The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author - Chapter 13

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Chapter 13

Having determined that we were going to publish with Authorhouse and negotiated a price, we decided to give the book a test run before we spent the big bucks.
We printed the manuscript and took it to OfficeMax and had ten copies printed and spiral bound. We distributed the copies to friends and family and held our breath.
Mixed reviews.
One copy went to my 46 year old son who was a 22 year police veteran. He immediately pointed out that police departments in the real world don’t operate like depicted in my story. DUH! I reminded him that this was not a “true crime” drama, but a comedy/mystery. It doesn’t have to be real! Naturally, I was disappointed, but then they gave the manuscript to my daughter-in-law’s eighty-something grandmother who LOVED IT. Right On!
We gave a copy to another published writer in our small town. Her book was an autobiography of her life growing up and published by a Christian based publisher. She liked the book but couldn’t give us a review at that time because of off-color language. OOPS!
We gave a copy to some “senior” friends of ours who are avid readers and own an orchard on the highway to Branson, Mo. When they read the chapter where Walt and Maggie take a trip to Branson, they wondered why they didn’t stop at the orchard, so I re-wrote the chapter to include the orchard. They loved it!
We gave a copy to Peg’s 87 year old mother who lives in a retirement village and reads a novel every two days. She has read hundreds of books and knows every author. She was the one who needed to love it because she was our target audience. She absolutely ate it up and passed it around the complex for her other senior friends to read. She said one lady laughed so hard she almost peed her pants. BINGO!
We soon discovered you can’t please everyone, but we pleased our target audience and you can’t beat that.
FULL SPEED AHEAD!