I was driving to meet a friend for dinner when I heard a Robert Plant interview on the radio. I've searched in vain to find a transcript; I think it's lost to the winds of change.

---

I grew up on Led Zeppelin, as classic rock lives on in southwest Iowa today as it did in its heydey. Middle America is where time stands still for old-school rock and roll, as it does for mall hair and some forms of acid-wash jeans. There are places deep in the heart of Nebraska where I assume people are still pegging their jeans, similar to the Space Odyssey: a land where time stood still and perhaps the universe ceased to rotate for several decades. That, my friends, is western Nebraska.

Anyway, Robert Plant was talking about his creative process. He said if he listened to what people wanted him to be at this point in his career it would all be awful, that he had to create what he is now for himself. As I was driving deeper into Kansas and reflecting on my own tiny writing career, I thought to myself, wow, if Robert Plant has deep existential questions, then I am totally fucked.

But that's it, isn't it? This is all there is, for all of us, what we have in this moment. Lay down your swords, boys, this is who you are.

---

Today I worked with Laura Fraser on a session at BlogHer PRO all about putting together a book proposal, which I did for SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK in 2006 or 2007. The book came out in 2008. If I did today what I did in 2008 for SIFTW, I doubt it would have been published. If I did twenty years ago what I did for THE OBVIOUS GAME in 2011, I think it would've sold better. The fact is, the world turns, and the publishing world turns with it, and none of us really knows what's going to happen next. What worked yesterday won't work today, and works today won't work tomorrow. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Being a writer is more about the career than the book. Save yourself the pain and absorb that truth.

(I really wish there was a typed transcript of this Robert Plant interview. You're going to have to trust the paraphrase here.)

So the host was asking Robert Plant about his career (and what a career!) and Robert Plant was basically saying at this point he just does what he likes and who cares what the bastards think? (Again, I paraphrase.) That at some point, people have an expectation of you, and you have to decide whether or not to fulfill it.

I have no idea if there is an expectation of me other than what I set for myself. I'm guessing probably not.

---

Yesterday, I lost a notebook with all my ideas for my next novel on Southwest flight 699 from Kansas City to Phoenix. I've filed a claim in the hopes that my little notebook with owls on the cover has been found. The first thing I did when I got to my room was open a Word document and word vomit everything I could remember from the five-hour drive home from Thanksgiving into it. The idea is so weird anyone who finds the notebook and reads it might think I am crazy.

I'm a little crushed that I lost that notebook. I may have cried in the Phoenix airport.

And as I dried my tears, I thought of Robert Plant.

And I thought about what expectations I have set for myself.

---

Today in the BlogHer PRO session I admitted, once again, all my writerly failures. How many times I have been rejected. My ongoing search for a career agent. My many projects in all their various stages. Laura actually called me out and insisted I would do better to work my network, and I admitted to myself and to her that maybe I haven't asked more people that I know in the field to introduce me to their agents because

I

am

scared.

Even after two books, I am scared.

I want to be Robert Plant.

I want to get to the point where I make my own art, and I do not worry about where the cards may fall.

I went into the session with the hope that people would hear my part of the story and understand that the artistic gig, the publishing gig, is fraught with rejection. I would have nothing, absolutely nothing, published without the sheer force of my will. Nobody else has ever cared about it like I have.

You get up, you send more queries, you get critiques, you revise, you query again. And so on.

Thank you, Robert Plant, for reminding me that in the end, nobody cares about my art like I do.

This week I'm finishing up my shitty rough draft of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to send to my beta readers, and I'm pretty sure it sucks and they will think less of me for reading it. Yesterday, I tried to list THE OBVIOUS GAME on a discount site, but it wasn't accepted. I suspect it's a little heavy for their genre-heavy readership, which I totally get, but it was disappointing because I could use the boost in visibility on Amazon. This year I've watched other blogger anthologies rising to heights SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK never saw when it came out. I realized a long time ago I don't have the personal following it takes to nudge my books over the echo chamber wall of who I know into the mainstream world of who I don't. It would take marketing dollars to get there, marketing dollars my publishers don't spend and I can't spend. I understand the business behind the business, but the art/business marriage keeps separate apartments. 

When I get low, Beloved always says, "But you got published." 

To which I retort, "But I didn't take off."

