I have a lot of writer friends, and if you're reading this blog, it's probably because you're one of them.
And recently, they've had this tendency to go and become all famous on me. I'd like to outline just a few of these authors:
Sam Landstrom, awesome dude, wrote a book called MetaGame. Got picked up by Amazon Encore. I was lucky enough to get an interview before he was successful. You can hear that interview here.
Elisa Lorello, who I found out about through Stacey Cochran, has also been picked up by Encore with her book "Why I Love Singlehood." It was talking to her on Twitter today that made me start thinking about all these friends of mine who have a much wider audience than I do.
JA Konrath was a no brainer for this post. He's sold more books than most self-published authors can hope to dream about selling (and we're authors--we have quite large imaginations). And what's more, he helps out all his author friends. He's a mutual friend of mine with Stacey, and if I remember right we were planning on getting him for interview but it didn't happen.
Funny thing about Joe (JA Konrath)--I read every single book about publishing that comes into our library. Every day I come here (which is 4 or 5 days a week) I check 808.3 for writing and 70.5 for publishing. And recently I came across The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, and when I was reading the self-published chapter (and this one's a good one) there was a little section about Kindle sales, and their main example was JA Konrath.
This blew my mind, having talked to Mr. Konrath casually on Kindleboards.com.
Finally we come to Mr. Stacey Cochran, who is one of my close friends in the publishing business since I started. We hosted a Blog Talk Radio show (in which we interviewed Sam) and it was through him I met pretty much all of these people. He's also the reason I'm on Kindle. He has a Raleigh television show on which he reviewed my book.
This guy is amazing. And his writing is superb.
I mean, really--how are these people all of a sudden... *gets all teary-eyed* growin' up...and...and signing contracts and stuff.
These are all really cool authors, and you should check them out.
Sam
Elisa
Stacey
Konrath
Dawson "Not Famous" Vosburg
Dawson-- thanks so much for the shout-out. I really appreciate it, and I'm humbled to be in such company. (I owe Stacey a lot too!)
ReplyDeleteIt may seem like *all of a sudden*, but in reality, it took a while for my first book *Faking It* to get noticed. I spent at least a year querying agents (and getting a ton of rejections), another year revising the manuscript, and then another year self-publishing it to meager sales. Putting the book on Kindle made a difference, but it took another six months before the magic happened and it took off. Add the time it took to conceive the idea, another five years before I got brave enough to put it on the page, and you're talking 10 years total!
As for "famous", well, no one's stopping me on the street and asking for autographs... ;)
You're doing some great things, and if you keep honing your craft and writing what you love, I believe you'll find your audience -- rather (and better still), your audience will find you (as was the case for me), and you'll do very well. Keep up the good work!
Best-
Elisa
You're welcome Elisa.
ReplyDeleteI'm always astounded by how much time other authors spend on their stuff. It makes me sheepish putting a book out after only two years since conception :P
Dawson
Not at all! I think two years is more the average. :)
ReplyDelete