A Small But Experienced Readership: a rant.

As William Goldman said in Adventures in the Film Trade:

"Nobody knows anything...Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one."

The same's true of any creative endeavour. Publishers and Potters and Gallery Owners are Tweeting like mad at the moment, but will it help sales?  Nobody knows.

So, what are the basics for selling a work of art? Firstly, people need to know about it (big publicity campaign, stack 'em high if it's the sort of thing you can stack high, such as a jug or a cushion or a book, word-of-mouth). Secondly, people need to believe they'll derive some advantage from experiencing it.

This second reason is why I fear my next book, due out next month, is doomed. The target readership, according to its publicity, is really vanishingly small:

'Don Quixote thinks he is the bravest knight-errant in all of Spain but he is the most deluded! Follow him on his hilarious misadventures! Treetops Greatest Stories is a series of timeless classics for children aged 711.'

Ah well...I try not to fill this blog with plugs for my books, but if you do happen to know any 711-year-old children then perhaps you'd mention my version of Don Quixote to them. 

It's out on the 9th May.


 Āraiši Windmill on Drabeši estate, photo by Modris Putns

Thing To Remember Today: nobody knows anything. The word body in Old English was bodig, and it's related to the Old Norse buthkr, which means box.