Here's the scenario: a young man working in commercial real estate is tired of enduring the dyslexia that has plauged him since childhood.
He discovers that he loves reading espionage novels.
He decides to try writing one himself and calls it Term Limits.
He sends it to 60 publishers.
They all reject it.
He publishes it himself. This was about 20 years ago, when there was a certain stigma to self-publishing because most people assumed you'd only do it if no publisher was willing to take your book. Which, of course, was true in this case.
The book didn't sell and he gave up and went back into real estate--oh wait, no, I've got that wrong. Actually it became successful almost immediately and an agent took him on and got him a deal with Pocket Books. Now his fans include Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
If you're a fan of spy fiction you probably figured out that I'm talking about Vince Flynn. He's now 45 and has just released his 13th novel, Kill Shot. The plots of his novels have been so correct that they're read by the Secret Service to make sure that in reality they don't have lapses in the security they provide.
He's been battlng cancer lately and seems to be on the road to recovery. You can read more in a story in USA Today.
By the way, did you catch the number of rejections?
Sixty.
Did you notice that he didn't give up after those sixty?
Hmm.
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