« Predestination or freewill..... | Main | Christ the King »
November 25, 2006
This writing bug ....
This writing bug is fun. At least I find it so, but I do have a serious problem with it. There isn't much point in writing and enjoying writing if you can't get the book published and sold. I recently bought a copy of the Writers and Artists Year Book for 2007 and almost wished I hadn't when I read the Foreward - a forward written by one of our current best selling authors. But, I have to say that what I read there and deeper in the book has made me even more determined to find a way to get into the mainstream. No, I don't want to be on the bestseller list - it would be nice, but I think I would find that a little too demanding at my time of life. All I really want to see is my books on sale in the regular stores where people can see them, feel them and hopefully, because of that, buy them.
Very few authors make millions from their work, and I don't aspire to do so either, but a steady trickle of royalties would be nice to boost my pension and give me the pocket money to do the things I haven't yet had time to do. So, I am now composing letters to various agents and taking a flyer at a couple of publishers as well. We shall see what happens from there, at least I have the book in print, rather well presented if I say so myself, and I have a sequel to it in a state in which I can show a manuscript to an agent or publisher. My biggest stumbling block is myself! I am one of those irritating people who never likes to launch something important into a mail system - I like to deal with people face to face, but that is not the way the publishing world works.
It may come as a surprise to learn that there are something like 178,000 new titles published in the US alone every year. On those odds you do have to ask yourself how do any of them actually get noticed? Well, of course, the answer is that many, like my own, don't. It comes down to advertising and budgets, if you have them you get noticed, if you don't .....
But, there are ways this can be addressed, so I will say to you - watch this space. In the meantime I do have a space on Amazon which is supposed to help me reach a readership. So far its pretty invisible but give it a whirl anyway, see what comes up if you visit Amazon and search for my book and pen name "Patrick G Cox". It will certainly help boost my "hit" rate!
Posted by The Gray Monk at November 25, 2006 03:46 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mt3.mu.nu/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4814