Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 122

The Fox, the Hawk, and the Keepers of the Chicken Coop

On January 27, 2010, Macmillan CEO John Sargent schlepped to the airport and flew across the country to meet with the company responsible for an estimated 15% of Macmillan's annual sales. He probably drew the short stick in a lottery among the CEOs of Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Penguin to see who would
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Love Story of Panthea and Abradatas, Part Two

[In Part One from last week, we learned---from Xenophon's Cyropaedia, translated by Walter Miller---how Cyrus the Great had captured the beautiful Panthea but refused to violate her honor. Out of gratitude for Cyrus's nobility, Panthea proposed to bring her husband Abradatas over from the enemy and enlist him and his thousand charioteers in Cyrus's cause.
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Leveling the Playing Field

Throughout the 1990s, the American Booksellers Association—the trade organization that represents independent bookstores across the country—spent more than $18 million dollars suing publishers and big box book retailers. (read: "Booksellers Settle Lawsuit Against Chains") The controversy concerned the third line item of my recent samples of book publishing profit and Loss reports:
TERMS OF SALE
In 1994, the
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My Years in the Wilderness

When I was living out of the back of my '65 Chevy van, there was a kind of dude I used to run into from time to time. A hard-core road character, burnt brown by the sun, unbathed in months, living on dimes a day. I probably met and spent time with a dozen guys
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The Love Story of Panthea and Abradatas

The following romance (in three parts) comes from one of my all-time favorite books, Xenophon's Education of Cyrus a.k.a. the Cyropaedia.
Xenophon was an extraordinary character—an Athenian aristocrat and devotee of Socrates, who became a great friend to Sparta and died an exile from his native land. The March of the Ten Thousand, also known as The Anabasis,
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The Economics Behind a "Hail Mary," Part One

I've racked my brain to figure out how to dive into the murky P/L waters without boring the bejesus out of everyone. I was talking about it yesterday on the phone with Steve and Callie, when I realized that each line item on a P/L [Profit/Loss Statement] actually tells a little story.  So over the
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"That's What I Want to Do"

One of the great joys of being a writer is that, through your books, you get to meet some pretty amazing people. One of those in my world is Hermes (Ioannis) Melissanidis from Greece.
Hermes won a gold medal in gymnastics at the Atlanta Olympics. Here's the video if you've never seen it. I met Hermes
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"Words, too, had to change their meanings … "

["War Stories" is taking a break this week. Here to hold down the fort till next Monday is my own favorite from a few months ago:]
The Peloponnesian War was the clash between Athens and Sparta that lasted, as the oracle had foretold, "thrice nine years," and ended in the defeat of Athens and the destruction
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A Matter of Infinite Hope

There are four words that book agents long to hear. An editor can wax on and on about how much she adores the novel or proposal you've sent her and about how well she would publish the book, but until an agent hears "We're running our numbers," he doesn't dare tell his client that the
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Shadow Novels

Some of the most popular posts in this space have been those in the "Artist and Addict" series. One point those posts made was that there's not that big a difference between an artist and an addict. Many artists are addicts, and vice versa. Many are artists in one breath and addicts in another. They're
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