From his obit:

It's doubtful anyone will ever break the record of 162 rejections before publication. Here are some reasons why.

If Irish Wine had trouble getting traditionally published in 1989, it would stand an even smaller chance in 2011. It's hard to believe any of the Big Six New York publishers would touch it today… unless teenage vampires were added. Or a serial killer. Or maybe it could have been written about two women instead of two men. Or it could have been ghostwritten as a memoir for Charlie Sheen. Otherwise the marketing departments wouldn't know how to market it.

Of course, none of the Big Six publishers released Irish Wine in '89 anyway. Mercury House originally published Wimmer's novel. Heard of them?

Based in San Francisco, Mercury House is a small, non-profit, independent publisher. Low volume. Narrow distribution chain. They operate on donations and internships. And, according to its website, Mercury House is not accepting submissions.

Irish Wine probably wouldn't find a traditional publisher today at all.

Fortunately, there's digital indie publishing, which makes operations like Mercury House less necessary. Ebooks and the Internet were sci-fi dreams in 1989, so Dick Wimmer had no choice but to continually submit to the publishing gods and pray for an angel to tap him on the shoulder. Digital indie publishing changes that.

Here's another reason Wimmer's record might never be broken. Publishing houses are wondering how to cope with the digital future that's galloping up from behind them, and jobs could be lost. Literary agents, a profession always on the knife's edge, must be nervous. The way the publishing world is devolving, there soon may not be 162 people in significant positions of authority to reject writers.

I mean no disrespect to the late author. His patience and endurance were admirable.

So let's raise a glass of Irish Wine to Dick Wimmer. May his record never be broken.

Shame on me. I have never watched a single episode of the reality TV show Jersey Shore. I blame myself for missing out on a cultural touchstone.

However, since celebrities are as unavoidable as used condoms on a Jersey beach, I have heard of Snooki. I doubt I could identify her even if you showed me her mugshot, but I am aware of her name and that she is famous for… something.

Snooki has a book on the market. It's published by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by multimedia conglomerate CBS. I suspect Jersey Shore appears on a network owned by CBS.

Hers is not just any book. It's not some weaselly memoir. It's a novel. For you Snooki fans, that means it was made up. You know, like most reality TV shows.

This New York Times article mentions similar novels from wordsmiths Nicole Richie, Hilary Duff, Lauren Conrad, and soon by the Kardashians. It also explains that ghostwriters penned most of those literary gems.

I'd like to thank Snooki, Nicole, the Kardashian sisters, et al, for launching the careers of your ghostwriters. They are surely destined for literary greatness.

Some may ask, "Pardon me, Ms. Snooki, but why were you given a publishing contract for a novel that someone else wrote?"

Here's your answer: "I'm famous, and they're not." Please be sure to add a choice expletive to that sentence.

Publishers and marketing execs agree. Fame sells.

Eight of the current NY Times Best Seller List hardcovers in Non-Fiction are celebrity memoirs. Perhaps some of those books were ghostwritten, too. But you don't get your name above the title if you're a nobody. Not in the world of publishing, my friends.

Remember Scott Weiland, former frontman for 90s rock band Stone Temple Pilots? Me, neither. But his memoir ranked #19 on the NYT Hardcover Non-Fiction List.  On behalf of his soon-to-be-a-household-name co-author, David Ritz, I say thank you to Mr. Weiland and their publishers, Scribner.

The general public holds the time-honored art of writing in high esteem. But they're also smitten by fame the way vermin love cheese. Thanks to the publishing industry, unknown authors are afforded the chance to exhibit their literary prowess - and perhaps pay off the college loans they accrued for their Masters Degrees - while basking beneath the glow from celebrity halos.

Publishing executives love books. Just ask them. They love authors and literature and especially the prestige their profession engenders. That's why the fine folks at Gallery Books must have been thrilled to green-light a novel by a TV personality like Snooki who admitted having read "only two books in her life."  

Behind the scenes, though, they surely welled up with pride when they provided Snooki's ghostwriter an opportunity of a lifetime. Whatever his name is.

He maintains that the old model of traditional publishing is "falling apart, led by the fact that the bookstores are going away, added to the fact that scarcity of titles is gone." Now that nearly 175,000 titles are published annually in just the United States, Godin says, "someone needs to wrangle the readers. Someone needs to be in the business of connecting the readers to the work."

Yet he complains that publishers don't currently do that. Obtaining an audience has become the writers' duty. Publishers require that the author create his/her own fan base. The publishing house offers to create the physical product. But in the digital age, printing, binding, and distribution are simpler and faster than ever before. And with the ebook revolution there's no physical product at all. Under these changing circumstances, what is a publisher's purpose?

Creating a book, Godin says, "is trivial. This is easy." He points out it was never the publishers' bailiwick anyway. "Most book publishers don't own printing houses," he said. "They just outsource it… So if the publisher says to the author, 'Your job is to curate and connect and lead the tribe,' the author should rightfully say back to the publisher, 'Then what am I paying you for?… I'll go do this myself and keep all the money.'"

During meetings at major publishing houses, Godin said "you can feel the pain in the room." The digital revolution is baffling them.

Godin suggests that publishers need to transition from gatekeepers to gatherers of tribes. By bringing people together to form tribes, publishers will offer authors what they seek most: an audience.

Will publishing houses be able to make that transition? Will they know how? Will they even want to?

Or will indie authors just go do it themselves?

Read this article from the Daily Beast: Left Behind at Borders. I found it pretty enlightening.

