Sometimes, no matter how good your story, publishers might not be willing to take the risk to publish it. Perhaps it’s too controversial, or they are concerned there may not be enough potential buyers in the targeted niche. In the case of Jennifer Lawler, the story was just too damn sad for any publisher to back it.

“Many of you have also asked why I don’t write a book about my experiences with Jessica. I have. My agent, the indomitable Neil Salkind, has been trying to find a publisher for it since last August. We have received many rejections, mostly on the grounds of ‘it’s too painful; it won’t find an audience.’ ”

“I have never believed that, and your response to ‘For Jessica’ is my validation. People want to read the truth, even if it is raw and makes them cry. They want to be moved, to feel that there is more to life than just another bathroom to clean or a new pair of shoes to buy.”

So she put the manuscript up on e-junkie.

More and more, ebooks are becoming a popular alternative to the long, drawn out process of finding an agent, shopping your book around, and hoping your publishing house sets aside enough cash for decent promotion. In the case of ebooks, you do your promotion yourself, but you eliminate the middleman costs – no 10% to the agent, no paybacks to the publisher. It’s all yours – or maybe you share a little with affiliates who help you with your marketing.

If you are a writer struggling to have your story read, frustrated with the whole agent/publisher setup, why not go it alone? It’s really a lot less scary than the daily rejections from agents and publishers that the average writer receives, and the marketplace will tell you how good your book is.

The Sticky eBook Formula will help you get the book written, formatted, published and marketed in record time. Like Jennifer Lawler, take matters into your own hands and tell your story, no matter how timid the publishing houses might be. They care about their own bottom line – shouldn’t you care about yours?

Totally ignore the price on the banner – Darren is taking $5 off for the next two weeks and selling it for $9.97, just like he did with 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which I and many of my readers benefited from.

The Scorecard will help make your blog posts more compelling, plus give you the skinny on SEO to better monetize your blog.

Whether you’re new to the blogging world (Welcome!) or an old hand at it, getting your blog ducks in a row is essential to building the traffic and creating the income you desire from your blog.

Brian Clark of Copyblogger has this to say about Darren’s Latest:

“I’ve built a multimillion dollar business not only by teaching the intersection of blogging and copywriting, but by using it. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers provides clear guidance on how to put this powerful combination to work for you, too.”

Try The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers and see the difference it can make for your blog.

Hanging out here. often staring into space or watching people – generally doing anything except the task at hand – I’ve noticed that the Dewey Decimal Classification might have come to its natural end.

When I was a kid in elementary school, we were taught Dewey on library days – once a week the teacher would herd us down to the library for a story, and then to pick out books for the week. We learned how to use the card catalog to find books on subjects that interested us. Every book was assigned a special number, and every number grouping formed a section of the library.

However, kids these days (wow, that really made me sound old) don’t have library days the way they used to. They don’t learn about card catalogs (though now it’s all computerized) or Dewey categories.

Here at one of the outposts of Toronto’s sprawling library system, kids wander aimlessly about, wondering where their favorite Twilight and Harry potter books are. These kids, teens and tweens are accustomed to bookstores.

There was a time in not too distant history that books were a luxury for only rich families to collect. Cities that had thousands of working poor put together libraries to make books more available to everyone. A system to keep track of all these tomes was devised, and librarians were required to help people learn and understand the system.

Fast forward to today. In Canada we have Chapters and Indigo. In the United States, there’s Borders and Barnes & Noble. Books are sorted according to area of interest, and then by author name. It’s all very straightforward, no indecipherable digits required. In a pinch, some minimum-wage college kid can direct you out of Cooking into Self-Help. Biographies are all clumped together, not spread about by area of biographical interest. Language books span from Arabic to Zulu without interruption. Signs clearly advise you what area you’re in, and are visible throughout the store so you know which direction to walk in to get the latest chick-lit marvel.

It’s very civilized.

So where does that leave Dewey and the moth-bitten librarian of old? Libraries are still functioning with an archaic system (albeit one they’ve slowly dragged onto computers) that few people – especially in a “multicultural” society like the one I live in – can comprehend. And with books being more affordable to the average person, the days of the library may be numbered.

I heard it the most, as I am guessing most authors do, in the course of receiving rejections for a book. From publishers in Canada, the United States and Britain, I heard great compliments – it’s clever, it’s funny, you’re, you know, nice and all that – but we’re looking for a somewhat bigger book.

It, of course, first occurred to me that they meant longer, or maybe just heavier. Couldn’t they fix that with a thicker binding? But no, I was dimly aware that it must be code for something. So I asked around. One editor couldn’t really answer, as if it were a trade secret, what big means, and if you don’t know what it is then you don’t got it. Even my agent wasn’t quite clear on it. She hinted that it was just something you knew when you saw it.

It started to feel like a Da Vinci Code sort of thing – a conspiracy. Everyone in publishing is looking for big and everyone knows what big means except the authors.

Smith goes on to attempt decryption of the “big” conspiracy. It’s something for me to keep in mind, though I can’t speak to it as I haven’t pitched yet. But are publishers looking for trendy over lasting?

