Right now I'm falling behind on my own stuff because I’m working on several projects for other people. I need to see progress, and I like to be busy, but reading over my own work for the third or fourth time makes me want to go sit on the couch and watch the old Dick Van Dyke TV show. I’m easily bored. That’s my little red wagon.
The funny thing is that, my best work, what I’m most proud of, I can’t tell anyone about, but ghostwriting is still great work as far as I’m concerned. I’m a story editor, not a line editor, so when reading somebody else’s story, even a poorly written one, I’m excited, because I get to make the changes that turn their work into something substantial. I get to “improve” the story. How could I want more than that?
Well, I do want more than. I want authors to have a chance to sell their work. And, I know one thing is certain in the life of an author: they have to get their books into the hands of readers. If only three people down the block from George Steinbeck’s home had read his novel, “Of Mice and Men,” how could he have become a Nobel Prize winner? No readers, no bucks, life sucks - that's the long and short of it.
The great thing about Kindle and EBooks is that once an author attracts an audience and gets some buzz going, once they have readers talking to friends and neighbors about their book, they can make sales forever, without any more work on that story. Sure, to be successful, they’ll need good marketing and future stories, but once they break the ice on that first book, the rest is easy!
If you have your book published in EBook form, find a way to get the story to readers. Give away copies, use Amazon free days, give away Smashwords gift vouchers, do a few monthly drawings for copies of your book at places like Goodreads (even though they don’t currently accept EBooks), do anything in your power to get more copies out to readers. If nobody reads your book, how is anybody else going to know about it? Again, no buzz, no bucks.
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