This Sunday’s New York Times has a couple of interesting letters in the Book Review section, responding to Rachel Donadio’s essay of on POD publishing. Maryann McFadden and Daryl Pebbles (AKA Hutton Hayes) are published authors. Click here to read their letters in full. Ms. McFadden originally published her master’s thesis, a novel, as a POD. She describes herself as “one of those rare exceptions: my self-published novel, which began as my master’s thesis, sold enough copies to land a good agent who sold it at auction. My novel, “The Richest Season,” will be published by Hyperion in June.” Mr. Peebles, who writes under the pseudonym Hutton Hayes, describes self-published authors as “voices lost in the muddled middle who spend five years writing a novel and seek the same opportunity for survival as traditionally published authors. They may sell 200 books, or 200,000, or only one, but now they can, at least, be read.”

Cheers to both Ms. McFadden and Mr. Peebles. They remind us that that money, although a nice side benefit, is often not the carrot that keeps us going; rather, it’s the love of the written word, the desire to be read and, thus, heard.