Book Blues

Happy Sunday!  It’s a chilly one here in the feel good town of Cobourg, but a lovely sunny day.

Cavan and I spent several hours at Word Northumberland yesterday.  I did sell two books to a librarian at the Colborne library.  I’m afraid that was it.  Since it was only $10 for the table, I guess I did have a bit of a profit.  Disappointing, but as another author pointed out, ‘No-one in Canada makes money off of books except for Margaret Atwood.’  Probably reasonably accurate, although there are a few other great and prolific authors north of the 49th parallel.

The problem with my books and I knew this from the start, is that the age group is pretty small and, of course they are Christian books, which makes the audience even smaller. Oh well, I certainly published with my eyes wide open.

This week my second book ‘Animals of the New Testament’ was reviewed by the Christian Children’s Book Review.  It was not a good review.  The actual overall rating was ‘ho-hum.’  Oh well.  They took exception to the price, which I agree is too high, but set by the publisher, so I have no control over that. They also took exception to there not being enough pictures.  That was mostly controlled by what I could afford and since I decided to pack six stories in each book, there was only one picture followed by three pages of text.

They also had major issues with the book as it was taken as fact.  Yes, I do have a line of scripture at the beginning of each story to say where the facts were.  And yes, I inserted animals to help children remember the stories.  The critic felt that was too much of a stretch.

I believe that taken in the right light, that the books have merit and for those who don’t take the Bible literally, it might work better for them.  I’m quite sure that there were many other minor characters not mentioned in the Bible.  I did stay true to what animals do live in the region of the world that the stories took place--hence no polar bears or penguins!

Well, I keep plugging away.  As I mentioned to one publisher yesterday, ‘Books are only a tiny bit writing and publishing and a huge amount of marketing!’ I think that any author will agree with that.

As often happens to me, I left the event yesterday with more books than I arrived with.  That is the problem when you are not only a writer, but also a reader!  Not to mention that Christmas is coming and I bought some as gifts!

I pray that everyone has a great week and don’t sweat the critics!  If in your heart of hearts, you believe you are doing something worthwhile, carry on!  God bless you all.