I
find it hilarious when there is a film on TV that portrays a life-changing
moment in a person's life leading to a book and international recognition. The heroes in the story find themselves at a
crossroad and somehow with a little bit of luck or none at all they get through
their ordeal and write a book about their experience.
The
closing scene is with our hero in a book signing with hundreds of fans queuing
up.
It
almost gives the impression that all you have to do is write your experience or
idea down on paper and then it will get published and you
will find recognition. For thousands of young aspiring authors this is not
the case. You may have a good story or some kind of personal experience that
you think you can show to the world and that you can do it with the right
words, the correct meaning and grammar, only to discover the land of who
cares?
The publisher who does not care:
You
finished your story and had it printed on nice paper and your friends
love it and your boyfriend or girlfriend loves it, and you feel proud and
confident to move it a step further.
You
might decide to follow the traditional route:
Send
queries with publishers that do not consider unsolicited manuscripts, that do
not talk to writers directly and deal only with agents, or that do not respond
at all to your queries.
That
is OK rejection is part of the game. It takes a year or two being rejected so
what? You trust in your work and you look for independent publishers, small
presses, only to receive rejections there as well. Still you are confident
enough the story is good and you decide to publish it yourself with
print-on-demand or kindle or you finally find that there is a small indie
publisher that is willing to take your work on board. Then you spend
another 2 years editing, correcting, and getting the thing into shape.
Eventually,
one way or the other it is ready to go out, but nobody is buying it.
The readers who do not care:
Your
book is out there but nobody cares to pick it up (even as a giveaway). OK that
does not mean that the readers do no care for your subject, they probably do
not know your book, they might have seen your book amongst thousand of other
books and they have no reason to read your book instead of the one next to it.
But
you do not lay low you decide to promote it correctly and preferably a few
months before its release date.
You
identify the genre, you keyword it, you target groups that will be interested
in it because it has a story with a dog in one chapter, therefore dog lovers
might like to read it, or you swear a lot and some punk/rock imagery will
attract that crowd, or you claim that the pope is a tosser thus “atheists must
want to read it” and you look for blogs that will give it a review. You
use twitter, you use facebook, goodreads, bookcrossing, squido... you visit
your local bookstore, you leave a copy of it on a bus, at a cafe, on a park
bench. You do whatever you can in a sincere way, because this is about reaching
people with your ideas, not pestering them to buy or review your book.
The
reviewers who do not care:
You
may think that they do not, but most reviewers are swamped and they might
receive your book and might genuinely want to review it. Instead they list it
on their self (which is an advertisement of shorts) but they do not have the
time to read it. Beware, reviewers are humans too, they are not bots. Your
story might not be light reading and at times they do not feel in the right
mood to read your subject. You get some good reviews but also some bad reviews
or only one bad review. Fear not roll with the punches and press on, after all
even Gabriel García Márquez gets bad reviews from readers on goodreads!!
Time
does not care:
Your
book idea happens and you find out that it can take as much as 3 (and maybe 4)
before it gets published and then you spend another couple of years promoting
it and helping it to build momentum or do whatever it takes, investing effort
and in desperation money to get it out there.
It
takes a lot of time to write, edit, proofread and promote it in a world that
competition is fierce. Your title will be there against thousands, millions of
other titles. It takes time before it makes a few sales. It takes time before you get reviews, possitive and negatives ones. It takes time before eventually receiving a comment like "it is a lovely book that affected me in this
way..." that makes your day for weeks and fuels you to keep going.
Here
is a time line for my debut novel The secret of the elements
June
2008: Birth of idea
August
2009: Novel completed
August
2010: Positive response to a query by Armida Publications
November
2010: Work on manuscript editing started
January
2012: Novel Release Date
I
know what you ask "is it selling?" Let say that, it gradually gains
momentum but it is hardly what you see in the movies.
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