Those fifteen minutes? They’re up.

Joe the Plumber has written a book, or has had a book written for him. Now I have no gripe with the guy, and I bear him no ill will, but I will say that the details of the book “deal” seem sort of, well, odd. First off, I’d think that he’d land a deal with a major publisher just based on the fact that he seems to inspire liberal ire as if he was the love-child of Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin.  But Joe seems to be a do-it-yourself kind of guy, going with a press that has only one other title— a book by the press’ owner, who also is the co-author.

Quoth Joe about the reasons for the small press:

I am not going to a conglomerate that way we actually can get the economy jump started. Like there is five publishing companies in Michigan. There’s a couple down in Texas. They are small ones that can handle like 10 or 15,000 copies. I can go to a big one that could handle a million or two. But they don’t need the help. They are already rich. So that’s spreading the wealth to me.

Uh, ok. This is sort of like having your eight-year old nephew try and fix your transmission because he needs the money more than your mechanic.  I think he probably had the bad luck to fall in with a borderline scam.  Probably his co-author said, “hey, I’ll write this for you for free, just let me publish it.”  Unfortunatly, our old friend Joe didn’t realize that a good contract with a reputable publisher would have paid him something, and they would have found someone with some writing credits to produce the actual book.