About three people I know have read my entire book “Dogging Steinbeck,” which is for sale on Amazon.com as an ebook for a lousy $6.99 but is still in process of becoming a print-on-demand book.

Message from Bill Steigerwald, my marketing director:

“Dogging Steinbeck” makes a fine (i.e., cheap) Christmas present for anyone who loves Steinbeck or hates Steinbeck; who loves “Travels With Charley” or hates it; who prefers American road books that aren’t written by New York or Europeans liberals; or who prefers truth and fact in nonfiction books rather than fibs and fiction.

Since I didn’t have an editor or copy editor to save my from my imperfect and mad self, my unpaid, invaluable readers have been invaluable. 

They caught many little mistakes of fact, typos or dumb writing, which I have fixed thanks to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program that allows writers to easily add material or fix mistakes.

My friend Jim Dourgarian, aka Bookman, who’s a major West Coast book collector, a Steinbeck expert and an ex-newspaperman, saved me from my worst embarrassment.

I had at least 20 semicolons sprinkled throughout my book.

For someone who once told his one and only class of college students to never, ever, use a semicolon, as I did, it was shameful.

Of course, neither I nor my marketing director Bill Steigerwald will ever use another; again.