ALERT!!

You are reading what may be one of my final posts at this blog. 

I've proposed retiring from the daily grind before, but with a longtime goal in sight, I'm seriously considering laying down my pen... or at least taking a long hiatus.

The goal was to write 2,751 5-liners, thus surpassing by one the number which appear in "The New Limerick," ©1977.  Edited by Gershon Legman (with but a few of his own limericks,) it contains over 1,000 more entries than does his "The Limerick," ©1964 with its 1,739 poems.

Assuming I quit or go on sabbatical, I may pursue the idea of publishing one clean and one dirty book of around 500 limericks each.  Since my experience with last year's "Limericks in the Time of Trump" hasn't been very positive, I'm not sure why I am eager to lose more money. 

That book cost around $2,000 to publish and in eleven months has sold only 218 copies thru Amazon.  We four authors have privately sold some, but with only word-of-mouth advertising, the book “laid an egg” monetarily.  Even if we’d had the money, where would we have advertised?

If I've learned one thing in my 6+ years of blogging, it is this: Never over-estimate the knowledge and sophistication of your readers!  I have told hundreds of personal and email acquaintances about this site.  When I've later asked their impressions, more than half have replied, “I had to Google for all the fancy words and obscure references you use.”  Evidently, most readers don’t want any education with their entertainment.

Another thing I’ve learned is that the number of readers who recognize and appreciate scansion, real rhymes, and cleverness is far smaller than I had thought.  Since I refuse to “dumb down” my work, publishing it for any reason other than self-satisfaction is probably a fool’s errand.  Stay tuned…