This is a sales pitch. I wish it wasn’t. But we’ve a choice to make. And I mean we. 

                  A dozen years ago I began these daily missives to a group of friends who’d invested in Daily Voice, the Internet news company I’d launched. I wanted to assure them that our company still had a pulse, which it didn’t really. Then it did. The patient recovered. No more need for bedside bulletins. 

                 Some of my friends said they enjoyed my daily musings. I was happy to oblige. My focus widened. Our audience grew – gradually – to five hundred or so subscribers. I retired, giving me more time. Jane and I spent four years in Italy. My poor country stumbled into a dismal swamp. There was plenty to discuss. 

                 I got older. Age sixty-two when these missives began, I was going to live forever. Age seventy-five, I hear a ticking clock. Didn’t I owe it to my kids to tidy my remains? A six-million-word mountain is a cruel bequest. 

                 We conducted a modest experiment. Might we grow our audience substantially? We spent a little money on helpers and online advertising, mostly on Facebook. Wow. We grew from five hundred to more than fifteen thousand subscribers in a year. If we continued that crazy rate of growth, might we make ourselves a force for decency? 

                 A few readers became paid subscribers but not many. Why should they? All they received for their contribution was my gratitude, nothing extra. That’s when we got the idea for Carll’s Book-of-the-Month Club. 

                 For the foreseeable future, I’ll be publishing a new e-book by me every month: travel books, fiction, literary criticism, meditations, poems. Henry has a book planned. I’m not as fecund as this makes me sound. For thirty years I’ve been completing books and shelving them. Only two of my books have been published, one commercially, one privately. I wrote books because I needed to, not to sell. I had a day job. 

                 These books are the best of me. Missives I compose for your immediate consumption. They’re casual. My books I shaped for posterity. I dreamed of affecting a future reader as Thoreau had affected me when I was twenty. I knew that wouldn’t happen but, hey, it was sweet to dream. (The first printing of Walden was two thousand copies – and they took five years to sell.) 

                 In addition to e-books, subscribers will be invited to a monthly Zoom call with me to schmooze about the book of the month or anything else we have in mind. I can’t wait to visit with you in person and not just in words. 

                 Subscribers will also have access to podcasts of books and missives and our archives. 

                 Is all that worth $144 a year or $20 a month? That’s your call. All the subscription money will be devoted to recruiting new subscribers. I’m not in this for the money. Will we become numerous enough to exert a little influence on our confused and angry hour? We won’t know until we try. 

                 So that’s my pitch. If any of you want to spend more than $144 and become a benefactor, we’d be thrilled. The more money we receive, the faster we grow. I promise, if you like my missives, you’ll like my books. And what a joy to make this journey together. 

                 Thanks for your precious time. You give me hope. 

                 PS. Join now and receive our first Book of the Month, Glimpses of a Self.