Who is responsible for your success?

Well, now, that's going to depend on what you mean by success, isn't it?

Did I just miss the article? It didn't really seem like much of one. Just a guy trying to sell stuff.

Piece seemed rather self-evident to me. Where are the "craft" techniques to accomplish the promotional deeds. Sounds about as effective as Congress cutting the budget.

A novel is successful because one reader love sit enough to tell everyone he knows all about it, and then they all love it so much they have to tell everyone they know all about it.

The best marketing can do is get your book in the hands of a tiny few readers. If you publish commercially, this happens automatically. After this, it's up to how well you told a story, and how well you developed characters.

Word of mouth sells novels, not this kind of marketing.

Looks more like a 'you can make millions self-publishing too!' kind of article.

If my book where to be come successful, I would make sure that I give credit where it was due to my literary agent and the publisher. Yes I'll pat myself on the back, but it takes more than the author to make a book successful.

Word of mouth sells more than anything.

The readers, bless 'em, are responsible for my success.

My fabulous critters for a) pointing out where I go wrong and b) convincing me that I am doing something right when I am sure I am doing it wrong... without any of them I would not have anything...

The best marketing technique to sell your next book is to make this one fantastic.

One factor the article doesn't address is luck. We like to think that our hard work will have the desired effect of happy readers and decent sales. So we write the best stories we can and then try to make people aware of them.

But there remains that weird, chaotic, random factor of luck. Sometimes books hit or miss with readers for unfathomable reasons. Luck makes me (and I suspect a lot of us) uncomfortable, because it is something we cannot control.

Still, I hope the old football coach adage holds true: "Luck is where opportunity meets preparation."

All those threats I make are responsible for my success. Every so often I remind my editor that I know where his kids go to school