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Inside
the Cover Book Reviews The Spirit of Publishing: The
Ultimate Guide to Getting Whatever It Is That You Write Into Print NOW! Perhaps what drew me to read this book was the author’s
note in the beginning. At 26, he
was an aspiring writer who promised God, “If you show me how to connect with
the artist that is so desperately trying to get out of me, God, I will always
make time to share this secret with others.” It reminded me of how my book Conquering Panic and
Anxiety Disorders came about. I
also promised God that if He’d help me get over my agoraphobia, I’d make
sure to tell the world that there is hope for even the most hopeless of us.
I know that plea well, and I respect anyone who lives up to the promise. This note is followed by pages of testimonials from people
who have taken Bird’s courses and used the system he advocates.
Those got me excited, too—they spoke of feeling free to write, feeling
they were connected to what they were writing at last.
I wanted to find out what got them to that point. Bird’s system begins with a series of meditations and
exercises meant to get you back to a time when you knew you were meant to write,
and to find out what’s standing in your way from achieving that goal. But don’t expect the whole book to be so touchy-feely; we
then have a chapter all about advances, rights, royalty rates... it’s meant to
educate you about how conventional publishers work and possibly whet your
appetite for the option of self-publishing with a POD press.
(Bird has done both; his first several books were published with major
houses, but his latter books are self-published.) I find the arguments in favor of POD presses a little
overblown (like suggesting that most conventional publishers do little or no
editing or marketing), but not to the point where I was throwing the book down
in disgust... which has happened before. For
the most part, I felt Bird gave a good assessment of all you’ll need to do if
you plan on publishing with a POD company and what you’ll need to spend for
services like copy editing, cover design, and promotion.
But he confused me a bit by seemingly encouraging POD publishing, then
announcing that traditional publishing is still the best option and POD should
be used only if you can’t land a traditional contract.
On page 59, he says the majority of the remainder of the book will deal
with how to sell your book to a traditional publisher. This book covers a lot of ground in 178 pages, and jumps
around quite a bit. It contains
many nuggets of truth I haven’t found in other books, like the suggestion that
authors quit agonizing over choosing a “perfect” title—the publisher will
probably change it anyway. And that
you should send your queries to agents who aren’t your top choices first (so
if you get feedback or a poor response rate, you can make changes to perfect
your query before sending it to your top choices.) It also contains some seemingly-conflicting advice, like
suggesting that you should do a significant amount of research on each agent you
contact, then suggesting that authors send more than 200 queries out to agents.
(If you’ve really done your research, it’s highly unlikely that
you’ll come up with 200 agents who are truly good matches for you and your
work—and you shouldn’t need to. My
target number would be more like 40.) It also perpetuates some bad advice, like the “Common
Copyright Law” (also known as the poor man’s copyright), which says that by
mailing a finished copy of your work to yourself, you can prove the date you
finished it. This does not hold up
in court for various reasons, one of which is that you could have mailed
yourself an unsealed envelope and filled it later.
Bird also incorrectly defines the distinction between a ghostwriter and a
co-author, stating that ghostwriters are usually called in when a celebrity or
expert already has written some rough material and that co-authors do more
original writing. (Actually, the
distinction rests simply on whether or not the writer’s name appears on the
cover. By definition, a
ghostwriter’s name is “invisible.” Ghostwriters
often start from scratch based simply on interviews, and co-authors are just as
likely to receive rough material to start from.) It’s hard for me to recommend this book. I felt there was some worthwhile information here, but you’d have to be experienced enough to know which parts are good advice and which parts are bad—and if you can already do that, you probably don’t need this book. |
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