Tips to Becoming an Indiana Author

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from Hoosier authors who have survived the trials of writing and getting published!

Exclusive online story from author James Alexander Thom, www.jamesalexanderthom.com

"In 1981 I got an excited phone call from my editor in New York, telling me to go get a New York TIMES  the next Sunday because my third novel, FOLLOW THE RIVER, would be on the Paperback Bestseller list. A milestone in any writer's career. "Congratulations!" she said.

 Sunday I drove to Bloomington, bought a Sunday TIMES,  took it to an outdoor table at a downtown cafe, got coffee, and opened the Books section. Birds were chirping in the courtyard trees as I turned cheerfully to the list. There was my novel, not far from the top of the list: FOLLOW THE RIVER. Then I frowned: The TIMES had misspelled my name: James Alexander THORN, not THOM.

Monday morning, my editor phoned and said she had called the TIMES to correct the error. I too tried all that week to get a call through to the editor of the bestseller list. I wanted to tell him that as an old newspaperman, I always made sure I had the name right, if only that, and surely the great New York TIMES could do likewise. Not getting through on the phone, I wrote a letter saying the same thing. (That was in the days before e-mail.)

The next Sunday, my book was still on the bestseller list...but my name was still THORN. Again my editor and I besieged the Bestseller List editor all week trying to correct it, but on the third Sunday it was still wrong.

 Sometime in the next week I finally got through all the barricades and had the Bestseller List editor himself on the phone.  In the calmest voice I could muster, I told him, "If nothing else, I'd like my old mother to see her son's name correct on the TIMES Bestseller List. It would make her proud."

 "I do regret the error, Mr. Thom," he said. "But it's a moot point now. Your novel has been bumped off the list this week."

 "Clear off?" I rasped.

 "Yes. A rather remarkable thing happened. Several cartoon books by the same artist jumped onto  the list. Books about a cat named 'Garfield,' by a Jim Davis."

 I never got on the TIMES bestseller list again, even though that novel went on to sell 1 1/2 million copies and is still my strongest selling novel, now in its 45th or 46th printing.

Maybe it's some solace that the guy who bumped me off the list was another Hoosier.” 

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