Do you want to write a Best-seller? (Part 3)

In the second part of this series, attention was drawn to the importance of styling, promoting, and timing your work if it must become a best-seller. But other things are involved in this.

Get a good publisher

Your success and stardom or your weal and woe, starts with the publisher. Note this: there are more Shylocks than Samaritans in that family. Or better still, more sharks than the friendly whales.

You will know a good publisher from the contract. Examine it critically. Some seemingly "good" contracts will not give you the full right of your book till you die! If you do not understand the document, get an attorney to examine and interpret it for you.

Or you could contact an author who has published with the potential publisher for advice. The author will tell you the truth because some of them are already going through Catholic hell with their publishers--legal suits over rights, royalties, and so forth.
You could also check with other sites for information about the publisher. I have earlier provided you the most credible site to check up with. The site owner gives the most updated, fearless critique of all the publishers. He throws his darts without giving a heck whether it lands in the White House.

A good publisher should give you the right of your book, pay your royalties regularly, and--mark this--promote your book. There are few of such ones. The majority are hypocrites.

Publish in different formats

It is best to make your book available in many formats. The wisdom in this is that sales will be coming in from different sources—from just one book.

What did they say about one man’s meat? The fact is that people have many choices. So publish your book in hardcover, paperback, e-book and as an audio book. Also have it put in movie, DVD, and video.

The present technology can handle all of that. Look around and you will see that all the selling books today are produced in that way. And there are even readers who will buy your book in more than one format. Why don’t you make hay as the sun shines.

Keep revising your book

The man that would write an error free manuscript has not been born. Or maybe he lives on second earth out there in outer space. Why is that so? Because the writer is an imperfect creature. This means that your book can be revised even after publication.
A review of Bill Clinton's My Life says that the book is short on editing--an euphemism for badly written. Yet it is a great book. Many great works have been revised. Consider these.

James Joyce has been regarded as one of the most important novelists if not the most influential of the twentieth century. Yet, his Ulysses, a parody of Homer's Odyssey, has a corrected version. Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote, considered the world's first modern novel, contains many slips. Just to mention two.

Cervantes records three expeditions for Don Quixote, yet it was actually four. And the author forgetting the names he has given to Sancho Panza's wife, Juana Panza or Juana Gutierrez (after the custom in La Mancha for wives to take the surnames of their husbands), calls her Teres Cascajo (her father's name) in Part II.
Even William Shakespeare reputed to have the widest vocabulary of any man born on earth (4,000 words) has ironically turned out o be the writer whose works has had the highest number of editions.

Most authors regard the revision of their work as a matter of life-and-death. A typical example is that of the Greek poet Virgil. When he was about to die, he ordered that his Aeneid be burnt for the reason that he had not polished it to his satisfaction. But the great Augustus Caesar got wind of it and countered the poet's wish. So Aeneid lived and Virgil died. Or Virgil lived because Aeneid did not die.

Your work could therefore be revised after publication. So it would be a course of wisdom for you to revise your published book. You can revise the subject matter, structure, and grammar of your work. And you can also cross check it for facts. It makes you a better writer.

Translate your work

When your book starts selling, the course of wisdom is to make it available in many languages. J.K. Rowling took advantage of that after she "arrived." Now the first five Harry Potter books have been translated into 61 languages making it possible to be read in 200 countries. How about that?

In translating your book, use languages that serve large populations like Arabic, Chinese, French, and Hindustani. If you could make that happen, then the world is your oyster. You could be listed among the first five richest people in the world.

These things are practical. They have worked for the 20 percent who have tried it; but the 80 percent who know all the things on earth that don’t work have continued to live miserable, wasted lives. But “you can do what you want,” says B. Catland. And he added a proviso: “If you don’t think you can’t."

So, how deep is your desire? The Wright brothers failed 99 times before flying an airplane. They had deep desire. Yuri Gagarin flew in space. He desired it. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (what a lonely place!) Because of desire. Bill Gates hit fame and fortune with computer. Because that was what he desired. And J.F. Kennedy ran about a dozen times for office before becoming the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Because he was ambitious.

But desire alone is not enough. Back your desire with positive action. Start writing your best-selling book today! Burn all the bridges that stand between you, and your desire. Do not say: “I can’t.”

An army general crossed the sea with his fleet of soldiers to an enemy territory, and had all his boats burnt. Why? He told his soldiers: “See, all our boats are gone. So, if you don’t fight to win this battle, there is no escape for us, for we shall all be dead men.”

The soldiers were inspired. Because there was no going back. Because they had no option than to fight till the very death! They fought hard. They won!

William Blake said: “He who knows not his own genius has none.” Thomas Wolfe agrees. Said he: “If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed…." And hear Erica Jong: “Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”

Those are memorable words from men who have a right to know. Men whose names have been immortalized. What about you? You can write a best-seller.

Many unknowns have done so: Margaret Mitchel (Gone with the Wind), James Jones (From Here to Eternity), Colleen McCullough (The Thorn birds) and Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead).

Why don’t you now go on to write and publish your echo Bible? And then your book will make it to the best-seller lists of the world’s most prestigious newspapers. And you, the now celebrated writer, will end up in a popular American TV Talk show, name them: Oprah Wimfrey, Larry King Live, Sean Hannity and many others—the precursor for a cover appearance on Time, or Newsweek, magazine.

Or find yourself appending your signature on a million dollar contract document in Hollywood, the entertainment capital of the world, for the movie right of your blockbuster.

And just in case you do not know how to spend your millions, I recommend you to buy a yacht and sail the Mediterranean. Or jump into the next space ship and become the first writer to travel to the final frontier.

Or better still; buy a country home, and write your magnum opus, titled: How I Made My Millions.

And live happily ever after. . . .

(Concluded)

Excerpted from How to Write a Best-seller by Arthur Zulu