Best-selling & Award-winning
But not rich and famous?
Hard to believe, but true.
Best-selling and award-winning for Canadian authors means about three thousand books sold, a bronze plaque on the office wall, and probably less than $10,000 in annual sales revenue. Lots to be proud of, but even if you and your friends and admirers think you’re good enough to be a best-selling award-winning writer, don’t quit your day job until you’ve sold the first million.
If you’re in it for the money, then doing crime is probably a better career path
than crime writing. (“Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts.”) Listen to your mother and find a real job.
Those are the inconvenient truths that the scammers and spammers in the author services industry will not tell you. Their businesses are built on selling hope to the hopeless and help to the helpless by stroking their egos then picking their pockets. “Mr. Author, our expert editors have selected your book for special mention in the New York Times Review of Books. Congratulations! Please call for more information.” Click Delete. Do not call. You’ll get an aggressive sales pitch for a marketing package that makes good money for them, but not for you. “Would you like to buy property in Florida with that?”
The next problem for readers and writers in the weird wild world of book publishing is the ease of getting a book published. There is an epidemic of self-published authors arriving on the market, about 4000 new books every day on Amazon. It’s too easy and inexpensive, especially for E-books.
How will anybody find ours? And how do readers select the good ones to read? How do bookstores and libraries decide what to put on the shelf? Most will rely on the selection of authors and their books from traditional publishers, but most big publishers are taking the easy route by selling more of what’s already selling – from John Grisham, James Patterson or Stephen King and others. Introducing new authors is high risk and low return for them too. That’s why word-of-mouth marketing is so important for the rest of us. Readers rely on recommendations and reviews, especially from other authors they know and trust.
Most readers will also have noticed that some books are obviously written with a focus on marketing appeal and book sales, not well-written content. Those authors have mastered the tactics and techniques of book marketing on Amazon – erotic cover, intriguing title, and only $0.99 for the E-book! Nothing but rave reviews, and nobody asks for their money back. Some of those writers are doing much better than the best-selling, award-winning guy.
Sad, but true. And it’s discouraging to watch if you’re a serious writer trying to satisfy serious readers. But it’s what we do. Rich and famous or not! We love to tell stories – to entertain, inform, inspire and motivate readers to do better for themselves and the world around them.
Stay tuned for more news on the Dale Hunter Series – BAD BOYS IN BOSTON will be coming to your town soon. Thank you for your interest in my books and these occasional updates and introductions to other authors you may enjoy.
Enjoy your reading.
Del
Del Chatterson
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