[Interview] Bosley Gravel

Bosley Gravel was born in the Midwest and grew up in Texas and southern New Mexico.

His work includes the novels, Servant of the Mud (Shadowfire Press, 2009) and The Movie (Bewrite Books, 2009).

In this interview, Bosley Gravel talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I’ve been writing stories ever since I can remember.

I first sought publication in the mid-90s, but that didn't amount to much. In 2006 I took up writing again and have written close to half a million words since then. About 200,000 of those have seen publication in some form.

Between 1996 and 2006 the Internet became a critical tool for writers and I’ve leveraged that in a predictable way by targeting online journals, using it for research and making cheap, efficient submissions via email.

The number one thing I did to achieve the goal of publication was to write every day and study the craft of storytelling. As for the reasons for seeking publication, that is hidden in treasure chest and buried deeply somewhere between my ego and my id.

How would you describe your writing?

My novels typically involve plots centering around personal growth.

I tend to use simple structures and complex characters (all male so far) who, through extraordinary circumstances, must come to terms with a hidden aspect of themselves. These characters have built entire worlds of myth around themselves and subsequently struggle to align themselves with both the myth and the reality of their lives.

Essentially, these are coming-of-age stories built on top of the hero’s journey formula. If that sounds rigid, it’s not.

I pride myself on not being afraid to take a chance and follow some strange and unusual paths. For example, I’ve written about an independent filmmaker who struggles to get his absurd imagination on the big screen; a troubled polymath who must come to terms with not only the brutal world, but his own fears of loss and love; a handsome anthropophobic accountant who finds his true nature in a new found world of organized crime and sorcery; a gifted musician who is orphaned at an early age and soon learns that even fame and fortune can not fill an empty soul; a could-be messiah who must come to terms with both his human needs, and his divine responsibility.

With my short fiction pretty much anything goes though. Most of that is available online in some form or another. A lot of it is genre stuff with emphasis on plot and trope, some literary and some just a kind of unclassifiable other. In my short fiction I’ve written everything from splatter-punk horror to morality fables.

I read widely and I think my fiction reflects that.

Who is your target audience?

I’m sort of a selfish writer, I hate to say.

I don’t think much about audience and, since I don’t really stick closely to one genre, I pay for this by not having consistent readership. When I write, the only loyalty I feel is to the story and, ultimately, to the protagonist.

With that being said, I have a handful of faithful readers who read early drafts and I’ll often oblige their tastes or tailor content for them in some fashion. But it will always be on terms that are true to the character or story.

Which authors influenced you most?

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn had a tremendous influence on me. I still go back and read that book occasionally. The depth and layering of both the Huck character and the story itself has had a big impact on me and introduced me to concepts of irony and metaphor in fiction -- although I didn’t know that the first time I read it of course.

Also, there is a book called Wyvern by A. A. Attanasio that is story about a Bornean native/Dutch half-breed who goes from the jungles to the shore of America in the 1500s. It’s really a story about destiny and human potential. A great book.

In terms of something I’ve read more recently, I think Rebecca Wells wrote some excellent short fiction in Little Altars Everywhere and Ya-Yas in Bloom.

Little Altars Everywhere, in particular, inspired me to start writing again after a 10-year hiatus. I was impressed with the depth of her characters and the simplicity of her prose.

Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker and William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Poppy Z. Brite, Louis L'Amour and Lawrence Block have also all made significant contributions to my writer’s toolbox.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

My writing is in stark contrast to my day job.

I deal primarily with computers and computer networks in the real world and, when I sit down to write, it’s the last thing I want to think about. So my stories almost never contain elements of technology. In fact a good deal of my longer works are set pre-1990 in order to avoid having to deal with the Internet, texting, cell phones, etc. I find all of that terribly boring.

Obviously though, as I writer, I’ve been gathering details on people, places and situations for years, and these come out in my writing. I think all the ups and downs of my life do come out in some way or another in my writing. I’m a bit reluctant to reveal any specific details though, so like the reasons for seeking publication, it will have to remain a mystery.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I think writers have an obligation to tell the truth.

The truth isn’t always pretty and the truth is often subject to perspective. Worse yet, the truth is sometimes fluid and changing.

I get concerned that a reader will misinterpret something I’ve written and use it to justify a rigid view of the world.

In the same vein, it would bother me a bit if I thought people were associating me too closely with my characters.

