Not Quite Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I was pleasurably shocked a couple of months ago to be perusing the book section of Costco and come across a stack of my textbook on Oregon's history. I bought a copy, since the price was good, and I figured that, well, someone had to do it.

A few weeks later I returned to find that it was gone. Maybe I should have bought more than one.

Being an author is interesting. It tends to bring one a lot of respect, deserved or not, and even status. But it's very rare for many people to read one's book, and if I were to add all the money I've earned from my books, it would come to less than $20,000. If I were to add up all the time I have spent on those books, it would be the equivalent of about five years of full time work. So you can do the math. And I doubt that the few thousand books of mine have been passed around, from person to person. I remember the words of a fellow graduate student many years ago, at Northwestern University, who summed up the life of the scholar with this observation: "You'll spend many tedious years researching and writing books that no one will read."

If I had it to do over again, I might well spend those five years on other things. But every year or two, there's a little unexpected surprise--a warm email or, once in a lifetime, a cameo appearance at Costco.