To which he responds with a frustrated stare, because he is never able to convince his ambitious and bullheaded wife that her goals are too lofty for her circumstance and abilities. Which is basically the premise of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's something I have struggled with for years -- when my overgrown ambition does battle with my talent and financial support.

This week, BlogHer syndicated a post by Kyran Pittman, which discussed why creative people compare themselves to the superstars of their fields when accountants and bus drivers don't. She writes:

The actors who don’t get Oscar nominations, the authors whose books don’t make the bestseller lists, the songwriters who don’t go platinum, the cellists who aren’t Yo-Yo Ma -– they aren’t underachievers.

Oh, the metrics available in this world, how bone-crushing they can be. I've stopped looking at metrics more than once a week for anything -- my blog, my books, my weight. There are too many ways to measure yourself with indisputable numbers in 2013. I'm the type of person who prefers problems with no one answer. Am I a success? The numbers don't lie. But subjectively, am I a success? It depends on your perspective.

I fight every day to push away the feeling that everything I do artistically is the adult equivalent of chalk drawings on the driveway before a rainstorm. 

But Kyran's right. The point isn't to matter to everybody, it's to matter to somebody, and it's my job to beat back the emails telling me I'm not doing enough to market my work and the emails trumpeting who won this or that award or made this or that bestseller list. I can't really manufacture that any more than I can force a stock to go up or down on Wall Street. 

Who and how many notice the art can't be more important than the existence of art. The existence of the art has to be the point.

And so a new day starts, and I remind myself this again. 

The Kansas City Listen to Your Mother show is this Saturday, May 11, at 7 pm at Unity Temple on the Plaza. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Unless you win two here.

Now that my conference is over, I'm starting to get really nervous for the show. I've heard all my castmates' performances, and they are both hilarious and heartbreaking. If you're local, I highly recommend the show, and not just because a portion of the proceeds go to the Rose Brooks Center. 

What is Listen to Your Mother, you ask? It's a group of women performing essays on motherhood, daughterhood and what it means to participate in this part of the human condition. The show will be around ninety minutes, and afterwards I promise you will leave a changed person for what you have heard.

I'll also be selling and signing my young adult novel, THE OBVIOUS GAME, and my parenting anthology, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, afterward. I'm reordering bookplates so hopefully they will be in by then. If you have a copy and you just want a signature, bring it on down. Some of my castmates will be selling their books, as well, so if you're interested, please bring small bills. Most of us aren't equipped with debit card thingies. 

So! If you want to win a pair of tickets, please leave a comment here. Every comment counts as one entry. I'll close entries on this Thursday, May 9 at 5 pm CT. I hope to see you at Unity Temple on Saturday! 

It's the fifth anniversary of the publication of my parenting anthology, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, this year, and so in honor of Mother's Day coming up, I rang up two of my contributors -- Alice Bradley and Eden Kennedy -- who went on to write their own parenting tome, LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES. We decided what might be really fun to do in a veiled attempt to remind you our books make excellent Mother's Day gifts for the lovelies in your life is update you on one of our vignettes from SIFTW and ponder which bit of baby advice from LPAB works for tweens, which we all now have.

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, Edited by Rita Arens -- buy it here!

I'm going to update my essay, "Sleep Cycles." (p. 25) Originally I included these stages of adult sleep cycles: 1) Alcohol-induced 2) Insomnia-Related 3) The Love Bug 4) New Baby-Induced 5) Toddler-Induced. Clearly, I had a toddler when I wrote this post. There are all sorts of other reasons you can't sleep after becoming a parent. 

My daughter is now nine. Since the Toddler-Induced days, I've also experienced the following sleep disturbances:

6) Growing-Child-in-My-Bed-Induced. My daughter has slept through the night since she was around four or five. It was a gradual thing, when the waking up and crying three times a night became waking up and walking into my bedroom once a night to try to crawl in where it was warm. At first, I gave in (it was always my side of the bed she approached, of course) and let her crawl in, only to find her elbow in my ear, her bony butt in my hip and the amount of body heat with me in the middle unable to crawl out from under the covers or even slip out a temperature-regulating foot stifling. This led to the next stage.