What counts as a big issue, I am guessing, is a trendy one, an issue of the moment. A black man who wants to become president, sex abuse in the Vatican, environmental disaster, Internet life. Or some kind of unlikely combination: black president and vampires; environment and Vatican; Facebook and global killer disease. Those would be big. (Black pope would be brilliant. You can’t have that one; it’s mine.) And, of course, it goes without saying, the Holocaust is still and always big – indeed, recently writers can be forgiven for wondering if there is any point to writing about anything else. (You can imagine the clever inventions going around our bars about how brilliant it would be to do some kind of “green” Holocaust novel.)

For any of my readers out there who have pitched, is this concept something you’ve heard of? This mysterious “big”? Let me know, or go leave a comment on Smith’s article.

It began with fiction. Once I began blogging about news, politics and war, I stopped reading fiction. My fortunes went to pay for non-fiction tomes on subjects that gave me nightmares.

Then I gave up books altogether. Magazine articles were better suited to my blogger’s attention span.

Until even magazine articles became too long! My attention span became so short I started reading only other blog posts.

I had to retrain my brain to stop eating candy and start eating fiber again!

Fiction. Fun, cheap, sleazy fiction helped get me back into reading.  I picked up something light and fluffy, easy to rip through, and spent a weekend reading it over coffee.

Then I tacked some heavier political non-fic. It took longer. More than two weeks! I kept putting the book down to do something else, wandering off, forgetting about it. But I stuck with it and finished the damn thing.

When you blog, it’s easy to have your attention span eaten away. It’s the nature of the best. Especially with 24-hour news channels blaring their 2-minute sound bites in the background. Everything these days seems to come in easily digested single serving portions, but sometimes you need more substance.

Don’t let blogging eat your brain. Keep it in fighting form with New Yorker-length articles and good juicy books.

Before my own deal, I’d assumed I would need a subscriber base big enough to fill the Rose Bowl. Why else would a publisher be interested?

And sure, a massive Feedburner number helps.

But in my case, my subscriber base today would fill the conference room at your average Marriott. Not that I’m complaining — after only six months it’s growing just fine, thanks.

But it does illuminate the point: Raw numbers aren’t as important as making a solid connection with a well-defined audience around a valuable niche topic.

I have been living the most extraordinary adventure these past few months. As some of you may know, I am a hard-right political pundit – Canada’s Fat Ann Coulter™ if you will. And I have been thrust head on into a world of left-wing socialists. It’s fascinating, good and bad, frustrating, demeaning and empowering – all at the same time.

In this process I’ve lost everything – including my work and my podcast.

But I have kept meticulous notes, and have prepared sample chapters of this story. I told myself when the saga began “If I can get a book deal out of this, I won’t care about the horror.” And a horror it has been. As it stands, I have been trading the story for lunches and beers. I need more than that to live on, though.

So welcome to my agent-shopping odyssey, which promises to be even more daunting than the looking-glass world I’ve fallen into.

A word about comments:

I’m rarely around on the Internet to approve them. If your comment doesn’t appear, please don’t take it personally. Try to remember that I am currently in Hell, and Hell doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

Have you ever thought about writing an e-book? No, not fiction. They don’t sell well in ebook format. But an information product?

Whatever your skill is, thereare probably people out there who need to learn it. From actuaries to zoologists, and all points between, you have a skill worth sharing with others.

About 30 years ago, when the computerized age was really taking off, someone said that information would be the new currency. They weren’t entirely wrong. Information is now something we spend our currency on. We are more educated now, in this generation, than we have ever been at any point in history. People in their 30’s and 40’s are still in school, getting graduate and post graduate degrees.

The rest of us attend workshops and seminars, take classes and e-courses. We read so voraciously that books are no longer a luxury – we now have big-box bookstores.

People want to learn.

If you can impart some kind of skill, wisdom or hack to them in simple terms they can understand, you can sell that information.

The Well-Fed Self Publisher will guide you through the steps of creating your informational product and marketing it to the world at large.

I wrote more about Peter Bowerman and his brilliant books here. Check out his free report to get started and earn that extra holiday cash right away!

Putting together, marketing and selling an ebook or a print on demand book can be tough, because you’re the only employee in the publishing house. You don’t have PR professionals at your disposal, there’s no agent to fall back on for advice – you’re totally on your own.

Peter Bowerman wrote The Well Fed Writer and marketed it on his own. He made a fortune. I have a copy, and if you aren’t hoping for failure, you should too.

That said, he also has a book called The Well-Fed Self-Publisher which chronicles how he made a living selling The Well Fed Writer. He offers a free report to whet your appetite, if self-publishing is something you’ve been considering.

I bought The Well Fed Self Publisher in ebook format. Again, for the same reason I mentioned above – no extra costs, just the book. Yes it takes a while to get used to reading on the computer, but it’s worth it for the money you save, trust me.

Anyway, check out The Well-Fed Self-Publisher . If you’ve been thinking about it, stop putting it off and DO SOMETHING about it!!

The Web Articles:

• 50 Tips to Improve Your Writing
• Recipe for Blog Success (tasty!)
• Is Online Education More Effective than Traditional Learning?

The Books:

• How to Eat Like a Hot Chick (I’ve read this a dozen times)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – the only way Austen is palatable to me
• Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom
• The Well-Fed Writer Book – second reading (Bowerman also offers a “ The Well-Fed Self-Publisher Book ” book

It’s back to school time. What’s on your reading list?