More on Reading for Healing

 I did a post on Reading for Healing back on the 21st of January—in that post, I also linked to other posts that alerted readers to my radically sudden backing away from my normal schedule on this blog…

I’m still reading for healing though I’ve moved on from reading and re-reading 7 of C. J. Cherryh’s works to re-reading The Lord of the Rings <— that link leads to the 50th Anniversary Edition, which is the most faithful reproduction of the author’s intentions…

To see why I mentioned the author’s intentions, check out my past post, The Publishing (And Editorial) History of Some Extremely Famous Fiction…

I spoke about healing, specifically with 5 of the 7 Cherryh books, in the January 21st post…

My reasons for healing with The Lord of the Rings is a bit more complex…

I should first mention that both Cherryh’s and Tolkien’s books are re-reads after many years—I feel the number of years between re-readings could be a gauge of the “value” of the 2nd (or, 3rd or more) reading; especially if the re-reads are years apart—you are older, your mind and heart have (hopefully) expanded—other books have amplified the Reading Space—it feels “comfortable” yet is still a “fresh” read…

~~~

So, reading for healing…

~~~

Cherryh’s Fortress Series (the 5 books in the January 21st post) are books of High Fantasy…

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has been called Epic High Fantasy…

To me, the difference is that Cherryh shook my mind and heart in ways that opened improperly sealed doors and chased the spooks away, relieving heart and soul…

However, Tolkien, who I’m still reading, is going deeper—not just opening doors but helping me re-shape whole Habitations in my mind and heart—not just relieving but reconstituting heart and soul…

I feel the difference is that Cherryh can tap into the Personal Unconscious treasuries of meaning but, due to the extremely “ancient” feel of the Rings story, Tolkien can tap into the Collective Unconscious…

So, I’m still healing… And, I should mention that I firmly believe that both Cherryh and Tolkien were aided in their writing by a Higher Power…

So…

Still Healing…

But, I’m nearly ready to begin a regular schedule of blogging again…

Monday and Wednesday will be original blog posts, Fridays will be Story Bazaar Tales, and the rest of the week will be valuable re-blogs…

However, there will only be 19 more Tales in the Friday Story Bazaar—have any idea what I should do differently on Fridays…?

This resumption of my normal routine will begin February 9th…

In closing, I’ll share a hearty recommendation that you consider re-reading some of your former favorite books—some will be like visiting an old friend, some will have not remained favorites, some will seem comfortable as well as completely new, since you have attained new vistas of personal growth………
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you don’t see a way to comment (or, “reply”) after this post, try up there at the top right…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visit The Story Bazaar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What Happens to a Book After It’s Published?

To answer the question in the title of today’s post, I need to first bring up the differences between Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing <— there, I brought them up with those links because they’ll take you to all my articles on those subjects :-)

And, I shouldn’t ignore the common sentiment among authors that publishing can feel like giving birth…

Plus, there’s the old adage that once a book’s published the author should respect its right to grow up as it pleases…

The thing is, just like a parent’s “intercessions” in their child’s life after they’ve left home, an author isn’t “finished” with a book once it’s published.

Of course, whether traditionally or self-published, the author needs to be involved in the book’s promotion; but, there are many other exploits a book-child can become embroiled in…

Take my book Notes from An Alien as an example. 

I published it in 2011 and the print edition is just like it was back then; but, I won’t be spending money to refresh the print edition—a version without the typos that have been discovered—I’ve decided to forego print; but, I have 4 different E-editions fully corrected…

And, you may want to check out a past post about how a book review taught me something important about typos…

Then, there’s this other book of mine…

It began as a series of fantasy short stories I published here on the blog every Friday, from December 6th, 2013 through July 18th, 2014.

Then, I decided to publish the stories as the book, Strange Fantasies, on Amazon. 

And, just a few days ago, I had a reason to open up that Kindle book on my Tablet…

Big mistake on the first page…

I’d listed the address of this blog right under the title…

However, back then, this blog had a different address (a domain name I’d been paying for…)…

But, since it was only published digitally, I had no concerns about saving money to pay to update it…

So, that’s what’s been happening to two books I’ve published, since they were born and left home—I’m sure there will be other intercessions in the future :-)

Yet, those changes in my books are Nothing compared to what an extremely famous author had to go through…

I’ll share a few excerpts from a past post I wrote—The Publishing (And Editorial) History of Some Extremely Famous Fiction—about all the trials and tribulations these books went through after they were first published…

It “…was initially intended…to be one volume of a two-volume set…, but this idea was dismissed by [the] publisher. For economic reasons [it] was published in three volumes over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955…”.

“A dispute with his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, led to the book being offered to Collins in 1950.”

“Tolkien eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. Collins did not; and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, ‘I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff.’”

“‘the printing is very good, as it ought to be from an almost faultless copy; except that the impertinent compositors have taken it upon themselves to correct, as they suppose, my spelling and grammar: altering throughout dwarves to dwarfs, elvish to elfish, further to farther, and worst of all elven- to elfin.'”

“Tolkien was re-editing because…Ace Books in the United States published an unauthorised edition….Ace Books were exploiting a copyright loophole which meant they did not have to pay Tolkien or his publishers any royalties.”

If you’re a fan of Tolkien, you may want to go read the full post…

So, If you’ve published, do you have any exploits you’d like to share in the comments about what your child’s been through since they left home? :-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} comE-

What Are Humanity’s Most Popular Books?

I’m always happy when I can write a blog post that deals with all three of the major topics I cover—Reading, Writing, and Publishing.

