Sara Niles's Blog: Sara Nile's Blog, page 5

The Age of Mega-Authors: over one hundred million book sales

There are best sellers in books, and there are epic, mega-bestsellers: books that have sold over one hundred million copies. The authors who have had the distinction of being included among this very elite group, as mega-authors, are few.

The book by author Agatha Christie that was published in 1939, And Then There Were None reportedly sold over one hundred million copies worldwide; which is no small feat considering the fact the prolific Christie has reportedly sold over four billion books worldwide, making Agatha Christie one of the most prolific authors of all time.

Books that have sold over one hundred million copies include The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien and A Tale of Two Cites by Charles Dickens; both English authors whose long running sales dated back to the nineteenth century, which of course, gave them both a good head start.

Since the dawn of the second millennium, there have been noteworthy authors who may eventually eclipse the former prolific champions for the prize of mega-authors; to name a few:

Barbara Cartland (1 billion), Danielle Steele (800,000,000), and JK Rowling (450,000,000)
From USA Today: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/b...,
Followed by Dean Koontz, Stephen King (350,000,000), and Louis L’Amour (330,000,000), with a pretty long list of authors who have sold over one hundred million books per volumes of work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_... however, there remain two distinct authors who are set far apart from the crowd: Suzanne Collins and E.L. Grey.

E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games topped the list in 2012 of book sales: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
AS of 2012 the Hunger Games reportedly outsold JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with over fifty million copies sold worldwide.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Wow! Now that is a lot of book sales…but wait, Fifty Shades of Grey by Suzanne Collins has sold over seventy million copies, according to the Wall Street Journal in its March 26, 2013 issue: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S...
The latter two authors, American author Suzanne Collins and English author E.L. James, are epic mega-authors whose names will live long in the annals of literature.

The Hunger GamesFifty Shades of Grey

Good Love versus Bad Love

Good Love versus Bad Love:
A Killing Difference

People marry for ‘love’ and they form relationships based on ‘love’-but does that mean that both parties in a love relationship, love the same way? There are two types of love. When I provided domestic violence prevention trainings for grades 1-12, years ago, in order to reach young children who were still in Piaget’s concrete reasoning stage, I had to simplify the differences in the two types of love as ‘Good Love’ and ‘Bad Love':

Good Love is unselfish and unconditional
Bad Love is selfish and conditional

Good Love is not controlling
Bad Love is controlling

Good Love would never hurt the love object
Bad Love can kill the love object-especially if ‘it’ dares to leave them; watch this 48 Hour Special:

https://www.facebook.com/48hours

Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoos Calling …by J.K. Rowling

So the secret is out: J.K. Rowling hid her identity behind the pen name Robert Galbraith in order to pen her second adult book since the Potter series (http://www.hypable.com/2013/08/16/jk-...). Of course, when you are as big and internationally famous as Rowling, there is no use trying to hide. We know who you are, and we will find you, no matter what pseudonym you use.

It seems obvious why Rowling would not want her name to get in the way of her writing-she wanted to be known for her writing and not her name. Either way, the results will be the same: readers read because they want to. There is no way to make a reader love your writing simply because of a name.

So what is the verdict so far, from the true judges, the readers? Good and exceptional.

If you go to Amazon and check the thousands of reviews, they are all overwhelmingly five stars, and I agree: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Cal...
I did not really like her first book: The Casual Vacancy, but this one is much better; she is definitely getting her adult writer’s pen in shape and her adult plots in form. I look forward to more from Rowling, under whatever name she chooses next.

Sex Sells, and it Sells Best in Fantasy Form

The remarkably successful Fifty Shades of Grey by Erica James, or E.L. James, was so successful that it reportedly sold one paperback book per second during the summer of 2012, according to Barbara Walters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRbcL...), to become the fastest selling paperback of all time. The subject matter of Fifty Shades of Grey revolved around sex, but not just regular sex, all forms of sex: bondage and masochism included, or perhaps we should say highlighted.

In USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/bo..., James says in an interview that women all want romance and fantasy, or in other words, most women want to escape into a world of romantic fantasy and forget the chores and the mundane day to day pressures of life; whereas men prefer to escape into a world in which power, action and adventure predominates. The most noticeable gender difference between book buyers is reflected in books sales data. Women are the overall biggest book buyers. In a 2010 news article it was stated that women make up over 60 percent of book buyers and the average age of those women is over 40 (http://seattletimes.com/html/books/20...).

So to recap the idea of break through novels in the book world, women evidently control the market. To test that theory out: Amanda Hocking sold over a million eBooks in which romance and the paranormal made up the plot, Danielle Steele (never forget the mega romance author), who has become her own brand, has sold from 600 to 800 million copies (depending of the source of the count) of her romance novels, which is getting close to the one billion sales mark. The subject matter of Steele’s books deals primarily with romance in every possible setting, and the majority of the buyers are women.

