Affiliate Marketing Secrets

Wwjdhi. Translation being writers who just don’t have it. I’m talking about those writers who want to be desperately published and make serious money from it. Now, I know no one here on Yahoo Answers (those of you who are writers of fiction and have penned short stories or massive seven hundred page novels) are in it to reach this goal. In fact, it seems every writer that I talk to only writes as a hobby or they write for their family and friends or because they LOVE to write.
I’ve never not once come across a writer who flat out admits, ”Yes, I write novels because I want to be the next Jk Rowling. I write books because I want to make millions and be on the NYT Bestselling list.”
Not. One. Single. Time. It’s like they’re ashamed to admit it. But whatever ”it” is there are certain writers who have it and others who don’t. It’s like having a girl or a hundred girls who think, for whatever reason, that they have what it takes to be a Victoria Secret model and so they try to ”break in” to the industry. They try for five or ten years even and are constantly rebuffed because while they might be pretty, they’re not quite what the industry is looking for.
And then you have a stunning, shapely twenty-one year old blonde who becomes a Victoria secret model on her very first try, without really breaking a sweat as opposed to the others who have been trying for ten years. Are there writers out there who clog the markets with their sad submissions, writers who just can’t realize that they are wwdhi? And more importantly, is it a fair thing to do?

My dad has a decent collection of short stories he has written over several decades that I want to combine in kind of an anthology of his work. I was planning on going on like Blurb.com or Lulu to self publish it, and maybe even have it listed on Amazon for fun. On Lulu they sell ISBN. Or I thought about actually sending it to a publisher to get published. But since his stories are very niche, I don’t know if there’s publishers that will pick up his stories.
Anyway, my question is… Years ago he may have had some of these stories published in magazines. He never got paid, but it was like Deer hunter magazines that he sent to. They liked his story so they published it. No money was exchanged. I’m wondering if the magazine would have the rights to these stories or can he still do what he wants with his stuff?
All of his work is printed off from the printer or in the forms of old emails. It be fun to see it edited, formatted, and all together in a collection so that’s what I’m doing for him right now. I’m just wondering how far I can attempt to go with his stories.
And yes he knows I’m doing this. I got a stack of papers I have to retype because the digital copy of many of these stories are lost and only thing that’s left is what he copies with copy machine.