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Adventure writer Antonio Graceffo is originally from Brooklyn, New York. He has a reputation as an aggressive, judgmental, and
provocative author, who writes humorous and insulting books about Southeast Asia. Widely panned, his books are available at amazon.com. He presently lives
in Cambodia, but will be fleeing the country before the publication of his controversial book, Letters from the Penh, which will be available on amazon.com in 2006.
Antonio's latest book: Desert
of Death on Three Wheels is now available on amazon.com
FYI: wanna read
an excerpt?
A writing professor once gave
us this example: What if Charles Dickens had
written the best novel in the universe, and then put it away in a drawer? The answer obviously was that we would never have heard of him.
And the
lesson the professor wanted us to learn was that the writer's work
doesn’t end when we complete the final chapter. We have to continue with
the next
step, which is getting published.
But, unfortunately, the professor
should have continued with the example. What if, after he Charles Dickens published his work, no one read it? That
is the position many new authors find themselves in. When they began writing, they believed that the odds were so severely stacked against
them, being published was so unlikely, that they had no plans beyond this seemingly impossible dream.
If you ask a promising athlete,
“What is your dream, in life?” He will answer, with no hesitation, “I want to win a gold medal in the
Olympics.” But, if you ask him the next question, he will probably stutter. “The
Olympics will be held on a Tuesday. What are you planning to do on
Wednesday?”
Behavioral psychologists, particularly working with athletes and business people, have long taught us that we set our own limits, the glass ceiling,
which we can’t overcome. Success or failure is completely determined by
what we are thinking. Because I have been both a salesman and an athlete,
I have been trained to visualize my success. In my mind, there is a picture
of a very long, difficult road ending at a distant finish-line, where my
books would be published.
If you have been living by a
similar visualization, my suggestion would be to extend that visualization beyond having a book published. After you
cross
that finish line, another very long and bumpy road begins, leading to your
book becoming a financial success.
The way you get people to buy your
book is by getting people to talk about
your book. Conventional ways of doing this include, asking newspapers and magazines to write reviews, donating copies to libraries and schools,
doing talks and book signings, and buying media ad space. Of course, you can
increase your book sales by publishing articles about related subjects.
Once you have a reputation for being an expert in your field, people will buy your books. New ways of getting people to talk about your books is to go
on
internet forums and chat rooms, and start a conversation about your book.
At least once a week, I do my
fame check. I put my name into all of the internet search engines and see what people are saying about me. The
strongest indicators are when you find reviews and chats which were done
independent of any action by you.
On reviews: We all love getting good reviews. They are a boost to
the ego, and help us
along the long path of constant rejection, which is the life of the professional writer. But what about the bad reviews? What if you go in a chat room and find out that someone has panned your book? It can be
disheartening. But, as writers we are leaving ourselves open to criticism.
Other professions can hide their feelings. A policeman may disagree with
the laws he is forced to enforce. A teacher may oppose a school policy. A business executive may think his boss is a jerk. But, they would never say
this in public, because they would lose their job.
At the risk of sounding cynical, most people can live a life of denial and then switch their outer
face, when the wind of public opinion changes direction. But writers lack this option. Our job is all about expressing our feelings and opinions. If
we try to hide our true self, our writing will suffer. And regardless of
what opinions you have written on paper, your true feelings will show through.
People will always have opinions.
And no matter how good you are, at least 10% of the people will dislike you. Believe it or not, but somewhere there
is a bitter man who hates Mother Teresa because he feels she was just too
selfish.
Publicity: So, how does a
writer deal with negative reviews? The only way we can
survive in this business without resorting to substance abuse or suicide
(i.e. Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson...)
is that we
must learn to turn adversity into opportunity. Bad publicity may be bad,
but it is publicity.
You get paid when people by your book. And, you get the same money if they
hated it or loved it. Obviously, we like hearing praise on our writing,
and word of mouth advertising is often the best way to sell books. There are
so many books available in bookstores and online, we often chose the ones recommended by a friend. Sales statistics for other types of products and services suggest that if people are satisfied with a product, they will
tell two people. If they are dissatisfied they will tell ten.
Only a small percentage of people
who liked a book or article will write a letter to the editor. But people who hated it always write. And worst of all, a lot of people with too much time on their hands are bitter people. They might be sick, injured, unemployed, or incarcerated, and have nothing
to fill their day, beyond writing hateful letters of complaints to editors
and authors.
It is normal human behavior that
we spend more time talking about things we don’t like, than talking about things we like.
A satisfied customer might say,
“I ate at that new Thai restaurant last night, and I liked it. The food was good. The prices were fair. And the waiters gave excellent service.”
But, the dissatisfied customer
will say, “You will not believe what happened to me last night. I tried out that new Thai restaurant, and, from the
minute I walked in, everything went wrong. The waiter...The food...” The dissatisfied customer will launch into a tirade, spinning a narrative
tale, with conflict, plots, sub-plots, and maybe even space aliens. Hemingway,
on his best day, couldn’t tell a story as well as a dissatisfied customer.
The
satisfied customer, on the other hand, only talked about the restaurant
for two seconds.
After the satisfied person gives his short review, the listener says, very
noncommittally, “I’ll have to try that place.” After the
dissatisfied customer finishes his lengthy and entertaining saga, the listener says, because he believes he is expected to, “I better stay away from that
place.”
But in the back of his mind, he is thinking, “It couldn’t be that bad.
I’d
better go find out for myself.” Or, maybe he is thinking about the dissatisfied customer, “That guy is such a complainer. If he didn’t
like it, it’s probably good.”