Most recently, Colleen Hoover penned romance novels that appeared to be aimed at the young adult audience, although the numbers of her sales suggest older buyers. The subject? Yes, it is romance and sexy romance (http://bloodybookaholic.blogspot.com/...). I could go on and on, but the finalize the point: if you want to attract the most eager buying crowd , it may be a good idea to write steamy romance aimed at the young adult crowd, while knowing the 42 year-old female buying power will back it up.

I don't write romance novels,and even if I did, there would be no guarantee that I would be able to ‘break into’ the crowded market. When you read the success stories of the authors who have made it big, you find a common denominator in many of the success formulas: luck and timing.

So keep writing and hope for luck, and be ready when the timing is just right.

A Writing Journey

A Most Unusual Life Wish:
A Bucket List to Remember
July 12, 2013

By Sara Niles (A.K.A. Josephine Thompson)
The term ‘bucket list’ is a term that was made more popular by the 2007 movie by the same title: The Bucket List and it means to list things that you want to do before you die. Most people list things that they never got around to, or special achievements that may have been lifetime dreams.

I have one primary thing in my life that has achieved a ‘do or die’, sacred mission status to me: it is the one thing I want to do, no matter what happens in my life. It is the thing that is of greatest importance to me, besides the most obvious and universal goal that most of us who are human share, that of putting family and loved ones first; but in order to clearly articulate why this one thing is so important to me, I have to tell a short version of my long life. The life altering, and consuming mission that I have been propelled into, was aroused by my own personal life experiences and cultivated by unfortunate circumstances along my journey.

In order to tell the story of my mission, I have to tell a snippet version of my life:

I was born to a country prostitute during a time when race relations in the southern United States were less than ideal and as a result, as a child of mixed race in the 1950’s, I was given away to my great-great uncle and aunt to raise, both of whom were in their eighties when I was barely past my toddling years. My relatives died while I was still a child and I married a man who was both abusive and mentally unstable, and about fifteen years and five children later, I found myself on a run for my life with five small children. After a traumatic upheaval, my children and I found an oasis of sorts in a small community in another state and life appeared to be grand.

To make a long story short and without telling the details, life was far from grand, as I discovered over the years. My five children had been damaged psychologically in ways that were not readily apparent, and it would take years before I fully understood the triple impact of domestic violence and abuse upon impressionable young children, or how childhood abuse affects them as adults. The impact of prolonged and extreme dysfunction is often triple and generational, successive generations are affected. I call this triple effect that predisposes victims toward drug addiction, trauma reactions and mental health issues, the ‘Three Headed Monster’.

My mission is to keep the Three Headed Monster at bay and my tools are my words: I wrote The Torn Trilogy, a monumental 1200 page work that is a testament of the power of the human spirit under fire, and as a long mission statement against family dysfunction and extreme domestic violence.

When my mission is completed, I want to visit one of the greatest mountains in the world:
Mount Kilimanjaro

Perspiration and Publication

Thomas A. Edison, who was notoriously gifted with a creative mind, said that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”, which is a truth that most successful and semi-successful indie authors have discovered. I have certainly discovered having a creative mind or special talent for writing, is not enough in today’s highly competitive book market, there needs to be one more added element besides creative writing, that is vital to success: you have to perspire a lot. The days of sending off a query letter to a handful of hungry literary agents and subsequently landing a large writing contract, are long gone; with the rare exception of a few select breakaway newbies who have been extended the scepter of honor for the day.

The publishing world has evolved markedly since 1974, when Stephen King almost never was discovered. According to the story of King’s first contract, after continuous rejections from publishers and a last ditch effort on King’s part when his wife saved his manuscript out of the kitchen trash and urged him to mail it “one more time”, King was discovered as a great writer, and the rest was history (http://www.horrorking.com/biography.html ). Those were the simple days, before the massive onslaught of eBooks at the rate of thousands a day, not to mention the 43,000 plus eBooks available through the Guttenberg Project (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/).

The frantic scramble to reach the top of the book pile, by relatively unheard of authors is both easier now, and more difficult. It is easier to become noticed, if you can break through the crowd before it closes in on you; but it is more difficult because the crowd of eBook publishers and indie authors, is growing daily, while the holes in the fabric of eBook marketing, are being filled almost as fast as they are created. Two Independent Authors who broke through the opening in the Young Adult genres, in a big way, were Amanda Hocking and Colleen Hoover, both were independent authors at the time, and both sold a million copies or more of their books. Hoover (http://colleenhoover.com/ ) made it to the top of the charts on Amazon with a number one bestseller and Hockings (http://www.worldofamandahocking.com/ ) was one of first indie authors to make it big. Many more are hot on their heals.

