WHATEVER HAPPENED TO, "I WOULD KNOW!"

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO, “I WOULD KNOW!”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 31, 2009

“The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.”

Socrates

* * * * * *

This is meant to end this. Some of you thought I was going to be on the cover of an Executive Excellence publication. That was a vanity myth as it turns out.

As I explained, perhaps not clearly enough, the publisher of that publication, Ken Shelton, published an article of mine I expressly told him not to publish. He took the article off my email address book, which you received as well.

Once the EE issue was published with my contribution in it, I was advised that a dummy issue was going to be created with my picture on the cover as if I had indeed been seen by thousands of readers, when in fact the only ones who would see it would be those on my very slender email address book -- that means you!

I explained this best I could, but someone still wrote, "Hey, Jim, I would not have known the difference. Fact is I'd have thought it was a big deal. Why be so incensed?"

My answer is simple: "I would know!" Whatever happened to that as the final arbiter?

Be always well,

Jim

PS

I've just written a story, "My Favorite Uncle." I am not going to put it on the web or on my email address book. I will mail it to you if I receive an email to the effect that you will not reprint it, send it on to anyone else as I plan to publish it. I will never writer for Executive Excellence again, or anyone else without an agreement signed and dated. The irony is that EE used to operate that way but has gotten sloppy.

A very popular novelist sent three chapters of a proposed book to three friends. It ended up on scores of blogs, and then into some newspapers. This author is one of the few who makes seven-figure income writing. She vows not to publish for the next five years.

You can say how could she be so stupid to send it to friends? The answer is that we writers like to get a sense of how our work resonates with our readers. None of us, not even authors who are millionaires are certain they are making connection with readers.