7) Trying-to-Sleep-in-a-Twin-Bed-Induced. When she showed up in the middle of the night, I'd take her back to her own bed and lie down with her, thinking of course I would get up and go back to my own, queen-sized bed in a few minutes. Of course, inevitably I'd lie down, fall asleep, and then be on that dividing line between too tired and too lazy to go back to my own bed even though trying to get any sleep with a grade-school-aged child in a twin bed is just plain ridiculous.

8) Sleepover-Induced. Whether there's an extra kid in my house or my girl is somewhere other than her own bed, I just don't sleep so well, period. I'm going to absolutely die when she goes to college.

I haven't yet gotten to the stages of driving- and dating-induced sleep problems. God help me when I do.

LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES! By Alice Bradley & Eden M. Kennedy -- buy it here!

NOW. For the LPAB baby advice that applies to a tween. 

Ahem.

I'm staring at "This Is Overly Difficult, and I Have Changed My Mind." (p. 142) I hope Eden and Alice don't mind if I update their advice for tweens.

Having a baby tween will:

• Win you the approval of the far right Update! As long as you don't end up with a pregnant tween!
• Allow you to start one of those "mommy blogs" everyone's been talking about Update! You'll realize when your kid hits around six OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE? I'M A FUCKING LIFESTYLE BLOGGER. THERE ARE NO MOMMYBLOGS.
• Give you an excuse to expose your nipples in public Update! Give you an excuse to revisit the eighties when your daughter asks for neon socks.
• Allow you to catch up on all those episodes of Sesame Street you've missed. Update! Allow you to catch on to all that is wrong with Disney programming for tweens.
• Exercise your arms from hours of vigorous stroller-pushing and baby-rocking. Update! Exercise your jaws from all those hours of teeth grinding. 
• Provide you with someone to blame for all those thwarted ambitions. There is no need for an update here. Move along.

Read Eden's post here and Alice's post here. And don't forget how lovely books are, especially for pregnant people, new moms, or anyone who prefers to laugh rather than to cry when thinking about children. Who wants to win a set of both books? One entry for each comment, every comment counts, enter as often as you like. I'll ship the winner the books directly from Amazon. The contest ends at noon CT on Monday, May 6 to ship in time for Mother's Day!

UPDATE: Congratulations, Julia! I'll be contacting you for your address. You win both copies!

My absolute hands-down, favorite thing about BlogHer conferences is the Voices of the Year ceremony. This year was amazing -- every single one of the presenters seemed to also be a theater person, because there wasn't a disappointing presentation in the mix. Not everyone who was honored got to present, however (including yours truly), so I was thrilled in the year someone liked one of my posts that the powers that be decided to partner with Open Road to present the entire kit and kaboodle as an ebook on Kindle and iTunes.

Who doesn't love a good blogger anthology? (cough)

So, anyway, the actual pub date is October 30, but if you're interested, you can preorder it now. Go crazy, Ma!

I deleted all my boards off Pinterest a few months ago, because I was pinning mostly public art and got freaked out about copyright. You really aren't supposed to pin anything you don't have permission to pin unless you took the picture yourself, and everything I was pinning was art, so I got nervous.

I recently read a great article somewhere (I've forgotten where) about starting a pinboard for your books, if you're an author. I think that's a fascinating idea. Probably even more fascinating considering two of the three books I'm pinning for aren't published yet. Either way, it'll be fun for me. Let me know if this would make a book come more alive for you, and if you want, follow my boards! I haven't pinned much yet -- I just started. It'll happen the way the books themselves happen -- slowly.

Just as ebooks are heating up after everyone got a Kindle Fire for Christmas, I got a letter this week from the publisher of Sleep Is for the Weak, Chicago Review Press. I don't hear from my publisher very often, as my book came out four years ago, and in publishing dog years, that is approximately What-Have-You-Done-for-Me-Lately-thirty. The letter basically told me why Chicago Review Press's distributor, IPG, got into it with Amazon, which resulted in Amazon yanking the Kindle version of more than 4,000 books off its site. My book was one of those books.

I'm disappointed and not really because I'm upset specifically about Sleep Is for the Weak. I still think it's a great anthology, I'm proud of it and all the great writers featured in it, and there are new parents all the time who might want to read it. Since you can't find it in bookstores any more, online is really the only way to shop. BUT STILL. I intend to write more books. I'm disappointed in principle that it's so hard to get a book in front of readers four years after it was published. 