While I bemoan the loss of Borders Books & Music as much as anyone, I understand why their business is failing - lack of foresight.

A few years ago, Borders merged its online presence with Amazon. Big mistake. They didn't foresee how the Internet would affect their business. It seems some of their employees don't quite get it, either.

The article mentions a Borders employee soon to be unemployed. Brittany graduated from college in 2008. She laments the closing of the bookstore. Her laughably ironic quote: "Places where knowledge is exchanged are disappearing, and it's awful," Jackson says."

Gosh, if Borders Bookstores close, how will we ever exchange knowledge?

Note to Brittany: If your college educators failed to inform you about this thing called the Internet, demand your tuition back.

It's also ironic that her 'knowledge' was exchanged via the Daily Beast, an online-only news source.

Borders bookstores are closing, in part, because some people were, and still are, blind to the digital revolution occurring right before their eyes.

Pretty silly, ain't it? Yet some dogmatic types stand by that idea.

Do an Internet search for the difference between a novel and a novella and you come away with a variety of answers. Some say a novella is up to 40K words. What if you wrote a novel that works best at 60K? Must you pad it to reach the magic number? Who came up with the rules anyway? More importantly, do those rules still matter?

With ebooks, maybe shorter is better.

The competition for people's attention is fierce. The least time-consuming entertainment dominates lengthier fare. Movies take very little time out of one's day, yet people groan when they see a film's running time over 2 hours. TV shows and YouTube videos are just about the ideal length for people's short attention spans. Show the average person a book the size of a Yellow Pages directory, and they're likely to groan like high school students given an eye-straining homework assignment. Few people have time to read in-depth magazine articles, let alone a book as thick as a cinder block.

Yet short stories don't sell as well as full-length novels. People like to immerse themselves in novels, which isn't as easy to do with shorts. 

What if novellas were written with the same plot intricacy and character complexity of a novel? The shorter length might appeal to people's shorter attention spans and lack of free time, which would make them more competitive with movies, TV shows, video games, and surfing the Internet. A novella could also presumably sell for a lesser price to attract even more readers. Serious readers might find a novella as unsatisfying as a dinner of crudites. Yet people often praise novels that are "easy reads" and fast-paced.

Clinging to literary traditions like word count seem quaint given the changing landscape of digital publishing. Ebooks and independent publishing offer the opportunity to experiment.

This from the NY Times:

Case in point: Did you read the runaway bestseller 'Water for Elephants?' Even if you didn't, you might recognize the title. Maybe you read that novel but still don't recall the author's name. Here's my point: the content mattered more than the author's reputation. Name recognition sometimes has nothing to do with whether or not a book succeeds. Word of mouth is still king of the marketing hill.

A counterargument could be made that Sara Gruen has done herself a disservice because of a lack of self-promotion. Well, I say that still doesn't matter much. Her second novel has been released to tepid reviews. That's because everyone compared her second book to what they loved most: her first book. But what sold her second - and what will continue to sell her work in the future, one would presume - was the success of 'Water for Elephants.' That title is now her brand. Unfortunately for her, that means that every book she publishes will be compared to her first novel, whether that's justified or not. But every author - every artist - is judged by his/her most popular hits. Look at Radiohead. People are complaining that their new album, the King of Limbs, isn't as good as Kid A, which came out a decade ago.

My other question about self-promotion is this: Who really gives a shit about the author's personality? Why should that matter? I have no idea what kind of people my favorite authors are - they could be wife beaters for all I know - but I enjoy their writing. I don't know what kind of man Steve Jobs is, but I love the products his company creates. On the flip side, I've seen the president/CEO/owner of Papa John's Pizza on TV advertisements and he seems like a likable guy, but that doesn't make me want to buy his pizza. Same deal with the CEO of Sprint who appears in TV ads. I don't care that the CEO is talking to me via television. All I care about is the service.

So, rather than promoting myself - which I'm loathe to do anyway - I'm going to direct my energies promoting my books. That will be the focus of my blog posts from now on.

Although I reserve the right to go on ludicrous rants like the above from time to time. ;)

Authors who publish on their own via Kindle's publishing platform can set their own price. When Amazon released the Kindle, the company set a precedent by arbitrarily creating an industry standard price of $9.99 per ebook - obviously less expensive than most physical books. But if you want your ebook to sell for lower than $9.99, you may. The author/self-publisher controls the price. I dropped the price of each of my novels to $3.99.

That's not the case regarding print-on-demand paperbacks or hardcovers. While my POD provider permits me some flexibility, there's a minimum sale price I must meet. That's because printed books have overhead costs that ebooks lack - namely paper, printing, binding, and shipping.

Given a choice between $3.99 or $15.99 for the exact same content - word for word - which would you choose?

That's assuming you own a dedicated ebook reader or ebook reading apps for your smartphone or tablet. Sales of those devices are climbing. Ebook sales are rising in tandem. Cause and effect, no doubt.

From January 1-March 31, 2011, my ebooks have outsold my paperback sales 4 to 1. That prompted me to drop my ebook pricing even lower.

You might think that would result in major revenue loss. Not necessarily. Because POD books have high overhead costs, the author's share is generally limited to 15-20% of the list price. By contrast, Amazon is currently offering 70% royalties on ebooks. Do the math. An author's income on a $3.99 ebook is actually higher than on most quality paperbacks listing at $15.99.

So, if you think dropping my ebook prices seems like a desperate ploy, think again.

I'm obviously not the first author to crunch the numbers. And that's why ebooks should sell very well for the foreseeable future.