Nicholas's Story
Copyright© 2025 by writer 406
Chapter 15
When the book was released, Nicholas took a day and drove to Chicago to visit a library.
He found Mrs. Edwards at her familiar post behind the reference desk. She and a teenaged girl were bent over, peering at what looked like a college application. He waited politely until she was free.
When she looked up and saw him, her face transformed into a smile.
“Mr. Carter.” Her voice carried the warmth of recognition. “I do hope things are going well for you.”
“They are, ma’am. Better than I ever dreamed.” He approached the desk, carrying the book.
“I brought this for you. To thank you.”
He watched as she ran her fingers gently over the book—a handsome hardcover with forest-green binding. The Excellence of Ordinary Things by Nicholas Carter. She traced the gold lettering with one finger before opening to the dedication page.
To Mrs. Lucile Edwards, Librarian, without whom this book would never have been possible. With gratitude.
The silence stretched between them. When she finally looked up, her eyes were bright with tears.
“Oh, Nicholas. Thank you. I am so proud of you.” She pressed the book to her chest. “I will treasure this always.”
He nodded once, dashed the tears from his eyes. Unable to trust his voice, he abruptly turned and made his way to his truck.
His next stop was a house out in Berkley. When he pulled up, a couple of high school aged boys were carrying out some kitchen cabinets and throwing them in the dumpster parked in the driveway.
Nicholas got out of his truck and approached the taller of the two boys.
“Hey, Jamie. Your dad around?”
“Sure is Nick. We’re remodeling a kitchen. You’re looking good. The college life must be agreeing with you.”
Nicholas agreed that it was and walked in and found Al was placing some stands on the kitchen counter prior to mounting the cabinets.
“Hey Al. You got some pretty good helpers.”
“Hey Nick, what you doin’ up here in the big city?”
“I’m heading back. Thought I’d drop off something for you.”
Al looked over at the book sitting on the counter. Spotted the name on the cover. His eyes widened in surprise.
“You wrote a book. I figured you would sometime all that writin’ you used to do.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I’d drop a copy off. Anyway, I’m heading back. It was good seeing you.”
Nicholas didn’t mention the fact that he put Al’s name in the dedication. Neither man was comfortable with displays of emotion. But both understood well, the words that were unspoken.
“Drive safe.” Al went back to his cabinet installation and Nicholas got in his truck and drove off. Thinking to himself that this day was a perfectly satisfying day.
The book was not a blockbuster. Nobody expected it to be. Philosophy books rarely are, especially ones written by unknown authors without academic credentials or media platforms. The initial print run was modest—five thousand copies—and the marketing budget was even more so. Hartwick had positioned it as a thoughtful niche title, the kind that would find its specific audience slowly but surely.
The first week’s sales were exactly what everyone predicted: decent, but not remarkable. A few hundred copies sold through independent bookstores, a small spike in online orders following a podcast interview Eleanor had arranged, a steady trickle at campus bookstores near universities with strong philosophy programs.
Nicholas wasn’t disappointed. His expectations had been low from the beginning. He hadn’t agreed to write the book to become famous or make money—he’d written it to articulate ideas that mattered to him. The fact that it had been published at all was a miracle. If a few hundred people read it and found value in it, that seemed success enough.
Frank, the salesman he’d met, occasionally called him with updates.
“Steady sales at Prairie Lights,” he reported. “The manager there really championed it—has it on their staff picks shelf.”
“The pictures are selling it,” he said another time. “People pick it up to look at the images, then get drawn into the text.”
What none of them anticipated was what happened next. Much to everyone’s surprise, sales continued to grow, little by little. Not dramatically, not exponentially, but steadily, week after week. The pattern defied the usual publishing trajectory.
“It’s unusual,” Eleanor told him during one of their check-in calls. “Most books have their moment and then decline. Yours is doing the opposite—starting modestly but building momentum.”
David had another theory. “It’s word of mouth,” he said during a marketing meeting. “The most powerful marketing in publishing and the hardest to engineer. I think people are telling other people about this book.”
Evidence soon came to support his hypothesis. The online reviews were few but passionate, often mentioning that the book had been recommended by a friend or colleague. Bookstores were reordering. Reading groups were picking it up, particularly those connected to community colleges and adult education programs.
Then the independent bookstores began reporting something even more unusual: customers buying multiple copies.
“They read it and come back for more to give as gifts,” reported one bookseller in Seattle. “One woman bought six copies last week—said she was giving them to everyone on her team at work.”
The pattern continued for three months. No massive spikes, no major media attention, just that steady, persistent growth that defied conventional publishing wisdom. Hartwick ordered a second printing, then a third.
Nicholas continued his university studies, focusing on his coursework. The book was important to him, but it wasn’t the center of his life. He was still working toward his double major in Philosophy and Psychology, still working at his handyman business with Miguel. Still holding to the same routine that had sustained him now for seven years.
Then a glowing review in The New York Times compared it to Studs Terkel. That’s when it exploded.
The review appeared in the Sunday Book Review, a thoughtful piece that positioned “The Excellence of Ordinary Things” as a philosophical descendant of Terkel’s “Working,” but with a distinctly modern perspective.
“Where Terkel documented what people did, Carter examines how and why they do it,” the reviewer wrote. “His philosophical framework of ‘arete’—excellence specific to a person or thing’s function—provides a lens for seeing dignity and meaning in work that’s often invisible or underappreciated. The accompanying photographs, also by Carter, are not mere illustrations but integral components of his argument, visual evidence of his thesis that excellence is all around us if we can bring ourselves to recognize it.”
The review concluded: “In an era of robots and artificial intelligence, when many question the purpose and future of human labor, Carter offers a compelling case for the irreplaceable value of work done with care, attention, and embodied expertise. This is not a nostalgic argument for traditional crafts, but a clear-eyed examination of excellence in all domains—from carpentry to coding, from waitressing to writing. It’s a book that will change how you see the world around you, and possibly how you approach your own work, whatever it may be.”
The day the review appeared, online sales jumped by 500%. Bookstores across the country sold out of their stock. Hartwick rushed a fifth printing, increasing the order to thirty thousand copies. The marketing department, caught by surprise, scrambled to capitalize on the momentum, reaching out to media outlets that had initially passed on covering the book.
Eleanor called Nicholas at seven that morning, her voice more animated than he’d ever heard it.
“The Times review is a game-changer,” she said. “We’re already getting calls from other publications wanting to cover the book, from bookstores needing more copies, from foreign publishers interested in translation rights.”
Nicholas took the news calmly, more surprised than excited. The external validation was nice but abstract—the book had already accomplished what he’d wanted it to, articulating ideas that mattered to him. That more people would now read it was positive, but it didn’t fundamentally change his studies at college.
The university, however, had a different reaction. The president of the university, Dr. William Hargrove, read about the book in the Times, then was shocked to discover the author was an undergraduate at his own institution. And to his surprise, the author was not tied to the university by a scholarship, not part of any special program, or someone the administration had identified as a rising star.
Nicholas was simply a student who had enrolled, paid tuition, and quietly pursued his studies while writing a book that was now receiving national attention.
Dr. Hargrove’s assistant called Nicholas the Tuesday after the review appeared.
“The president would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience,” she said. “He was quite impressed by the Times review of your book.”
Nicholas arranged to meet him that Friday afternoon, between his phenomenology seminar and his research meeting with Dr. Thompson in the anthropology department. He wasn’t particularly nervous about meeting the university president—he was just another person doing a specific job with its own form of excellence, like Al the carpenter or Eleanor the editor.
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