Time to Write

Should you walk away from BookWalker?

BookWalker is a business that has been sending out lots of emails to authors, offering to help them market their books.

The price? A mere $2939.00.

If you are even considering spending that kind of money you definitely need to do your due diligence. Fortunately, the excellent "Writer Beware" blog has done some of it for you. Here's a small sample, about the BookWalker website:

"Similarly, there’s nothing to back up the promotion and relationship claims: no client names, no examples of successful PR campaigns, no mention of who the partner literary agents, collaborating editors, etc. actually are."

That alone should be enough to set off alarm bells, and there's plenty more.

Based on the information in the Writer Beware look at BookWalker, my advice is, don't walk--run!

 

If It Hasn't Happened for You Yet

It can be frustrating to keep on writing while waiting for your break. Sometimes we wonder whether we're just wasting our time. All those days, weeks, months, years with nothing happening.

Of course, it's not really that nothing is happening. You're constantly learning, improving, and bringing new stories to life. The part that hasn't happened yet is the recognition from others, like editors or producers, of the value of what you're creating. And that hurts.

I have experienced this myself, and at times it has put me off even submitting material. I love the process of creating. The process of marketing? Not so much. But, of course, we have to do both. Both call for patience. Here's what the poet Rilke wrote about that:

"Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!"

That's the lesson I have to learn and re-learn. Maybe it'll help you, too.