A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: The Unique Life Cycle of a Book
It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic is a look at the life cycle of books -- how they differ, how do you define "success" and "failure," and what authors can expect over a lifetime. Here at MSI Press, we have seen a variety of paths taken by successful books (and ones that have not fared as well). For lack of better nomenclature, I would say that we have hares, tortoises, dogs, cats, and mountain goats. Hares As in the fable, the hares start out fast. These books have strong launches, sell hundreds of books in the first few weeks (from a larger press, these might show up as thousands of sales) and then, quite suddenly s