How I almost sold out to Big Publishing

About a month ago, I went to publish my book, “Kick,” with one of the Big City Publishing houses, but they asked me to take a dive — to make room for a love story about a zombie and a sparkling vampire and their quest to find a werewolf with a dragon tattoo.

At the time, I agreed to take the chump change they were offering to go publish on Amazon. Sure, I published on Amazon, but I did it MY way…

This is how it went down when I walked into Big Publishing’s headquarters to meet Marcellus Wallace, head of the “What’s Selling These Days” department:

I walked in, sat down, and looked at him. He showed me the band-aid on the back of his head so I’d know he meant business. I nodded — I meant business too.

He looked at me and said, “I think you gonna find…when all this shit is over…I think you gonna find yourself one smiling self-pubber.

The thing is John L. Monk…right now, you got ability…but painful as it may be…ability…don’t last. And your days are just about over.

Now that’s a hard self-pubbing fact of life, but that’s a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about.

See, this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic self-pubbers.

Self-pubbers that thought their books would age like wine…

If you mean, it turns to vinegar…it does.

If you mean, it gets better with age? It don’t.

Besides, John L. Monk…how many novels you think you got in you, anyway? Two? Novelists don’t have an old timer’s day.

You came close, but you never made it. And if you were gonna make it, you would have made it before that.”

Then Marcellus Wallace handed me a big stack of coupons for free meals at McDonald’s – it was supposed to be chump change, but whatever. I could still get food with them. I reached for the stack, but he pulled it out of my reach.

He wasn’t done…

“You my scribbla’?” he said.

I looked at him sideways and said, “It certainly appears so.” Then I grabbed the coupons.

He held on briefly, for dramatic effect, then let go.

“The night you release your book live on Amazon,” he said, “you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride, fucking with you…Fuck pride. Pride only hurts…it never helps. You write through that shit. Because a year from now? When you kicking it in the Caribbean? You gonna say to yourself, ‘Marcellus Wallace was right.'”