Bill Peschel: You Gotta Have A Gimmick

What is this?
It's Bill Peschel's professional and personal home on the web. Welcome. Poke around in the drawers and cupboards. There's a lot of interesting stuff here.
What's the Reader's Almanac?
It's my 2008-2009 nonfiction book project. A year's worth of entertaining and thought-provoking stories and anecdotes about writers and their books, tied to the day they occurred. Published regularly. Here's a list of the essays published so far.
Why is it on the web?
I don't have an agent or a contract, so this is my way of building an audience, and seeing if there's any interest in the book. The daily deadlines don't hurt, either.
Are you going to write anything else here?
Sure. The occasional book review, a collection of links to neat articles and websites, and my opinions. You know, the usual stuff you find on the web.

Recent Reader's Almanac Posts

Saturday Literature Links
Thoreau makes an ash of himself (1844)
Dickens leaves the United States, gratefully (1842)
Uprisings and Downfalls: Troy, Sherlock Holmes, the Irish Rebellion and Brendan Behan
A Merry Shakespeare (1597)
Petrarch: Just one look (1327)
Writers at Play: Brendan Behan and Jackie Gleason
Writers at Rest: Henry James

The Unscratchables. Cornelius Kane.

Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days. Al Columbia.
Mostly Harmless. Douglas Adams.
Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop. Lee Goldberg.

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September 18, 2006

You Gotta Have A Gimmick

These days, it's not enough to be published. You got to have a platform, an audience, something that separates you from the rest of the pack.

Or, as Lynn Scanlon puts it at The Publishing Contrarian: A Hook!

If your story has a child with Down's Syndrome as a main character, as in "The Memory Keeper's Daughter," you've got an audience to market to. If you're an Afghan, there's thousands in the U.S. eager to read "The Kite Runner."

In short, put in something that interests a particular group, and you've got potential sales.

And if you can't think of anything, well, you can always fall back on sex.

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