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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
- #39 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Movies & Video
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.
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
― 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.
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 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.
