BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
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Everybody wants to write a book. And everybody thinks they can write a book worthy of publication.
Perhaps they’re considering a memoir (“Wait until you hear what I did in college!”), or a cookbook (“People love my meatballs!”), or a mystery (“Get a load of this – the book’s narrator is actually the killer!), or poetry (“I’ve moved beyond rhyme!”), or a picture book (“the average picture book is only 746 words—I can do that by dinner time!”).
And the worst thing for somebody like me in publishing is that everybody asks me to “look at” their manuscript.
High school friends, doormen, cousins, my daughter’s appendectomy surgeon (seriously, that happened!). And the manuscripts are almost always, awful.
“Hey, want a look at my book – 1001 Jokes for Doormen?”
I respond honestly (‘cause if you don’t, it just goes on and on and on). And that’s when — POOF! — they get pissed at what I honestly said, the friendship is over, the doorman ignores me, I’m un-invited from family reunions, and surgery would be deadly.
Anyway, it just happened again. A reader, “Jimmy” often sends me emails via my website.
He tosses much praise at my blog, loves the contrarian publishing I did, and he greatly appreciated my recommendations for book publishing resources.
Great book publishing resources such as:
And then it happened. Jimmy’s last email asked if I would look at his manuscript. I did. It was awful. Tons of typos, nothing more than thousands of typed words, and completely lacking in craft. And I told him so.
He responded. To quote, “You’re a piece of shit.”
Oh well. It goes with the territory.
Tomorrow: And then there’s the BEST thing about being in book publishing