Friday, January 13 (cont'd)

I passed several milestones before I wrote Bukowski Never Did This.

100 books, 25 years as a writer, 150 books, 30 years, 200 books.

250 books. This year will be my 35th anniversary as a writer.

I was a headliner at the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA)'s Legends of the Underground reading, off-off-Broadway.

That is, I wasn't just a legend in my own mind. I was a legend to the ULA.

Not that it impressed anyone as a writing title but it meant a lot to me.

I'm serious. I was starved for recognition. This was recognition. By a group of misfits, bitter literary also-rans, whiners. But recognition.

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

When I finished writing SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL, a celebration of writing 250 books without selling a word, I thought, What next?

I have flogged that horse. What next.

I decided to write a novel about working for a living, combining writing and work, combining writing and work and family.

A conventional novel, with a plot and characters, a setting and a theme.

Well, not too conventional. The novel was autobiographical, and switched back and forth between sections called Novel, with fictional characters, and Diary, with real people, showing how each form shed light on the other. How the two forms complemented each other.

LitVision was a little magazine, just starting out. The free-range rooster of creative writing. They belonged to the ULA.

They put out a call for manuscritps. They had decided to publish a book.

I sent them SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

In the meantime, I was writing Bukowski Never Did This, and posting it at The Daily Bulletin.

The editor, Pat Simonelli, read Bukowski Never Did This, at The Daily Bulletin, and said he'd rather publish it than SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

I said, "Whatever."

It had been 18 years since my last published book-length book, Forty, was published by Popular Reality, in 1987.

Jack Kerouac only went seven years between The Town and the City and On the Road.

Barbara Pym only went 16 years between the time her publisher rejected An Unsuitable Attachment as "out of step with the times" and the time Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil named her "the most underrated novelist of the [20th] century."

This was better than recognition by the ULA. It was a book I got paid for. A book somebody else paid to publish and paid me for writing. That was a first.

As lagniappe, the ULA was behind it, and Out Your Backdoor Books, a ULA member, would help distribute the book. So I had a publisher, a distributor, and an alliance of underground writers, and publishers, on my side. I had a support system. An infrastructure. It wasn't just me and the trunk of my car.

As soon as Bukowski Never Did This came out, I quit my job, cashed in my annuity, and gave myself a grant, to promote Bukowski Never Did This and write about doing that, on the so-called Redneck Riviera Tour.

I had a book release party, reading, and book-signing for my book in Philadelphia.

I attended Philly Zine Fest, Zine-A-Palooza, in Atlanta, a folk art trade show (Folk Fest), a writers conference, where I was a presenter, and a street fair in Panama City, Oktoberfest.

I drove around Northwest Florida calling on bookstores with my book.

I was invited to read and sign books in Fairhope, Alabama. Good morning, Tri-States, as Red Holland used to say. About the Florida, Georgia, Alabama market his fishing show served. "Look out now, don't tell no lies--you on the teevee."

"Who says Red don't get the big ones."

If you want to hide a book from New York, self-publish it, or publish it yourself on the Internet.

Both are stigmatized. Self-published books and Internet books.

They haven't been vetted by professionals. They are amateurish.

For that matter, put it in a chain bookstore in the mall. See how much hand-selling you get where publishers pay for locations for placement in the store, like Proctor and Gamble paying for a new soap display.

Of course, you can't get a self-published, or small press-run, independently-published book in a chain bookstore in the mall. Your promotion budget isn't big enough. You don't have a national tour. You aren't on radio talk shows, television talk shows. You're too...small press.

I think publishers, and bookstores, sneering at the Internet is like buggy-whip manufacturers sneering at the internal combustion engine. There's something there they should look at. As a matter of self-preservation.

I thought that by publishing my books online, as I wrote them, I would interest an ink-and-paper publisher into reprinting one of them, and selling it to bricks-and mortar bookstores.

That happened.

I thought that publicizing it on the Internet would bring reviews, blurbs, discussion, commentary, sniping, hissy-fits, etc. A cussing hissy.

That happened.

Publishing on the Internet is a strategy of attraction, not promotion, as AA says. Readers come to me. People who look for books like I am writing seek it out, and find me.

Search engines look for keywords. People get a hit on my website accidentally. There is serendipity involved. You can't fake a keyword hit. And it won't be denied.

Finally, there are some independent bookstores left, and fulfillment is a dream. They will go directly to my publisher and buy books from him. All I have to do is give them an url. I leave the business end up to people who do that for a living. So I can concentrate on writing, driving around, eating at Lambert's Throwed-Roll Café, in Foley, and posting what happens to me online, daily, as it happens, in the great long continuous book of my life.

Support independent bookstores.

Support underground writers.

Thank you for your support.

If you have questions, ask away.