(As a side note...that last sentence is something my MOTHER would not have ever said. In fact, I would have never uttered those words all in a row five years ago. Ah progress!)
Let's read that again: Those two sisters in that picture right there have been prostitutes for the better part of the last five decades. Now one of them...and I'll be honest, I couldn't keep them straight because through the entire documentary they wore exactly the same clothes. One had a little dog and one didn't, and that was the only difference. Anyway, one of them is retired. She has arthritis and wasn't able to bend as much as her clients wanted her to. So...there's that.
The other one is STILL WORKING. She sits in her little window and men come up to her and then she...well, she does what she does. (And yes, there are some graphic moments of video and yes they are disturbing and no, you should not watch this with your children or your parents in the same city.) And she says she has to keep doing it because her state pension isn't so good.
There's a state pension for prostitutes in Amsterdam? They really are open over there, aren't they?
The retired one paints. What does she paint? Lovely water colors of rivers?
So, she paints pictures of genitalia. Sometimes people are attached to them and sometimes not. So...there's that.
Now the documentary is almost two hours long. That's a lot of time to watch these two geriatric ladies have tea, walk that dippy little dog, and then one strips down to her underthings to spank old men while the other fills giant canvases with huge lady and man bits.
Okay, I'm an American and here these things are still shocking. And maybe they should be.
Or maybe not.
There's a lot to be shocked about in this world. War, genocide, rape, crimes committed against children, the cost of gas in the US when we are the #1 oil producing country in the world. (Another sentence I never thought I'd ever utter.) Is it really shocking or disturbing, what these two ladies do? Or is this just one of those pieces of real life where you look at it and you say, "Isn't that something?"
It's the same with writing. I've read a lot of books and I'll read many more. There isn't a genre I won't read, and if it's done well, I'll enjoy it. I don't live in those books. I don't live in that world. Books give me an opportunity to look into another world for a bit and say, "Isn't that something?"
I read a very long article, and I forget the source, it was one of those things passed down on Face Book, that was basically chiding Amazon for making books so cheap. Suddenly, the article was saying, books aren't special now that everyone can afford them.
That's not a quote, but it's darn close.
I'm sorry, what?
Are we back in the Dark Ages where the only people allowed to have books are the clergy? (That didn't turn out so well, did it?) We needed Gutenberg and his printing press to bring books, most famously the Bible, but books in general, to the masses. Books are to be read. They are to be read by EVERYONE.
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| Martha Merrill's Books...you can get all of mine there! |
The article went on about Amazon's practices and what not...and no, I don't love seeing book stores closing. But you know what? Book stores, the big ones, are closing because people want to read and they don't want to have to pay a ton of money to read. Did we learn NOTHING from "You've Got Mail?" Ironic, I think, that the very pro Barnes and Noble author of the article was grousing about book prices on Amazon while B & N and others like it spent years pushing the indie book sellers out the door. Now the indie book sellers are hanging on and the internet is selling more books by more authors for way less money. And indie authors, like me, are getting their books into indie book stores like Martha Merrill's in Waukesha.If people cannot afford print books...and with print costs rises almost as fast as gas, they can't...they will not read books. New stories, not only by indie authors, but by big names, will not sell. Stephen King was, many years ago, on the cusp of the e-book generation. J. A. Konrath is a prophet for e-book publishing. The goal of any author is to get the story in people's hands. Above all, we want to be read! We don't just want to be read by people who can afford a $34 hardcover book. We want to be read by EVERYONE.
Don't have a Kindle or a Nook or an e-reader? Don't need one! Want to read tons of indie books for $2.99 or less? (many are free!) Check out websites like Smashwords.com. There you can download a book to your computer and read it there. Not the most comfortable way to read it, but once you've paid for it, you can print it out and poof! You have the file on your computer and you can still read it in the tub! All for less than the cost of a cup of coffee at a gas station.Is everything out there awesome and great and life affirming? Much like Netflix documentaries, NO. Some of those books are not great. Everything is a crap shoot, whether you're going to a movie, buying a CD, or reading a book. You might like it. You might not. At least, with online publishing, you're rarely out more than $2.99. The upside is you can get in on the ground floor of an author learning his or her craft. Isn't is super cool when we can say, "Well, I've been reading that author since her first book came out, and I've always known she was awesome."
Friends, there are links on this page to every single one of my books and right now, not a one of them is going to cost you more than $1.99. I believe every one has the right to read a book and every story, no matter how disturbing I might find it, has every right to be read.
Now, go forth and buy my books...and then go read a bunch and then go forth and WRITE!