I try to avoid the problem of having too loud a moral voice by writing about people and less about ideas.

Apart from being accused of evangelizing some half-baked belief, my only other real worry is being a bore -- the worst sin ever for a writer (makes me shiver just thinking about it).

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The biggest challenge is finding the time to go back and edit what I’ve written.

By the time I’ve completed a chapter or a short story or even an novel, my imagination is already taking me to the next one, and the previous one becomes a lot less shiny and pretty.

The only cure for this is discipline, and the desire to be published. No editor wants a first draft on his desk; well, no editor in their right mind, anyway. The only real way to deal with the final polish is to just go ahead and do it.

By the same token, I try to avoid over-polishing a piece. I think too much commercial fiction is edited to mush and really has no remaining voice. I'd rather not do that.

Do you write everyday?

I write every morning. I go for about 500 to 750 words; on occasion more. I just grab a cup of coffee and write a page or so, get my kids out the door for school, then hack out another page or two.

I've written about five novel-length manuscripts. Two of those were released at the tail end of 2009, one as an ebook, and the other as a paperback. The others remain in various stages of drafting.

The two that have been released are:

• Servant of the Mud, Shadowfire Press, Dec 4th 2009. This is a mythic urban fantasy that follows Pauly, a reluctant Christ figure, who transitions from an irresponsible street kid into something far more, and
• The Movie, Bewrite Books, Dec 10th 2009. This is a story about a small town kid with big dreams, and a very weird imagination.

What would you say your latest book is about?

In The Movie, the unemployed young feller’s dream is to break into Hollywood with a DIY movie called Cannibal Lesbian Zombies from Outer Space -- versus -- Doctor Clockwork and his Furious Plastic Surgeons of Doom. This was the book’s original title and still stands (in small print, artfully hidden in the front cover image -- my publisher added The Movie as main title).

See what I mean about my characters taking myth and building reality?

How long did it take you to write the novel?

Twenty-four very, very busy days.

How did you choose a publisher for the book?

I’ve always been keen on small presses. I’m still cutting my teeth as an author and I like the idea of dealing with editors who are hand-choosing their projects and not having them assigned by acquisition folks.

I like the idea of a ‘mom and pop’ style press in this day and age.

BeWrite Books was one of the handful of small presses that turned up in my research as being flexible and open to literary-type fiction that is fun and unpretentious.

What advantages and/or disadvantages has your association with BeWrite Books presented?

BeWrite has been everything I’d expected it to be ... and more.

Craft is obviously very important to the staff, and it shows in their titles and the attention my manuscript received (the first draft took me twenty-four days ... it was almost a year in edit as revisions passed between me and BeWrite Books over and again).

The disadvantage, I suppose, is that small presses can’t afford the media-blitz marketing big publishing can do ... with an emphasis on can. It doesn’t look like big publishers do much advertising for their authors these days anyway, other than a select few.

I think in the day and age of virtual everything, handling distribution/production the way BeWrite does it is the future that big publishing will eventually yield to anyway. So that’s really less of a disadvantage and more of a ahead-of-their-time kind of thing with BB ... but it still limits sales.

Bewrite’s no-pulping methods are a lot better for the environment. And while I’m rarely seen hugging trees, I think being frugal with our limited global resources is important.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into The Movie?

This book wrote itself. I’m told every author gets one of those sooner or later.

I think the most difficult thing was to go clean up the prose and punctuation, etc.

I read once that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on a single sheet of paper that rolled continuously through his typewriter, he used no punctuation and no indents. My manuscript was not much different.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

This book was just fun to write. The characters all have an innocence about them, an innocence they’ve chosen to indulge. In direct opposition to this innocence is the lead character’s screenplay with these bizarre and decedent scenarios.

I enjoy deliberately blurring opposing concepts like that.

I’ve had beta readers from all over the world, from middle aged American housewives to Australian teenagers, even a moderately curmudgeonly (but brilliant) Scottish editor -- they've all loved it.

The idea that I could write something that would be enjoyable by such a vastly different group of people is immensely encouraging.

What sets The Movie apart from other things you’ve written?

This is the most light-hearted manuscript I’ve written. My other books tend to be dark and only cautiously optimistic about human nature.

In this case, caution is thrown to the wind and I’m thrilled that it came out this way.

It’s also written in first person which is a rarity for me.

In what way is it similar to the others?

