Posthumous Publishing, Part 23, Working Dead

The Pros and Cons of Publishing Posthumously

Part 23: Terminology Blunders: Not Early Retirement

Most living authors spend their days in a kind of “early retirement.” For the dead writer, the opposite is often true, as in a “late-career.“ Some notable posthumous authors include: Geoffrey Chaucer, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Stieg Larsson, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville. Success, elusive in life, was only found during eternal rest. Not that any of these aforementioned authors have been slacking as of late. Sales are brisk, new editions regularly released, and many still remain on best seller lists of one sort or another. Book tours and TV appearances admittedly have been curtailed somewhat, though they remain top seance celebrities. It’s an important reminder that even the most peaceful forever after can be easily marred by the “working-dead.”