The Only Path to Success

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

It sounds counterintuitive. The only path to success is through regular failure. To consider this topic, let’s begin with a couple of stories. 

Thomas Edison invented numerous inventions which we continue to use today--like the light bulb. “But despite his outstanding success, Edison failed frequently. In fact, it sometimes took thousands of attempts – literally – to perfect his experimentation. That was exactly the case when Edison was working to devise a novel storage battery. According to his close friend Walter S. Mallory, Edison had already tried 9,000 experiments and hadn’t yet found a solution. When Mallory commented about the lack of results, Edison promptly responded, “Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!”

Or consider James Dyson and his 5,126 failures to invent a vacuum cleaner. acuum cleaner. “That’s how many failures James Dyson went through before finding the winning prototype for his first vacuum cleaner. Five thousand — one hundred — twenty-six! That meant four years of developing the product, going deep into debt and putting up his house as collateral to the bank loan. He pinned everything on this invention without any guarantees that it would ever work. That level of determination and patience is absolutely mind-blowing to me. James is now the fourth richest person in the UK with an estimated net worth of £16.3 billion. Well deserved, I say!”

As writers, we face a great deal of rejection. Many people have forgotten those early days of finding a publisher for Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, the co-authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul (one of the bestselling series in the English language). Their submission was rejected 140 times which is a lot of rejection. Yet they continued looking for a publisher. Mark wrote this story in the foreword of my book Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. Follow this link to dowload a free section of this book including the foreword.  

If your work is getting rejected from editors and literary agents, keep submitting and writing. Your persistent effort will pay off if you continue looking for the right fit for your work. I admit the path is not an easy one. I’ve been rejected many times in my own journey. I’ve come to understand that rejection is not person but saying my writing was not the right fit for that particular editor or agent. I have to keep submitting and keep connecting with new people to find the right fit for my work.

The process or journey is not easy but possible. I encourage you to: 

--keep making new connections. Who you know is almost as important as what you know.

--keep learning your craft and reading how-to books, articles and online courses. I’ve been studying publishing for decades and continue to learn new aspects all the time. 

--keep trying new types of writing. In the free excerpt from Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams, I have a detailed list of the variety of writing. You may not be a book author but you may be excellent at magazine articles. It’s a conversation I had recently with a contributing editor at Guideposts (one of the top circulation publications). She hasn’t published a book but loves writing short magazine articles and reaching millions with her writing.  

The only way to fail in your publishing efforts is to quit the journey. I encourage you to continue to move forward on the only path to success. Let me know what you think in the comments below. 

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Ideas Are Fragile

 

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

Years ago, I took a continuing class from bestselling author and Guideposts Contributing Editor Elizabeth Sherrill. She said, “Writers are swimming in a sea of ideas. You have to carefully select which one to pursue.” While I have forgotten other things from those workshops, this concept has stuck with me and something I want to address in this article. As Earl Nightingale said,  “Everything begins with an idea.” Ideas are fragile and need to be guarded and most importantly executed.

Capture The Idea

As you read books or magazine articles or watch something on television, ideas are swimming through your head. There are many different tools for capturing ideas. Some people use their smartphone to make a quick note. I often use a piece of paper or a post-it note from my desk. The post-it notes are good because after I handle the idea, I will throw it away.

Pitch the Idea 

 

As I’ve mentioned in these articles, timing is a key element with the idea. You have to pitch it at the right time to the right person. Maybe it's a magazine article idea and you write a query letter which you send to several different publications at the same time. Of course, you mention in the pitch that it is a simultaneous submission. 

Or you have written a book proposal which is getting out into the market and getting turned down. The rejections happen to all of us as writers, but you are working for the one person who will say yes to your idea. 

Recently an author signed their contract with Morgan James Publishing. This author has been on quite the journey with his book idea. He had a literary agent who pitched the idea to various publishers but no one offered a contract. Then he hired an editor to write his book manuscript and pitched it to me. I championed the book to my colleagues and this author got a contract and is going to publish his book with us. See the persistent effort in this example? Timing and the right connection are critical for the idea to happen.

Take Action 

The final and important step with your idea is to take action or execution. From my experience, the sooner you can take action, the better. 

To give you an example of taking action, next month I will be teaching at the Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference. I’ve not been to this particular event but I know a number of the faculty. If you can, I encourage you to attend this event since I understand it is a smaller conference. This week the conference director wrote that a broadcaster was coming to the event and could record an interview (an idea). I studied my schedule and looked at the interview calendar. Then I scheduled a time. I pitched an interview about my Book Proposals That Sell book. I have prepared a list of possible questions for an interview and I mailed a book to the broadcaster. 

