Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 4 | Page 14

PRESS “CONTROL” THEN CLICK “BUY” TO PURCHASE THE BOOK CURRENT NYT BEST SELLERS 7/19/15 COMBINED PRINT & E-BOOK FICTION 1. GRAY, by E. L. James 2. THE ENGLISH SPY, by Daniel Silva 3. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, by Paula Hawkins 4. A NEW HOPE, by Robin Carr 5. ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, by Anthony Doerr Complete List COMBINED PRINT & E-BOOK NONFICTION 1. DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, by Holly Madison 2. THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, by David McCullough 3. THE BOYS IN THE BOAT, by Daniel James Brown 4. MODERN ROMANCE, by by Aziz Ansari with Eric Klinenberg 5. DEAD WAKE, by Eric Larson Complete List JULY-AUGUST 2015 MY SOLUTION TO THE MEMOIR (CONT’D) You want to get a memoir out there? Try being famous first. Then, maybe someone will read it. Does that mean you shouldn’t try and go for it? Of course not, but unless you have a very intriguing premise, to fill in that other ten percent of the names on the shelf nobody has ever heard of, you’re going to end up with a garage full of books (or a Kindle version that sits there with little sales). Maybe that’s all you want, just something with an ISBN number in the Library of Congress with your legacy. That’s fine. MY SOLUTION I’m no celebrity. Nobody outside of my very few web site readers here and my friends and family have ever heard of me. Who cares what kind of life I’ve had? Sure, I’ve had some interesting things happen to me, at least in my mind, but would anyone care? The only way I can get my story out is to do it my own way without going through the hassle of publishing a book. I do it without the burden of a garage full of those books or worrying about sales figures on Amazon. Plus, I have no deadline and no editorial pressure to write any particular format or subject, or sequence. I write what I want, when I want and whatever I want to write about. It all started last March, 2014, when our Henderson Writer’s Group publicity chairman, Tina asked me to write an article to publicize the upcoming Las Vegas Writer’s Conference. She asked me to post in a local political discussion web site called Let’s Talk Nevada, if they’d accept it. I did, they did, and after it went live, Let’s Talk Nevada asked me if I had any other non-political articles I’d like to post for their Sunday edition. They were looking for some light reading, s ܝ