ENTHUSIASM

"Never flag in zeal." Can you guess where that quote comes from? Let me know if you know and I'll send you a book from the backlist. How about the first five correct "guessers" get a book?

Anyway, promoting books and relying on book sales to make payroll can be discouraging. The competition is mighty. There's a lot of books being published out there every day. And there's a lot of competent authors writing well who attract a lot of readers. One quote I recall from a writing workshop went like this: "If you want to be widely read, write something worth reading."

But, regardless of content (I'm fond of saying, "Content is King.") selling copies is challenging. On the front end of the publishing biz, all is enthusiasm and optimism. Michael Korda, former president of Simon and Schuster said, "Publishing is all about enthusiasm." On the back end, publishing is all about reliably, consistently, persistently, promoting titles. My friend from the old days, John Kuderle from the now defunct Bookmen Distributors in Minneapolis, Minnesota told me that the three rules of book selling were, "Promotion. Promotion. Promotion." He was saying that books don't sell themselves. I add that the enthusiasm of a book's birth does not necessarily carry forward to the selling of said tome. I like what Muhammad Ali said, "Everybody's got a plan...until they get hit."

The way it is in the book biz is pretty much like what Ali said. Every book starts out a best seller until it gets hit with the hard work of promotion, promotion, promotion. Maybe we could call the selling of books the, "Ali Way." Irregardless (I looked it up. It IS in the dictionary) our plan is to eschew the discouragement phase of a book's life, maintain the focus on the optimism of a book's birth, and keep boxing, keep promoting, keep, "Dancing like a butterfly and stinging like a bee," to the best of our ability every day with every book we can.