Do You Really Want to Publish a Book?

World War 1 - An Ukept Promise

The Great Promise 
My physical reality

Is it vanity or physical reality? After spending so much time researching and writing I truly believed I had written a damn good story others would want to read. But most of all I wanted a physical representation of my efforts, something I can give to others to read, which they seldom do.

If you decide to self-publish you need reviews in order to sell books and it is only natural to turn to family and friends to accomplish this necessity - WRONG!! Unless your support group is different than mine, which I doubt since human nature is universal, you'll discover that they will be more than willing to accept a copy of your work and promise to read it and write a review. But it will not happen or perhaps a few honorable ones will follow through, but for most they never find the time and since they didn't invest a dime in purchasing the manuscript, in fact they didn't even select it so they do not have an emotional or financial commitment.

I gave everyone time to read it - some obviously were slow readers, before I reminded them of our agreement - which very few responded to. They were either embarrassed or didn't give a damn so don't bother me again. Out of thirty 'friends and family' I received zero responses. I even told them to be honest and if they didn't like it, let me know.

Perhaps your support group is more committed than mine - getting just one response would prove that. It is commonly known that several authors use this method to pad their book reviews, knowing full well that those who mark your book with less than four stars risk being defriended on facebook or shun from the family. This is especially true for new authors who no one knows but whose book had been reviewed by twenty-five people who gave it an other rating of four stars.

E-books

From the cost of self-publishing to the zero cost of publishing on Kindle. I really tried to find a literary agent or publisher for my non-fiction rewrite of the Great Promise - 'World War 1 - An Unkept Promise', but for all of my efforts not one agent was interested, or perhaps I didn't write an acceptable book query. I find it disturbing that the quality of one's book is dependent upon writing a query that meets an agent's strict requirements, which is not standardized, thus forces the author to write a query for each agent.

After feedback on my e-book, 'An Unkept Promise', some thought that the chapters on researching for the three chums and my trip to England was too drawn out. So I rewrote my second book eliminating a lot of the details, as well as reducing details from the chapter on his military career after the journal ended.

I rewrote the book and titled it "From Notes and Well Remembered Incidences" then converted it to e-book format and published it on Kindle.

What I am finding is there is increased interest in "World War 1 - An Unkept Promise". I'm also discovering that the volume of sales increases the more I blog.