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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Bite your Tongue.

Those who decide to self-publish can hold their heads high, because they will be counted among some of greatest authors in history. Below is but a partial list of authors who have chosen to self-publish at sometime in their career.

• William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly,Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane,
  
• e.e. cummings,  Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot,Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin,
  
• Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne,Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers,
  
• Stephen King,Rudyard Kipling, Louis L’Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine,
  
• Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust,
  
• Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley,Upton Sinclair,
  
• Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi,
  
• Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.

Note: The list was pulled from John Kremer’s Self-Publishing Hall of Fame

If you don’t find at least one of your heroes here I would be very surprised. Also you may have noticed that quite a few poets populate the list. Modern poets complain that publishers aren’t interested in their books. It’s said that poetry doesn’t sell. Compared to a fast paced pop-novel of sex, violence, and action they are probably right. I have to keep reminding myself that publishing isn’t primarily about getting the finest works into the public’s hands–it’s a profit generating business like a grocery store. If the stock isn’t turning it is costing money. I, like many others, tend to glamorize the traditional publishing houses and imbue them with a nobility they just don’t have. It’s a business. Poetry, on the other hand, is something else. Poetry is a work of passion, not business. Publishers probably weren’t any more anxious to publish poetry then than they are now and that is why so many poets had to resort to self-publishing.

Ernest Hemmingway

One of my Talking Through My Hat readers added this comment about self-publishers:“For me all I had to do was find out that Hemingway’s first book was “self-published,” to help me make my decision and after 32 years of “practice” I feel I did it just right. And then later this year when I found out about Mark Twain’s force of ten thousand book agents scattered across America selling his works and Ulysses S Grants Memoirs (also published by Twain’s company which was run by his young nephew Webster).” Miles Cobbett, Author the Alaska book CHAMPION.

Miles followed up with this comment in another post: “One more tasty tidbit about Hemingway and his publisher, that I bet you already know is his lively discussions in letters between him and Charles Scribner about Royalty Payments. I was fascinated to read in copies of Hemingway’s “Letters” that CS only offered to pay Ernest Hemingway 10 % of the net. And Ernest wrote back in a lively letter that he wanted 15 % or a Minimum of 12.5 %…
This was fascinating to me, especially when I read in the other book I wrote to you about, (Birth of a Salesman), how Mark Twain offered and paid U. S. Grant and his widow, a whopping 70% of the profits from publishing Grant’s Memoirs.”

I have more sympathy for the traditional publishers than you might think from reading my posts. They have to have highly tuned crystal balls to foresee the future. If they choose to take a gamble on an author, and it tanks, what do they lose? Why the entire investment, of course. And what about credibility? What happens to the employee who stands behind a book bomb? Or two, or three? Can you say pink slip?

If you know your book will sell–you stand behind it. Raise the money to print and promote it. You might be like my friend Miles Corbbett whom I quoted above. His self-published book CHAMPION is selling well and he owes it all to word-of-mouth advertising. Miles has this to say about his success: “Getting the word out has been a fun & challenging journey, but it’s all been done so far without any help from a Madison Avenue super advertising blitz.”

If you are a self-publisher, considering self-publishing, or a supplier to self-publishers be sure to check out the manifesto for The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors, Inc. (click here).

I, Bill Ruesch, have a confession to make. Although I’ve been in and around printing for some 35 years, book publishing is comparably new to me. You see, I did something that most Americans (somewhere around 80% wish they would do) I wrote a book. Actually I wrote four, one non-fiction, two poetry, and a novel, but that is beside the point. My novel would be my break through book. It  is a children’s fantasy story set in the fictional 1950′s small Florida town of Burns. It’s called The Whistlin’ Salamander. The thing is, I didn’t know what to do next.

Does that seem odd to you? I don’t mean to imply that I don’t know how to get a book printed. I could do that in my sleep. What I didn’t know was how to get it published. So, I turned to the Internet and bought several books on the subject.  I found tons of information on the business from landing an agent, to wooing a publisher. Publishers, for the most part, I was advised, won’t even look at a manuscript that hasn’t been presented by an agent, so I tried, and tried, to find an agent.

I learned about query letters. I came up with what I believed was a dandy, and made sure it was letter perfect. Agents, I read, have zero tolerance for grammar or spelling errors. I found out that different agents required different numbers of pages to sample your manuscript, and that I had to scrupulously follow every instruction or risk immediate rejection. I was very certain that they would love my letter and the submitted pages would be hailed. In my daydreams agents competed to sign me. That was the fantasy. The reality–not so much. Not only didn’t anyone bite, they didn’t even nibble.

What next, I thought?

Aha! An old friend Karen Christoffersen, I recalled, had worked with Richard Paul Evans author of the best-selling Christmas Box. Maybe Karen could help me. I called Karen and she told me that they were working on a program to teach self-publishers everything they needed to know through a practical hands-on method. At the completion, authors would receive fifty copies of their bookstore-worthy book printed, designed, edited, and proofread. That sounded like a good idea, but I already knew how to get all of the production things done. What I needed to know was how to sell my book. The great-agent-chase convinced me that traditional publishing wasn’t ready for me yet.

Karen introduced me to Phil Davis the owner of ZDocs a digital printing company specializing in short-run books. Phil, being the savvy entrepreneur that he is, had created a course to teach authors how to use the Internet to establish or increase credibility, and to sell books. He named the course T.A.P.The Author Platform. I told Phil about my quandary and he gracefully allowed me to study TAP with the proviso that I would report back to him anything I didn’t understand. Hey, I could do that. Through The Author Platform I learned the importance of creating a blog. Viola, that’s what you are reading now. I learned about social networking and you can find me on Facebook , Linkedin and Twitter, I found out that through social networking you can reach thousands of people with your sales message in less time than it takes for one person to walk into a bookstore, pickup your book, and look at the jacket.

I’ve been practicing the principles Phil teaches in TAP.  I now know that self-promotional activities are challenging. They take time, they take energy, and they require all of your creativity. How well does it work? In just a few months I’ve become connected with amazing people all over the world that I could never have met in 10 lifetimes otherwise. My network gets stronger everyday. The more I learn the more I realize there must be thousands of people in the same boat as I was, authors stuck  somewhere along the path between writing a book to successfully selling it. My need became the incentive to develop The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors. You can read the manifesto, which is just a fancy way of saying vision and purpose by clicking here.

I’ve heard sad stories of garages full of self-published books that don’t sell because the authors don’t know what to do once they have them. I would heartily recommend The Author Platform as an excellent way to begin. It costs a little money, but compared to the cost of just storing unsold books, it’s a pittance. Knowledge truly is powerful.