Words I Write Crazy: Bottled Abyss: Guest Post

Monday, October 15, 2012

Bottled Abyss: Guest Post

Today I'd like to welcome over Benjamin Kane Ethridge, author of Bottled Abyss, over for a guest post!

Get some readers, will ya?
By Benjamin Kane Ethridge

I want to talk about that published book of yours, but I need to make something clear. With two novels published and another about to come out at the end of this month, I still feel unequipped to offer advice to other writers. We go down such diverse paths that I am loathe to explain the terrain another travels. I’ve started my career in the independent press market. Others started with a mid-list publisher and then others begin with a large New York Publishing house. Any advice about writing will take a different shape from each different approach. Yet, there is connectivity here; I’ve spoken to successful writers from most backgrounds now, from self-publishers all the way to New York Times Best Sellers, and I’ve scraped together one common truth among them: you must have an audience.

Publishing can be Darwinistic at best. I’ve seen some great talents fade into nothing because sales didn’t justify their existence. Of course, some self pubbies might enter into a delusional phase and keep cranking out books regardless, but I’m going to assume that after mass rejection from the rest of the world, there is no choice but to hang up your hat.

Well-published people are in a different spot. They don’t want to descend into the small press because that might show some sort of failure or fall on their part. Not all of them are this self-conscious, but I’ve met some who literally don’t publish anything again until another big house takes them back. With a bad sales history, holding out like that might define their death in the market place, but that’s, of course, up to them.

I read somewhere that all you need is a great book and the rest will take care of itself. That’s lopsided advice though. You need a great book and you need people to read it. That readership needs to be sustained too. Promotion is a big part of that and unless you have a million dollar ad campaign, you’re going to need to get down in the ditches and do most of the dirty work yourself. That goes for writers who are published by large houses too, because you want to keep your bosses fat and happy. Face it bravely: the paradigm has changed. Reading is not the number one form of entertainment, not even a close second. So it’s up to you to hunt down your audience and make them love you.

Good luck to us all.

From Goodreads:
YOU'VE TAKEN PAYMENT FOR A DEATH THAT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU. WHAT WERE THREE ARE NOW ONE, AND I AM FURY...

Herman and Janet Erikson are going through a crisis of grief and suffering after losing their daughter in a hit and run. They've given up on each other, they've given up on themselves. They are living day by day. One afternoon, to make a horrible situation worse, their dog goes missing in the coyote-infested badlands behind their property. Herman, resolved in preventing another tragedy, goes to find the dog, completely unaware he's on a hike to the River Styx, which according to Greek myth was the border between the Living World and the world of the Dead. Long ago the gods died and the River dried up, but a bottle containing its waters still remains in the badlands. What Herman discovers about the dark power contained in those waters will change his life forever...

Bio:
Benjamin Kane Ethridge is the Bram Stoker Award winning author of the novel BLACK & ORANGE (Bad Moon Books 2010). For his master's thesis he wrote, "CAUSES OF UNEASE: The Rhetoric of Horror Fiction and Film." Available in an ivory tower near you. Benjamin lives in Southern California with his wife and two creatures who possess stunning resemblances to human children. When he isn't writing, reading, videogaming, Benjamin's defending California's waterways and sewers from pollution.

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