I've always been a "swing for the fences" kind of guy. And why not? If you connect, it's out of the park. But even if you don't, and just make contact, it can still fall in for a single.
Enough baseball.
A perfect example is my friend Kimberly. Several years ago, my wife and I visited Kimberly and her husband in the Bay area. Kimberly had recently published her book, Scrappy Project Management. She asked me if I wanted to write a book for the Scrappy label. Her ultimate plan was to develop the Scrappy series to the point where someone like "For Dummies" would want to buy it, as in, buy the whole concept. So I wrote and they published Scrappy Information Security & Scrappy BCP. There are now several other Scrappy books as well. As far as I know, For Dummies has not come a'calling. So technically, she / we did not accomplish the goal of selling the series. Is she disappointed? Hardly, considering that Scrappy Project Management consistently ranks in the top-50,000 best sellers on Amazon. (That's good.) Mine, unfortunately, do not get that high...yet! And though Kimberly may not be earning "retirement money" from the sales of her book, I'm sure it's funding some nice dinners and fine bottles of wine.
A perfect example is my friend Kimberly. Several years ago, my wife and I visited Kimberly and her husband in the Bay area. Kimberly had recently published her book, Scrappy Project Management. She asked me if I wanted to write a book for the Scrappy label. Her ultimate plan was to develop the Scrappy series to the point where someone like "For Dummies" would want to buy it, as in, buy the whole concept. So I wrote and they published Scrappy Information Security & Scrappy BCP. There are now several other Scrappy books as well. As far as I know, For Dummies has not come a'calling. So technically, she / we did not accomplish the goal of selling the series. Is she disappointed? Hardly, considering that Scrappy Project Management consistently ranks in the top-50,000 best sellers on Amazon. (That's good.) Mine, unfortunately, do not get that high...yet! And though Kimberly may not be earning "retirement money" from the sales of her book, I'm sure it's funding some nice dinners and fine bottles of wine.
The point is, aim high, but be satisfied with reaching smaller milestones.
So here I am. I would love to get some of my poetry published. Again, I'm trying to build up my resume, my CV, in the hope of 1) attracting general attention to my work and, 2) giving publishers a varied list of works that were good enough to attract someone's attention, in order to help boost my cred when they're considering whatever project I've submitted to them. I read somewhere words to the effect of, "Don't try to convince a publisher to release a book of your poetry. Get poems published in a number of magazines and anthologies, and then you'll have a book." Good advice, which I had planned to follow.
But...
While looking for magazines and anthologies, I came across Manic D Press, which says on their website, more or less, "Hey, send us 5 - 10 poems if you want to have us consider a book of your poetry." This is the same publisher I referred to a few posts back, when I presented my poem, "On Writing In Coffeeshops."
OK, why not? So I just sent 5 - 10 today. Worst case, they say, "No thanks," and I fall back on my plan of looking for magazines and anthologies.
But if they say "yes" ...
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