Killing Lincoln: The Real Story

[Steven Hager]

I appreciate the shift in tone.

Time's a-changing, and the book industry is about to undergo what happened to the music industry.

I am 63, a single father, and two years ago, after I was put out to pasture by my company of 25 years, I began converting my life's output into ebooks and writing a blog. I had a very successful career as an author, screenwriter and editor, so there was a lot of material and I cherry-picked the best.

The blogs and the ebooks completely changed my process. Although I'm most famous for my Hip Hop journalism, and that's my bread and butter, I also got well-known for my research on the Kennedy assassination. I was the editor of a national magazine and could easily court all the best writers on the subject since the rest of the media ignores the real research in this area.

I discovered what an immense tool the blog became. When I wrote about Sturgis and Maria, Maria's daughter immediately contacted me to assure me they'd never had an affair. When I wrote about the death of Dorothy Kilgallen, someone very close inside the investigation reached out to praise my efforts, and offered some minor corrections that immediately were incorporated into the blog and the book.

Once I became sure of the landscape, I put the book out. There may be some small insignificant details that will be instantly and easily corrected, both on the blog and in the book, that's the result of a significant shift in technology and I plan to take full advantage.

It takes a major publishing company two years minimum to realize a book and the book needs to be finished six months in advance. Dozens of people are involved, the cost is immense and many trees will be chopped up. That's the old way, and once you turn in the manuscript, it's written in stone forever. It's dead.

My way is so much better....the info lives on the web and the book is constantly updated, and when that happens, I will announce it on the blog so everyone knows a change has been made.

This is all new to me, but I published five paperbacks in one week, and I'm already wondering what I should pull from my archives for the next book. The Lincoln project came like a comet out of nowhere just from watching a film on netflix and realizing the trial was a fake and being run for corrupt reasons.