A Big Day for Buddha
A Big Day for Buddha

Pitching A Book

Pitching A Book
Pitching A Book

Pitching A Book

I’ve just been pitching my book to a literary agent, like I’ve been talking about for a while, so I’m full of hope that this will be a big turning point in my career as a writer. I have submitted to agents before, but only half-heartedly, not that I realised that it was half-heartedly at the time, it’s just that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I sent my first book, ‘Daddy’s Hobby’ in paper format from Thailand to London. It cost me £32 and when they didn’t reply, I gave up. Fifteen months later, I submitted another book to three agents by email, but when they replied that it wasn’t what they were looking for, I gave up again.

Then I bought the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ (http://amazon.com/B00LGPJ2B6) from Amazon, and realised that there were recognised formats for pitching a book, a few right ways, and lots more wrong ones, and my way was not good. I read that yearbook from cover to cover in two days and it is not thin at 816 pages. I learned a lot and was determined to try again.

And then Christmas came.

Now, this is one of the disadvantages of having a book in e-format: you can easily forget about it. If you have a book on your shelf you see it there every day and that is a reminder, but my book is in the cloud. It might as well have been in cloud cuckoo land, because I forgot about it and my intentions for six months, until just recently.

Next time, if I can’t get the book on my shelf, I must remember to leave it on my computer’s desktop to jog my memory.

My Dad always said: ‘If you haven’t got a memory, get a notebook’ and it looks as if that time has come for me, because I just lost a period of six months of pitching my books and at sixty-one years of age, I may have less than twenty of those left 🙂

All the best,

Owen

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Owen

Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.

Articles: 595

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