by Another in my series of, “Don’t You Wish Your Cats Were Cute Like He?” I mean, come on. Look at the guy.
My book is this close to being accepted. Just working on the teeniest, tiniest changes and fine tuning. It’s basically done and I will have a book coming out next year. Mind-blowing. Soon it will be on to the fun parts: the cover, seeing how they lay out the pages, getting the galleys, (a bound paperback version that is sent out to reviewers) trying to figure out how to promote it and get people to buy it (sometimes not so fun).
That reminds me of a totally not fun part. Publishers like to get quotes about your book from the most famous, influential people they can for the back cover. They’re called blurbs. So, every book you have to go through this process of begging people for blurbs, people you know, don’t know, begging your friends to ask their famous friends, it’s really horrible. Plus, I honestly think most people figure these blurbs are from friends (and they are, or people who are doing it because they owe someone else a favor, etc.). Which isn’t to say that the good things they said aren’t true. Anyway, I think that back cover is valuable sales real estate and could be used in much more creative ways. Every time I write a book I propose other ways to use the back cover and every book I’m shot down and told to get blurbs.
I just thought of something I might do for this book, for instance, and this is just off the top of my head so it might not be a good idea. But I could find some of the nastiest most over-the-top things ever said about the Duke parapsychology work through the years, maybe a good one from each decade, one from the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, etc., each leading up to now and something that says, “Well, all of the guys were WRONG. Read inside …”
