If you’ve read my posts both here and on FWoWA’s Yahoo! Group, you may think I have a bit of a fixation with the Pacesetters series. I do. It's my easiest reference for the kind of talent we have, which I think we're letting go to waste instead of nurturing.
In my previous post I mentioned that the publishers may have had a problem with the quantity of submissions they received from authors across the continent. I also believe that one of the things impeding our progress is the lack of information. While published authors may have had access to the relevant editors, it would be my guess that aspirants were in the dark about how to get the proverbial foot in the door.
In those days, we didn’t have the Internet, which complicated things. Now we have a vast source of information. Even the publishers are getting closer to authors through their website and blogs.
Speaking of websites and information ... guess what! I found a website dedicated to the Pacesetters series. I was a little surprised to discover that only 130 titles were published in the time the series was active (over 16 years, which means an average of just about 8 books a year = less than a book per month)
Find this and more on Pacesetters here. If you wish, you can just go straight to the site's novel catalog, which is complete with cover pics of the books. It seems you can buy available copies, but I can't advocate for the legitimacy of that aspect (if anyone has purchased books from the site, kindly let us know).
Wikipedia, has a list of established African writers, grouped by country. Where were they? What are they working on? How much money are they making for their publishers and more importantly for themselves. Most do not even have websites...
Before I sign off, check out my blog for an interesting post on how much a New York Times best-selling author actually makes.
Empi
No comments:
Post a Comment