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November 22, 2006
Books on the Brain: I had coffee yesterday with another writer who had attended the Nieman Conference and I was relieved/discouraged to hear she walked away with some of the same impressions as me.
"The one things I came away with is that everyone is writing a book," Katharine said. "It seems to be the new cliche."
That's somewhat intimidating. An agent who spoke at the conference flatly noted that as the market gets flooded with new ideas, book publishing won't be the way for most people to pay the rent. That's kind of awful, because writing books is fun. You kind of hope you'll be that one-in-a-thousand writer who can actually make a living doing it full time, but reality dictates you keep the day job. Writing books, particularly narrative nonfiction books that require lots of reporting time and expense, becomes an expensive hobby for most.
I'm supposed to be excited and proud because I'm one of the few and lucky people who actually found a publisher willing to invest tens of thousands of dollars into his idea. But it's a bit overwhelming at the moment. I also learned this weekend that 25,000 is the magic number. As in, sell 25,000 books you can be reasonably assured of a follow up deal. Fail to sell 25,000 books and you're no longer an author, but just some guy who once wrote a book that didn't sell very well.
I was told I will get graded on a bit of a curve because I'm coming out from a smaller publisher that doesn't have the resources to market the book as aggressively as, say, a Random House. But still -- 25,000?!?!? I've hired a publicist which sounds vain on the surface, but it's sort of the reality -- I know Barricade will do everything they can to make their investment pay off, but I have never met an author who was absolutely thrilled with the marketing efforts of their publishing house. And that includes authors who get published by the bigger houses. At the very least, the publicist gives me peace of mind that I'm doing everything I can to make this successful and it also makes the next few months fun -- if he's good, which he seems to be, I get to give lots of interviews and become an expert on the Israeli-American underworld.
And now that I have some time away from it, I'm confident that the book is good. Everyone who has read the excerpt (.pdf file) has told me they were left wanting to read more. One woman even said I was "brilliant."
"The way you structured it, with all those staccato sentences, it was like you were making me feel like I was on cocaine," she said.
For the record, as much as I'd like to take credit for being "brilliant," that was completely unintentional. A big, fat, happy accident. And, not for nothing, if being on cocaine makes you feel like you're reading a book, you probably need a new drug dealer.
If you really want to help me out -- and I know you do -- send an email to 20 of your closest friends. Tell them you've been checking out this writer and you're looking forward to the release of his book in February. Tell them they may want to check out the excerpt for themselves.
Just a hint, is all. A rather bold and shameless hint, but it can;t hurt.Labels: bloodandvolume, writing
Posted at 6:44 AM
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