It includes several hallmarks of a Bosley Gravel story: male protagonist with a somewhat flawed sense of reality and vivid imagination, a meta-story woven into the story proper, love, sex, death, the absurdly tragic ... and the tragically absurd.

What will your next book be about?

My current novel manuscript, American Woman, is about Hollywood Tommy.

Tommy is a self-absorbed womanizer, who as a way to deal with a mid-life crisis, rekindles a relationship with his ex-wife and his children in suburbia.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Writing one word after another. Finding a reason to do it each and every day.

Having the guts to get things in front of editors and readers.

Aspiring to write a book better than the last one I wrote.

Having the guts to get my work out there to editors and readers.

Related articles:

• Interview: Bosley Gravel, By gapyeargirl123, The Book Bundle, September 2009
• William Gibson On the Future of Publishing: Made to Order Books, By Steven Kurutz, Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2010
• The future of the book, By Chin Wong, Manila Standard Today, September 21, 2010

[Interview] Mark Kaplan

Novelist, school teacher and screenwriter, Mark Adam Kaplan was born in Staten Island, NY. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a Masters of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute’s Center for Film and Television Studies.

He has worked as an Associate Editor and then as a public school teacher in New York City before relocating to Hollywood, CA.

His film credits include, A Time to Remember (Tai Seng, 1998) and Echoes of the East: Tibet, 1997.

His writing includes book and music reviews which have appeared in magazines that include Rapport Magazine in Los Angeles; “Date with the Chairman”, a short story which was published in the anthology, Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers (Cleis Press, 2005); and, A Thousand Beauties (BeWrite Books, 2009), his first novel.

In this interview, Mark Kaplan talks about his concerns as a writer:

When did you start writing?

I’ve always written, although I think I made a formal decision to give writing more importance when I was in college. I was directing plays and found myself inspired to speak my mind that way. Several of my own plays were produced in New York and Los Angeles, although nothing took off.

How would you describe your writing?

I do many different kinds of writing at the moment.

I write articles about teaching and education, prose, and screenplays. I find it difficult to stick to one genre (or media for that matter). Some stories are made for the screen, I believe, and some require deeper insight into a character’s thought process. There is room for crossover, of course. But I believe that truly interesting works in one genre do not translate easily into another.

For example, I really do not care what goes on inside of John MacLane’s mind, but I love watching the Die Hard films. On the other hand, I found Snow Falling on Cedars quite moving as a novel and unwatchable as a film. There are exceptions, of course. But I believe the rule generally holds.

I am reminded of an interview I read with Milan Kundera. After having The Unbearable Lightness of Being made into a film he swore that he would never write another novel that could be adapted. After reading his Immortality, I understand what he means.

Who is your target audience?

I do not write with a single target audience in mind. Perhaps that is what impedes my greater success.

Some of my screenplays are written for families, others for young adults. A Thousand Beauties was written without a target audience in mind, but I have found great interest among adults, middle-aged and above. Naturally, the audience is not confined to this age group, but when discussing the book with them, I have seen genuine surprise and interest once I disclose the nature of the story. It is certainly too adult for teenagers.

Who influenced you most?

My mother wrote stories which she read to us as we grew up, and I loved hearing them. She pursued her writing throughout my life and that taught me to keep going regardless of how my work was received.

My father, on the other hand, is not a writer, but always offered his honest opinion, which was sometimes very painful for me to hear. He did, however, keep my feet on the ground and offered me a more pragmatic outlook on life.

I began writing A Thousand Beauties after the death of my paternal grandmother who succumbed to pancreatic cancer. My maternal grandmother died shortly thereafter. I have been fortunate to lose few loved ones during my lifetime. Their passing forced me to stop putting off my novel writing and sit down to work.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I have many concerns as a writer. I want to touch my readers’ hearts, to entertain them, but I also hope to reveal something they may not have considered.

I am most concerned by what appears to be the approaching disappearance of the casual reader. Computer games and the internet have provided the next generation with such a wealth of hands on, interactive amusement, that I fear the loss of a public that reads books for pleasure.

Young people are reinventing the language with text messages, and their growing need for immediate gratification, (which was a punch line twenty years ago) does not bode well for entertainment that delays satisfaction for two- or three-hundred pages. J. K. Rowlings’ books, and the runaway success of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series are encouraging signs. But I fear the tide is turning away from a novel reading public.

How are you dealing with these concerns?

