I have noticed these last few days that certain things have been pressing my buttons like mad. The biggest of these by far has been a spiritual novel, whose name I won't mention directly which has been doing the rounds. The author of this book, who according to her website, worked in the city before having children is putting out the intent to sell 1 million books by December, when her book is presumably self published, and 100 million by the end of next year (I think I got that right). In order to do this, she placed full page advertisements in last weekend's London, New York and Sydney Times. I have no idea what the response to this has been, since last time I looked there was no mention on her website.
The thing that is pressing my buttons more than anything though is not the fact the she is doing this, but the fact that she can afford to do this, because in my mind it does reinforce the idea of there being a very uneven playing field when it comes to the whole publishing business. Money does definitely talk, and it is not what you have written that counts, but who you know and how many you can sell, for this you can also read those who can afford to pay. It is bit like Random House or one of the other large publishers paying book stores for prime space.
The other thing that has been annoying me is the fact that this book seems to be being endorsed by a lot of well known people within the spiritual community and circulated around the Internet. A lot of these same people promised to do the same with my own book but didn't. I suppose it goes back to the same old thing though - why were they not honest enough to tell me that they were unable to keep those promises, and why did they feel they had to fob me off in this way by making promises they have not been able to keep.
Having thought about this in detail though yesterday, and discussed it at length with Coran, it is almost as if seeing all the things that this woman is going and the successes that she appears to be enjoying (although I don't actually know if she is, or whether it may turn out to be nothing but hype), it makes me feel that the things that I am doing are not enough and are not good enough. This is of course total rubbish. I have put an extraordinary amount of my own time, energy, and yes, money into this project and I know that the universe will respond. Slowly at first to begin, but then things will get bigger and bigger until they snowball.
My own goals are if anything far more realistic, as hardly any books in all of history have sold 100 million copies in one year - if she is self published, imagine stuffing all those envelopes - this is a sure fire way to get RSI and never write a book again ! I have learnt the industry inside out though from the bottom up (quite literally) so although i may be aiming lower at asking for 1000 sales by the end of the tax year, this is far more realistic and achievable.
It seems at the moment though that I am trying almost too hard and pushing things to happen before they and I are ready for things to happen. I bumped into my friend Soraya yesterday on the way home from the gym yesterday and was talking about this with her. She mentioned that there was an interesting article re this on Jelaila Starr's website (Jelaila being spokesperson for the Nibiruan Council). I had a read of that last night then and digested what she had to say. That was basically then when things get like this, where it feels like you are continually hitting a brick wall then you need to step back and analyse. So that is what I have done.
I went back to the drawing board and thought about how much better I could sound when ringing book stores if I had some answers prepared, kind of like the sales spiel that cold callers use, but less rehearsed. I have written some ideas down and am keeping it in front of me each time I call. Having spoken to half a dozen or so stores today, the results have been a bit more encouraging. I have secured 2 more orders from stores in London - Leadenhall and Kensington. A member of the public actually went into the Kensington store it seems and asked to order a copy - maybe then they will order some more in response to this ? I will have to email the MBS Manager and let them have some information .....
The thing that is pressing my buttons more than anything though is not the fact the she is doing this, but the fact that she can afford to do this, because in my mind it does reinforce the idea of there being a very uneven playing field when it comes to the whole publishing business. Money does definitely talk, and it is not what you have written that counts, but who you know and how many you can sell, for this you can also read those who can afford to pay. It is bit like Random House or one of the other large publishers paying book stores for prime space.
The other thing that has been annoying me is the fact that this book seems to be being endorsed by a lot of well known people within the spiritual community and circulated around the Internet. A lot of these same people promised to do the same with my own book but didn't. I suppose it goes back to the same old thing though - why were they not honest enough to tell me that they were unable to keep those promises, and why did they feel they had to fob me off in this way by making promises they have not been able to keep.
Having thought about this in detail though yesterday, and discussed it at length with Coran, it is almost as if seeing all the things that this woman is going and the successes that she appears to be enjoying (although I don't actually know if she is, or whether it may turn out to be nothing but hype), it makes me feel that the things that I am doing are not enough and are not good enough. This is of course total rubbish. I have put an extraordinary amount of my own time, energy, and yes, money into this project and I know that the universe will respond. Slowly at first to begin, but then things will get bigger and bigger until they snowball.
My own goals are if anything far more realistic, as hardly any books in all of history have sold 100 million copies in one year - if she is self published, imagine stuffing all those envelopes - this is a sure fire way to get RSI and never write a book again ! I have learnt the industry inside out though from the bottom up (quite literally) so although i may be aiming lower at asking for 1000 sales by the end of the tax year, this is far more realistic and achievable.
It seems at the moment though that I am trying almost too hard and pushing things to happen before they and I are ready for things to happen. I bumped into my friend Soraya yesterday on the way home from the gym yesterday and was talking about this with her. She mentioned that there was an interesting article re this on Jelaila Starr's website (Jelaila being spokesperson for the Nibiruan Council). I had a read of that last night then and digested what she had to say. That was basically then when things get like this, where it feels like you are continually hitting a brick wall then you need to step back and analyse. So that is what I have done.
I went back to the drawing board and thought about how much better I could sound when ringing book stores if I had some answers prepared, kind of like the sales spiel that cold callers use, but less rehearsed. I have written some ideas down and am keeping it in front of me each time I call. Having spoken to half a dozen or so stores today, the results have been a bit more encouraging. I have secured 2 more orders from stores in London - Leadenhall and Kensington. A member of the public actually went into the Kensington store it seems and asked to order a copy - maybe then they will order some more in response to this ? I will have to email the MBS Manager and let them have some information .....
No comments:
Post a Comment