Once Upon A Time

The book publishing world in the pre-internet days was a little like the wild west. The wolves were lurking everywhere and part of finding your way in that world was learning how not to become their prey. When I began seriously pursuing a writing career in the early 1990’s the most dangerous of all the wolves were the vanity publishers. These unscrupulous publishers preyed on the naivete of unsuspecting new authors and offered to publish their books for a hefty fee and an extraordinarily large cut of the royalties.

They wouldn’t waste any of their precious time or money promoting your book, that was the author’s job. Their goal was to flatter the most authors they could, make them believe their book would become a bestseller, then extract as much money as possible from them before they caught on to their scheme. Vanity presses were not much better than pimps and I’d guess there weren’t many of us indie authors who escaped unscathed.

Once upon a time I was tricked by one of these vanity publishers called Publish America. They praised my work heavily, sufficiently pumped up my ego, and gained my trust. After what seemed like hundreds of no’s it felt so incredibly good (and ingratiating) to just hear a yes. I signed on the dotted line, cut them a check, and they published a collection of my early poetry entitled Continuum.

Shortly afterwards the publisher sent me a single dollar as an “advance” on my royalties. You read that right—one dollar. This was, no doubt, some legal formality they discovered they had to satisfy and that dollar was it. Once my friends, relatives, and a few coworkers bought copies of the book and I resorted to trying to sell copies at craft shows and out of the trunk of my car. When I got tired of being my own full time salesman the jig was up and book sales evaporated completely. I became just another feather in their cap.

Today these wolves wear different clothing but still have the same goals—to prey on the unsuspecting. For indie authors these days it’s all about gaining online exposure. With millions of authors clambering for a rapidly shrinking audience it’s not easy. How can you gain access to readers’ precious and divided attention? How can I crack the formula for creating a viral post? How do I possibly get hundreds of reviews on Amazon?

Now, the wolf pack is still coming for you but now they stalk your inbox. I probably get upwards of three of these spam emails daily—all AI-generated slop pasted into an email to try to get authors who’re so desperate for readers they take the bait. Sometimes the sender even refers to the wrong person in the salutation. There are a number of different angles. Sometimes the sender claims to be a literary agent, sometimes they’re the founder of a book club with thousands of readers who want to feature your book, other times they claim to be a successful author “just wanting to connect” to give helpful advice. It’s all about getting you to respond and developing a rapport.

All of these schemes have one thing they have in common: they want your money. After trading a few emails the topic of their fee inevitably enters into the conversation. Once upon a time I would have probably been flattered and willingly lured into the scheme but life has provided enough experience and context to allow me to avoid becoming their prey. These days these emails immediately get marked as spam but it ends up feeling a lot like that old “whack-a-mole” carnival game. Send one to spam, three more appear from different email addresses.

Getting older isn’t all bad. After a while you begin to realize, at its core, life doesn’t really change all that much. Aging feels a little like watching the same theater production on a continuous loop but with different actors and directors. The only thing that changes are the sets, the players, and perhaps the finer details of their approach. You begin to be able to predict, with a fair amount of accuracy, what happens next.

The real trick is to escape cynicism—to allow yourself to continue to trust, to remain open, and stay reasonably optimistic about not only the future but in human nature itself. The world tries its best to make you a cynic. To be honest, some days staying on this track sometimes feels like a full time job but it’s worth every effort to try.

It’s true, this world is filled with people who will scam you, use you, misinform, and gaslight you. All of those characters will be around forever and will just take on different incarnations throughout your life. In the end they’re only fooling themselves.

What truly matters are your actions and intentions, how you interact with the world around you, and how you feel about the person you see in the mirror. The goal is to love as many of the people around you and the minutes of your life as you can. As your world shrinks and your years begin to wind down you realize what’s important in life isn’t complicated at all. What’s important is how present you are. A good meal. A new experience that lights you up. Finding joy in the happiness of others.

Have you built things that have added to the goodness of the world or conspired to tear things down and contributed to the pestilence that plagues our existence? This very moment will, someday, be referred to as once upon a time so you’d better be sure to make the most of it.

All for now. Thanks so much for reading.