Remaindered.

I was perusing the clearance rack in the back of the Half-Price Bookstore, running my fingertips across the spines of the novels, and I was struck with a thought:

You will write your books, Dave, and they won't be bestsellers, but you will get them published and they will sell a few copies to a small, devoted following. Some of the rest will end up on this wall, marked down to one or two dollars. But that's okay, because then someone like you will find them and love them and share them with their friends.

And then one day, someone like you will stand right here, running their fingertips across the spines of your work, the work you sweated and cried over for years and that's now been reduced for quick sale, and they will realize that they too will never write bestsellers, but that the books they publish will be bought by a devoted following, and will end up on this rack too, to be enjoyed by the next generation of mediocre but passionate writers. And so it will continue.

And I was okay with that.