"I just read your post about self publishing vs big house publishing. More please!" emails Diana Symons (right). "I am self published—my printer is sending me my first box of books today! So now I'm wondering what to do... When you talk about the tenacity of doing it yourself, I'm all for that, but do you have a great posting of what that really means?"

Actually, I do! As I was writing yesterday, I was immediately reminded of a story Jeffrey Trachtenberg wrote for the Wall Street Journal two months ago about C. Ben Bosah's foray into self-publishing, and the lesson I took away from it: "If this is a 'cautionary' tale, it isn't about staying away from self-publishing because you don't understand the big, complicated publishing industry and it will break you like a twig; it's about not starting up a publishing company if you don't have the entrepreneurial spirit to get through what Seth Godin calls 'The Dip' while you learn from your mistakes."

And then, prompted by the story of Tony D'Souza's self-promotional hustle, a reminder of how important it is to "write a book you are committed to; a book that you are ready to defend and lug around the country," I remembered another bit of advice I offered around the same time: "Is your message so important that you'd be willing to give over a huge chunk of your life to getting it out? ...If you can't say 'yes,' then why should you expect anybody else to care about your book either?"