Memoir question

[greg winick]

Thanks Gary. Thanks for the doubts too.

[leslee]

They don't have to be marketable. If you're selling them only at your seminars, you have a ready-made audience, right?

If you were trying for traditional publishing, it would be entirely different. In that case, I would agree with Gary.

[greg winick]

There is really a lot more to these books than what I said on the post yet judgement is being made on their marketability.

[leslee]

Judgment is being made based on the information you provided.

You can't expect us to take into consideration information you have chosen not to share.

[Gary Kessler]

My judgment on marketability was based on the market for memoirs of what information you revealed. Are you a celebrity? If not, the market has been glutted with memoirs on cancer and teacher experiences, most of it self-published and family/home-town limited in appeal/sales, because there's a very limited market for the memoir form on these topics and/or for any memoir not by a celebrity.

Has your objective market research told you otherwise?

Sorry if you'd prefer to hear this after you've sunk your time, emotions, and money into it rather than from the get go based on market research.

If it's the market you are interested in, fictionalized versions stand a slightly better chance over memoirs.

[greg winick]

I appreciate what you're saying. I guess I felt like I wasn't asking if these books were marketable.

[Gary Kessler]

I appreciate what you're saying. I guess I felt like I wasn't asking if these books were marketable.

OK. "Published," though, relates to the market--as did your original question. If you're just writing these for yourself or your family, a previous response seems appropriate: you can recover old ground and even double up wording in a subsequent memoir as you wish. You're the only one you have to satisfy.

[greg winick]

Thanks Gary,

I know you know how the market works, and I see how without celebrity status, my memoir will never be considered by agents and publishers. That is why I am self publishing my first book. Perhaps I can ask you another question. I am trying to figure out what genre my book would actually be classified under.

My book is about overcoming great obstacles, and the obstacle of having my wife and son simultaneously diagnosed with inoperable tumors was actually placed in front of me last year. But my book is not about just that. I go back into my childhood where my brother and I were abandoned by our parents and forced to support ourselves at the age of 14 and 12. I show how we overcame that and how I was able to earn incredible amounts of money as a teenager in order to support us in our own apartment. I then take the reader through a lifetime of being an entrepreneur with many failures who ultimately makes millions in business. My book shows how I use a new age philosophy for overcoming many things, my anger toward my parents, my failures in business, and my many insecurities. I use this philosophy to overcome the greatest obstacle I ever encountered and I detail how my wife was miraculously saved and how my son, whose diagnosing was absolutely impossible to overcome, was also saved after undergoing the most complicated neurological surgery in medical history.

What genre would this be?

[leslee]

I see how without celebrity status, my memoir will never be considered by agents and publishers. That is why I am self publishing my first book.

Wait a minute. That isn't what Gary said. He said there was a limited market, not that your book would never be considered.

You know - if you want to be traditionally published, you can always take a crack at it. Put together a query letter and try it. If it doesn't work out, you're still free to self-publish.

[Gary Kessler]

From your description, I'd probably try it in "Inspirational," and I wouldn't just do it in print; I'd do it as an e-book too.