How to become a best-selling author
I don’t know, do you? Maybe I should ask the odious Jeffrey. All I know is that having written three books, had this last one and the one before serialised in both the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times and had great reviews, the only real money I ever seem to make from my books is when my publisher sells them to other publishers or the papers start a bidding war to serialise them.
Ciao Bella is doing OK. Waterstone’s in the King’s Road has it in the window (or it did last time I was there, I even have a photo) it is on the tables at the front of the shop and I have been droning on about it endlessly on the radio, in the papers, even a TV appearance. So why is the odious Jeffrey on the bestseller list and I’m not? Is it because he writes a better book? I don’t think so. Is it because people don’t want to read a better book? Everyone I know (even strangers) who has read Ciao Bella loves it. So what’s going wrong?
Having spent most of my adult life trying, fighting to get a book published I thought that would be it. Instant fame and fortune, goodbye to my day job. But it hasn’t worked out that way, at least not yet. Oh well, as I heard in that oracle of common sense, The Simpsons, “forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling”.
25 Nov 2006 helena
Hi Helena,
Golly, I never look up these post a comment do da’s but I just finished Ciao Bella and had to tell you direct that I enjoyed it enormously! I was so keen to read what else you had to say about writing the book.
Your meeting with your father in the fog on the beach was so beautifully described…the book was an incredible set of stories woven together and it will be wonderful for your children to have.
Contrasting it with my own upbringing was depressing (…”brought up on farm in Australian outback…sheep farmer father has no clue who Dante was but showed me lots of paddocks…so useful when trying to get ahead in the music industry in London”)
Many thanks and best wishes, Carmen
Hejsan Helena!
Hoppas du inte har något emot att jag skriver på svenska. Efter att ha läst “Two Lipsticks and a Lover” Har jag via amazon beställt ciao Bella Jag ser framemot att läsa den, och så även min granne
Lycka till !
Kram, Kajsa
..
Hi Carmen
Many thanks for your message. I thikn the Australian outback sounds very glam, and Dante can get tedious, especially when you’re 14 and in love with John Travolta….
All best
Helena