Celebrities

Like most people, I am sure, I love Claire Balding.  So much so that I mentioned her in one of my books. Yes, dear reader, one of my books that you have never heard of thanks to people like Claire who is currently marketing her new novel which I am sure is very good.

Why do you say that, I hear you cry, poor Claire has nothing to do with your failure to get published or does she?

Claire is probably unaware that publishers and literary agents are no longer (assuming they ever were) interested in the ‘dead ordinary nobody has ever heard of Joe Bloggs’ author because selling their books would take a lot of effort when books with a celebrity’s name on them, sell themselves.

Now, you may say, perhaps your books just aren’t good enough and that may well be the truth but there is plenty of dross which gets published providing it has a well-known name attached to it because most people do judge books by their cover.

I am by no means alone, I am sure.  The generally recognised statistic is that 1% of ordinary people get their books published which means there are a lot of people in the 99% bracket like me. I doubt that many of us are Charles Dickens or Jilly Cooper but they had to start somewhere. Some of us could be better but nobody gives us a chance.

My books have been read by a couple of hundred people and not just people I know! I have had generally good feedback which could be because nobody wants to offend me but I don’t think so.

My plea is to give ordinary people a chance.  It is easy money for celebrities to tack on ‘author’ to their many accomplishments but to some of us ‘author’ is all we have.  If they thought, that nobody was turning on the television to watch them present or cook or compete, how would they feel?  They would feel like they didn’t matter which is how we feel.

Life is hard and a challenge and not fair and I know all of that, this is not my first rodeo, but please give some of us chance to show our talents.