Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Great stuff, Don. Reading between your lines, though, I have the sneaking feeling that you secretly appreciate a cheeky chappy who promotes himself and his book entertainingly and effectively without getting on your wazz.
I know you didn't have Nick Spalding and A Life With No Breaks in mind as you wrote, of course, but let's take Nick as an example of a plausible marketeer in embryo ...
I'm a pro editor with with over forty years' wearing experience of saying 'TBNT' to writers. This week, for instance, I have collected about fifty submissions by authors hoping to publish through my own wee house. That's my weekend taken care of. And my two associate editors will each be facing a similar pile.
I doubt if I will find one submission in my fifty enticing enough to ask the author to let me look over his/her full manuscript. Our hit rate at BeWrite Books is something like ten eventual publications from 1,000 cold subs.
So you can plainly see that when it comes to my precious recreational reading time, I'm not wildly enthusiastic about free and two buck downloads from unknown authors who have gone through no selection process and who try to wing it as first-timers without professional editorial input.
But Nick has intrigued me since he joined MR recently, so I broke a golden rule of mine and downloaded a free sample forty pages or so of his book. I was amazed to find that I was so well hooked by the prologue/intro/excuse (call it what you will), that I stopped there to go back and download the full monty.
I think it cost a buck and a half from Smashwords. I probably couldn't get a half-pint of bitter for that in the UK these days. But that's not the point ... Nick's gentle and witty promo led me (for the very first time) to the 'shameless promotions' thread here, which led me to download the sample, a few pages of which led me to buy the book ... TO READ FOR FUN!
If I get fed up after a while, I'll let him know his novel experiment failed for me and the book's crap. I'm a brass-necked old cuss and honestly believe that if a wannabe writer can be discouraged, he should be. If the book lives up to its prologue promise, I'll post a review everywhere I can by way of thanks.
Either way, Nick made a sale with a mere intro in his book (let's call that 'the query letter') that, had it come to me as a submission backed by a sound writing sample of a couple of thousand words, would have brightened my weekend's submissions filtering no end and led to a request for full ms assessment.
To A Life Without Breaks tonight. It might be a dog's dinner of a mess, but I'm already impressed by a writer who managed to lure a busy -- often jaded -- editor to stump up the cost of a jar of good ale to see what's on offer.
Watch this space. Hoots. Neil
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Aw shucks...
I may use that the next time I go on a date:
"How would you describe yourself, Nick?"
"Why...I'm a plausible marketeer in embryo, sweetheart. Your place or mine?"
Thanks for the kind words, you brass-necked old cuss.