Frank Georgalis – Writer

Step by Step, Write, Promote and Market Your Book Part IV

Appraising Your Book     It’s like gold mining

By Frank Elias Georgalis

For the beginners guidance and encouragement is the food to keep them alive. If you have any relatives who will encourage you to write, you are a very lucky person. But if you have friends and relatives who, once you tell them that you are going to write book, they turn and look at you, as if you are kidding or just confessing that you are crazy, or at least they think you lost your common sense and you are not normal according to them. The reason is that many say that they are going to write a book, but most of them give up after the first pages.
I remember about thirty year ago, when I first started to write my book Eagles Don’t Rest, which is a WWII drama, I was visiting my retired mother and father in Greece and obviously much source of information was to come from my father who was a military man and had served in two wars. My father and I stayed up half of the night, asking him questions and he was answering while my mother was sleeping in the other room. That morning after I had my coffee my mother asked what was so important that my father and I were discussing the night before, and I told her that I was writing a book about WWII in Greece and my father was helping me with the project.
“About guns and ammunition, your father is great,” she mumbled as she walked away. She asked no other questions about it. Close to noon time, I told her that I was going to have lunch with one of my friends who was a school teacher. On my way out of the door, she stopped me, making sure my father was not listening and she said softly, “Now that you are going to have lunch with your friend, don’t tell him that you are writing a book,”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because serious minded men don’t write books,” she replied in the same whispering tone of voice.
“Okay,” I said, lowering my voice “But can I tell him that I am reading a book that no so serious minded person wrote?”
“That’s good all serious minded men read books.”
So, all of you, according to my mother, are not so serious minded people sitting in front of me, get used to that. If you’re asking for some moral support don’t expect to get it until your book is in the stores.
There is a lot of sadness in my heart knowing that many authors who have lived and eventually died taking their dream like a heavy secret with them. It was not just a dream, it was a hope and belief that they created something dear to them, spending time working on it, and having nobody to turn to and nobody to show it. Maybe, according to the educated and scientists, the world is round and not flat, but I have seen many people who went over the edge and never did return.
The information that I am about to put down on paper has come to me not by walking down the lonely halls of the publishing houses, but going through tons of research looking to publish a book that I had written and thought that it was worth printing. Even though your book maybe praised and marveled by all who read it, if it doesn’t go far is because the proper steps of promoting it were never taken. I shall not let this to happen to you now that you have my book you are not only under my wings but you will be under my spell. I shall put down or I shall chart the roads to success and you will not detour from it unless it’s an absolutely necessary to detour. It may be that all roads lead to Rome, but in the publishing industry all ways do not lead to successful book.
Once you have written a book and you have decided to publish your book, you have entered the world of publishing. The publishing world is divided in two parts. One part is the commercial way and the other is the self-publishing road. The world of self-publishing is as old as America. Ben Franklin was the first American to self-publishing. Tom Paine was another early American to become a self-publisher. Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series, he took matters into his own hands and published his own works. I can go on and on with famous names and classic works that were self-published. So lift up your head and believe, if you choose to be a self-publisher, you are in company with some of the best writers in the world.
I am not going to sit here and put down on paper every book and writer who self-published his works. I will write the way I speak when I am conducting a seminar.
In the publishing world, as in sailing, the word is “Casting off”. The important thing is the length of the book. It can be from 120 pages to 600 pages that depend on the writer. Charles Dickens was a writer of many words and was successful, Ernest Hemingway was a writer of few words and he was also good.
This is the right place for me to tell you a little true story which has nothing to do with sales of books but it has a lot to do with life itself. Bear in mind if you are or you want to be a good writer, the more things you know about life the better you will write. Come to think my story has to do more about guns than life itself, but if you modify it, it fits life to a tee.
Writing a book needs a great concentration on what you are doing and the bottom line is your target to first please yourself and second to sell the book to the public.
I served in the American Army stationed in Germany during the peak of the Cold War. The job that I was performing required for me to carry a pistol (45 caliber) on my waist or in a shoulder holster. I had never in my life fired a 45 caliber pistol or any other type of a pistol, so one day I decided to go to the pistol range and find out my ability of firing the pistol and hit the target. It was an open pistol range. I fired and hit nothing from the fifty yard line and firing my pistol I missed the target completely. I didn’t give up. So I decided to enroll in a six week pistol shooting course.
The very first thing was for us to learn to hold a pistol with one hand. The instructor said holding the pistol with both hands is difficult for the shooter to shoot and hit many targets, because the shooter has to turn his whole body. That made sense to me, but some thought other wise and were kicked out of the class for not following the instructor’s orders. To learn and become accustomed to holding the pistol with one hand took only two days. The next think the instructor came up with was to use the word BRASS.
Breath
Relax
Aim
Slack
Squeeze
This learning process of holding the pistol on the target, which was a dot on the wall 18” away and repeat the word BRASS, lasted three weeks, every day and eight hours each day, without firing one single shot. It is obvious and normal that some who were under the impression that they knew how to shoot, thought what the instructor was teaching us was not useful in shooting and most quit the course. Out of thirty that had enrolled six die-hearts were left learning. We learned to pull the trigger, the arm to go up as it happens in real shooting, but we, the remaining six, came to the point where when the arm came down at eye-level, would automatically stop there.
Finally the fifth week we all went to the shooting range, and practicing what we had learned, we were astonished to see the unbelievably favorable results the very first time we shot live ammo. My score was 840 out of possible 900 in bowing it means 285 out of possible 300.
The word BRASS stayed with me for the rest of my life. I used it in making sales, I used it to teach others how to sell, and I used it to solve problems and many times to reduce my anger. Keep in mind the word BRASS it can be useful to you as it is to me, you may think that it has nothing to do with writing; if you think that you are wrong.
The law of relativity tells us that everything is related, by sound, vision and thought.
BRASS as you go on in to selling and marketing the book you will find it as a problem solver. Remember your target is selling you book.
My interpretation of the word BRASS in the everyday living is as follows:

B—Breath: program your self to think.
R—Relax: feel free to think. Abolish all fears and doubts out of your mind.
A—Pick your target you want to think of.
S—Prepare yourself to move ahead.
S—Move out!

