“In the future, everyone in the world will be famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol
You may not have noticed it, but I became famous almost a year ago. It started with my self-published “best seller” You’ve Got the Power: Four Paths to Unlocking Your Archetypal Energies. I didn’t know it was a best seller. It’s #1,670,381 in books on Amazon. I’d hate to think who is #1,670,382. Yet, despite the fact that it’s a book about movement, for the nichest of a niche audience, I’ve been getting calls daily for almost a year, congratulating me on my “incredibly successful” book.
It’s always someone with an odd, unidentifiable foreign accent. They usually have names like Alaister Anderson, or Kimberly Scott, one even chose the name Mac Davis. English is clearly their third language as they struggle through the script, stumbling over the word “archetypes.” At first, the calls were all the same, offering to represent my book at the Miami Book Fair, the Los Angeles Book Fair, the NY Book fair, or just about any fair in the world.The company names were always garbled, but some I identified: Letterpress, Bismarck Alliance, URLink Print Media – impressive sounding names. All of those websites look alike, and when you dig, you find they are all, every one of them, scams. When I blocked them, they didn’t give up, calling from other numbers with other agency names. I began to feel that I recognized their voices.
Then the offers ratcheted up.”Bonafide Literary Agency – we want to represent you!” “TV appearances with a genuine TV personality!” “Opportunities for a distribution deal!” And then the other day came the best offer ever. “Jay Parker” from a “literary agency” called to congratulate me because “a genuine, traditional publisher,” Harper Collins, wanted to offer me between $250K and $350K plus 20% royalty. If only LOL. I picture these poor call center workers chained to their desks, forced to promise fame and fortune to the 1,670,380 other writers who long for validation and maybe a book deal with Harper Collins.
One of the things that attracted me to Awareness Through Movement® is the fact that we use words to convey movement for others. Careful, non-judgmental, articulate and economical language offers a portal toward self-understanding and wellbeing.
I always enjoy your point of view in these sharings. Also, I learned that you are a mime. How would you act out the”success” of your great masterpiece? I will enjoy very much if you do this. Thank you.
That would take some pondering 🙂
Very interesting literary experience. It is amazing to me how many scams there are in the digital world.
What amazes me is the ammount of energy they put into the scam, and how anyone would fall prey to it!
Real people publishing books, how exciting, no matter where you are in the rankings, I celebrate you!!
It’s such hard work.
I published my book 22 years ago, also movement related and this last few months the same phone calls as your started coming in.
When the male could not get me to move his female co worker tried.
Wonder what happen if you say yes.