Let the Truth Be Known…About Your Work

By Barbara Ann Cerda | Contributing Writer

While watching a network interview featuring nascent cult classic author E L James. I was drawn to the simplicity of the author’s responses and tone. Her choice of words mirrored her art. Surprisingly within her body of work the real world of BDSM, that can be raw, frightening and extreme, was made an accepted new sexual frontier.  Nevertheless, this pleasantly understated authoress has reshaped mainstream media and changed how the world reads eBooks.

The Fifty Shades of Grey series of books has joined the celebrity autobiographers and devotees of media pop culture to become bestsellers.  We have entered the time when there is little wonder contained within prose, no sentient phrases stimulating the synapses. As a novelist if you have not pondered yet why your work sits lonely on virtual shelves….you should.

Serious novelists should wonder why their writing or storytelling skills do not stack up to a cult favorite. Let us sum it up in a single word…resources. Media works that are made into cult favorites have considerable resources. They own insider connections, expensive expansive PR and serious marketing dollars.

Your time spent on research and editing has a limited ROI or return on investment.

Do you consider the hours and dollars spent to bring your work to market? Consider this. On a business trip, you peruse airport concessions looking for a novel that you have not read yet. While experiencing frustrations you have an epiphany. You recall your daily well-crafted prose created for staff and superiors.  They have come to depend on your scribing skills. There is that idea for a novel patiently waiting in the ethos of your brain…waiting to become the next much loved literary work. The idea grows steadily through thought and action it becomes a reality. Every freed moment becomes adventures in researching within dusty old universities and public libraries, fleshing out information for back-stories and characterizations. Then your three hundred plus page novel is complete.

The joyous epiphany becomes a Greek tragedy.

In its infancy, your book received good reviews and steady growth in readership.  Nevertheless, after its first year your online store rankings slowly settle to six digits.  There is no mass migration to your book site to buy that precious work. You understand that it is not a brilliant treatise on a much-loved global leader, or a snap shot in time of global history…but it is a good story.  Consider this.  You lack only one important thing, legions of readers.

Filed Under: Marketing, Publishing, Selling Books