Once upon a time books were sold in stores, where people came to browse and to buy.

Stores were places of discovery, magical venues that offered escape and surprises on nearly every shelf.

But alas, stores were stodgy, slow to adapt to changing tastes and titles. Except for a few independents and some of the earliest and loudest discounters, they were anything but great marketers.

So, their decimation nearly went unnoticed by all but their most ardent patrons. We all know this sad story.

What was happening in the book world that escaped the attention of the public and many of the largest publishing houses were niche providers that used direct marketing to quite profitably hawk their wares.

Time-Life Books was one such entity that flew under the radar of competitors as well as such venerable sales tracking publications as The New York Times. Yet its titles sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions, year after year.

TLB sold through Time Magazine and other Time, Incorporated publications. It also maintained retail displays at tourist venues, and of great interest to me, it sold libraries directly to consumers by telephone.

I worked in the circulation division in sales and management. Our mission was to enlarge the proportion of Americans that read books, which when I was with the company, was pegged at a mere 3%. The remaining 97% didn't step into bookstores.

If we wanted their purchases, we had to go to them, or find them where they went.

We were very, very good at selling books, and of course we guaranteed satisfaction. Each volume was delivered on a ten-day trial.

How effective were we?

For fun, one of my associates "invented" the Industrial Library. Its lead title was SOOT. And he then went about scripting a presentation, plugging in features and benefits that touted the wonders of this volume.

His wind-up promised, "And if you like this book you'll love the next one, called TRACTOR."

He made two calls and got two orders, which of course were never written up, and the nascent Industrial Library was shuttered.

The last thing you'll probably deduce from this story, unless I bludgeon you with it, is its most important theme, if you are a writer or publisher or both.

DIRECT MARKETING SELLS BOOKS!

(The telephone component of this tale is immaterial. What matters is that we manufactured not only books, but new markets for them.)

The other day a writer submitted a question to an online literary group: "Any tips for how to sell books?"

I replied:

"When I was 12, I sold newspapers on street corners. Kept me in candy bars and pimples."

Of course, I was being facetious, but there is a serious underpinning to comedy.

What is to prevent any of us from standing on a corner with a pushcart of books? As a test, why not buy a whole bunch of Dan Brown's latest and sell them at a discount to passersby?

I bet, with a certain amount of effort over the course of a year, you could earn six figures from a single location.

As time passed, you could also tout your own titles, if at that point you even cared to distribute them.

As I see it, there is an alternative to aggressively making the publishing business pay.

You can banter about whether to self-publish, find an agent, polish your writing skills, make social networking productive, and distract yourself with a multitude of other nonsense issues.

To borrow from the title of one of my best-selling books, isn't it easier and better to simply REACH OUT & SELL SOMEONE?