Larry McMurtry Auctions 300,000 Books

Larry McMurtry (photo from LA Times)

Larry McMurtry has led a charmed life, as authors' professional lives go. He's produced commercially successful books for over a generation. A number of works have achieved critical recognition, notably his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove. Some of the Texan author's books have become fully realized movies, with The Last Picture Show and Brokeback Mountain among the best known projects. McMurtry has also opened and continues to operate an independent bookstore. If the adage "do what you love, and the money will follow" has any practical substance, McMurtry's activities would qualify to support it.

The 76-year-old author-businessman, who recently married Ken Kesey's widow, recently decided to auction two-thirds of his bookstore's 450,000-unit inventory. His rationale, according to a Reuters story picked up by the Chicago Tribune, was estate management. The decision had nothing to do with e-books, declining patronage, or "content yearns to be free" ideology.

Commercially successful authors such as McMurtry are increasingly becoming business enterprises. In that way, writers now mirror other highly individualized talent, such actors and athletes. "Personal branding" will only exacerbate this trend toward sophisticated business structures. We've come a long way from Henry Miller and Anais Nin, whose erotic works were among the items sold at McMurtry's auction.