When the broadcaster saw my interview, he reached out and reminded me of our interview several years ago about Billy Graham. We have never met but we will meet next month during our scheduled interview.  

Will others on the conference faculty, take action and schedule an interview? I have no idea but I saw the opportunity, seized it and took action. It’s the same process each of us have to do with an idea.

What ideas are swimming through your head? How are you taking action as a writer to capture, pitch and execute these ideas? As writers, we have a world of opportunity around us. We need to be constantly expanding our connections and continually pitching and executing our ideas. What actions are you going to take today? Let me know in the comments below.

 

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Authors Should Get Full Information

On a regular basis I speak with authors that I've met at conferences about the publishing program at Intermedia Publishing Group where I work as a publisher.
 

In recent weeks, I've talked to a few authors who decided to publish with other companies. One novelist told me, “I'm going with CrossBooks Publishing because they are part of Lifeway and I'm a Baptist.”

Another author told me, “I'm going with WestBow Press because they are a part of Thomas Nelson.”

What would-be authors may not know is that “publisher” may not really be a part of those companies, but rather what turns out to be quite a money maker for that entity. Would-be authors need to take a hard look at these companies and who is doing the actual customer service, production and marketing for these books. 

I suspect these authors will be shocked when they discover the truth. Many authors are putting their trust in a referring company without looking closely at the details and receiving the full picture.

I encourage you to read the details in this March 7, 2012 article in Publishers Weekly. The article is about the parent company for 12 different publishing brands and how Author Solutions is looking for a buyer. 

A careful reading of this article shows the huge amounts of money being generated from this entity that published more than 27,500 titles (that's different books) in 2011 with an estimate of each author generating $5,000 for the company—or spending that much money with them. 

Here's the previously hidden information revealed in this article about Author Solutions. “Its workforce totals 1,565 full-time employees with by far the greatest number, 1,215, located in its facilities in the Philippines which handles not only production but sales and marketing as well.”

Authors who have worked with the “brands” of different publishing entities report that their customer service person changed with each call. One author who published with CrossBooks told me she was unsure if a person of faith even edited her book or not. Her concerns were valid because unknown to her, she was working with people in the Philippines.

I've been on the phone with the customer service people from one of these brands. When you fill out an online form, you start what they call a “lead” and the customer service people begin to telephone and email you. I asked one of them where they were located and they responded, “Bloomington, Indiana.” (The location of the parent company Author Solutions.) I suggested they were in the Philippines and the customer service person denied it and said he was in the United States.

Why do the authors go with these companies? They believe that it gets them attention from a company like Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publisher, or Lifeway, the large Baptist publishing arm, or Guideposts or Writer's Digest or Hay House. The truth is something different.

During the last year WestBow Press (Thomas Nelson’s Author Solutions arm) did 1,000 new titles. I understand on average an author spends $8,000 to get a book produced. I do not know the percentage of revenue for Thomas Nelson from those authors but it is significant because of the volume.

Under the Author Solutions model, they set the retail price of the book and then the author buys the book at 60% off the retail price. The company makes their income from printing so they set a high retail price. Some would call it inflated. I spoke with an author this week who had a hardcover novel with WestBow. This first-time novelist had a retail price of $33.50 for a hardcover book. Yet the establishment of the price was outside of the author's control.

Recently one of my friends published through Inspired Voices, a service of Guideposts. She wanted to send me a review copy of her book and it took several weeks and multiple emails and telephone calls before it happened. Again this author was unaware that she was communicating with someone in the Philippines. It explains some of the communication challenges.

Authors need to get full information before they plunk down their money and begin working with these different entities. They have dreams of getting picked up with the referring entity—which has happened once or twice in the midst of thousands of other books being produced. The chances of it actually happening are about as good as winning a lottery or maybe you have a better chance with the lottery in my view. Yes, it is that slim.

There are twelve (an even dozen) of these publishing brands in the marketplace and authors need to fully understand what they are doing before taking the leap in this direction.

Why do these respected companies like Thomas Nelson, Lifeway, Guideposts, Writer's Digest and others join forces and produce these titles? It's not hard to understand. They are in business, and businesses need to make money. You as an author are in business as well. As such, I encourage you to look carefully at the company you are partnering with. 

