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Monday, October 14, 2013

NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR BOOK ... Worse no one appears to care

 

Alone and barren in the cold night of cyberspace ... that is your book.

The harsh truth is that no one cares about your book.

There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe.

Many of those – perhaps as many as half or even more – are self-published.

On average, they sell less than 250 copies each. Your book won’t stand out. Miley Cyrus’s will. Yours won’t.

But then, do you really want to rub your, ah, posterior into the twig and berries of some stranger on stage for fame? 

And if the answer is Yes, Miley has a teddy bear suit for you to wear!

Of course, there are rare exceptions.  How rare?  On the order of 1 or 2 per million.

WE NEED TO BREAK OUT OF THE AUTHOR-TO-AUTHOR GHETTO IF OUR BOOKS ARE TO REACH THE WORLD AT LARGE.

Sure, some indie authors will buy your book. Some may even review it. But they constitute a tiny fraction of your potential readership.

You need to make your voice carry beyond the small world of indie authors to reach the world at large.


We need to post on riveting, compelling subjects to lure in the world at large.

How many posts have you read teaching you how to write better?  That is BOOOORING to the world at large.

How is it that vampire romances are so compelling?  In essence, the woman is kissing a corpse who views her as a last resort, walking Happy Meal.  Talking about our fascination with teasing death and bad boys might draw in READERS not just AUTHORS.

I write about the isolation and mutability of human nature in HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS:

http://www.amazon.com/HER-BONES-ARE-BADLANDS-ebook/dp/B00FPFOJNO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381797114&sr=8-1&keywords=her+bones+are+in+the+badlands
Just 99 cents
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,692 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  •  
    LONELINESS:
     
    It is one of the tragedies in today's ultra-connected world that loneliness is the hungriest hunter. 
     
     Our mobile devices don't connect us but rather isolate us with tidal waves of Twitter and Facebook LOOK AT ME's.
     
    How many lonely souls go through a work day with fellow employees staring at their cell phones

    as if at a mirror while never being seen by those around them.
    

     
    So imagine how universal is the need for people to read that they are not alone in feeling the emptiness of their lives?
     
    “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
     
    Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier
     
    (or more narcissistic)—
     
    and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill.
     
    Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, best known for her role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, would have been 83 last August,

    but nobody knows exactly how old she was when she died.
     
     
    According to the Los Angeles coroner’s report, she lay dead for the better part of a year
     
    before a neighbor and fellow actress, a woman named Susan Savage, noticed cobwebs and yellowing letters in her mailbox,
     
    reached through a broken window to unlock the door, and pushed her way through the piles of junk mail and mounds of clothing that barricaded the house.
     
    Upstairs, she found Vickers’s body, mummified, near a heater that was still running.
     
    Her computer was on too, its glow permeating the empty space.
     
     
    Vickers’s web of connections had grown broader but shallower, as has happened for many of us.
     
    We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors,
     
    and yet we have never been more accessible.
     
    We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy.
     
    The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years.
     
    In 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend.
     
    By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.
     
    See?
     
     
    Talk about what affects the heart of our society, and you will touch their hearts. 

    And if you hold an ember of hope that they are not alone, perhaps they will reach out to you.
     
     
    And if you do not a gain a reader, you will have gained a friend.
     
    Life is about more
    than sales ...
     
    It is about souls reaching
    out one to another.

    23 comments:

    1. Roland, I would love to read your blog on a regular basis, but, unfortunately there are so many graphics, links and videos that my poor little netbook can't keep up with them and the page stops loading/freezes/crashes!

      ReplyDelete
    2. Undergroundfortea Gothic:
      I'm so sorry to hear that. I have tried to limit my videos, not having one for every post. Sorry about the links doing that to your netbook.

      Thanks for braving all that you did to comment. It means a lot.

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    3. I still can't get past the fact that Miley has a teddy bear suit for me to wear!
      I am always enamored by your words.
      Not the absurd to make a point like the above mention of the teddy bear, But the fervent words that you sear the hearts of the readers.

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    4. David:
      You're too tall for the teddy bear suit! :-)

      Actually, in her MTV exhibition, Miley had little people in teddy bear suits dance around her while she did, ah, interesting things with her posterior and them. Yesterday, a little person wrote how degraded she felt by the whole thing. Sad, really.

      I try to touch the heart to let my friends we are all mostly in the same boat, hurting from the same bruises life inflicts to us all.

      Thanks for such nice words. :-)

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    5. Great post - and so so true. We are even more isolated than connected!

      Good luck with Her Bones Are In The Badlands, sounds awesome! Just downloaded it, but no promises on when I'll get it read! LOL

      ReplyDelete
    6. Yolanda:
      I often find myself at working, entering blood products into the computer and turning around to find everyone else with their eyes glued to their phone screens!

      Thank you so much for downloading HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS.

      The first page and a half make up the very short first chapter. Thanks again for downloading!! :-)

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    7. Why did that last scene remind me of Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens Great Expectations?

      Nice Fitzgerald quote, we are after all, pack animals. Observe early tribes.

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    8. D.G.:
      So true. We banded together to survive in our early history and the need remains.

      Ah, Mr. Dickens, he understood so much. I really enjoyed GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I am intrigued with the movie centering on his love affair in THE INVISIBLE WOMAN -- based on a true story as they say. So you know how happily it will turn out.

