I could write a book about my publishing odyssey.  I figured the world was waiting breathlessly for my memoirs. Then I found out I lived in a small world. Agents told me publishers were not interested in journalistic memoirs — that the public didn’t care about the quality of news reporting. And maybe that’s the problem with contemporary journalism.

Anyway, I was getting a runaround from a university press a few months ago when my stepson, Ken, suggested I self-publish. I resisted this show of vanity. I try to keep my self-worship secret. But Kenny knows things I don’t. I had never heard of Amazon’s books on demand, or its Kindle device that is all the rage nowadays.  Before I know it, Ken puts together a six-point business plan, part of which has people reading this right now. I guess he heard me bitch so much about contemporary journalism, he designed a website as defense mechanism against listening to my whining. So here I am in my own little forum trying to hawk books. I will try to be more sensitive than in the days when I sold Bibles door-to-door by displaying a center spread of Jesus and saying, “Do you mean to tell me with Jesus looking you in the face that you can’t afford the daily price of a pack of cigarettes to own this wonderful Word of God.”