Yes, you may be promised that you will be connected or helped. Look beyond the promises to look carefully at who is doing the work. and their results. How much knowledge of the American marketplace can you really expect from a company based offshore? This is the company that’s setting the prices and deciding on the marketing. 

As with any business venture, buyer beware. Make sure you will get your money’s worth and that the promises will be kept. 

The Unexpected Role Model

I loved to come into my California office on a Sunday afternoon. At the time, I had small children at home and I found it hard to write and meet some of my freelance deadlines. So I would often slip off to the office for a few afternoon hours. To give you the right timeframe, it was in the mid-80s and I rode a Honda Scooter back and forth from home to the office.

On one of these Sunday afternoons, when I came into the building, I noticed the lights were on at the director's office and since everything else was still, I walked past to see what was happening. A friend of the director, Jamie Buckingham, was sitting at the keyboard. He looked up and greeted me and said, "I'm a jungle pilot today flying planes in the Amazon." The writer of such bestsellers as Run Baby Run by Nicky Cruz, Jamie was a prolific writer and yet a couple of times a year, he wrote some material that never held his by-line and he didn't earn a dime. As a pure ghostwriting ministry, Jamie wrote all of the public material from our director.

When readers would rave to me about the director's engaging storytelling, I would always smile and say, "Yes the writing is terrific." I knew the director didn't write any of it but the words came from Jamie's pen.

Many readers of these entries might not remember Jamie Buckingham but millions of people are still reading his writing and his ghostwriting. He was a favorite columnist for Charisma magazine and died of liver cancer in 1992. I learned a great deal from his life and his teaching about writing--through his words and through his actions.

Here's a story that few people remember about Jamie but I write it to encourage you about second chances. Dean Merrill wrote this story about Jamie in a little book from Zondervan published in 1981 called Another Chance, How God Overrides Our Big Mistakes (long out of print but you can get as an inexpensive used book). On page 59, Merrill includes an excerpt from Buckingham's Where Eagles Soar, "Well-known author and speaker Jamie Buckingham describes how God painfully confronted him with a sin--not once but twice. He was a successful pastor in his mid-thirties at the time, but only after this canyon of embarrassment did his wider ministry as a writer emerge."

In October 1965, a group of 20 deacons in a large Baptist church in South Carolina confronted him with stern faces. They forced his resignation and he writes about calling his wife and asking her to come get him at the church. "She found me, the shepherd of the flock, crouched in a fetal position in a basement hallway, huddled against the landing of the stairs. 'It would be better for you, for this church if I were dead,' I sobbed." She comforted. She smoothed. She never asked for details. There was no need."..."There was a desperate reaching out for friends, only to find they had all deserted. I was like a leper. Unclean. I wrote letters--more than 90 of them--to pastoral and denominational friends. Only one man dared respond and that was with a curt, 'I received your letter and shall be praying for you.'"

The Buckinghams returned to his home state of Florida and led a small but growing church. "But as Vance Havner once remarked. It doesn't do any good to change labels on an empty bottle.Nothing inside me had changed. I was still the magnificent manipulator, the master of control, the defender of my position. I was still pushing people around. I was far more politician than a man of God."...:"Soon echoes from the past began drifting down to Florida...I continued to fight, to brave the growing onslaught of fact that kept building against me. It took 15 months of a stormy relationship before the Florida church cast me into the waves to calm the sea--just like Jonah."..."I had no choice but once again to slink home and huddle with my wife and children while the fire of God continued its purging work. Often, I have discovered, we can not hear God when we are busy. Hearing comes only when we have taken--or are forced to take--times of quietness."

In his idleness, Jamie picked up a copy of Guideposts and learned about their first contest for writers. He submitted a first-person 1,500 word story about a young man who prepared to go to South America as a missionary pilot. "Since I had nothing else to do. I wrote the story and sent it in. On October 1, 1967, "I was stretched out on the bed in the back room of our little rented house when the phone rang. It was the Western Union telegraph office. Jackie took the call and copied the message on a scrap of paper. It was from Leonard LeSourd, editor of Guideposts, stating I was one of the 20 winners--out of more than 2,000 submissions."

At that workshop, Jamie learned more about how to write the stories of others and met the publisher who was looking for someone to write Run Baby Run for Nicky Cruz. His career as a ghostwriter and co-author was born.

It was my privilege for those few years to see Jamie on a regular basis and watch him work. He even taught a several day writer's workshop for our staff during the early days of my own writing life. It was way before I co-authored any books with anyone. In many ways looking back, Jamie served as the unexpected role model for this part of my writing life.