Top authors 2008

Shelagh wrote:

I didn't say that unknown authors can't find agents/publishers -- I said that books put out by unknown authors are difficult to sell without proper marketing.

Which books? Self-published books by unknown authors? Or commercially published books by unknown authors? If the former, then your statement really says: "Flogging a self-published book is hard."

Which sounds like a job for Captain Obvious.

About the difficulty of selling a book by an unknown author, and a tangent about Amazon rankings.

My first textbook competes against two giant icons. Their books are heavily adopted and corner the market. Going up against them is bloody -hard and expensive, requiring hundreds of free desk copies (cost: ~$100 each) and coverage by the sales force. Inroads are being made, slow but sure.

How does this relate to Amazon rank? During fall and spring textbook buying time, my book bounces between overall rank of 29,000 and 150,000. At those times it can be very high in individual categories -it often shows up as #3, right under the "giantest" of the giant icons, who is always, always, #1 and #2 (and sometimes 3, 4 and 5). But the icon has far more college adoptions/sales than I do. Hence, my categorical ranking of #3 really means quite little.

My amateur attempts to relate Amazon rank to yearly sales shows there is a relationship between OVERALL rank and number of school adoptions (my pub does not share the latter with me). I am assuming that when students learn the book is required they seek it cheaper on Amazon (where it sells for ~$80).

What's my point? Not sure anymore, lol. Just agreeing that it IS difficult to sell a book by a commercially published unknown, and probably next to impossible for a self-published unknown. Nothing I've read on this board has shown me any different.

I knew we would think alike eventually!

Dear Shelagh,
I have a picture of that page when Wooffer made it to number 1. It did not last long, but it was nice to see.

Love,
Betty

LC wrote:

Point being that ordinary people do, indeed, write books that reach an impressive level of success. They write things in their circle of competence.

That is true and LC you need to feel good about your book.

There just aren't enough places in the traditionally published book world for all the good books out there. So somewhere, somehow, we need to get those good authors known and their books read no matter who published them.

I wrote within my circle of confidence. I have rewritten my book with my credentials as a military wife during one of the most dangerous times in history, no longer as an authority putting into place some of your suggestions. There are military wives sending their husband to war today as in the past. We have commonalities and credentials, as well as others who have contributed, one being a journalist with a book with a traditional publisher, but that book might never be published by a traditional publisher.

Does that mean I'm a lousy writer? Does that mean I should stop this endeavor that branches out into various writing areas? It does not, because creativity is creativity, and perhaps we need to put our two cents into the future of writing and find creative ways to market good writing and help unknown good self-published authors become known.

Carol

It all comes down to the way a person looks out their own eyes and can get someone else to see what they see through the writing of words on paper. To me, it is fundamental. It is what writing is all about. Whether it is fiction or text books. The words mean naught unless someone who reads them sees what your mind concieved. The words are the insturment, the poor conveyor of thoughts and images. Oh, but when one other mind sees what you see through the words that you have written, well then, you can say you have done your job as a writer. It is my quest.

Love,
Betty

Carol, I always said that I thought writing your book from the distaff side was a valid and marketable angle.

As for "we" needing to get good self-published books known and read, I'm not sure who the "we" here is or what should be done. People already have access to cheap self-publishing options via Lulu, Createspace, etc. They also have the right to spend the same kind of money commercial publishers do to get their work known.

Betty Fasig wrote:

Oh, but when one other mind sees what you see through the words that you have written, well then, you can say you have done your job as a writer. It is my quest.

Love,
Betty

Betty, that is a great quest.

I'm on my way.

Love, Carol

I've started reading Thirteen Moons on my iphone Kindle. That, plus a conversation I had with my daughter tonight, are reminding me why I do this stuff.

I told her we had been discussing just that on this board, and that I was thinking that my personal "impossible dream" was to write the next Cold Mountain when she asked if I had read Frazier's newest, the above mentioned Thirteen Moons, and during the same conversation mentioned the free Kindle for iphones and ipod touch devices, so I bought the ebook and downloaded it immediately.

Every word has a kind of masterful beauty:

Quote :

Cloudy days, I sit by the fire and talk nothing but Cherokee, or else I sit silent with pen and paper, rendering the language into Sequoya's syllabary, the characters forming under my hand like hen-scratch hieroglyphs.

That is what I want to do, and why I continue to try to get there. I want to put words together as masterfully as charles Frazier does. Of course, if I manage to do so, I would want them to be read by as many people as possible.

But it's like Betty said, "when one other mind sees what you see through the words that you have
written, well then, you can say you have done your job as a writer."

Yes, Carol, it is a great quest.

BTW, Sequoyah is an almost ancestor, related to Nate Brown in my story, the husband of Ailcy's Aunt Alice, and of Joshua Smith, Ailcy's friend who died at the Alamo, should you remember them from the chapter I posted on the WIP thread. Sequoyah's English name was George Gist. Nate's and Joshua's mother were sisters, daughters of Nathaniel Gist, who was Sequoyah's half-cousin.

Ann