Catch 22
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a novel, CLOFA, which involved terrorists capturing a nuclear powered electrical generation plant in the U.S. and threatening to blow the reactor up, putting at risk some seven million Manhattanites. At the time, the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] was hijacking commercial planes, making bomb threats, and putting at risk the lives of hundreds of passengers.

I felt compelled to write CLOFA because I was then working in the nuclear power industry and knew what was possible technically and what was not:
>One could take over a nuclear reactor site with little more than a can opener,
>A really good outcome for a nuclear ‘incident’ was the China Syndrome,
>There were simple actions the U.S. Government could take to significantly mitigate
circumstances.

OK, so you don’t believe the bit about a can opener. How about box cutters?

Fortunately Yasser Arafat was as clueless as many members of our own government about the technical possibilities for blowing up a nuclear reactor — and we were spared this particular disaster at that particular time.

Osama Bin Laden himself is more savvy technically [civil engineering degree 1979] so there may be an opportunity for CLOFA 2007. Of course I’d have to go through and globally change relevant dates. In other words, sadly nothing significant has changed in the passing quarter-century except the date on the calendar.

In attempting to publish CLOFA, I encountered the classic obstacles:
>Well- known publishing houses only talk to well-known agents,
>Well-known agents don’t talk to Virgin Novelists,
>With the exception of vanity presses, only publishing houses made books,
>Vanity presses were the ‘kiss of death’ for authors,

— and decided to put the project aside. There were other fish to fry, and living in Princeton, NJ my own family was not at great risk from a terrorist attack on a nearby nuclear reactor site.

I had run into the Catch 22 of traditional publishing and decided to gracefully withdraw from the fray. Having grown up in Jersey City during Frank Hague’s reign, I knew: ‘One doesn’t fight City Hall’.

Fortunately for readers, brave souls like Ernest Hemmingway, John Steinbeck and thousands of other authors over the years persisted in the face of incredible odds to bring great books to the public.

Classic Publishers are Not Doing Their Job
Operah Winfrey was hurt by assuming reputable publishers still separated fact from fiction. More recently a well known publisher brought out a book by a Harvard undergraduate that is alleged to contain over twenty uncited passages from another author. Classic publishers today are simply not doing the 'seal of approval' job readers and authors expect of them. It isn't the best of ways to differentiate oneself from e-publishers, who make no such claims regarding certification of the content of a book.

This Web Log will document my journey to fame and fortune — or some acceptable facsimile thereof — and save other Virgin Novelists the world over heartbreak and shekels. Novelists, virgin and otherwise, are welcome to join in with their own publishing experiences. As I see it now, one can get published respectably — no establishment stands in our way today. Unsurprisingly, whatever route you choose will take time and money [yours].

My Odyssey Through Book Publishing Today
I am a successful publisher. I found this out a few days ago in my quest to have my latest novel, The Business Plan, Perpetual Life for the Rich and Famous, set to print.

My company publishes computer software. The process one goes through today to bring a book to market is similar to the process software houses go through to bring a computer program to market. So, without having to go back to school, I have some experience with modern publishing techniques.

Prior to WWW, there were major differences between book publishing and software publishing, the principal one being the technology used to deliver source material to end users. Publishing houses accepted author manuscripts [like in hand-written], set them into type [like in Ben Franklin], and delivered printed books to readers via bookstores [like by pony express]. In contrast, software houses accepted source code in Ascii text files on computers from programers, automatically converted them to machine language code and electronically shipped the resultant programs to end-user computers.

While this horse&buggy/millennium falcon comparison of the pre-Web state is overdrawn, it is only slightly so. All software users have computers, making it easy for softrware houses to be 100% digital from start to finish. Today all 1.03 billion Web users worldwide have computers, or access to them. This now makes it possible for book publishers to go digital. The Web is facilatating a paradigm shift in literary publishing.

The median aged [34 years] U.S. citizen was taught about literature by the previous generation [54 year olds] of English majors when romantic stories about Hemmingway, Steinbeck, et al. and relationships with their agents and publishers abounded. Now, all the mystique associated with relationships between great authors and their well-known publishers has evaporated — bad news for classic book publishers, but good news for yet-to-be-famous authors like you and me.

V.N.