I have seen some books that have generated interest among our disenfranchised young people. Townsend Press puts out The Bluford Series, a number of books set at the same inner-city high school. I have seen kids who have never finished reading a book devour these one after the other. They deal with what used to be adult themes, but are more and more teen issues. The prose itself is accessible, and writers like Paul Langan and Anne Schraff have proven there is still hope.

I am now working on my own young adult novel that deals with teen issues, Dangerous, in the hopes that it has a similar effect on our young people.

Dangerous will be about Leon Mendoza, a young kid coming of age in East Los Angeles who faces the challenges that come with the territory. He’s been arrested for dealing and accused by his homies of ratting them out. Caught between the courts and the streets, Leon fights to survive and escape from the life that fate seems set for him.

What are the main challenges that you face?

For years I tried to write for financial success, with no success. When I started writing, I was all about the creative energy and artistic inspiration that drives most artists. Then suddenly I was 30 years old, and my future livelihood was in question. I turned to screenwriting, hoping to crack into the Business and achieve the financial success that had eluded me. To that end, I came up with “commercial” stories. I honed my craft until the writing was top-notch. But what had suffered were my ideas. I spent nearly a decade working on ideas that were not truly inspired due to my misconceptions about what I thought Hollywood wanted.

I still love much of the work that I did at the time. But none of it was original enough to separate me from the pack. I worked with countless partners on countless projects, none of which have taken off.

A Thousand Beauties was written for nobody’s sake but my own. It is, by far, the best work I have done.

What sets it apart from other things you have written?

A Thousand Beauties is different from anything else I have written not only because of its form, but because of the intimacy with the characters the form allows.

Most of my writing for the past decade has been in screenplay format, where the focus is on meaningful actions. A Thousand Beauties allowed me access to the character’s thoughts and feelings as well as their actions.

This is also the one project that I have spent the longest time developing. The growth from its inception until its present form has taken seven years, far longer than any other project in my repertoire.

It is similar to other things that I have written because I tend to embrace the darker passions, and this work is full of them.

Do you write everyday?

Unfortunately I do not have the time to write everyday. As the father and primary caretaker of two young daughters, a public school teacher and a husband, the demands on my time are extreme.

Whenever I find myself with some free time (which is rarely) I sit at the computer and try to move through whatever I am currently working on (right now, Dangerous has this questionable honor). I usually finish writing sometime after 1:00am, and have to leave for work by 6:00am.

How many books have you written so far?

A Thousand Beauties (Bewrite Books, 2009) is my first full-length book, although I have had short stories published, am an internationally produced screenwriter and of course, have essays on the Internet.

What would you say the novel is about?

A Thousand Beauties is about Rupert Ruskin, a successful but unpopular man who has isolated himself from the world to chase his family’s elusive vision of enlightenment. He believes if he can see a thousand beautiful things in one day he was achieve the perspective of angels and spend the rest of his days in bliss. But his vision-quest is interrupted when his ex-wife, Elaine, bursts back into his life with the news of her cancer. Ruskin figures that if he can help Elaine find a thousand beauties, then perhaps her last days won’t be completely miserable.

I wrote the first draft of A Thousand Beauties in about eight months back in 2002. It sat on the shelf for a while, and I wrote several page one rewrites, cutting out over 150 pages from the original length.

How did you find a publisher for the book?

I sent out submission packets, but they met with little success until I sent it to BeWrite Books, where the editor, Neil Marr responded to one. He requested the full ms, and, after reading it, rejected it. Luckily for me, his rejection came with copious notes on the text. I reviewed his notes and found them clear professional.

I wrote back to ask if he would look at the text again after I worked on it more. Fortunately, he was happy to do, since he loved the premise so much. This rewrite took about five months.

True to his word, Neil reread the ms. This time he accepted it, and we began the process of beating the text down to its shiny core. We worked for several months on the book. Without his insight, honesty, and openness, A Thousand Beauties would not be as good as it is. I was very lucky to find an Editor who actually works as a editor. It was a terrific collaboration and I am grateful for the experience. This was the biggest advantage this publisher offered.

Did the arrangement present any disadvantages?

The disadvantages are that BeWrite is a small European publisher, and I’m in the United States. Also, the company relies on Print-on-Demand technology, which means they do not print a large run and blast sales in the first few weeks. (This is not Publish-on-Demand, or self-publishing. It is an entirely different animal.) Also, they offered no advance against royalties, and due to the nature of their publishing process, the paperbacks are a bit pricey. However, they also offer an e-Book, which positions them well for the future, and is good news to all Kindle users.

