14,400 hits, 94 countries, 7 months

I find it fascinating that this modern Internet age has brought both its opportunities and challenges. For example, I began writing this blog in January of this year. So far, I’ve had 14,400 hits in over 94 countries. I’m not telling you this to brag, but to express amazement that this Salt Lake City, Utah lifetime printing broker who has only been two foreign countries in his life, Mexico and Canada, has through the Internet been able to reach out to the entire world.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Now, my progress is not spectacular. I’m not an Internet shooting star. What I am is a person sitting at my desk on the lower east slope of the Wasatch Front in my eighty-year-old home overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. I’m a publicly-educated, middle-class guy, raised in a middle-class family, without any particular social advantages. My only real leg up is that I have a better-than-average capability to see the forest for the trees and a strong work ethic. With these abilities, I’ve managed to make a lower-upper-middle-class income over the past twenty years by selling my knowledge of printing and offering my services to help customers get their printed projects delivered on-time, at competitive prices, at improved quality levels.

What I’m trying to say is that I really haven’t achieved any more than millions of other Americans in similar circumstances.

Writing the Great American Novel

So what is it that this unspectacular, pretty average guy brings to the table that  people throughout the world might want to know? Obviously, my understanding of printing and how to get things done efficiently has proven to have value. It has been that knowledge that paid my bills for 20 years. What else? I wrote a novel and that experience brought me to the edge of my knowledge chasm.

Reaching my knowledge chasm

I looked down and realized that I had no idea of how to cross to the other side. In the real world a printed book makes a poor bridge across a wide gulf. In the mind, however, a book can be anything. It can give you wings.

Could I produce a book? You bet. I could do that in my sleep. Did I know what to do with it once it was created? No way.

Those Who Sort the Avalanche

That’s when I discovered some interesting facts. I believed that writing a book was unique. Wrong, some 80% of adults would like to write a book. Of that 80%, many, like me, actually do it. I also believed that publishers would be anxious to get their hands on my special novel. Wrong again. I learned that most publishers aren’t interested in a manuscript that hasn’t been presented to them by well-connected agents, so I contacted a lot of agents. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with them. They seemed oblivious to the particular genius of my book, then I discovered that both agents and publishers face daily avalanches of manuscripts. Far more than they could ever get through. How could anyone deal with this mass of paper? They take short cuts and make primary decisions on arbitrary things. Oops a misspelling–you’re out. Darn the manuscript was bound when the instructions said unbound–you’re out too. And so on. I was told that less than 4% of submitted manuscripts ever become books. Getting a book traditionally published isn’t an up hill battle, it is a vertical climb without a rope. I didn’t like the odds and began to seriously consider the concept of self-publishing.

Pre-build the Audience

That’s where I am now. I am learning everything I can as fast as I can about self-publishing and marketing. This blog, example gives me an opportunity to introduce myself to the world. So far this year, as I said earlier, over 14,000 people have checked in. By the end of the year, could that number double? What about the year after that? At some point, and I’m not sure when that will be yet, I will feel ready to invest in producing my book and offering it to my readers. My reasoning is that if people like my blog they will likely like other things I write.

Free, Free, Free

Again, I’m not a shooting star. I’m just a regular guy who has the ability to express myself fairly well in the medium of the written word. I have hopes and dreams just like any other person. I’m thrilled with the response to Talking Through My Hat–may it continue to grow. The reason I wrote my story here is to give others hope too. The Internet provides a platform to talk to the entire world. If you aspire to be an author, and apparently, 80% do, write a blog. If you don’t know how to get started look into The Author Platform by following this link. Talk to people and tell them who you are. Let them get to know you. It’s free or nearly free. It’s the First Amendment to the US Constitution in action. Free Speech for Free how could you get more democratic than that?

P.S.If you already have a self-published book and would like to enter it into a no-fee contest with winner chosen by reader votes go to Wake Up Celebrity Author on The Author Platform. The winner becomes the Barnes & Noble. com Best-Seller. Cool.

Talk about trying to catch the train after it has left the station, the big publishing houses are just now looking into Internet and network marketing.  The Internet hit the publishing industry like a runaway freight and it wasn’t truly respected until upstarts like Amazon, and Google were seen riding off into the sunset lifting their glasses of champagne high into the air.

Even now Amazon is leading the book selling revolution with electronic books. What are the traditional guys doing? Mostly moaning about how book sales are down (is that true Amazon?), and gnashing their teeth about how foot traffic into bookstores has decreased.

This is why I say if you go the traditional route your chances of success are very slim.  I’ve read that a new title will get a whole 30 days of shelf exposure before being flung into the discount bin. Or even worse, having their covers ripped off for return credit and the book destroyed. You have to make a big splash early and fast to survive.