The publishing industry is the craziest industry ever, and it's the only industry I know of in which a store can buy stuff and then if it doesn't sell, the publisher has to buy it back and the author doesn't get paid -- even though it was initially sold to the bookseller. You don't get paid until Amazon buys your book and Amazon sells your book. Otherwise Amazon can buy your book, you can get super-excited, and then six months later Amazon sends back your book and all those numbers disappear from your royalty statement. It's crazy-making, and I didn't know that's how it worked until after I got my first royalty statement from Chicago Review Press and called them up to get the most frustrating math lesson known to an artist. And though I'm using Amazon as an example, it's not just them -- it's every bookstore. This is how the industry operates. Books get about two months on the shelf, and then if they're not flying off, well, they can and do get sent back. I'm constantly thankful my book was published in an era when the Internet existed to continue to sell my book after it disappeared from bookstores in the teeny tiny little parenting section that has about six shelves for every book ever written on the subject. Or maybe instead what I really find: Three shelves of baby journals, two shelves of books on getting your baby to nurse or sleep and half a shelf of humor books and books written by Jenny McCarthy with maybe one copy of Anne Lamott's amazing Operating Instructions. I totally get shelf space. I also totally get that new books come out all the time, so bookstores have to keep things in rotation. Which is why the Internet is so, so important to authors.

The publishing industry already has incredibly low margins for publishers and authors on top of the crazy-ass sell-back clause. What happened with IPG, again from my letter:

IPG, our distributor, could not in good conscience accept Amazon’s demands to the detriment of publishers and authors. As a result, Amazon is choosing not to purchase our e-books at terms that are in line with the rest of the industry and are acceptable to all our other customers. Amazon has removed our Kindle editions from their site, though the print editions of our books are still available for sale on Amazon. IPG is taking a brave stand against Amazon’s predatory pricing, along with other major players in the industry. We support them and hope that you will too.

But, you know, lest we feel too sorry for IPG, the distributor isn't too focused on ebooks, according to them: 

Some of the small presses that work with distributors don’t sell many e-books. IPG president Mark Suchomel told Crain’s that e-books make up less than 10 percent of IPG revenues. 

I'm glad it's not hurting IPG's bottom line too much, but the authors might feel a little differently about that.

And, since Chicago Review Press published my book, I can't just decide to publish it as an ebook if I want or distribute it in any other fashion. From a letter from IPG to its publishers:

7. Seriously consider the implications of this action for the long run. If we don’t hold firm on your behalf, your margins will continue to erode. IPG will continue to represent you well to those customers that are happy to buy from us at reasonable terms. If you or your authors were working directly with any large vendor, you would not have the opportunity to push back on or even have a conversation about terms. Your continued support is appreciated.

8. If anyone from Amazon calls you, please let them know that you are distributed by and contractually tied to IPG.

According to the letter, you can still get Sleep Is for the Weak in any format other than Kindle, and even if you have Kindle, you can still read it. Side note: you can email yourself almost anything on a Kindle, although a small fee applies. I email myself updated revisions of my new novel all the time because it's easier for me to find problems when it already looks like a real book. Here's how to find Sleep Is for the Weak electronically, from the letter:

All of Chicago Review Press’s titles remain widely available in both print and electronic editions (EPUB and PDF formats). You can find them at your local independent bookshop, www.indiebound.org, www.BarnesandNoble.com, Apple’s iTunes, Google Books, www.ebookstore.sony.com, and elsewhere. The only format you will not be able to buy—temporarily, we hope—is Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format. Although, if you have a Kindle Fire, with just a few steps you can download almost any e-reader app and purchase EPUB and PDF editions that can be read on the Kindle Fire. You can also purchase both print and e-books directly from the IPG website (www.ipgbook.com). 

I'm just disappointed. It's so hard to be an author anyway, and to have your book on the virtual shelves when it's not on the physical ones and then have it removed feels just horrible. I understand why IPG did what it did, and its negotiating power is one of the reasons I wanted to be traditionally published. If it were just me against Amazon, how would any negotiation go? Amazon's not evil, IPG's not evil, Chicago Review Press is not evil: No one is sitting around rubbing their hands together thinking how they can crush the souls of writers. They're making business decisions. Because bookselling is a business. It's tough to have your art be part of a business sometimes.