One friend pours himself a glass
of milk from the refrigerator, and quickly spits it out. “It’s spoiled!” He yells. The other friend takes sip,
also spits it out, and shouts. “You’re right!” Then he calls to someone
in the other room, “Come try this milk, it’s spoiled.”
You see the worst movie of your
life, and call a friend. “I hated the new Vanna White movie.” The friend says, “But, I told you it was bad, why
did you go see?” You give some feeble excuse like. “I wanted to see for
myself.”
Selling books: In popular
culture, and this extends to books, there is a certain shock
factor which helps sell books. Most of us weren’t interested in reading
a book with the title: Satanic Verses, until we heard that the
author had to go into hiding because of death threats. Then it became a best seller. In Southeast Asia, where I live and work, there is a book about Cambodia called Off the Rails in Phnom Penh. Almost immediately after
publication, the book was debunked as a mixture of exaggerations and sensationalism.
And since the author conducted
much of his research in brothels, and while
buying and taking drugs, the book raises a number of moral questions. If
you mention this book in a group of ex-pats, anywhere in Indochina, most will say they hated it. But more importantly, nearly 100% of them will say that
they have read it. And the ones who haven’t read it, will say something like, “I have been meaning to read that to see why everyone hated it so
much.”
Bad publicity is such good
advertising, the author should pay me for this article.
Someone once said that you could
judge a man by his enemies. If someone important or famous hates your book, this is almost a prescription for success.
Charlton Heston probably didn’t give favorable reviews to
Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine.”
I enjoyed “The Ten Commandments” as much as the next guy, but I still
paid $12 to watch the movie.
Most Kerouac fans know of the
famous review by Truman Capote. After he read On the Road, he said
“That’s not writing, that’s just typing.” But, I don’t know of a single person
who cites
this quote as a reason for not reading On the Road. “If
Truman Capote didn’t
like it, I won’t read it.”
In my field of adventure travel
writing, one of the most famous literary
rivalries of all time was between Eric Newby and explorer Wilfred Thesiger.
Thesiger was a brilliant man, hardened by years of privation exploring the
deserts of Africa and Central Asia. During a brief meeting in the Hindu
Kush, he once called travel writer, Eric Newby, a pansy for sleeping on an
inflatable mattress. The story of this silly insult has been retold so
many
times, it will probably outlive any of the great works written by either man. When Thesiger died last year, I went on line gathering as many of his
obituaries as possible. At least half of them mentioned the fact that he
had crossed Africa’s Empty Quarter more than once, and called Eric Newby a pansy.
Both men are heroes to me. And once again, I
don’t believe that this insult
put anyone off of reading Eric Newby.
As writers, our jobs is to
entertain, to inform, and to provoke critical
thought. If someone famous thought enough about
you to hate you, you should feel flattered. And, if they went the extra mile and wrote a scathing criticism
of your work, glow in the spotlight. Fame and financial success will not
be far off.
Here's an excerpt
from Antonio Gaceffo's latest book entitled The Desert of Death on
Three wheels
The fantasy: On the fifth day, the water ran out.
Thousands of kilometers of parched
earth lay between me and the next Uyghur village, where I hoped to
trade my father’s
watch for food and water. Having no other choice, I hacked open
the camel’s hump with a machete, and drank the water stored in the
spongy white flesh. It
smelled of rotten fish, but, slowly, I felt it bringing
me back to live. The sand, which blew at fifty miles an hour, drew
blood on my exposed
skin. I collapsed beside the carcass of the suffering camel,
and snuggled tight against its lifeless belly, hoping the sandstorm
wouldn’t burry me
alive.
The reality: Actually, that was how I pictured a
sandstorm in the desert would
be. But when I was provisioning up back in Aksu, I found out that
camels were out of my
price range. Instead, I was feeling extremely un-macho,
pushing a silly looking three-wheeled bicycle. The flower covered
basket and the bell had
already broken off, but a few of the brightly colored
streamers still dangled from the handlebars.
And as for my father’s watch, it was plastic.
In the rainforest of central and South America,
there is a species of frog, which
comes in a variety of fluorescent colors: orange, yellow, red, and
bright green. They are
shinny and enticing, like living candy. The first thing
you want to do when you see one is touch it. If you are a predator,
the first thing you want
to do is pop this exotic creature in your mouth.
This species of frog bears the name Poison Arrow
Frog, because its skin secrets
a chemical so toxic that the natives rub the edges of their weapons
on it before setting out
on the hunt. Touching this frog would be the last thing
you would ever do. And yet, the desire is there.
A deadly thing can be compelling.
The Taklamakan Desert, also called The Desert of
Death, is located in China’s
Xinjiang Province, formerly East Turkistan. It is the second largest
desert on Earth.
Scientists consider it to be the most dangerous desert in the
world. But I am not sure how they measure these things. All
deserts look pretty dangerous to me.
I met my first sand storm early in the morning.
After hours of traveling at a
snail’s pace, I had given up on ridding. The wind was too fierce. Even
standing up on the
pedals I could make no headway. So, I limped along, dragging
the useless hunk of metal behind me, like Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s
old partner, damned to
dragging the weight of his sins chained to his body.
I would have liked nothing better than to have just
thrown the bike away. But
that would have left me with no wheels. And, I would surely have died of
thirst before I could
make it to the next oasis. The other thought which crossed
my mind was to find shelter and wait out the storm. But this was out
because even sitting
still I would need to drink ten to fourteen liters of water
a day. The storm could last indefinitely. Glancing at my reserve, I
counted only five
liters. I had no choice but to press on.
Contact the author Antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com .
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