I’m going to tell you a true story about the now-defunct Borders bookstores.

Years ago, I wrote a book about the town I was living in. Even though I changed the names to protect the innocent and threw in heavy doses of exaggeration and fantasy, everyone knew exactly whom I was writing about.

I’m a nice guy and it was a fun book and no one took offense (no one sued me, that is) and I was happy and the publisher was happy and the people of the town I wrote about were happy.

One of my neighbors was traveling when the book was published, and when I ran into him months later, he said he’d heard I’d written a book. Yes, I told him, I’ll get you a copy, something I’d done for all the other neighbors.

“No, no, no, I’ll buy one,” he said. “Where can I get it?” We went back and forth for a while, but he insisted that he would rather buy one, in the mistaken belief that somehow, someway, I would get all the money from the sale. It was much too hard to explain that on a $26 book, I might get $1.25 – if the wind was blowing from the southeast and it was sold after 11 p.m. on the third Tuesday of the month. At least that’s the way the contract seemed to be written.