I haven’t read David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but around 90,000 people have so far after a couple of months. Okay, well, 90,000 books have been printed by HarperCollins thanks to Amazon’s promotion of it. For two solid weeks before the book was released, Amazon pasted the book onto its homepage and offered a 40% pre-order discount.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that heavily clouted HarperCollins published it. A nice blurb from Stephen King didn’t hurt, either, and tells you Wroblewski has earned his place on stage.

And this is his debut novel in a literary world where brand names are important to publishers and readers.

If one isn’t lucky enough to get Oprah, Amazon, HarperCollins or Stephen King to go to bat for him, there’s always the ebook, or print-on-demand services like lulu.com. Call me old school, though: When my book is finished and published (by somebody eventually), the hard cover will sit on my bookshelf like a trophy, and the satisfaction of doing it the hard way will sit at the front of my lips.