ery nice lunch the other day. An old friend – a really old friend – a guy I knew like 30 years ago – contacted me and wanted to have lunch. Sure, love to. Then he mentioned that he would like to have me sign a book for his son. (yeah, it has been that long). So sure, we met and I signed the book with a big flourish and all sorts of personalized jokes – I love signing books. We ended up chatting about things, some of which will follow in the next DOG EAR.

But that was the thing – I got to make another sale. Sure, it’s work chump change after Amazon or whoever strips off their cut. But its nice to know that I made some money, that I reacquainted with a friend, that we had a good time (and that we stayed at lunch hours longer than expected).

If I needed further evidence of this, only the other day (just before Christmas) my wife pointed out that Amazon had given us about $35 bucks from all the holiday sales. I haven’t gone in to look but that’s a modest bump over the trickle I usually receive. And sure, in some cases, it’s because of people who know / knew / wished-they-hadn’t-known me. And sometimes maybe the Amazon search engine takes pity on me and bumps someone over to my book. And maybe, I’d like to hope, that sometimes this column (this and the book reviews) brings people over. After all, I’ve written 250 or so DOG EARS and 260 reviews. And every one of them has a link to my purchasing page. When you think about it, these years of blogging equate to nearly a novel in themselves (so look at all the free stuff you are getting!).

Anyway, yes, so thanks to new readers who picked up my book this way or that. I appreciate the support. And thanks to all my readers who follow my day-to-days in my efforts to read and write and share.

This is, after all, a labor of love.

And like the best of charities, very little goes towards my profit.

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