In the case of Hoover and Hockings, did either of these authors just get lucky? Although luck has something to do with it I am sure, from what I have seen and read, these two women worked off their respective glutei maximi; as I have discovered while following their tracks. Whew!

So what does it take to break through into the publishing world?
Creative talent= one percent
Perspiration= ninety-nine percent
Add perseverance and hope for luck!


Bio: Sara Niles AKA Josephine Thompson
Sara Niles is the author’s pen name, chosen for Torn From the Inside Out Torn From the Inside Out

Domestic Violence: Power and Jodi Arias

The famous Power and Control Model of Abuse was initially framed to fit the pattern of male abusers who abuse female partners; and as a result, the model tends be gender skewed. In real life examples, such as the case of Jodi Arias, some of the components have been shifted, but the same power and control dynamic is still obvious. Jodi Arias is addicted to power and control; whether through force or emotional manipulation, the motive remains unchanged. Abusers of both genders must feel like they are in control, and Jodi Arias is no different.

Jodi felt she was able to control Travis via sex and catering his ego; but when she realized he had actually left her, she engaged a killing rage and slaughtered him.
The 'Leaving' stage of a potentially violent relationship is always the most dangerous stage. It is not the first trip of the average of 7 times that an abuse victim 'leaves' that gets the abuser really mad, and if he or she is a killer-ignites the killing rage-it is the last time they leave. The most dangerous time is when the abuser knows for sure that it is absolutely, and finally over for good-that there is nothing he or she can do to stop the abandonment by their former lover--it is that time that is the most dangerous and sometimes, the time that turns deadly.

The actual act of physically leaving, it not the most important dynamic in the pattern of violent abusers, but it is the ‘leaving’ the relationship via whatever form that ‘leaving’ takes, that is the trigger to violence. In the case of Jodi Arias, she 'left' as a warning when she moved away; reflective of Travis’s emotionally threatening to leave her. This was her way of saying, you are about to leave me, see how it feels-I will act as though I am gone and you will panic and want me back. I will make sure I stay connected via sex on the phone- I will drive you crazy with desire...and you will want me back.

The power was still in Jodi's hands, as long as she called the plays.
At least, so she thought. The realization that her power of Travis Alexander was moot came when Jodi made the final determining trip to Travis Alexander’s home, only to discover that even after sex and photos; nothing had changed. Travis had left her, abandoned her, leaving her hopes of having control of him forever crushed. The words Travis Alexander spoke to Jodi Arias, before his murder, may never be known, but the weight of his words to Jodi, carried the burden of his death sentence.

The killing rage of Jodi Arias took over, and she annihilated him. In Jodi's mind-the power was still hers. When the jury said they in effect did not believe her lies and the world waited to see if she would receive the death penalty under Arizona law, Jodi once again, was in danger of feeling robbed of her power....unless...unless she called the plays and chose the death penalty for herself.

Last bid for power:
"I want to die" she said within minutes of the verdict; leading a rational person to think that she chose her responses in advance-to stay one step ahead of the world.
To Jodi Arias, power is more important than justice, or even her own life. The behavior of Jodi Arias fits the distorted illusion of an individual who feels the only way they want to live in the world is if they can control it.

Torn From the Inside Out

“To tell a tale so great as to tear the soul inside out"
Sara Niles, Torn From the Inside Out”

Enter competition for free copy of Torn From the Inside Out
Torn From the Inside Out

The Cosby Show: catalyst for change

The Cosby Show ushered in a new way of thinking about 'black' families and their values, opening the eyes of the American public to the fact there is more 'sameness' among different races, than 'otherness'.
The first step of societal change is to break down attitudinal barriers that keep separatism alive and to replace this attitude with one of unity.

The Cosby Show became one of the longest running comedy shows of all time, leading the ratings for a large part of its run.
The Cosby Show became a front and center theater for Americans to assess their view of race and equality as the show became an accepted part of American entertainment.

The position attained by the Cosby Show allowed it to become a catalyst for social change; a long and arduous process that takes time. In the course of time, shows like the Cosby Show broke down
the attitude of 'otherness', the 'them and us' point of view, that was crucial to keeping America separated and a state of racial turmoil.
Long live The Cosby Show....and thank you.

Pinterest: Portal into the World of Beauty

When I was young I would have burst from sheer exuberance at the things that are available at our fingertips today, such as the marvels of Pinterest. Now that I am older, I am humbled by the great beauty and imagination in the world, from the work of man to the natural wonders of nature.

The work of the Greatest Artist of All lies in the heart of nature, atop high mountain peaks and in the majestic landscapes around the world. Beauty is everywhere-it lies within the muscled lines of powerful beasts and in the gentle flower....we live in an incredible world full of art:
http://pinterest.com/saraniles/human-...