Beatrix Potter's first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was rejected by several publishers, at least initially. But Potter was so driven to share her children's book, written for the son of her former governess, that she privately printed it starting in 1901. After finding success, Frederick Warne & Co. began printing it as a trade edition in 1902, and multiple reprints were issued in the years following. With more than 45 million copies sold, this self-published book is also one of the best-selling books of all time. The Frederick Warne publishing company went on to publish all of the books in Potter's 23 Tales series.
Amanda Hocking and her wildly successful paranormal novels have made lots of news recently as a threat to the traditional publishing model, 
Edgar Allan Poe's first public work, Tamerlane and Other Poems, was commissioned by the author himself, turned over to a young printer who had previously only printed labels, flyers, and other small jobs. The 40-page book was pamphlet-sized, and it is believed that only 50 copies were printed, although some believe the actual number is as low as 20 or as high as 200. Tamerlane and Other Poems is considered to be one of the rarest first editions in American literature. So rare, in fact, that noted poetry anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold believed that it didn't even exist until one was found. It's believed that a total of 12 of these self-published editions still exist today. Poe's next book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems was picked up by publishers Hatch and Dunning, and Poe considered this to be his first book.
With such an auspicious name, John Locke was bound to do something amazing, and he certainly did: Locke became the first author to sell more than a million e-books without a publishing deal, and he did it in just five months. Perhaps the most amazing part of Locke's success is that he did it all without an agent, publicist, or huge marketing budget. Locke's success is credited to his deep understanding of the audience he writes for, a natural skill for a man whose background is in niche marketing. After finding success and joining the Kindle Million Seller club, Locke signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to have print editions of his books sold and distributed by the publisher. Locke has also written a guide to becoming a successful self-published author: How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, a title which has done quite well itself, currently ranked in the top 100 of both Kindle's Self Help and Success stores.
You may not recognize Richard Nelson Bolles' name, but you most likely know his popular self-help book, What Color is Your Parachute?, which was self-published by Bolles starting in 1970. Bolles 
Cynics might say that it's easy to get published when your family owns a publishing house, but have no doubt that Paolini and his family put in hard work to self-publish his first book, Eragon. Paolini's parents owned a small, home-based publishing company, Paolini International, and after seeing the potential of their son's work, decided to publish the book. The entire family helped make Eragon a success, promoting the book in schools, libraries, and bookshops with the young Paolini dressed in a medieval costume. Things didn't go very well until the stepson of popular author Carl Hiaasen bought a copy of the book and shared it with his stepfather, who brought it to the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, who contacted the Paolini family and offered to publish the book commercially. The book was on the New York Times Children's Books Best Seller list for 121 weeks, and was adapted into a feature film. He has since written three more highly acclaimed books.
Would you buy a New Age spirituality book out of the trunk of an author's car? It sounds like a strange thing to do, but 100,000 people did, making James Redfield's The Clandestine Prophecy an incredibly successful book, despite being rejected by mainstream publishing houses. Warner Books eventually agreed to publish it, but not before author Redfield sold copies out of the trunk of his Honda, and not just a few: 100,000 of them. After packing up his bookstore in a trunk, Redfield's book became the No. 1 bestseller in 1996, and spent 165 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. All told, more than 20 million copies of The Clandestine Prophecy have been sold worldwide, and a film adaptation of the book was released in 2006.
Irma Rombauer's The Joy of Cooking is in just about every kitchen you can find, as one of the world's most published cookbooks, in print continuously since 1936. But the cookbook started out as a privately published affair in 1931, with 3,000 copies created by label maker AC Clayton and illustrated by Rombauer's daughter. At the time, Rombauer was struggling emotionally and financial after her husband's suicide, and this was her way to support her family. 
It took JA Konrath's book, Origin, more than ten years to find an audience, after being rejected more than 50 (yes, really, 50) times by every major house in New York. But in September 2011, Konrath noted that he has sold tens of thousands of copies of the book in the Kindle store, where it was ranked #274 at the time. In all, Konrath collected nearly 500 rejection letters for his nine unpublished novels before being picked up by Hyperion. But that didn't happen before Konrath finally found an outlet for his writing through Amazon's self-publishing system. On his blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Konrath shares his secrets to becoming a successful self-published writer. Hint: it's perseverance, mixed with generous helpings of luck.
Along with his student EB White, Cornell University professor of English William Strunk Jr. wrote and published The Elements of Style as a guide to address elementary rules of usage, principles of composition, and commonly misused and misspelled words and expressions. It was originally designed for in-house use at the university and was known as "the little book," emphasis on the little. But it didn't stay little forever, and the book has since been revised and republished to much success and use. In 2011, Time magazine listed The Elements of Style as one of the 100 best and most influential English language books since 1923, and it is easily recognized as one of the most widely read and used English style manuals. All told, more than ten million copies of this originally self-published book have been sold.
