Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

07 Jan 2002, 10:51 a.m.

In the preface or epilogue to paperback editions of best-selling…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

In the preface or epilogue to paperback editions of best-selling books (e.g., Ender's Game, Iacocca, The Gift of Fear), authors oft say something like, "I never expected that I would get thousands of letters from people who said, 'Your book changed my life.'" You know, it's happened enough times that authors really should expect it by now.