This is the last post by our guest columnist Tom Wick.  We wish him the best in establishing himself as an author and thank him for his contributions to this blog.

So it’s almost labor day or depending on how quickly Benito’s admin is posting things perhaps even past then…so this will probably be my last regular post. Thank you to all the automated phishing programs that left comments.  So I wanted to do two things: leave you with some kind of departing word of wisdom and talk about the scam blogger who recently revealed her real identity while simultaneously trying to hock a self-published book.

The first part easy. Success is like a wave, once it reaches it’s foamy peak, it’s too late to ride it if you’re still on the beach. What I mean is once you’ve read Hairy Potter or Twilight it’s too late to write about sorcerers and werewolves EVEN IF you have a very original take, because your good work is going to get lost in the noise of the copycats. If you’re successful most likely it will be by doing something nobody has thought of or by writing something that becomes timely on the verge of it’s completion. This is more than just being lucky. Ever wonder how the championship hats for the winning team get made in time for the post game interview? Of course the hats are made for both teams ahead of time. If you want to guarantee success you need to take this approach…except for you there are more than two possible answers there are infinite and it’s a book not a hat.

Now for this other blogger. Purely from a publishing standpoint she did everything right…generated publicity, sold out her ideals and has avoided plagiarism allegations. But none of that matters because her book is “self-published.”

It’s fitting that my parting words are a warning about another scam. Self-publishing is alot like higher education or insurance where you pay alot for a false peace of mind but if you actually need it you get nada. Basically a company tells you they love your work and wants to publish it but they want to “split the start-up costs.” So they charge you two to three times the actual cost of printing the book and slapping a cover on it, charge YOU for your own BOOK and of course all marketing and sales falls on you. Then if you happen to sell any books they take a second cut, all the while pedaling trips to useless bookshows and anything else they think “authors” will pay for.

These vultures pray upon people with the same dream we have and exploit people’s emotional attachment to their work and the desire to prove critics (who are often very cruel and very right) wrong. There is a special place in hell for all of them.

Well everyone it’s been fun. I’ve got some great ideas lined up for the fall. I will check back in with progress if there is any.