"HOW TO BECOME A BEST SELLER" - Story Mirror Creativity Workshop III

Sharing some of my thoughts on “How to become a Best Seller” from the 3rd Story Mirror CreativityWorkshop, which was organized in association with Story Mirror, ApparaoGalleries, Madras Photo bloggers and Aspiring Authors Group. The  speakers at the workshop were budding author and poet Sulaiman Sait, Director Brindha Sarathy, famous cartoonist of Hindu - foremost Krishna Devotee Keshav and Film Director / Producer as well as a fine Tamil Haiku writer NLingusamy. 

If you like to know more about the workshop III, please check this post by Madras Photobloggers. For the details on the upcoming Workshop IV on 17th Dec @ Apparao Galleries, please register here and checking on the 'Going' Tab.

HOW TO BECOME A BEST SELLER

The agenda of my talk was to get the aspiring author to understand what goes on behind making a best seller and how a budding writer can work on the ideas to get to the top. The agenda of my workshop was...

And here are the main point from the workshop.

BASICS

First things first , to make your book a best seller, the content is the king. Write a great story with beautiful language, flesh your characters with interesting matter and thoughts, you have a winner at your hands.

Second, as I keep repeating in my talks the powerful words of Milan Kundera, “Any work of art has to have a purpose of its Existence”. Your book has to have a purpose to suastain interest in the long term.

And finally the 3^rd basic thing is to “Write the Damn Book” as Naresh Fernandes advised me some years back when I was looking for the way to publish my first book, “Songs of the Mist”. This is what the enthusiastic budding authors forget to do and waste precious amount of time in contemplating, thinking and finding the right / any publisher to publish the book.

MARKETING

Find your champions: The best and the most powerful advise that I can give, in terms of marketing your book, is to find your champions, usually they consist of your friends, relatives and colleagues.

Create your champions: And equally powerful advise you should thing about , in the process of becoming a best seller, is to help others become a best seller. This way you will create your own champions.

APPROACH

Keep the buzz going

Find New angles, Promote in new ways, Launch in new places

Workshops, Book Clubs, Training

Create a platform to share your thoughts, ideas and reach out to your readers

Write something that other’s can find use for e.g my post on Hindu Lit For Life is used as archive for the official Hindu Festival Page. Click here and click on the "Archive Blog" tab. Below is the case for IndiBlogger's BNLF Curtain Raiser, which was used in their portal for their mega blogging event last year, Oct-Nov.

In the end, here are some key points that you need not only to keep in mind but also actively pursue. Sharing also some of the pictures from the Story Mirror Creativity Workshop III. If you would like to attend the upcoming 4th Creativity Workshop, please register here...

Take-aways

1. Advertisements on FB, Twitter and most of the social media’s do give ROI. Personal Emails do, personal interaction do. SO create an email List

2. Keep the interaction going on, help before asking for help

3. Celebrity Endorsements, High Value Influencers, High Profile Publisher’s don’t work in terms of ROI

4. Book Readers, Review Bloggers, Book reading communities work. Get on to them

5. The best turn around is your own website, blog or group is. So create each one of them and invest your time and effort on it.

6. Write the next book, get your book translated, publish Kindle versions of supplementary books

7. Create workshops, help in learning curve of your readers, provide value of your interaction

8. Solve a problem, provide support without any need of reciprocation, become an expert in your niche area

9. Focus on your area of expertise

10. Get one blurb that counts, Get an introduction by some one of authority or expert in your area, ask for their help in spreading the word.

11. Utilise Amazon’s marketing tools

12. Finally, get your champions together, which will come from your family, friends and network.

TO ATTEND THE NEXT WORKSHOP ON 17TH DEC @ APPARAO GALLERIES - CHENNAI, PLEASE CLICK HERE AND CHECK THE 'GOING' TAB.

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Shashi 

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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On Writing Fiction                  

My book "Songs of the Mist" journey across India...

