You’re an author, and you’ve cast your lot in life with eBooks and the digital revolution, and you say it’s hard to be a success.

Don’t fret.

In publishing, even during the days when agents and editors and traditional publishing ruled the industry, it was tough to be successful.

Finding an agent was hard.

Finding a publisher was even more difficult.

Selling your book was almost impossible.

A New York publisher might release 300 titles a year. The man in charge hoped that seven of them would sell enough copies to pay the losses on the other 293 titles and still make a profit.

Big risk.

Big reward.

But don’t despair.

Just remember one important fact.

Since the beginning of time the world and all of humanity needs storytellers.

You’re a storyteller.

And you have a story to tell.

All you need is the Great American Hero.

You know him.

Or her.

The Great American Hero has long been the foundation of fiction, nonfiction, film, legends, and life.

The Great American Hero has always been the one who stood strong when he had no chance of winning, who went to war against overwhelming odds, who defied those odds, who refused to bend, refused to back down, refused to quit.

There was Gary Cooper in High Noon.

He walked out into the street alone.

There was no one to help him.

But he was willing to exchange his life for the sake of law and order.

There was Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird.

He walked into the courtroom alone.

There was no one to help him, but many willing to condemn him.

But he was determined to stand tall for a cause he believed in and defend a man who had no chance of ever being judged innocent.

There was Karen Silkwood.

She led the investigation into her company alone.

There were few who believed her and fewer willing to back her.

But she was willing to risk it all in order to blow the whistle on faulty plutonium fuel rods that her firm was manufacturing and protect other workers from becoming contaminated by deadly radiation.

She is buried in my hometown of Kilgore.

I don’t know if her body was wracked with radiation or not.

But I do know that no grass grows on her grave.

There was Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back.

He charged enemy lines alone.

There was no one to help him. The other troops were dug in and hanging on for dear life.

But he was willing to defy death itself in order to save his unit on a bloodstained battlefield in a foreign land so far from home.

One alone.

One against all odds.

So who are the Great American Heroes of today?

They are the independent authors, and there are legions of them.

They battle the fickle and unpredictable publishing business alone.

Only the fortunate few find someone to help them.

But they are willing to forsake any semblance of a normal, sensible life and invest their time and their talent, their hopes and their dreams, their last ounce of sanity in novels they pray someone will buy and someone will want to read.

They keep getting knocked down.

They keep getting back up.

They don’t give up.

They don’t quit.

They can’t.

There is another story to be told, and the Great American Heroes can’t wait to tell it.

Please click the book cover image to read more about Caleb Pirtle III and his books. His Great American Hero in Secrets of the Dead is Ambrose Lincoln, a man without a memory, going where no sane man should go and righting the wrongs in the battle-torn landscape of of World War II. The novel is also available as an audiobook.