The challenges posed by this kind of publishing primarily involve accepting and evaluating their criticism of the work, being open to others’ ideas regarding design of the book and cover, and working collaboratively on a project conceived and executed (until this point) on my own.

Also, without the clout carried by a big house, it is more difficult to obtain reviews by recognizable figures or papers. This is a primary focus of my attention right now.

I am also involved with the promotion of the book far more than I would be should the book have been put out by one of the big publishing houses. Fortunately, the people at BeWrite have a wealth of knowledge about ways to get the word out. It’s a great learning experience for me and a lot of fun.

What did you enjoy most about the whole process?

The most enjoyable part of the process so far has been working with the Editor. I had been looking for feedback such as he provided for years, and had even paid for it at one point. For all of that, no one gave me the specific kind of notes that he did, which I found both useful and refreshing.

Part of the reason why it was so pleasurable is the manner in which the notes came. All were handled with meticulous attention to tone and came in the form of suggestions – which I was free to either accept or reject. This courtesy and professionalism is something I have rarely encountered.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

A Thousand Beauties is definitely my most significant achievement as a writer. Although I am proud of my film work, the quality of this novel, and the difficulty of the work in getting it here have made its release the proudest moment of my professional career.

How did you get there?

It all comes down to hard work, being open to criticism (but not a slave to it), and the luck of finding an editor who shared my vision, and was willing to nurture a novice writer to make it a reality.

Possibly related books:

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Reading, Writing and Self-publishing

Since September 2006, the Leicester Review of Books has been conducting a survey to find out what readers and writers think of self-publishing and self-published books.

Among other things, we are asking writers to tell us their experiences of self-publishing. What benefits have they received? What are some of the disadvantages or challenges that they have experienced?

We are also asking writers to talk about the reasons that motivated them to by-pass the literary agent and the mainstream publisher and publish their books themselves.

And, which is equally important, we are asking for readers’ experiences of reading self-published books.

How do the books compare with those that have been published by mainstream publishers? Are they just as good or are they inferior? If they are inferior, why is this?

Wikipedia defines self-publishing as “the publishing of books and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers.”

The encyclopedia goes on to explain that although self-publishing represents a small percentage of the publishing industry in terms of sales, it has been present in one form or another since the beginning of publishing .

“… many works now considered classic were originally self-published, including the original writings of William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, William Morris, and James Joyce.”

Hugh Griffin, who works for the Los Angeles engraving and printing company, Stuart F. Cooper, adds that in the United States “self-publishing” refers to the practice of buying one’s own International Standard Book Number (ISBN) to protect publishing rights and having the printing done by one‘s self.

“Many authors produce books for low prices and sell them successfully…but almost without exception, they use genuine ‘self-publishing,’” Griffin says.

The question of self-publishing is even more important today because advances in technology have made it easier than ever before for writers to publish their own books and make what they are writing available to a wider audience. As Wikipedia contributors point out, the tools which facilitate self-publishing and which are at writers’ disposal have been made possible by advances in technology associated with xerography, desktop publishing, print on demand technology, the internet and blogging.

From the discussion that is emerging, there are strong concerns that a lot of what is being self-published is of a poor quality.

Anna Creech, a librarian and blogger, is strongly opposed to self-published books.

“I’ve read only a handful of self-published books, so admittedly my experience with them is limited,” she says. “However, all of those books needed the heavy hand and red pen of an editor before they could be palatable. As a result, I refuse to read any more self-published books.”

She advises writers to get an editor who is not related to them before they decide to publish anything.

Wikipedia contributors suggest that the problem of sub-standard self-published books is in part due to the fact that it is often very difficult to differentiate self-publishing from vanity publishing.

“The latter term is a pejorative one, usually referring to situations in which a publisher contracts with authors regardless of the quality and marketability of their work,” the encyclopedia explains. “They [vanity publishers] appeal to the creators' vanity and desire to become a ‘published author’, and make the majority of their money from fees charged to the creators for publishing services, rather than from sales of the published material to retailers or consumers.”

Linda L. Rucker, like a lot of other writers who venture into self-publishing has had her own brush with a vanity publisher.