One of the reasons, I am writing the three book series, "The Monk Key" of which "Songs of the Mist", is the first part, is to share the story of one young man's journey to 'find the divinity within'. As the series was conceived on the banks of holy river Ganges, in 1987 and firmed up across my travels to Rishikesh  Varanasi, Ganga Sagar. So it has been my deepest desire to offer it to that divine sources from which it draws its stories, energy and its blessings. 

The another purpose of writing this book has been to reach out to the young generation who, in my opinion are alienated from the deep source of our culture, heritage and thoughts - our ancient scriptures. When asked, if they have read our Vedas, Purana's and Upanishad's etc., they typically reply "What is the point of reading them" due the certain biases rooted in modernity. The book "Songs of the Mist" is one such attempt to share the knowledge and thoughts of Karma Yoga, based on Bhagwat Gita; in order to inspire them to connect proactively with our cultural heritage. At the book's launch at Chennai's famous book store, I shared my thoughts on the same.

My book "Songs of the Mist" was published in Dec, 2016 and within 9 days it reached two thousand ranking amongst millions of books at Amazon. In April 2016, it breached double digit ranking. Within a period of 6 months, I have been blessed with opportunities to fulfil my desire to dedicate the book to its sources of inspiration. From the Himalayas to plains of India, I have had few opportunities to dedicate the book to Holy Ganges, at Rishikesh, Varanasi, Kolkata; Goddess Durga of our ancient temple in the eastern UP village and Buddha Shrine at Kushinagar - a place where Buddha attained Nirvana. Through book readings and launches, I have also been blessed to reach out to the readers of young India.

It gives me a great pleasure to share some of the images and few video clips, chronicling my book's journey across India. Hope you will enjoy it.

Parmarth Niketan - Rishikesh

Sivananda Ashram - Rishikesh

Varanasi

Durga Ji, Buddha at Kushi Nagar and friends from Varanasi...

Book Reading at Leela Palace Hotel organised by
Apparao Galleries

Here is an introduction to my book by the Famous Author, Journalist and Writer, Timeri N Murari at the Leela Palace Hotels, organised by Apparao Galleries in an event called "An Evening of Art, Music and Writing".

"Many of us here yearn for something more in our life. Shashi has provided a spiritual release in beautiful book, Songs of the Mist. It’s unusual and thought provoking book. The book answers questions that we struggle to frame in our daily lives. Shashi’s descriptive beauty of the mystic nature of Himalayas interwoven with sufferings and the heartaches, and struggle of each protagonist, provide eloquent and thought provoking read. Not a book to browsed at glance and to reach books full potential demands commitment and investment of time to savor its subtlety and do grows." - Timeri N Murari

 

Odyssey Book Launch

At the Odyssey Book Launch, the popular Rapper - Blaaze (Baba Rap, Hosanna Rap, Slum Dog Millionaire, Delhi 6 etc.) and Keshav Ji - The Famous Cartoonist of the News Paper Group Hindu, who is foremost Krishna Bhakta echoed my thoughts about our ancient Indian Heritage and culture...

“When you just listen to it (Shlokas etc), …the sanskrit syllables are enough to get you positive energy, without knowing anything about it. … it can only bring peace in a world like this”. – Blaaze

“Our Purana’s (Ancient Vedic Scriptures etc.) give you how to deal with life, how to deal with situations and predicaments, as they have already analyzed and laid it out on platter so that you don’t have to think.” – Keshav ji

Chennai and Kolkata Book Fair

Hope you have enjoyed the journey with me amongst holy places of India as well as my thoughts shared within the video clips. If you would like to read my book "Songs of the Mist" it is available at the following places.

Amazon.in || Amazon.com || Amazon.UK || Flipkart || Google Play || Kindle ||

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Shashi 

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Hindu Lit for Life 2016                                    

On Vedic Culture - Hindu Phobia is not the right way to look at it....

