[MRM]

One of my favorite authors is Pat Conroy and one of my favorite stories is how he got his first publishing contract. He was one of those people who was born to be an author and he was driven to publish. After graduating from the Citadel he taught school for a year before he was fired, and wrote "The Boo" and "The Water is Wide" and published them on his own. As far as I can tell, "The Boo" was never mass marketed. "The Water is Wide was picked up by Life Magazine and serialized (I actually once owned a copy of that issue, long gone now, sadly) and was later republished when he became established.

So he was starving, sending his transcripts to anyone who would read them, and putting all the money he could scrape together into printing costs for his self-published books when he started circulating a little novel he called "The Great Santini." He was in his apartment one day when his friend who was helping him publish called and exclaimed that Random house wanted to publish "The Great Santini." Conroy asked what terms. He was told something like $10,000 for a run of 3,500 books (my numbers are off, but they don't matter). Conroy paused for a minute and calculated in his head, responding, "I can get it printed cheaper down here in Atlanta." "No, Pat," his friend replied. "They want to pay you $10,000 to publish the books.