SOME THINGS YOU CAN'T MONETIZE

When you're an author everyone believes that you don't work.

 After all sitting chained to a keyboard nearly every day of the week, shuffling research papers, researching sources, reading obscure books to find forgotten facts and piecing together previously undocumented events and then putting all of that together into a written document that is tens of thousands of words long over the space of two years and getting paid for it- well, that just isn't working... right? Of course if you do exactly that while sitting in a cubical under banks of fluorescent lights in a huge office building while being lorded over by several layers of managers... now it's considered working. 

To this day, my own wife of more than 30 years, who got together with me while I was writing my very first book and has now seen me produce and have published more than two dozen books, still seems to believe that they all have somehow written themselves while I just sat around, watched TV and ate snacks. 

The intelectual quip then becomes, "author? Well how do you monetize that?" What's the reward? What's the payoff?

Not all things in life can be "monetized" here is a prime example:

THE FOLLOWING ARE PERSONAL MESSAGES REPRINTED HERE WITH PERMISSION FROM KOLE A. BROKKE- NOTE THE DATES!

02/16/2017 Kole A. Brokke

Hey, Wes I seem to only come to you for help when it comes to the Great Lakes, but I am doing a documentary about the steam turbine for my school and I was wondering if there would be any way to make some footage on a ship in lay up right now. Do you have any idea on how to ask a company about that?

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Wes Oleszewski

The friendliest steamship company seems to usually be Interlake and the only phone number I have for them is from 1992, it is 216-694-4007 and I'm not sure if that's any good anymore. You can probably get them through their web site: http://www.interlake-steamship.com/ I never had much luck with any of the others. Hope this helps.

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11/06/2019 Kole A. Brokke

Hey Mr. Oleszewski, I want to apologize for not talking to you in over two years, but I do just want to thank you. When I first read your book "Mysteries and Histories" back in 2012 when I was in 6th grade it sparked something in me that these wrecks and sailing are a major passion in my life and through out the years I have gotten more and more into them. And I eventually learned that sailing on the lakes is a career I wanted to follow. And now I have been sailing for over 3 months as an OS deckhand with Interlake Steamship Co. Hopefully this month I'll get a letter from Great Lakes Maritime Academy as I want to attend their deck officer program. So thank you very much for writing such detailed and humanized accounts of wrecks and near misses on the lakes. It has done and inspired more than you know...

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Wes Oleszewski

Your message is very rewarding. I don't get rich in dollars doing this... I get rich in ways such as yours. Thank you.

Further "monetize" me HERE