She has published two novels, What the Heart Wants and Dark Ridge as well as a collection of short stories, Words out of Time. Her short stories have also been featured in the anthologies, Forget Me Knots, Romancing the Soul, the 2005 Riverdale Short Story Annual and in April Rollins’ Coffee Camp Review Magazine.

She says she was horrified when What the Heart Wants came out.

“Like a great many of the un-initiated, I too went with PublishAmerica for my first book. At first, I was elated that a so-called traditional, royalty paying publisher wanted to publish my book, but when I held the finished product in my hand, I was horrified.

“No editing, was the worst of what I saw. As a new writer, I had no idea about editing. I figured that if the spelling was correct, then the manuscript was good to go.”

For her second novel, Linda L. Rucker shopped around and managed to secure an agent.

“She was a good agent, but patience has never been one of my virtues, so waiting for her to find a publisher just didn’t work for me. But, more [than] that was the notion that when she did find one, it could be anywhere from eighteen months to three years before my book hit the stores. As I said, patience is not a virtue for me. So, I chose to release my agent from her contract and go with self-publishing. Most folks think that term is a death knell, but is it really?”

Shawn Street, a PublishAmerica public relations officer disputes Linda L. Rucker’s claims and asserts that the company does edit books for grammar and spelling.

“We do not change the content of the book. When the Text Production Department edited her book, Ms. Rucker had two opportunities to review the work and approve any changes that were made.”

Street argues that PublishAmerica markets the books it publishes and makes them available to online bookstores and to bookstores across North America through the wholesalers Ingram, Brodart, and Baker & Taylor.

“PublishAmerica sends out press releases announcing a book’s release, as well as announcement letters to the author’s family and friends. We also send review copies to legitimate reviewers daily. Further marketing is a joint operation between the publisher and the author,” Shawn Street says.

Lilian Masitera, one of the most versatile Zimbabwean writers, has published a collection of poems, Militant Shadow; a novel, The Trail; and a collection of short stories; Now I Can Play.

Her writings tackle contemporary issues in Zimbabwean culture and she does it in a manner that is clear, straight forward, no-holds-barred and forceful.

Her books are examples of high quality self-published works.

She argues that because a book has been self-published does not mean it is sub-standard or of a poor quality.

Another author, Irving Karchmar says he decided to self-publish Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel because mainstream publishers did not want to be associated with it.

“I can’t do anything about the relentless commercialism of modern publishing, especially since it is a Sufi novel, about Muslims, published after 9/11, that no one wanted to touch. So after a couple of years of sending it out to agents and publishers, I decided to publish it myself.”

The novel since been has translated into Russian; Bahasa, Indonesia’s national language; Turkish, and into Malayalam, the language of the Indian state of Kerala.

Karchmar identifies a number of factors behind his novel’s success.

“I think I did it mostly in a smart way. I had a friend design the interior and cover, ($500.00) [I] did my own editing, along with friends, and paid only $99.00 for the initial fee for putting it in their system, which included an ISBN. I also decided to pay an extra $75.00 to get a Library of Congress I.D. number, and a bit more to get into Baker and Taylor wholesalers, so anyone going into a bookstore could order my book. They have deals with other online sources and are now owned by Amazon.com so my book is on Amazon, and Abebooks, Alibiris, Borders, Target.com and many small websites that affiliate with Amazon.”

He advises writers who want to self publish to invest in a good website, to market themselves and join discussion groups as well as invite bloggers to review the books.

“Booksurge pays 25% of the cover price as royalty, so it is not too bad a deal, and by many hours of working at it, I have managed to sell well over 500 copies online and to a few bookstores. I also got a few bloggers to review the book and some magazines,” Irving Karchmar says.

Wikipedia contributors support Karchmar’s views when they observe that self-published works that find large audiences tend to be rare exceptions, and are usually the result of self-promotion.

They give The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield; The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer; What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles; In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters; Photoshop Efx: What Side You're On? by Dhanang Rah Wibowo and Eragon by Christopher Paolini as modern-day examples of self-published books that have been successful.

Another example is Graham P. Taylor who earned a publishing deal worth 3.5 million pounds after he had self-published his first novel, Shadowmancer. Taylor’s books have since been translated into over twenty different languages and are also going to be turned into movies.

Irving Karchmar says, “It can be done! It just takes work, like anything else in life.”

Writers who are contemplating self-publishing need to investigate the industry thoroughly and make sure that their work has been sufficiently edited and critiqued before they take it to the printers. They should also be prepared to market and promote their books aggressively.