Today, June 27, 2015, is the one year anniversary of publishing Saving Babe Ruth. I felt a sense of accomplishment seeing the book in print and widely available at this time last year. My euphoria didn’t last long.
It’s been a year full of ups and downs. If I thought writing the book was difficult, promoting the book’s message in a crowded marketplace of ideas quickly seemed next to impossible. There were several hurdles to overcome. While I’ve had some success, I have admittedly failed to surmount some hurdles over the past year. But time and good liquor heals all wounds, and I’ve got both on my side.
Within the baseball community, there are a number of people who don’t want to see Saving Babe Ruth succeed. To some, it represents a challenge to their business interests. To others in the baseball community, the book offers too much to think about, and it’s not in their nature to think too much about anything. But the vast majority who have had experience with youth baseball have found true meaning in Saving Babe Ruth, and that’s cause for celebration on the book’s anniversary. But I don’t want to celebrate the anniversary by just revisiting the past year. I want to look to the future for Saving Babe Ruth as well. I have some big plans for the month of July.
What I had to say in the book had to be said. People within the baseball community certainly weren’t saying anything at all, or perhaps their voices weren’t being heard above the roar of the youth sports industry which steams ahead as it monetizes childhoods across this country. Free play is being replaced with “pay to play” and the ramifications of this thinking creates a new class structure of “haves” and “have nots.” This class structure is unsettling and serves to undermine communities nationwide in addition to undermining the development of our youth as a whole. We need to change our way of thinking; I hope Saving Babe Ruth is the first step.
And then there is the professional sports industry. I’ve certainly had my run-ins with that machine this past year. Last August, one of the nation’s top purported professional sports agents threatened to sue me over the novel. In addition to threatening me with legal action, he said in an email that his “team will be watching every interview, public statement and post” I make about Saving Babe Ruth. Hey, I like keeping company with a bunch of dudes as much as the next guy, but this crowd didn’t seem like one that was going to buy me any drinks.
And so I had to deal with this very difficult situation last fall and winter. That’s an entire story in itself. Suffice it to say, it took a lot of my time to address this situation, time which have could have been better spent spreading the positive messages of my novel. Unfortunately, I still need to look over my shoulder every day in talking about Saving Babe Ruth. But the themes of Saving Babe Ruth need to be heard; I refuse to be intimidated. Besides, there seem to be enough wusses in the world today; adding one more to the ranks might have taken the planet out of orbit.
Another hurdle I have had to overcome is the perception that the book’s growing success is somehow causing money to fall from heaven for me. I don’t expect the average person to understand the publishing industry. But know this: Making a minimum wage is not frowned upon so much as it is a celebrated achievement in the writing world. And I have yet to achieve even that level of success despite my efforts over the last year, let alone five years. In fact, as far as investments go, this is a losing proposition for me. So why continue? It’s because I believe so passionately in Saving Babe Ruth. It’s also because (at least according to my therapist) I might be just a tiny bit crazy.
I think my greatest success this past year has been in connecting with people who have read Saving Babe Ruth and have felt passionately enough about it to devote some of their precious time in supporting it. A writer without readers or reviewers is nothing. Let me thank each and every reader and reviewer for your support. You have helped me continue the good fight when things looked their bleakest. You’ve made me laugh. You’ve made me think. While I write this, my eyes are welling up with gratitude. You have touched me so deeply and I can’t thank you enough. Okay, enough of that. There’s no crying in baseball, right?
One highlight this past year was in receiving two national books awards in Austin, Texas from the Independent Book Publisher’s Association. These awards are the highest honor an independent author can receive in my estimation. While I’m proud of finishing first in the “Best First Book: Fiction” category, I’m most proud of finishing second in the “Best Popular Fiction” category for 2015. You see, I view Saving Babe Ruth as much more than a baseball book. I always hoped to transcend that simple classification. The award suggested I have met with some success along those lines. Readers seem to agree and their votes are the only ones that count in the end.
The reviews of readers, especially the more recent ones, have really brought themes outside of baseball to life and have expressed them more eloquently than I am capable of doing at this time. It’s been something to behold. When you have one reader’s review stating that he despises sports and baseball but enjoyed the book anyway next to another reader’s review that states that the book is a must read for baseball fans, I think that’s an accomplishment. Maybe it’s a sign of things to come. (These two reviews are on Amazon and dated June 24, 2015).
What’s next? My goal is for Saving Babe Ruth to become the bestselling baseball book on Amazon Kindle by the end of the All-Star break in the middle of July.
Yeah, you read that right and I am sober, though I’m at least thinking of reaching for the bottle now that I just wrote this.
That’s right. It’s go big or go home for me. Like Babe Ruth said: “I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”
In order to achieve this goal, Saving Babe Ruth will have to outsell such baseball books as Moneyball, The Art of Fielding, Wait Till Next Year and a host of other books about such baseball greats as Pete Rose, Derek Jeter and Jackie Robinson. Will Saving Babe Ruth accomplish that goal?
Now where’s that bottle?
But I’m hoping that Saving Babe Ruth can accomplish more than being a top selling baseball book by the middle of July. I’m hoping an entire country will embrace it as a novel that transcends baseball and sports. I hope it reaches the popular culture as a work of literary fiction that helps to define what it means to be an American today.
Okay, now I found the bottle.
A bestseller is a pretty tall order for an unknown author of an unknown book not represented by one of the big publishing houses. But Saving Babe Ruth has always been an underdog novel about underdogs. Heck, even Underdog himself makes a cameo appearance in Saving Babe Ruth. Like they say, every dog has its day. I hope Saving Babe Ruth will find at least one during the dog days of summer. Perhaps the day will come when Saving Babe Ruth is selling so well that people will sit up, take notice and ask: “Who let the dog out?”
Woof-Woof!
I’m pouring that drink now. Cheers!