ublisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve

Ever heard of Juan Piquer? Probably not. Considered to be the Spanish Ed Wood, he directed “The Pod People,” a remake of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It was a first-class bomb. I’m not that kind of POD. Nor am I an “iPOD, you listener” person. In my opinion, the palm-sized music player is one of Apple’s most annoying inventions. What I am is one of the publishing industry’s pariahs, a print-on-demand author.

I didn’t start out that way. I had to follow a long and winding trail to get there. It began when I was a young graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Malta had fascinated me from the first time I learned about the island as a stamp-collecting child. I also was a huge fan of Benvenuto Cellini, hanging on every word in the Autobiography. I even had the punch line for my story. So I wrote, edited, scrapped, and rewrote the novel several times over the next 35 years. I came close to getting it published in the mid-‘80s when an agent signed me to a contract. It didn’t work out. It was another 20 years before I finally finished (again) and began to contact literary agents.

I made some 200 inquiries with not a single personal reply. Finally, convinced that my search for an agent was fruitless, I reluctantly began my unwanted transformation from literate writer to POD person.

Librarians, as literate people, probably can imagine the joy of seeing one’s life work in print. For me, the happiness was tempered only slightly by that $1,000 check I had to write to make it happen. The reviewer at iUniverse, my POD publisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve

s, a print-on-demand author.

I didn’t start out that way. I had to follow a long and winding trail to get there. It began when I was a young graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Malta had fascinated me from the first time I learned about the island as a stamp-collecting child. I also was a huge fan of Benvenuto Cellini, hanging on every word in the Autobiography. I even had the punch line for my story. So I wrote, edited, scrapped, and rewrote the novel several times over the next 35 years. I came close to getting it published in the mid-‘80s when an agent signed me to a contract. It didn’t work out. It was another 20 years before I finally finished (again) and began to contact literary agents.

I made some 200 inquiries with not a single personal reply. Finally, convinced that my search for an agent was fruitless, I reluctantly began my unwanted transformation from literate writer to POD person.

Librarians, as literate people, probably can imagine the joy of seeing one’s life work in print. For me, the happiness was tempered only slightly by that $1,000 check I had to write to make it happen. The reviewer at iUniverse, my POD publisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve

ad the punch line for my story. So I wrote, edited, scrapped, and rewrote the novel several times over the next 35 years. I came close to getting it published in the mid-‘80s when an agent signed me to a contract. It didn’t work out. It was another 20 years before I finally finished (again) and began to contact literary agents.

I made some 200 inquiries with not a single personal reply. Finally, convinced that my search for an agent was fruitless, I reluctantly began my unwanted transformation from literate writer to POD person.

Librarians, as literate people, probably can imagine the joy of seeing one’s life work in print. For me, the happiness was tempered only slightly by that $1,000 check I had to write to make it happen. The reviewer at iUniverse, my POD publisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve

ly. Finally, convinced that my search for an agent was fruitless, I reluctantly began my unwanted transformation from literate writer to POD person.

Librarians, as literate people, probably can imagine the joy of seeing one’s life work in print. For me, the happiness was tempered only slightly by that $1,000 check I had to write to make it happen. The reviewer at iUniverse, my POD publisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve

ublisher, gave the novel a perfect 600 score. Somewhat skeptically, I asked the sales rep if high scores were standard procedure. He said he had never heard of a perfect score before. So, I thought, someone besides me and the friends I forced to read the manuscript, thinks it’s good. It was the first of many glowing reviews from professional reviewers and average readers alike.

I’ve made more than 700 sales on my own, though I’m running out of friends and friends of friends. I’ve traveled twice to Malta to promote it in its setting, and have visited Maltese communities in the U.S. and Canada. The publisher estimated that I would need to spend $1,500 in promotional costs. I reached that figure in less than two months.

But, enter Anti-POD. Not the Antipodes, or Galapagos Islands, but the publishing industry’s intractable prejudice against independently produced books. Unfortunately, much of it is deserved. The sheer awfulness of some of the “Vanity Press” productions, most of which were written to be read by friends and relatives, has poisoned the well for all independents.

The prejudice is most evident in publicity. Any independently published book quickly finds itself in the circular files of newspaper book reviewers. It is also painfully obvious with the booksellers. Although I have placed my book in mystery bookstores and in smaller general-interest bookstores, the ones with the greatest sales volume haven’t been interested. They don’t get a large enough discount, and, for the most part, they can’t return unsold copies to the POD publisher. Even my relatively small neighborhood chain bookstore has me on a waiting list (now extending into mid-2006) for a group book signing with other local authors. Not necessarily to stock the book, you understand, but to get a cut of the sales I generate.

This POD person isn’t giving up. Someday my agent will come, leading me to a commercial publisher and perhaps a