Anniversary: Tenth Year of my first Self-Published Work

This snuck up on me as I was getting to bed last night: Gee, ten years ago I was working at the University of Florida Libraries and... OH YEAH that was when my book got published!

I had actually finished completing the last story I wanted to add to the Last of the Grapefruit Wars anthology back in May 2003.  Submitting the work to the Print-on-Demand service Xlibris went pretty quickly because I had enough of my stuff lined up and because I sped through the editorial process (there are glaring grammar goofs I spotted when the print version got out, my bad).  Anyway, on September 2003, boom, actual print copy of the book showed up on my doorstep: two hard-copies and twenty paperbacks.  Seeing it available on Amazon.com a few weeks later was part of the thrill.

There was a particular thrill to getting something actually in print, in hand, the feel of the book itself.  I suppose with the advent of ebook publishing that feeling may fade, although the need for print books may never truly die off... but that's another issue.

So... um, for anniversary celebrating... should I offer an autographed copy or something?