Image Courtesy of Brendan Gogarty ~ http://www.freeimages.com/profile/brendan76

I’m sure readers want to know about popular books, even if they often love books that aren’t popular.

I’m sure writers need to know about popular books, even if they have no intention of writing a bestseller.

I’m sure publishers are ravenously interested in what makes a book popular.

Still, there are fleetingly popular books and enduringly popular books.

So along comes a site in Australia called Women’s Weekly that takes the data and orders it a bit in an article called, The 30 biggest selling books of all time might surprise you.

I imagine Readers can enlarge their horizons by checking out these books…

I’m sure Writers would improve their craft by reading these books…

I honestly wonder what Publishers think about all this…

Here’s a list of those books (ranked by total sales):

The Holy Quran

The King James Bible

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

She: A History Of Adventure by H.Rider Haggard

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by CS Lewis

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne

Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Odyssey by Homer

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Nineteen Eight-Four by George Orwell

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Anderson’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson

Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Are any of your favorites in the list?

Are there some you’d consider reading?

Why do you think these particular books became the Most Popular?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com

How To Make A Book A Bestseller

Some folks think every writer tries to write a bestseller.

Image courtesy of Lisa Kong ~ http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sabercat

Well, many writers just write what they want because they feel they must.

If the money comes, fine; if not, write more…

Some folks think bestsellers are hard to write.

Some writers think they know a “secret” to writing a bestseller…

I should, at this point, refer you to one of my past posts:

Want To Be A Bestselling Author? ~ Don’t Read This Blog . . .

In that post, I reference four writers who pretty much smash the idea that there’s a “formula” for bestsellers.

In fact, even the best-written books have only a crapshoot chance of being on The Lists.

However…

If you can find enough up-front money, you can, it appears, buy your way to the top.

Let me quote the Los Angeles Times :

“Every author wants a bestselling book — and those who can pay for the services of ResultSource Inc. just might get one. The company describes itself as ‘a boutique marketing firm that works with today’s thought leaders to build bestsellers’, which it has.”

The article that quote is from is, Can bestseller lists be bought?

It talks about the book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together by evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife, Grace.

More from the article:

Their “…contract was for ResultSource ‘to conduct a bestseller campaign for your book, Real Marriage on the week of January 2, 2012. The bestseller campaign is intended to place Real Marriage on the New York Times bestseller list for the Advice How-to list.'”

And, it did appear there, for a week…

That was the first signal the book was a bogus bestseller.

Do read the article about how ResultSource made that happen.

Also, the ResultSource presence on the web is mostly a 404 Not Found error now…

If you’d like to see some lists of books that seem to have earned the Bestseller title, check out these 100-million-copies-sold books. (Scroll down a bit to see the top three in each category…)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com
* Google Author Page
GRAB A FREE COPY of Notes from An Alien

Bestsellers . . .

That title up there has a definition that rather surprised me. I typed it in and used the handy highlight-and-look-up-dictionary I have to check the spelling ( it’s very late and I worked very hard today :-)

I’d spelled it right but the definition wasn’t just something like: books that sell a lot of copies.

Here’s my dictionary’s entry ~ “A book that has had a large and rapid sale”

So, slightly taken aback by that “rapid” part, I’ll forge ahead and recommend an exercise for Readers, Writers, and Publishers.

Whether you read books, write books, and/or publish books, it might be of some aid if you could familiarize yourself with books that fall into these categories I plucked from Wikipedia:

• 1 — List of best-selling single-volume books
  • 1.1 More than 100 million copies
  • 1.2 Between 50 million and 100 million copies
  • 1.3 Between 30 million and 50 million copies
  • 1.4 Between 20 million and 30 million copies
  • 1.5 Between 10 million and 20 million copies
• 2 — List of best-selling book series
  • 2.1 At least 100 million copies
  • 2.2 Between 50 million and 100 million copies
  • 2.3 Between 30 million and 50 million copies
  • 2.4 Between 20 million and 30 million copies
  • 2.5 Between 15 million and 20 million copies
• 3 — List of best-selling regularly updated books
  • 3.1 More than 100 million copies
  • 3.2 Between 50 million and 100 million copies
  • 3.3 Between 30 million and 50 million copies
  • 3.4 Between 20 million and 30 million copies
  • 3.5 Between 10 million and 20 million copies

I’m sitting here trying to grasp the concept of 100 million copies of the same book and being hindered by being just as incapable of comprehending 20 million copies…

In case your not the type of person who clicks all the links in a blog post, I’ll list the top three books in each of the three 100 million-catagories:

Best-selling single-volume books ~ More than 100 million copies

A Tale of Two Cities

The Lord of the Rings

The Hobbit

Best-selling book series ~ More than 100 million copies

Harry Potter

Goosebumps

Perry Mason

Best-selling regularly updated books ~ More than 100 million copies

Xinhua Zidian / Xinhua Dictionary

Scouting for Boys

The McGuffey Readers

Have any surprises?

Think they got the numbers wrong??

Wish other books had been in the top three???

Before you answer those questions, I’m compelled to put their disclaimer about why certain books were not included. I’ll make it small in case you don’t care about disclaimers:

“Religious books, especially the Bible and the Qur’an, are probably the most-printed books, but it is nearly impossible to find reliable figures about them. Many copies of the Bible and the Qur’an are printed and given away free, instead of being sold. The same goes for some political books, like the works of Mao Zedong or Adolf Hitler. All such books have been excluded from this list for those reasons.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our Comment Link Is At The Top of The Post :-)

Take Part In Our Reader Survey

Get A Free Copy of Notes from An Alien