That's not Opportunity knocking: It's a Jehovah's Witness."

"If you can build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

That isn't exactly how Emerson phrased it, but it's close enough. And it's bullshit! Or at least it is today. Maybe during Emerson's age it wasn't. But if you built the world's most brilliant mousetrap: a masterpiece or economy that quickly dispatched mice without any pain and made them disappear, you would have to engage a high-priced patent attorney, have a costly prototype, write a marketing plan, research all previous mousetraps, and deal with a hundred other modern day details to prove you had a viable commodity. So, do not sit by the door, your mousetrap in your lap, waiting for someone to beat a path to you. They won't come. I have friends who have written excellent novels that may never be printed because publishers take forever to read manuscripts and often don't respond to anything not submitted by an agent or pal. My partner Peter writes great plays that will not be produced because they fall into the hands of mediocre artistic directors who only want to stage what Broadway staged last year. My friend Sharon creates wonderfully imaginative children's books that may never be read by children because their celebrity-conditioned parents are buying the lesser efforts of movie and rock stars who may not have even written, The Sequined Squirrel or the Absentminded Albatross. I am sure there are hundreds of Susan Boyles out there who will never get a break, never be discovered, and will spend their lives singing brilliantly in showers, amateur shows and choir lofts. Getting noticed today is incredibly difficult and increasingly costly. If you don't have a friend, connection, or famous relative, you've got your work cut out for you. I could go on and on about this subject, but I think I just heard the London Symphony's recording of "Three Blind Mice" play from my latest "No bait required, painless mouse trap and incinerator with disposable ashtray feature."

Case in point: Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria just published a cookbook: Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends. While I am sure that it's probably a charming cookbook, do you think that if she weren't a star it would ever have been published? Of couse not. And you can be sure there many more much better cookbooks that will never be publlished.