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    9. What a great post! I would be hard pressed to select just one passage as a favorite.

      As for Facebook, I use it less and less. I like the 'look at me's' quip. So true.

      Dean Koontz wrote a book long ago, I forget the name. But the characters were all physically connected to their computers. A couple episodes of Dr. Who, had similar scenes. Our society has left behind science fiction and become science fact. And the horror stories and coming out.

      Excellent post!

      ReplyDelete
    10. I loved this post, Roland. So true, and sad, and yet hopeful. Lately, regardless of how much I love books, I find it more and more difficult to step into a bookstore. The reason is that I look at all those books, beautiful, shiny books and think: How many of these are bought and read and how many sell more than a few copies? And if they are here and their chances are so small then what are the chances of all those millions of books on Amazon and elsewhere?
      Better not to think of it, huh? Better just to keep writing and keep doing what we do and if, in the process, we touch a few souls then that would be a sweet accomplishment...
      I think sometimes about the success some famous books have had in very recent years and I have to blame it all on luck and on some sort of sheep mentality because if you look at them carefully there's little to warrant such enthusiasm.

      ReplyDelete
    11. WORDS CRAFTER:
      Dean wrote about it first in MIDNIGHT (that now seems dated with the technology surge). He next wrote about it later in two very creepy but enthralling books: FEAR NOTHING and SEIZE THE NIGHT. I would highly recommend the last two books -- it has a great hero, Christopher Snow, and his super smart dog, Orson, who picked his own name from CITIZEN KANE. :-)

      The sad fate of Ms. Vickers is chilling, isn't it? The image of her mummified corpse sitting in front of a still flickering computer screen stays with you.

      Vesper:
      I like walking into a bookstore to roam the non-fiction sections, prowling for intriguing titles in psychology and science. With my time-draining job I just don't get to do it often anymore.

      Sadly, most of those titles will not sell many copies. But I think of all the different minds attracted to different titles, each because of their own unique personalities. I find titles I would find in no other way.

      You're right: so many titles drown in that sea of shelves. Yes, the herd mentality is often the reason for the success of some titles: the urge to be in on the IN thing of the moment.

      You're also right in that we must keep on writing our novels. We do not know which one will strike a chord in hearts of the readers.

      We must also write our posts so that non-authors will be drawn to our words. If we touch the bruised hearts of those visiting our cyber homes, it may be that they will think our books may contain some of the same words and candlelights in the dark.

      You may not be able to read a map by the light of the full moon, but you can see well enough to know where to place the next step, right? :-)

      Thanks again for the lovely review of LUCIFER'S ORPHAN. Fallen even blows you a kiss (but don't let her know I told you!)

      ReplyDelete
    12. Wow, great post. And so depressing about that Vickers woman. :(

      ReplyDelete
    13. Wonderful post Roland but depressing as well...I hate my phone and most often don't even know where it is which makes my family crazy! It disturbs me how much a telephone does these days...my smart phone is connected to my smart house and I just feel stupid because I don't know how to use either...lol!

      ReplyDelete
    14. I agree with Alex on this one.

      And I think Her Bones are in the Badlands sounds like an awesome awesome book.

      ReplyDelete
    15. Alex:
      The increasing isolation of so many people is, indeed, sad. Ms. Vickers especially so. The image of the flickering light playing over her mummified face as she sat dead before her computer is chilling.

      Jennifer:
      We are the lonely nation, caught up in technology and our own dreams, often to the exclusion of real human contact. Sigh. Thanks for liking this on Google+.

      Siv:
      My company cell phone is the simplest one in the office: no internet, no texting, nothing but what a phone should do: let me talk to a real human being. :-)

      Like you, I am clueless about the smart phones! Thank you for liking this post on Google+ at the bottom of my post!

      S.L.:
      Thank you. Give BADLANDS a try: a trip to the time of Silent Films and a simpler but still isolated era. :-)

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    16. So true...so sad. It's just crazy how over-connected we can get and yet how lonely it really is. And that our books are just one in an ocean of many. The question now is how to get seen, how to get non-writers talking about our work...

      Great post. Enjoyed!

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    17. Thanks for the reminder to get off of my bum and socialize IN PERSON, 'cause online, it's pretty much all skin deep.

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    18. Rebecca:
      FB has the right name: FACE. All the "friends" are just surface, shallow, cyber-faces without depth.

      Our books are tiny rafts in a huge ocean, almost impossible for non-authors to notice. We try to shoot flares up into the night but so far have just fizzled.

      We must keep on paddling and hope for a cyber-miracle. :-)

      Beth:
      How many of our FB "friends" could we call up in the middle of the night to cry out our hearts to?

      Thanks for your comment. :-)

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    19. Ha! Never thought of it that way- you're right. Faces and nothing more..."friends" never meant. Yeah, looking for that miracle or spark that helps spread the word...some day. Good luck to us all!!!

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    20. Rebecca:
      I wish you the best of luck in finding that cyber-miracle -- of course, I kept a tiny wish for my own miracle, too! :-)

      Hope your mid-week goes amazingly!

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    21. Social media can be very isolating if you don't use it properly.

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    22. J E:
      It's hard to use properly these days. A few months ago a young girl was killed by a predator who traced her down by her FB account.

      Hope your back is better. :-)

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