Chew on this thought–what if you published your own book and you could take the time it needs to build its audience? What if you controlled the presentation, marketing, and distribution? AND, instead of getting a 10% royalty earned fifteen times as much? This is the essence of self-publishing.

I’m not saying that everyone is ready, willing and able to do what it takes to be a self-publisher, but what most don’t know is that it is easier than you might imagine. You can build yourself up and become an industry thought leader in six months without even leaving home. Blogging makes it possible. The Internet makes almost anything possible. I know–I’m doing it. I started a blog last January (it’s July now) and I’ve had nearly 11,000 hits so far, and my monthly totals are going up, up, and up.

Why am I doing this? Exposure. Name recognition. I haven’t even published my books yet, but before I do I’m laying the groundwork. I’m networking and making world-wide connections daily. That’s so cool I can hardly stand it. If you scroll down the right side of my blog you will come to a yellow map of the world. Click on it and see how far and wide my words have gone.  I even have a language translator so that they can read what I’ve written in their own tongue. Technology–don’t ya’ love it?

Social Networking (web2.0) is flipping the whole book marketing system upside down. It used to be that you would sell books and then people would come to know you. Now people can get to know you and then you sell books. Which method would you rather use?

I’ve been following T.A.P. (The Author Platform) to learn the ropes of blogging and social networking.  Without this guidance I would be lost. TAP very clearly shows the path to follow and gives very valuable tidbits of information along the way. I can heartily endorse it because I use it. Oh, and by-the-way there’s a No Risk 15 day FREE trial too. What could be sweeter? Just click here for more information.

What do I get out of it? I get a little slice of the action, it’s true, but more than that I get the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve helped my fellow self-publishers, which is the same reason I have for creating The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors (click here for more information). I believe that we all benefit if we strive to raise the bar. We can do that by producing better self-published books, and selling them smarter than the big guys.

I love to question generally accepted truisms and it drives my wife crazy. “Why can’t you just accept it or let it go?” She tells me. This trait used to get me into trouble in school too. Just because the teacher presented something as a fact, that didn’t mean it was. Teachers don’t like little snot-nosed kids challenging them. I took more than one trip to the coat closet, I can tell you.

Everyone has a book in them and 80% want to write one.

I am bringing this up for two reasons, the first being the statement that “Everyone has a book in them.” I looked for the source of this quotation and it seems to be either unknown, a cliché, or anonymous. If anyone knows its origins, I would love to hear about it. The second statement treated as fact is that “80% of [people/adults] want to write a book.” How was that research conducted I wonder? Did a student with a clipboard wander up and down the streets stopping pedestrians to ask, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” No matter how the research was done or even if it was done, it might be true. Ever since I wrote the manifesto for The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors (to read click here) everyone I know is either writing a book, has written a book, or has a close friend or family member working on a book. You might be tempted to ask, “Bill all of those sources you quoted know you, and you’ve written books, shouldn’t the figure be 100%? Okay smarty that would be true if they all pointed to me, but they didn’t, they were talking about themselves or some other person. I have enough sense to exclude myself from this highly questionable research I conducted.

Are 43.56 million books being written right now?

If you use my personal experience as valid research (note: not actually recommended) and take a wild a_ s guess, you would probably be correct in assuming that most would never really attempt it. But just suppose that 20% did give it a go. The adult population of the US according to the last census was 217.8 million. Twenty percent of that figure would mean that there could be 43.56 million books in process right now. Over forty-three million is a mind boggling figure. Even if 1/2% is true that would still come to nearly 11million books. Good grief–no wonder only 4% or less of manuscripts presented to publishers ever make it into print.

Family histories and journals are books too.

Let’s address the maxim that everyone has a book in them. I suspect that is true also. If for no other reason, our life stories will make interesting reading for someone. Especially once, we’ve passed on. After my father retired from his job as a computer systems analyst, he spent time gathering diaries and journals about our immediate ancestors. For me it was a good read. For someone unrelated, not so much. The point being that it is a book. A book printed on a home printer and hand bound with a metal strip you can purchase at any office supply store.

Is the book my father self-published going anywhere other than the bookshelves of his children? Probably not. But, what if one of our descendants became famous or heaven forbid infamous, wouldn’t someone love to have their hands on this information so they can speculate all day long on what made that person tick?

The difference between a book, a good book, and a great book.

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The question isn’t does everyone have a book in them. That answer is yes. The real question is does everyone have a good book in them? This answer is obviously no. The authors that can weave a story in such a way that it becomes a living thing are still far and few between, but as we have already discussed there could easily be a million books in development right now that given a chance could be the next Catcher in the Rye. There are too many manuscripts for traditional publishing and distribution to handle. If you are the next yet unrecognized great author, you may have no choice except to publish your own book, promote your book, and take it like The Little Red Hen to the next level by yourself.

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