A Modest Proposal: A Fair Marketing Plan for the Self-Publisher (The Writer’s Workshop)

In publishing, marketing is often treated as a certainty—while outcomes remain negotiable.

Fees are quoted with confidence. Campaigns are praised for activity. Visibility is celebrated as progress. Yet actual readership, measurable impact, and long-term value are frequently left undefined.

A Modest Proposal is a short, reflective essay written by a retired business-to-business marketer and longtime independent author who has lived inside this contradiction for decades.

Drawing on more than 160 published works and years of professional marketing experience, Dr. John P. Elcik, IV examines a simple but rarely asked question:

What would book marketing look like if risk, reward, and respect were shared more fairly between authors and marketers?

This book does not offer tactics, tools, or formulas.
It does not assign blame.
And it does not promise results.

Instead, it offers something quieter—and more durable: a clear-eyed examination of industry norms that are often accepted without scrutiny, particularly by self-published authors navigating a marketplace crowded with advice but short on accountability.

Written to be read in a single sitting, A Modest Proposal invites thoughtful readers to pause and reconsider assumptions about value, compensation, and success in the modern publishing ecosystem. It is a work of reflection rather than instruction, intended to sharpen judgment rather than prescribe action.

The conversation does not end with the final page. Readers are invited to continue exploring these ideas at penodyssey.com/modest, where discussion, context, and perspective extend beyond the book itself.