Marketability of the book

Choosing a marketable subject is the easy road to success. The very first thing for you is to find out the marketability of your book. I have read some terrible writings in my life. I have spoken to a lot of editors and agents and they all told me that they have gotten some terrible writings. The most peculiar thing was that the writers thought they had something good and valuable in their hands. Their mothers, their wives, brothers and sisters believed that.
The big companies have what they are referred to in house book evaluators. Around the globe there are many free lance book appraisers or evaluators. Appraisal of anything is an opinion. The opinion of the appraisal is based on comparables. Comparables are topics of the same category of published books around the time they are appraising your book. They measure the activity of the published book and the public’s reaction. They also take into consideration, the artistic and literary style with the commercial value of your property, they put all that together and come up with a report. It may not be exactly what you had in mind but it will be a report that you can base your decision on, whether you want to continue or discontinue your efforts in publishing it.
One night I was watching the American Idle show. The politically correct panel, consisting of one black man a woman and a white man sat and listened to the hopefuls trying out by mostly singing. Very few according to what I heard and saw had any talent but they were all convinced they had talent and qualified to be American idles. When they were told by the panel they had nothing to offer and at times the members of the panel went beyond the normal rejection way, to tell some of them that they were awful. The contenders not alone didn’t like and didn’t agree with the panel’s decision but some started screaming and insulting the panel. They actually thought they were good beyond my imagination. Then I asked myself the question whether I was fooling myself like they were by thinking that I was a good writer. I called my friend Al Farbman who has retired in Florida and who is the man who told me that I was better than Dan Brown. When I told him that I felt I was comparing myself to those who had no talent at all but thought they were the best. He started laughing with a full set of lungs and an escalated heart beat.
When that laugh subsided, Al told me soberly what I longed to hear and had heard before, that I was not dreaming of being good.
The above story covers two subjects; one is the doubts we writers have of our writings.
Books and movies are very risky business. There are many good writers who have written books that flopped as there are many movie makers who have made movies that sunk in the box office. We writers, who have been writing for a longtime, are not suffering from inferiority complex, we cannot read people’s minds. The same goes for movie producers. A long time ago I watched on TV a very interesting interview of the producers of Jaws. The interview was conducted by a very good host right after the movie was declared being a block buster. The producers admitted that they never thought it was going to be such a block buster. In fact they both said they had doubts whether they were going to make their money back or lose it all. Even after a successful screening, they still had doubts. They said there was a critical scene in the movie that they could not guess how the public was going to receive it. The scene was when Jaws slid into the rear of the boat and grabbed the screaming captain and swam away with him, half of his body in the fish’s mouth and the other half out, swinging his arms and calling for help, they both said that scene could have gone two ways. One as horrible as it was meant to be, with the hope that people would scream with fear, the other way they said the audience could have taken it as being funny and would laugh. But the audience screamed. They both stood up and left telling each other that they had a hit in their hands. When it comes to art, there is a fine line between failure and success.
The main subject is the appraising of the book. I don’t have any of my books appraised by a professional, I have them appraised by my closest friends and relatives, without them knowing it. I have mentioned before that I speak to people about my books and I let some to read parts of it. When I speak of what I have written I am listening with my eyes to see the expression on the faces of the ones I speak to. One peculiar thing I learned listening to people about writings and their opinions, having read the script, if they come back saying, “It is nice, Jack, keep it up,” it meant nothing to them, but if they come back tearing it apart, they are saying that there is something good in there.
While I was writing my book Salome, the untold love story of the third Maria, I took every opportunity to speak to people and groups of three to 103. They weren’t planned seminars or lectures there were opportunities for me to find out what the reaction of people was due to the sensitive nature of the topic.
I am not trying to burst your balloon, but before you get yourself involved in anything as dramatic and as frustrating as publishing a book, have your book appraised to find out if it has any commercial value. The artistic value may be there but the demand for such a book should be examined carefully. In the artistic world beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. No one who is involved in the arts can predict success or failure because we all are looking at something of art from a different point of view and with a different eye. Some are looking closely at the grammar, I am a big fan of phraseology
Let me go the other way for a minute. When Moby Dick was written by Herman Melville the critics tore it to pieces and the book did not go anywhere until years later. But no matter how you cut the pie, it is nice to hear the good news from a professional. There is another word I dislike, professional. How about the word skilled, proficient or trained? Those to me are nice and simple words to describe somebody’s ability to do something well. The choice of words and the construction of the sentences, I call phraseology. If the opinion of the appraiser is unkind, don’t lose hope, look for a second opinion. For the simple reason success cannot be foretold, the same reason failure cannot be foreseen.
You evidently, having received favorable opinions about your book from friends and appraisers, I should hear a sigh of relief coming from you. Don’t jump up and down in triumph, because that is only the begging of many rivers to cross, mountains to climb and battles to fight when some times it seems that you are fighting men, who have guns and ammunition and you only have a spear to throw. As you go on reading my book you will discover other ways and means of having your book appraised.