The Underground Route to Self-Publishing.

Problems getting published? Here's a couple of solutions.

Zafar Anjum, who links to all the best lit. stories in the UK newspapers before I'm even off the starting block (not that I'm jealous, you understand!) picked up this story about a writer who decided to give his novel away in the streets. The article is both hilarious, and gives an interesting insight into the UK publishing business, so do go follow the breadcrumb trail back to the original piece.

I thought you might like to read about another very enterprising individual who sells her stories at a subway station in New York. Source: The New York Times.

NEW YORK -- Since the day it opened, and for obvious reasons, the subway has been as much a supermarket as a means of transportation. Daily, it delivers a group of prospective consumers numbering in the millions. August Belmont, the system's chief financier, sensed the potential and tried to tap into it by plastering the early subway with hundreds of tin-framed advertisements for everything from rye whiskey to washing powder.

Over the years, there have been cigar stands, flower stands, newspaper stands, chewing gum machines, a record store and an army of hard-working immigrants who wander the trains selling AA batteries, toy cell phones, lighted yo-yos and plastic sticks that make funny sounds when you wiggle them. Once, I spotted a well-used one-piece bathing suit for sale at the Second Avenue stop on the F line.

So it is in that grand tradition that a small, friendly 27-year-old woman named Adrian Brune set up shop about two months ago to sell her wares at Times Square. Her "shop" is a very common one for subway commerce, consisting of a small cardboard box, behind which she sits with her back against the wall. But what differentiates Brune from her competitors are her unique handmade products, advertised in a hand-lettered sign on the sides of the box. "Writer w/ good short stories for sale: $2 each," it says, adding in parentheses, "Masters from Columbia; bad economy."

In other words, Brune is a player in what the writer Terry Southern once called the "quality lit game," but instead of trying to sell her work through publishers, she has decided to go right to the reading public. This would be a brave decision, if it were one she made herself. In actual fact, she says, it was made for her by the publishers.

"I got to the point where it was either start selling my stuff or try to sell my work," she said last week, sitting on the floor of the Grand Central subway station, where she has relocated because the police there seem to appreciate nonfiction prose more than those at Times Square do. ("I've only been kicked out of here three or four times," she said with appreciation.)

Brune, who was raised in Tulsa and came to New York by way of Chicago and Boston, says that she originally conceived of her subway sales job as a form of "protest slash performance art." After graduating from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism last year, she tried in vain to find full-time work, but landed only occasional freelance jobs (including a few short articles for The New York Times). She was angry at New York, she said, and wanted to find a way to let the city to know it.

But then a funny thing happened: She discovered that low-priced, cheaply copied, heartfelt short memoirs held together with paper clips actually sell pretty well in the subway.

In fact, on good days she sells out of them, unloading 20 copies or more of each of her three stories. (One is about the death of her stepmother, with whom she was very close; a second is about online dating and a third is about a whirlwind romance she had with another woman at Columbia. She is at work on a fourth story about another romance.)

Last week, Brune was doing a very brisk business in the corridor leading to the Times Square shuttle. As a salesperson, she tends to comport herself with ease, something like a country-store clerk selling fertilizer to farmers. "You like short stories?" she says to the undecided. "Try this one."

"Hey, have a good one now," she says as they walk away. When a man in a baseball cap walked up, she gave him her friendly sales pitch. "You want action or satire?" she asked.

"Action," he said finally and forked over two bucks for the whirlwind romance. Brune folded the bills into her pocket. "Guys like the action story," she said.

In the space of about two hours, she had sold more than a dozen stories, some to satisfied repeat customers like Orlando Fonseca, who had also bought the whirlwind romance story and gave it a big thumbs up. "It reminded me of some of the stupid things I did," he told Brune, smiling.

She says that she has never had any customers demand their money back, though one man did return a story, apparently disappointed that she is gay. "I think he was a little sweet on me," she said.

Of course, the subway is not always the most relaxing sales environment. Once she spent the whole afternoon with a rambling drunk at her side. The same day, she said, "a slam poet or whatever he was came up and slam-poeted me."

Some people, most often women in business suits, look at her behind her box, well dressed and well fed, and roll their eyes. But others seem to understand. In fact, one woman recently gave her a $10 bill for a single story

"O.K., maybe she thought this was about charity," Brune said. "Or maybe she just thought I was undervaluing my work."

See, there are all kinds of ways to get your words out there and all you need is a little imagination.

Maybe you'd like to post your own suggestion in my comments. There is a prize for the best one: you get to buy me lunch.