A Call to Greatness
Today, while wandering through a Home Depot looking for flashlights and varmint spray I got a call from Lulu Publishing. They are the the self-publishing company that I have used to publish three books written mostly in 2017 when I had lots of time on my hands as the New York Wheel went into legal rigor mortis over the issue of construction costs, which were under firm completion-guaranteed fixed-price contract, but which the contractor (a large well-respected Dutch firm) could not deliver at twice the price. Such situations happen more often than they should and are anything but unusual in the world of business. Imagine someone over-committing and then using legal tactics to try to slide out from under the obligation. Standard stuff. So I stayed home and wrote to keep busy since there was little business to be done on the Wheel and no one asking me to do otherwise.
The first book I wrote was Mater Gladiatrix, the story of my mother’s life. As my mother approached one hundred years old I decided I needed to gather details of her life to do my best to write her story at some point. Then, when she died in early 2017 I set to task and wrote her biography in two months. I have told many friends who are facing the end of the lives of their parents that they should consider the same sort of project. It seems few feel able to do so despite the amazingly cathartic benefit of the process. I literally relived my mother’s life in writing the book and then shared the task with my wife Kim of narrating it for an audiobook. I researched and learned things I never knew. I explained things to family members of which even my sisters were not aware. I put to rest all my roots and ancestral demons as they were. And I gave myself a great sense of personal accomplishment along the way.
The next book I wrote was at the request and suggestion of my wife. She wanted me to write Cecil’s story and she asked me to call it Eat, Play, Poop. It was a very different kind of experience writing about the tale of a rescue dog who had become a beloved and pampered pet. I felt that doing it for Kim was the big driver and the artistic angle, as challenging as it was to find the voice for the story, could be secondary to the overwhelming sense of love Kim had for Cecil. To be clear, Cecil’s story is the story of Kim’s boundless love for all creatures large and small. I managed to muster eighty or so pages in this tribute since I refused to fictionalization the story too much and there is only so much to be said about a house pet that lives in an apartment. I am happy I did it because he means so much to Kim and the story of her love is an endless tale.
The third book was to be my coup de grace in a literary sense. One of my big themes has been retirement. I’ve worked in the field and thought even more about it than normal. I spent ten years lecturing about it at Cornell and I even wrote a published academic treatise called Global Pension Crisis: Unfunded Liabilities and How We Can Close the Gap, published by Wiley & Sons in 2013. This new book was to be less an academic work and not do much about the financing of retirement, but more about the psychology of modern retirement. There were twenty-three “tales of a modern prisoner” depicting the thoughts on the subject as they evolve from early career to late-stage career thinking. It is called Gulag 401k. I put more effort and more storytelling into this work than ever before. I got good reviews from Kirkus, five stars from Goodreads and general praise from those who read it. I wanted this book to be special and to get widely read.
I never meant for Mater Gladiatrix to be more than a personal family and friends work and found the thought of promoting a story about my mother to be a bit too puerile for my taste. While I joked about the silly pet book going into the literary stratosphere, I has no great expectations for Eat, Play, Poop. But Gulag 401k was my baby and I decided to give my baby every advantage to launch it into the literary realm. I bought ads in the Kirkus Review. I paid a specialized literary publicist to promote it and get it out into the right hands over several months. And then, at the suggestion of Lulu, I bought 4 million online social media impressions to try to spur sales. I did everything everyone in the business thought I should do. I spared no expense as they say. And not one bit of all that moved the needle to sell books or audiobooks (again, self-narrated with loving care).
I decided some time in 2018 that literary success, while certainly requiring great talent and perhaps even literary genius, also requires lightning to strike. In other words, there is only so much one can do to make a writing career take flight, the rest is in the hands of the Gods. There may be people who know how to define what will and won’t sell, but to suggest that it may be a rather hit-or-miss profession would not be a stretch. And tastes migrate every day. The people deciding what might sell may or may not be the same age, ethnicity or demographic of those doing the buying. The one thing we know for sure is that the internet and the whole new media experience has accelerated the pace of changing tastes in all things and certainly in entertainment such as books. I feel far less concerned about storytelling going out of fashion even if the exact medium with which it is conveyed changes. Good stories can overcome, but the themes and styles need to appeal to the “audience”. Lots of marketing thought goes into all these issues, but I’m not yet convinced that any of it substitutes for that telltale spark from the lightning strike.
The Lulu marketing rep had just taken over my “account” and was calling to see what he could do to help push my three books more than had already been done. I explained the history to him (I was in a generous and pleasant mood) and suggested that nothing I had seen from Lulu, Kirkus or anyone else in the publishing marketing business made me want to spend more money on a book (in this case Gulag 401k) that had been out there getting unsuccessfully flogged for almost two years. To move the conversation on and allow me to get back to my flashlight buying, I told him to think about all I had said and call me in mid-January if he came up with any great ideas to convince me he had found the secret to my success. He agreed and I predict I will not hear from him since he seemed like a smart enough guy to know the difference between persistent salesmanship and wasting time.
I will continue to write and take pride in my works, both my books and my blog. I like the thought that I’m leaving my thoughts for others (perhaps family and friends or perhaps even others) to enjoy. Whether I am Shakespeare of just Rich, my words have value to some, even slight, degree. Life is fleeting. There are no guarantees that our souls, as embodied in our thoughts and stories, carry on to infinity. There is no guarantee that books, stories or even the damn internet last forever. Nevertheless, I will always answer the call to greatness in the hope that it’s not always a wrong number.