WESTLAND, Mass. For Todd Schlemke, a happy marriage, two healthy and financially independent children and a successful career as a pension actuary were the product of forty years of hard work and sacrifice, but as he reached retirement age he realized they weren’t enough. “I’ve heard all the jokes about how an actuary is an accountant without the personality, and they never bothered me,” he tells this reporter as he sips a no-alcohol beer on the “breezeway” outside his home. “But I didn’t want to leave this earth feeling I had something left to say, and never got around to saying it.”
So he put in two years outlining and writing “What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Pension Actuary’s Philosophical Perspective on a Life Well-Lived,” a light-hearted look at planning for disastrous future events. “I poured my heart and soul into it,” he says with a trace of bitterness. “I contacted every reputable publisher and literary agent, and all I got for my trouble was form rejections saying my magnum opus ‘wasn’t right’ for somebody, but they wished me the best of luck.”
But Schlemke says he is “not a quitter,” and so he took the path followed by many frustrated writers and decided to self-publish his memoir using an on-line service that promised him assistance (for a fee), in book design, editing and marketing. “They were really great,” he says, “up to the point of actually selling books.” In his mind’s eye, he had seen himself signing copies at a local chain book store, but learned “the hard way” that self-publishing companies can do little to place their wares in brick-and-mortar retail outlets, and not much more to boost sales on-line.
So Schlemke was left with 1,000 copies, give or take a few that he gave to friends and relatives, to dispose of, and while he adopted a posture of indifference to the stacks of boxes in his basement, he agreed to become pro-active in response to his wife’s complaint that she needed storage space for a crib and toys when their granddaughter visited.
Saturday night found Schlemke out on the streets of Boston past his usual bedtime of 9:00 p.m. because he learned, after discreetly asking a non-profit client, that it was the “witching hour” when he would see the highest volume of the region’s neediest in all their misery, desperate for the help that an affluent society could afford to give them–but didn’t.
“I couldn’t put it down!”
“Excuse me,” Schlemke says to a man sleeping in an alley doorway, “would you like a little something to read?”
The man, known as “Tiger” to others in the rough neighborhood of low-rise commercial buildings that borders Boston’s “Chinatown,” slowly stirs to consciousness, first batting away with one arm at an unknown assailant in his dream.
“Are you okay?” Schlemke continues.
“Hell no I’m not okay,” Tiger grumbles. “My ankles are swollen and I hit my head when I fell.”
“Awfully sorry. To help you put things in perspective, there’s nothing like a how-to guide to putting your financial house in order, seasoned with a generous helping of ‘dad jokes.'”
“What time is book group?”
“Are you a cop?”
Schlemke laughs. “No, I’m just a guy who wrote a book that one amazon reviewer–full disclosure, my colleague Ted “Buzz” Pine–said was a ‘laugh riot.'”
“I don’t need a laugh, I need a drink,” Tiger says. “Are you gonna give me some spare change or not?”
Schlemke reaches in his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and adds a dollar bill as a bookmark to the pages of his tome, then hands it to the man. “Here you go. Have fun!” he says as he ambles off towards a disheveled woman known to her street-mates as “Rosie,” who is pushing a shopping cart filled with her belongings down Kingston Street.
“Excuse me–ma’am?” Schlemke calls out, hoping to make a second quick “sale.”
The woman ignores or doesn’t hear him, causing him to quicken his step to catch up with her. “Have you ever wondered how to change course midstream and turn unfunded pension liabilities into a healthy retirement plan balance sheet?”
“Rosie” turns to face him and, not recognizing the man dressed in “business casual” before her, let’s him know that she’s “not that kind of girl.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstood me,” Schlemke says with genuine remorse. “I only wanted to see if you wanted a copy of my combination autobiography/self-help guide, it’s not available in stores.”
“An ‘author,’ huh,” Rosie says with undisguised contempt. “Well you can kiss my ass and make it a love story, okay?”
Actuarial Feud: I’m not making this up.
Schlemke is taken aback at the woman’s brusque reply, but he persists in the face of her resistance. “I tell you what, I’ll give you $5 and a hardback copy–suggested retail value of $27.95–if you’ll talk your book group into assigning it for your next ‘soiree’–okay?”
The woman is puzzled at the high-finance proposition Schlemke has proposed, but recovers her wits and makes a counter-offer. “I’ve considered your offer, and would rather you just gave me $30 cash, and I’ll buy the book on-line.”
“You will?” Schlemke replies in disbelief. “That’d be great! Would you mind leaving a review as well, or just rate it with five stars?”
“Rosie” squints and looks off into the distance, as if calculating the fixed and variable costs involved, and her net profit margin. “Sure,” she says finally, “but that’ll cost you another five bucks.”
A new distribution idea? I took some notes; we’ll see how it works.