As one of my favorite Czech Author, Milan Kundera once said that every act of creativity, writing or novel should have a purpose. I had decided to write my story in year 1987, when I first visited Rishikesh, finished writing all three parts of "The Monk Key" in 2010 Nov. But still had no reason to get it published other than my ego, I.e. to get to be known as an author, which was actually not on my priority list. But last year, one day I asked my son, have you read Bhagwat Gita and he said, no - what’s the point of reading it. This gave me a purpose, i.e. to make our Vedic / Upanishadic / Poranic scriptures come out of obscure depths of dogmatic beliefs and rituals and become main stream and interesting for young generation. This book "Songs of the Mist" and "The Monk Key" series is my one small step towards that goal.

You see, our conscious mind works on only two things - logic and language. And our ancient books and scriptures are treasure troves of both Language as well as knowledge and the extremely deep thought processes. Reading these ancient books can easily ignite a spark a new idea, a new search for meaning in your mind, specially young minds. Yes there are things written in these books that usually don’t go with modern and prevalent scientific thoughts. But the fact is that some people cherry-pick only the negative things about our culture and heritage, and in the process creating a narrative, which is not actually in the sync with the grand reality of our heritage and culture. This ultimately has created a bias against our vedic heritage and culture and alienated young generation. This saddens me to a great extent and with this post I am trying to put things in certain perspective, with hope that it will inspire you to reach out to our heritage and culture.

Almost 3000 years ago, Pythagoras came to India, (Albert Burk in his book Das Apstamba Sulba Sutra 1901 says he came to Kanchipuram) to learn from Indian sages, masters and went back to his city. Apart from the Pythagoras theorem that he is famous for, which is now proven to be the direct takeaway from Shulabha Strotra, he also took our methods of teaching, which was famous at the time. - The Gurukul system of learning. The alumni were the likes of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

Image curtsy Wikipedia

Let me tell you another story, which I have talked about in my blog post earlier discussing the Big Bang (Click here to read). Lemaitre - An ordained priest in 1931 observed the night sky over the years and realised that the nebulae’s he was observing are going farther away. He then proposed that the Universe must be expanding. Then as he retraced this expansion back in time as thought experiment and proposed a theory that as the Universe in the past must have started from a single point. In a BBC interview in 1949, George Gamow another scientist, gave this theory a name - The Big Bang Theory. In 1970, Stephen Hawking and his colleagues proved mathematically that the Universe indeed started from a single point with the Big Bang.

Now the reason I am telling you this story is that almost 3K years ago, in Mandukya Upanishad, it is also said that the Universe was formed from a point with the Pranava Naad which literally means A deep Sound, and if I may paraphrase - from the Big Bang. But if we go out and say this to a scientist, they will laugh.  Though this is exactly what the priest Lemaitre proposed in 1930s too. Why?

Because some one took Georges Lemaitre’s words seriously and did continuous research over decades and finally Stephen Hawkins proved it. But unfortunately in India, we don’t do it. We don’t take the thought experiments of our ancient sages to its logical conclusion by research and experiments. Almost 3K years ago we had abandoned the experimental part and only took forward the ritualistic part of our Vedic culture. I feel sad about it.

But slowly things are changing now. There are people still working on those obscure knowledge somehow or the other to make it acceptable to the world. Yoga is one such example of our knowledge being embraced by the world now.

There are people who do get inspired by those ancient shloka, for example a young mathematician of Indian origin in USA- Manjul Bhargava. He is a fields medal winner - which is considered to be a noble prize for mathematics. His grand father in Rajasthan gave him a set of ancient shloka’s. The Fibonacci sequence embedded in the shloka triggered his curiosity and he developed a method that won him his PhD in an US University too.

And I am happy that there are people like Manjul Bhargava from USA, and still more closer to us in Chennai cool people like my friends here, the youth icon and Singer Blaaze and a great Krishna Bhakta, Painter and famous Cartoonist of Hindu Sh. Keshav and music director Paul, with whom I am trying to bring out Songs of the Monk from my book. When I hear them collaborate and sing ancient Shloka’s, I feel that all is still not lost.

__

Shashi 

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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                                 Creation and the eternal Sound OM