READ THIS OR ELSE. . .

Two people read the following bit of information posted yesterday. Any writer should find it of interest so read the damn thing:

I hope everyone saw the Associated Press-USAToday story today on John Grisham's 20th anniversary of his first book, Time to Kill. If you missed it, he received many rejections, then an agent took over and it was published by Wynwood Press. They cut one-third of the manuscript and printed 5,000 copies. Gisham bought 1,000 of them himself and then did the promotion and marketing because Wynwood didn't. He set up signings at libraries and such places in Mississippi and even had one on somebody's front porch.

Equally good a second time, Dick.
( I read the damn thing!!)

Me too. I always read Dick's writing. I just don't always comment.

Carol

Sorry to have missed it yesterday Dick, thanks for posting it again.

Okay Dick, I'll dammed. Good info.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

Two people read the following bit of information posted yesterday. Any writer should find it of interest so read the damn thing:

Ooo...you are masterful.

He had to pay his dues with a lot of lawyer books before he got much traction on some of the other things he wanted to write.

Malcolm

I'm with Carol. I read it, just didn't comment. If I don't have something to say I don't just like to post words. What were we expected to say? Or would just any comment do?

I READ IT...You didn't say we had to do a damn book report!

I savored the first post, Dick. I was going to reply when I realized I would be late to my tutoring job if I didn't leave right away. I had been writing too much already.

Ann

See what I mean about this place being persnickety.

Carol

Me, too. What Marie said.

Yeah, but... It doesn't apply to me because even through his struggles he had something I'll never have. Talent!

Okay, okay, for those who need to be told, I'll do the telling.

From the Slushpile blog interview:

http://www.slushpile.net/index.php/2006/03/01/interview-john-grisham-author/

"Slushpile: I recently read a claim (inaccurate, I believe) that you self-published A Time to Kill. Can you please set the record straight on how your novel came to be published by Wynwood Press?
Grisham: Wynwood Press was a new, small unknown publishing company in New York in 1989. Everybody else had passed on A Time to Kill,
Wynwood Press took the gamble. Printed 5,000 hardback copies, and we
couldn’t give them away. Wynwood later went bankrupt, or out of
business."

I wonder if they were driven out of business by a hostile writers' forum because the publishers made money by selling books to their authors. We all know this is an evil thing to do, so the publisher deserved to go bankrupt.

Boy, what a bunch of hard-nosed people. But I did get your attention, so HA, GOTCHA!

Dick Stodghill wrote:

Boy, what a bunch of hard-nosed people.

I'll take that as a compliment.

I'm not sure what the point is. I doubt he intended to market the book himself. He ended up with a lot of copies (I don't know if he bought them from Wynnwood or what, but I'm sure it was unintentional, regardless) and took it upon himself to sell them. It was only after his three subsequent novels took off that a publisher bought the rights to that one.

I was wondering about the 'or else...'

I suppose Dick had a banquet of broccolli to force down some throats?