Wheatmark Author Climbing the Charts at Amazon.com

On Wednesday, November 26, 2008, Jim Best's book, The Shopkeeper, rose all the way to #2464 on the Amazon sales rank. This is 2,464 out of 5,000,000 and it puts his book in the top 0.0005% of all titles available. What's more interesting is that he's done it all without putting money into marketing. He's put plenty of time in, certainly, but since publishing with Wheatmark, Jim has utilized his Amazon page as his greatest marketing tool. He has 18 five-star reviews. He has a blog on Amazon. He's also published a second book with Wheatmark, The Shut Mouth Society, which ranks at #15,953.

In fact, if you went to Amazon and typed in Western, in the book department, The Shopkeeper would come in at #3, right behind Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian at #2.

An independent fiction author can compete.

National Novel Writing Month

One of my favorite episodes of the Gilmore Girls is the one where the town is about to have a knit-a-thon to raise money for their beloved, and apparently essential for transportation, bridge.

That's kind of what National Novel Writing Month is about, but without the bridge or the knitting or the extra long scarves. The goal for participants, according to the official site, is a 50, 000 word novel by midnight on November 30.

As many Wheatmark authors and employees alike know, writing a novel is not easy. Character development and plot plans can thwart the most enthusiastic writer. Some may call it writer's block. I call it, "Everytime I Sit Down to Write a Book."

Although for the record I'm not participating in the project, I think the idea of forcing yourself to begin writing everyday to a word limit, throwing caution to the wind when it comes to normally important novel-writing concepts, like for example being coherent, is an amazing and freeing idea.

Why get bogged down in the details if the details keep getting stuck?

I remember "free writing" periods in school were frustrating because I never had enough time, pencil lead (it was a while ago, OK ya'll?), paper, and eraser surface area to plan, write, rewrite, rehash, and deliberate my story. Free my foot. I was one stressed out eighth grader.

The spirit behind the the NaNoWriMo (Yep. It even has an awesome acronym.) of just getting the ya-yas out in order to achieve massive amounts of writing is a great way to think about your next project, and maybe the project after that.

By just sitting down and letting the story and characters flow ... and maybe some robots from space alongside some make-believe rock stars and a dog that can talk ... will open you up to a whole new perspective on your work.

Now that's a novel idea!