Jack toted up the figures in his notebook.
Expenses:
- $650 – paying for damn professional editor
- $ 50 – paying for a damn professional reviewer
- $ 500 – paying a damn professional to design a book cover
- $ 66 – paying for his own damn books to hand out
- $200 – incidentals, including a damn Monteverde Invincia Deluxe fountain pen for autographing copies that he never used.
- $1466 – total
Revenues:
- $ 11.92 – royalties
- $ 0 – speaking fees
- $ 11.92 – total
Net
- $ (1454.08)
Fools! Idiots! Morons! He used a thesaurus. Nitwits! Halfwits! Imbeciles! Now think outside the box. Jackals! Hyenas! Swine! Asshats! Barbarians! Dingleberries! Nimrods! Oh, there’s just not enough insulting words for the tens of millions who refused to buy his book! After all, his editor and reviewer, bought and paid for, had high praise for his first novel!
Damn you, Amazon! Damn you, Barnes and Noble! Damn you, Google Play Books! Damn you, Kobo!
He had gotten his book out there in the ether and waited for the 5 star customer reviews to pile up. Nada! Bupkis! Zilch!
Jack figured that his first customer review needed to be seeded to get them started flowing in. He created a new account for Amazon and submitted his review under the name of James Boswell.
“5 stars! Mr. Lack has written the best novel of this century – indeed, perhaps of any century. Shall we compare it to Voltaire’s Candide? Yes, we shall. Never since that masterpiece has there been such an exquisite exposition on the despair of optimism. Sorry, Dr. Pangloss – we do not live in the best of worlds and Mr. Lack has just proven it an anew with this jewel of a debut novel.”
He waited for days. Nada! Bupkis! Zilch! No new reviews! So he asked Joleen to write one.
“Do I have to read it?” she moaned.
“Sheesh, Joleen, just do it.” After a few days, she submitted her review on Amazon.
“5 stars! Jack Lack’s A Bit Too Much is a tour de force! A roman a clef! A magnus opus! A piece de resistance! The hero loses a bunch of jobs, blows up a car, goes to jail and somehow finds a girl on the outside from behind prison bars. It’s really sweet! It has something to do with artificial intelligence and that’s something you hear a lot about these days because it has something to do with computers. It’s not very long and that’s a relief. You should buy it or he’ll get really mad, okay?”
Jack kept his Amazon book page up all the time and compulsively checked it every few minutes until finally he came across Joleen’s review. He exploded out of his chair, burst in on her while she was dressing to go to her sales job at Rooms To Go and yelled at her “You should have told me you had written a review and let me read it before you submitted it! Hey, where’d you get all that jazz about tour de forces and magnus opus and whatnot?”
“Oh, you wrote those down for me to put in the review. You never appreciate all the things I do for you. I didn’t even want to read it anyway.”
“Hell, Joleen, you didn’t even read it! I wrote down the plot for you to help you get started reading it. I know you hate to read books. At least you put it in your own words. The only thing I’ve ever seen you actually read are magazines like People, US, and Entertainment Weekly. But I never saw you once crack the cover of my book.”
“Jack, when are you going to get a job? All I ever see you do is sit around in your underwear, smoke dope, drink beer, peck out a few words every now and then, and watch porn. The great American novelist, my ass.”
“You think it’s easy? Sure, great artists have their vices. Kerouac was a drunk. So were Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Burroughs was a junkie. Salinger had a thing for teenage girls. So did Nabokov – he wrote the classic Lolita about a pedophile. Me? I drink beer – light beer, mind you!”
“Who the hell are these people? Anyway, I do read – I like romances. Or I would read romances if I had time after working two jobs to support your sorry ass. How much have you made with your masterpiece anyway?”
“Just you wait! Just you wait! Aw, wait a minute – don’t wait. A true genius is never recognized in his own time – Kafka, Melville, Hurston, Dickinson. Well, wait a long time. You’re still young. You’ll outlive me by decades. After I die, the royalties will start flooding in wave after wave with my posthumous recognition! Our grandchildren will be rich!”
“Grandchildren? You’ve got to stop yanking your crank all the time if you want children, much less grandchildren, buster.”
“But you’re always working!”
“I’m off tomorrow, thank God.”
Jack grinned. “Really?”
“You want a baby? Save it for later, buster.”
~
Fifty years later. Jack Lack III rolled over and kissed his wife. “Another huge royalty check rolling in tomorrow, baby! Thank you, Grampa, may you rest in peace! How about we celebrate if you know what I mean…”
“I do. Save it for later, buster.”
Copyright © Johnny Clack 2022
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