The Holy Grail for Authors

Every business has a pinnacle of success. It is the ultimate mark of achievement. In book publishing, much of this mark of success is tied to winning a particular award or getting your book on a particular bestseller list.

The ultimate bestseller list is to see your book on the New York Times bestseller list.. If you study this particular group of authors, you will notice the same names repeatedly land on this list. 

When an author lands on the New York Times list, the achievement is forever carried with their publishing life. They are introduced as a New York Times bestselling author. In many ways, it is the holy grail of publishing to achieve such a milestone.

I’ve never achieved such a milestone but I know a number of authors who have reached this goal. Last Thursday, I moderated a panel with three members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors who have reached this milestone and become New York Times bestselling authors.

I wrote some these words in another airplane on the way to this event. As the moderator, I pulled together the speakers and organized the session into three parts: the pitch or the proposal, the writing and the promotion and life changes that came from the experience. 

I asked each speaker to pull together some tips and suggestions into a handout. This handout was given electronically to the conference attendees. Also I printed a number of copies that I hauled to the event.

This event is at a "members only session" for the ASJA. In other words, you have to be a member of this organization (about 1400) and have registered for the conference and traveled to New York City for the event (an even smaller number).  Several other workshops were going on at the same time but I had a good number in this session.

Originally I scheduled four speakers and at the last minute one of them got ill and could not attend. Yet her information is in the handout. Here’s the handout for this event. I found this document insightful and hopefully you will as well. It is nine pages of solid information and insight.

I give it to you in hopes it will help your writing life.