Nomad said:
Interestingly, the information comes from a book about which many people have good things to say--The Publishing Game, by Fern Reiss. I don't know the author personally, but have seen some of her articles here and there, and from what I've read she seems to know her stuff. I just went to her web site and she seems very savvy and pretty successful. Unclear why she chose to add a crummy thing like to her book. I certainly hope she deletes it in subsequent editions. There's no mention of the award on her site--maybe she's realized how lame it is.
But she doesn't know her stuff. Her advice stinks to high heaven.
Her website offers to sell you her brilliant plan to
make your book a bestseller. Right off, I can see it has three, maybe four problems.
First: She's a self-publishing advocate. No way is a self-published book going to become a bestseller. The infrastructure just isn't there. And a self-published book for sure is not going to become a bestseller in thirty days.
Second, here's her list of ways to catapult your book to bestsellerdom:
- Be featured in national magazines
- Sell to corporations, book clubs, and catalogs
- Be distributed through library approval plans
- Win a BookSense award
- Create a knock ‘em dead print and broadcast publicity campaign
- Organize a profitable speaking tour
- Syndicate yourself
- Sell via an email newsletter
What's missing? Any evidence of distributors being involved. No distributors, no large-scale sales. No large-scale sales, by definition no bestsellers.
Third, most of that stuff is stone soup. If your book is sufficiently interesting to attract that kind of attention, you don't need to be self-publishing it.
Fourth, she can tell you how to get a BookSense award? That has a dubious ring to it. Procuring is not winning.
Onward. Her page on
getting an agent links to her article, Five Things Your Publisher Won't Tell You. I am not impressed when an article starts with an assertion which I know from direct personal experience is false:
We do no publicity. Ten years ago, publishers did some marketing for books. Today, even the biggest and best do almost none. (They send out advance galleys, and wait to see if anyone is interested. Then they focus all their publicity on the books that look like they’re going to hit the big-time.) So if you want your book to fly off bookstore shelves, guess who’s going to have to do all the publicity? You got it.
Furthermore, that's a characteristic assertion made by scammers and bottomfeeders who're pushing self-publishing schemes. Who is this mendacious broad, and why does anyone believe her?
(Incidentally, her page on
promoting your book says that unpublicized books stay in bookstores for six weeks, not four. Not only is she not truthful; she's not consistent in her lies.)
If Fern Reiss is using her book to tell people to get themselves a Publishers Advocate Award (for which they'll pay a $50 entry fee), but she isn't acknowledging her connection with the award, she's dirty. And since you can pay an additional $10 to get an expedited award, I assume the award is thoroughly dirty too.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.