[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

*My* take on the "triple" metaphor (and the reason *I* cited it) is that just because Turow got lucky from the start in finding a willing sponsor for his work and because he was successful from day one, he has never personally experienced the travails and mistreatment of other "lesser" writers.

It sounds to me like you *are* trying to take the element of talent completely way from Turow. Because if he was just "lucky," then success is purely random and shouldn't people who are "successful" don't deserve any credit for what they actually have achieved.

But that's ridiculous on its face. "Presumed Innocent" wasn't Turow's first book; that was 1L, a somewhat popular book about Turow's first year in law school. I think it's still in print, but it wasn't a blockbuster. PI was a blockbuster and it was really, really good: the kind of book that everyone talked about when it came out.

So, to him, the BPHs are great partners and facilitators. He never had to work the count, take one for the team, or try to steal a base. He was already standing on third with zero outs at the start of *his* game. Instead of hitting a triple, he got a walk and moved to third on a wild pitch.

Again, you are trying to deny his talent and assume anyone could have done what he did.

To bring up another baseball metaphor; he never spent time riding buses in the minors, but instead went straight to the big leagues. When you travel first class all the way, you can't exactly appreciate what riding in steerage is like. Life is very different from where he sits than it is for a writer whose book brings in a couple hundred bucks a month and he's happy because that is his car payment. (Or meal money.)

I agree with this analogy, I think.

Turow is like Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning or Willie Mays - the kind of talent that only comes along once every couple of years and is immediately recognized as being very very good.

He's not - to use the analogy from Rusch that I disagreed with - on third because he was born there. He's on third because he hit a triple. However, the coach can't set up a game plan assuming that everyone else on the team is going to hit a triple as well.

Which is why he sees the tech and market changes the industry is experiencing as negatives instead of positives for authors because in his whole point of view anything that is bad for publishers is by definition bad for authors.

And this is probably right. Again, I don't agree with Turow's AG rant; I only disagreed with the suggestion that his being a successful author was only a matter of luck.

But there is a reason that most people don't follow Bill Gates retirement advice ("give away 40% of your wealth"); it's because what is best for him isn't necessarily best for most people. And the same is true for advice from people like Turow, or Stephen King, or even Dan Brown (or any one of the hundred-odd very successful authors) - what may be good advice for people who sell 10 million copies is likely not good advice for people who sell 5,000-10,000 books per year.