Opinion

First-time author grateful to library

Posted December 07, 2008 10:00 pm

In this Thanksgiving season, I offer belated gratitude to Schaumburg Township Public Library. This thanks is for stocking my first and maybe only book, "Planet Hibernia 3153 A.D." I also thank those libraries in Elk Grove Village, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Centralia, Tolono and others.

Like new authors, I went to a subsidy publisher, Dorrance, in Pittsburgh. This firm, in 1973, published "Navajo Code Talkers." From this book came the film "Wind Talkers." Upton Sinclair had to seek a vanity publisher for his controversial book, "The Jungle."

Many budding authors have to go this route, most are unknown people. Celebrities are offered money in advance for their tomes.

Every person has a story. And even if a book doesn't result in much monetary remunerate, it can confer a form of immortality.

John J. Shelten

Hoffman Estates

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