(FORTUNE Small Business) – What happens when a small book publisher's first release happens to be Jeff Bezos' favorite kids' book? Or when the baseball bat that a clever carpenter whittles in his garage turns out to be Barry Bonds' homerun weapon of choice? Such accidental endorsements--on top of hard work--resulted in better business for Jill Morgan's Purple House Press and Sam Holman's Original Maple Bat Co.

Morgan, an ex-Motorola engineer, started republishing children's books last year, after seeing many of her long-out-of-print childhood favorites selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars. With $35,000 (in savings and a loan from her parents), Morgan named her company in honor of her favorite kids' book from 1965, Mr. Pine's Purple House. Written and illustrated by Leonard Kessler, it's the story of a man who paints his home, dog, and cat purple in an effort to stand out among his copycat neighbors. Morgan entered her inaugural title in Amazon's Advantage program, which helps small presses benefit from the online book giant's wide reach. It languished for six months until an Amazon staffer came across the title and remembered Jeff Bezos' mentioning it was his favorite childhood book. Next thing Morgan knew, the title was featured in an Amazon e-mail newsletter detailing Bezos' long-held affection for old Mr. Pine's individuality tale. Amazon ordered 1,000 books--the most to date for Morgan, who, unlike Bezos, still operates out of her garage, in Keller, Texas. Within a day, the book's sales rank leapt from 50,000 to 15. "I was ecstatic," says Morgan.

While Morgan is enjoying her success, she's working hard to make the most of her unexpected good fortune. After the endorsement from Amazon's Bezos, a South Korean book publisher e-mailed Morgan to ask about foreign rights to the Mr. Pine book. Then Scholastic called to request review copies for its book club. She's parlaying the extra exposure to help push the eight formerly out-of-print titles she's publishing this year. Morgan sent an e-mail to Neiman Marcus, noting her Amazonian fame, and managed to get a meeting to discuss selling her books through the department store.

Sam Holman has lots to be happy about too. The 56-year-old Canadian has never played professional baseball, but he may well have helped change America's pastime forever. After listening to a friend, who was also a baseball scout, complain that beefy ballplayers were breaking too many bats, Holman walked into his garage in Ottawa to build a better stick out of sugar maple, not the traditional white ash. Hunched over a 56-year-old Italian lathe, he carved a prototype in 1997, then placed an ad in Baseball America and began touring spring training sites hawking his bats.

Since then the maple Sam Bat--leaner and more dense than the ash--has made solid contacts. Players rave about the power the bats generate and their durability. Holman has converted about 300 major leaguers over the years. But it really wasn't until this year, when Barry Bonds began using Holman's bats to threaten the home-run record for a single season, that sales began to boom. Last year, Holman sold 7,000 bats. This year, he'll sell 18,000.

Holman has used his extra cash to move his now ten-person company out of his garage and into a turn-of-the-century tavern he's converted into a factory. But he's growing with caution. Thirty-eight different companies vie for major league players' affections, including, of course, Hillerich & Bradsby, which is based in Louisville and provides about 70% of major leaguers with Louisville Sluggers. Our advice: Get it while you still can, Mr. Holman.