THIS PUBLISHING BUSINESS!

THIS PUBLISHING BUSINESS

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 1, 2010

REFERENCE:

You all know I write a lot. Most of you don't know, however, that I am one of those authors who continues to write despite the stonewall he continues to run into with spectacular regularity.

I share this with you because I think the most important thing is not SUCCESS, but PASSION.

My passion doesn't seem to diminish with age, but percolates at a steady and commanding rate. So often I am asked, "How much money do you make with all your books and articles?"

The sense is that I am a rich man from writing. The fact of the matter is that I am reasonably well off because I have not let my passions run amuck, plus I live modestly, and always have.

At this late stage in life, I know there is only one kind of sustaining wealth, and that is LOVE, and I found it some twenty-four years ago with BB. I am just as irascible as I ever was, just as direct and brutal in my comments, only now this is tempered by an angel at my side

To give credence to these comments, I offer an email to a friend in the publishing business. He has always been there when my confidence wavered, but not with bromides but with truth. It is why I respect him so.
JRF

* * *

LETTER TO AN EDITOR FRIEND:

Ned,

I was fascinated reading the piece on Harper Lee and her novel "To Kill A Mockingbird," which appears in the current (June) issue of SMITHSONIAN.

The novel is now fifty years old. Lee was implored to write other novels but declined. She did agree to help Truman Capote with his "In Cold Blood," and some say she essentially wrote it for him, which she has never claimed. The counter claim of course was that Capote wrote her book. The little twerp never discouraged the rumor. So much for rumors. Now 84, she is just as serene as she ever was.

It so happens I was reading the article while staying in line sending my CD to Simon & Schuster, MacMillan and Anchor Press. I didn't send it to St. Martin's Press, or Harper & Row on your advice, or to Prentice-Hall. BB looked up P-H and they don't actually exist anymore, leastwise as I remember the publisher.

Imagine, coming back from South Africa in 1969, sitting down and writing CONFIDENT SELLING in six-weeks, a single draft, sending it off to Prentice-Hall because it had published SELF-IMAGE PSYCHOLOGY by Maxwell Smaltz, and having it accepted within two weeks, and published in the following year.

The book was in print for twenty years, went through several reprints both in hard and soft copy, was serialized in a national magazine, and was included in an article in an American Air Line magazine on self-development. Moreover, once published, it brought people from the East and West coast and the Midwest to meet with me here in Florida, and talk about the book.

I was also the single guest on PBS's local affiliate's WEDU for one hour to discuss the book. Haslam's, which then was a famous independent bookseller, sold more than one hundred copies at the time.

What could be easier, right? Wrong! I've never gotten into that stream again.

The only time I've been paid for magazine articles was in conjunction with that serializing of the book, and some fifteen or twenty articles with SALES & OPPORTUNITY magazine in the 1970s.

BB has suffered greatly for my passion, as you could say I've been close to a total failure, as I've been unable to find a sustainable audience. I don't say this with regret because my passion is still high and I've written nearly every day since 1990, published eight book since CS, and more than 350 articles in national publications. My blog, alone, has some 500+ missives. I wonder how many more millions like myself are out there?

To this moment, however, no matter how much I have failed to make connection with others I continue to write from heart and head and with a singular passion.

Herman Melville quit writing for twenty years when an audience didn't materialize for MOBY DICK. Now, it sells in the hundreds of thousands of copies every year. Incidentally, Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD continues to sell about a million copies a year, worldwide. It has been translated into forty languages.

Thank you for your help and patience,

Always be well,

Jim