B. U. G. S.

America First Books is a new one-man concern you might want to look at:

www.amfirstbooks.com

I have ghosted a number of books for others, which was where the money was, and I have written three under my own name.

America First Books will go out of business if nobody supports it. It is completely dedicated to the publication of e-books. I have no idea what exactly e-books are, but since I was in politics, the fact that I am completely ignorant of the subject does not prevent Ole Bob from making expert commentary on it.

For me, the point is that William Fox, who is trying to make a go of this company and who always sounds tired when I call him, is a big fan of mine. If you think Bob is somebody you want to encourage, you will be a fan of his.

Let me start off by saying that I had absolutely sworn off the whole idea of writing another book on any subject. There are very few people who have published books in the usual printed format, and you will play hell trying to get Their Majesties to talk to peasants like you.

Now that I am anathema to New York and even to Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan, real authors won’t speak to me, either. I’m kind of proud of that. You have to be an Olympic class S.O.B. to have been the editor of The New Right Papers with all the big names and then to find that even the most extreme of your former comrades will not return your calls.

I hope you don’t think I’m being egotistical here, but I am not only in that Olympic class of S.O.B’s, I am a serious contender in the Olympic Finals in that category.

OK, I’ve bragged enough. Back to the subject.

There are very few of us who published books for top publishers under the old system, and all of them but me call into a category that might be referred as His Majesty. So it is no surprise that Mr. Fox had trouble understanding why he was such a relief to me.

Try to understand how much effort goes into a book under the New York publishing system. You put together a complete outline and write a chapter. Then you waited a month or more before receiving a reply from the publisher.

That was THEN. NOW you wait SEVERAL months. In fact, unless you are an “established author” you can no longer submit the outline and chapter to a publisher directly. You have to get an agent first. That means CONTACTS.

There was a time when His Lordship the Agent would be willing to read over your proposal if you paid him to do so. Even that is now in the past.

Anyway, the point is that under the present system the last thing that is important is writing. My last book, “Why Johnny Can’t Think,” was submitted by my team to different publishers. One of them, seeing my background, thought I was a great deal. They accepted the book.

Then they READ the damned thing.

You know, I have gotten rejection slips in my time, but this one was a doozy. They said that not only were they backing out on publishing “Why Johnny Can’t Think,” but they were destroying all correspondence relating to it.

So I paid for it myself. I sold out the first printing of three thousand copies, minus the ones Scriptures for America and James Edwards of The Political Cesspool are still selling. Normally when you sell out the first edition you print a new one. In fact, I know no exception to this rule but ME. I was just too exhausted to bother.

Now maybe you can understand why America First Books was such a relief. William Fox just wants me to WRITE.

After all my years as a Washington insider, an Official Discussant on academic papers before Nobel Laureates, and all the rest, the fact that I still cling to the idea that a writer’s function is to WRITE sounds idiotic. Maybe you can attribute to my being from the Bible Belt or to brain damage.

A writer’s function is to make contacts, not to spend all his time in front of a keyboard.

I understand that.

So Mr. Fox simply cannot understand how relieved I am that all he wants me to do is WRITE.

He wants about anything I will give him. He wants my book explaining “Wordism.” In fact, he is insisting that I write a book about American history from the Southern perspective.

Under the best of conditions, writing a book is bone-crushingly hard. But I am going to try.