Get Roger’s Goat!
Roger Simon, founder of PJ Media, author of many novels and screenplays, has a new book out called The Goat. He explains here why he decided to self-publish it, after so many novels published in the conventional way:
The Amazon blurb begins this way:
Whatever happened to Dan Gelber – the divorced screenwriter who journeyed to Nepal in his seventies only to plunge to his death off of Mt. Everest?
And just who is Jay Reynolds – the mysterious twenty-year-old tennis prodigy who appears out of nowhere to battle Rafael Nadal at the French Open and Roger Federer at Wimbledon and become the new hope of American tennis, possibly “the greatest of all time”?
Award-winning mystery writer (Moses Wine series) and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter (“Enemies, A Love Story,” “The Big Fix”. “Bustin’ Loose,”), Roger L. Simon answers these questions and more in The GOAT, his first standalone novel in years.
Why am I self-publishing? Aside from the obvious publishing world bias against anyone to the right of Trotsky (this is particularly true for fiction; there are several good conservative venues for non-fiction), I have real reasons for having decided, after all these years and books, to self-publish. And not just because it’s clearly the wave of the future.
I believe in free markets and self-publishing is entrepreneurial. You get a greater hand in your own creative destiny, even if it’s more of a gamble.
The author foregoes a publisher’s advance for a significantly larger piece of the revenue pie and control of production, pricing, and marketing. Of course, that means paying for everything yourself from the cover design to formatting to ads.
I confess; I haven’t read the book. Yet. And I’m a friend of Roger’s. But it sounds really, really good.
[ADDENDUM: See this review at New Criterion.]
Already ordered an advance Kindle copy for $2.99!
The opening paragraph from Leaf’s review was of personal interest to me, as my High School choir director had us present Lenny’s one-act opera in my senior year, and I was honored (?) to be one of the performers in the scat singing jazz trio.
I don’t remember it as being that bad, although it was indeed no “West Side Story,” which it actually pre-dates, as it does “Candide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Leonard_Bernstein
Noting this error in chronology is not to cast any aspersions on Mr. Leaf’s review of Simon’s book, which I enjoyed reading, but illustrates that every writer should fact-check his own work.
“Skid a lit day: skid a lit day… Ratty boo.”
I had read a little about publishing after the printing press was invented, and it seems that publishers took the power position quickly and never let it go.
There was a biographical film about Thomas Wolfe called “Genius” that was good. He had a tough time getting published because he didn’t have an elite background, and his writings were much too long. He and his first editor went at each other hammer and tongs and the editor took a meat axe to the material. In later years, after a falling out, the editor wondered if he had damaged the artistry of Wolfe’s work.
AesopFan:
I had a record of “Trouble in Tahiti” when I was young. LOVED it. Saw it twice in person. LOVED it each time.It’s a small masterpiece, IMHO. And predated “West Side Story.”
Ratty boo, indeed.
One of my favorite duets from it—so sad— is the one where Diana and Sam sing “Why, why did I have to lie…”