In the end, books are as good as their distributors. There are many, many incredible books by even well known authors that simply go out of print. I have hope that the increase in ereaders will allow books to stay in print longer electronically and be easier to access years later. The events of this week make me wonder, though. 

http://oascentral.blogher.org/RealMedia/ads/adstream_jx.ads/blogher.org/ChimeIn_Nov11_Review_001/@x13

Editor's Note: I was paid by BlogHer to write this post and conduct discussions on Chime.in. But the discussions were about blogs to books, so, you know, they didn't have to twist my arm very hard. Also, there's a really, really good giveaway at the end of this post.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by social media? I mean, here you are, reading this blog, so it's not like you don't know anything about it, and it's not like I don't, either, but I'll admit ever since there was more than blogging, I've felt like it's too much. I can't keep up with Facebook at all. I talk on Twitter, and I usually talk back to anyone who talks to me, but I don't try to keep up with everything everyone says. It's too much. As my good friend Average Jane put it back when the world Twitter was young, Twitter is a stream that you step in and out of at will, and you don't worry about what happened when you weren't there.

So now I've joined Tumblr and Pinterest and Google+ and most recently, Chime.in.

I heard about Chime.in at BlogHer Writers '11 because it was a sponsor, and I just joined because I am going to be leading a discussion about blogs and books for the next week. If you're interested in those topics, please do come join me.

I'm going to keep Chime.in about blogs and books, just as I've kept Tumblr straight about publishing and Pinterest completely random. Facebook, hell, I don't know what I'm doing at Facebook, but I'm 100% sure I'm not using it correctly. Twitter is just where I talk to online friends -- most of my real-life friends look at me cross-eyed when I talk about tweeting. That's how I'm managing all of this new social media, and I've found once I hit my stride at how I personally am categorizing things, it's something I look forward to using. I'm not trying to become a design queen on Pinterest -- I'm just pinning some things that are either pretty or really random. With Chime.in, I hope to be mentoring. I really enjoyed mentoring the anthology group at BlogHer Writers '11, and as I have done something of a blog to book, or at least anthologized blogs to books, I hope to pass along a little advice and encouragement this month at Chime.in.

Things I like about Chime.in so far:

• Really easy to join. Sign in with Twitter or Facebook. Sort of like robbing from Peter to pay Paul, except all of them are free. Or something. I'm not actually sure where this analogy is going.
• You can search on your interests and it just hands you groups to follow. I followed the bookish groups, since I've already decided how I'm going to specialize on Chime.in.
• Social media multi-tasking: Whatever you chime you can also send to Facebook and Twitter. I really appreciate this feature, because I have different friends on different platforms, and I like it that way. Let the randoms who for some crazy reason are following me on Google+ see my broadcast links there, and I'll stick to blogging and books on Chime.in. But you know, sometimes I might want to tweet it just to be absolutely crazy. I like having the option, regardless.

Those who have questions about blogs to books here in the past or those who are just curious? Join my thread on Chime.in. I'm hoping I'll get some questions over there, but if not, you know, I'll just talk about what happened to me.

And, as is awesome, after giving away two nooks on my review blog, I now get to give away a Kindle Fire. Yes, yes, yes. Comment here or participate in my blog-to-books discussions on Chime.in to enter. Official rules are here. My part of the contest ends on Monday, November 7 at midnight CT. Comments or discussions on Chime.in timestamped after midnight CT on November 7 won't be eligible for my part of the contest. But get ready -- I'm not the only blogger participating. My friends and colleagues Stephanie O'Dea, Karen Ballum of Sassymonkey Reads and Diane Lang of Momo Fali have Kindle Fires to give away, too!

• Tuesday, November 1 - Monday November 7 -- win here -- GIVEAWAY CLOSED: Congratulations, Linda Sherwood!
• Tuesday, November 8 - Monday November 14 -- win with Stephanie O'Dea Enter here -- GIVEAWAY CLOSED: Congratulations, Cheryl Moore!
• Tuesday, November 15 - Monday November 21 -- win with Momo Fali here and Matt Logelin here!
• Tuesday, November 22 - Monday November 28 -- win with Sassymonkey

See you there!

