Author: Bernard Shakey
Date:   01-27-04 12:59

At EE's suggestion I picked up Jacqueline Deval's HOW TO PUBLICIZE YOUR BOOK. It is very well organized and full of useful info., especially for midlist (i.e., most) authors, who are going to have to shoulder most of the publicity burden themselves.

One thing that really struck me in reading it is how often the actual publication of a book ends up being somewhat or very anti-climactic. The typical scenario for a midlist author at a major house, especially a first time novelist, is to have a first printing of a few thousand copies go out with almost no publicity, and to have the book more or less die after a couple of months.

The book doesn't end up earning back even its low five figure advance, and within a few years it's out of print.

The end -- at least as far as "the market" is concerned.

Not to sound like Blip, but it does sometimes seem kind of crazy how hard we work at all of this, given what "success" so often looks like.

Of course anyone who is in this for fame and fortune is simply nuts -- still . . .

It's a thousand pages give or take a few
I'll be writing more in a week or two;
I can make it longer if you like the style
But I need a break and I want to be
A paperback writer.