The Top Two Percent -- Rule!

That’s right.  The top 2% in any industry, craft, or country, -- rule.  They do it by achievement and performance. And also by attention to details.

In the writing world, it’s a new game.  No longer are the large publishing houses controlling the industry. Neither are the brick and mortar retailers. But, unfortunately, the writers are still third tier elements in the business.  Only 2% seem to break out of the mire of our industry.  Unfortunately I am not one of those 2%.  The emerging power in the publishing industry is the on-line blog -- databases.  One in particular seems to be leading the pack.  The book-blogs are on my excrement list because they are nothing but parasites.  They produce nothing; they exist only because we as writers allow them to use our material to build their businesses.  I tried a few of them to see what they did for my sales.  I was ripped off by 2 of the lesser players and chastised by a third for my negative reaction to being cheated by their sister companies.

My contemporaries embrace these parasites and consider them an integral part of their business model.  They actually feel proud to be accepted and be given the opportunity to pay to advertise that their book is free of deeply discounted.  The leader of this hyena pack charges up to $300 per one time inclusion in their daily database post.  Many authors can’t ever recover the cost of the expenditure.  Those that do, have to continue advertising in order to sustain their presence in the market.

Two percent of these book-blogs will survive and make a decent profit.  They are all spawning a generation of freeloaders rather than readers.  It’s too bad.

My thirteenth novel was just published today!

I hope it’s well received by my loyal readers. I can dream for the top 2%.  We’ll see.  SHOOTER was started over a year ago.  The outline was finished in September of 2012. I was sidetracked and inspired in January of this year. I wrote and published TRES PIEDRAS in three months. I came back to SHOOTER in April of this year.  I’ve actually been writing this novel in my mind for the better part of my adult life.  I was twenty-one years old when Kennedy was assassinated.

Like most of my generation, the mistrust and backlash toward the government began with this event. The cover-up was so thoroughly transparent and inept it spawned a generation of rebels.  We could see the fumbling and bumbling on live television so we began to question everything.  Politics aside – it was a sad time and literally changed the world.

SHOOTER is around 65,000 words.  I encourage you to read the free sample on Amazon and post your remarks here.