Now that it's November, people might think I'm doing NaNoWriMo, butI'm not. I've been working on this novel since June, and there is noway it's going to get done by the end of November. Ha ha ha ha ha.Ahem. Ha.

But I did turn a corner last Friday. I ended the second third androunded the corner in my head into the last full section of the book.I'm at 46,000 words now and still aiming for 75,000 before I startcutting. The novel is definitely feeling young adult at this point, andI think YA word count is supposed to be between 55,000 and 70,000words. 

About halfway through the second third of the book, I finally saw how it was all going to fit together. There are still certain details that are lost on me, and there's one character I haven't figured out how to fully utilize (does every main character have to be important?) or I should probably cut her out. Right now she's just sort of there but doesn't play a big part in my heroine's life. I think I need to go read some more novels to figure out the answer to that question -- reading always answers most of my questions about writing. How did someone else pull it off?

I sat down with my notebook two weeks ago and laid out the last half of the book. Each chapter got two or three scenes I wanted to work in. What happens between those scenes usually occurs to me when I sit down to write. I try to write at least one chapter -- at least ten pages -- each time I sit down. The chapters may or may not stay at that length -- it's just a way for me to mark progress, like mile markers on an endless highway. Without those mile markers, the trip just seems unbearable.

I get very overwhelmed at the thought of writing something I can't finish in one sitting. Even when I'm tasked with writing long articles, I do the research in several sittings but then when I sit down, I spit out the entire rough draft in one go. This novel thing is different. It's too long, and even if I had the stamina and time to do it in one sitting, I wouldn't know what was going to happen. The plot has occurred to me in the car and in the shower over months. 

Last Thursday night, Beloved and I were talking and I told him I had no idea what I was going to write about in the chapter I had to do the following day. I knew the scenes, but I didn't know what was going to happen in them or how I was going to get from point A to point B. He said, "Just let it come to you," and I knew he was right, but I was panicky. Usually I can sort of see it before I sit down. But then, last Friday I totally got it and wrote 27 pages in one sitting. I think the subconscious will bring a lot to fiction if you plant the seed of the scene and then let it rattle around a little.

Once I wrote out the chapters and scenes for the rest of the book, the writing got a lot easier. Many people believe in outlining an entire novel before they sit down to write, and many people just give it a go. I'm sort of in between, but I am finding having the scenes decided makes it easier to sit down. Then I have the room -- I just have to decide which characters walk into it and what they do while they're there. 

I am anxious to get the rough draft out. That's always the part that worries me the most. If you're going to lose the scent, it's in the rough draft. Rewriting is easier for me than writing. I'm not a person who gets trapped in rewrites, going over and over the same passage. I believe in making each sentence the best it can be, but I don't like working the same project over and over. I read once that Tom Robbins rewrites his novels something like 30 times before they are published. But he doesn't use an outline. He's going at it in a completely different way than I do. I like to make passes, he likes to get it right before he moves on. I have no idea how he can do that -- not know what's going to happen next, but be at that level of detail with each sentence -- but clearly it works for him, and I can only hope to learn how to make this novel-writing process work for me. It has never worked for me before.

While I understand the language of a YA novel should be accessible, I want this novel to be well written. I don't believe in purely plot-driven novels with sloppy sentences (ahem, Twilight). Lemony Snicket wrote some really tight middle-grade novels, and they are clearly accessible to young readers. They even define the hard words right in the text. So I know it can be done. 

The book thing scares me. I had a dream the other night my publisher called me and said every book in the history of the universe written right before and right after mine had sold well, but mine was horrible. And WHY? WHY WAS MINE HORRIBLE? WHY DIDN'T PEOPLE LIKE MINE? I sat there trying to explain but realized I couldn't. 

After much consideration, I think the point of the dream is I'm writing this novel for me. It's a story I want to tell. I really, really want it to get published and be out in the world, but like Beloved always says, I can't focus too much on whether or not it will be popular, because to focus on that is abandon why I write in the first place. Yes, I believe in supporting books with author marketing efforts. Yes, I believe in finding a publisher with a solid distribution model. Yes, I definitely believe in the power of good publicity. Ultimately, though, like bloggers who start blogs to make money, authors who write books only to sell copies will not last very long, for the same reason -- nobody will want to read them.