I'm 67 today! I have decided that if I havn't made a working model of Bessler's wheel by the 6th June this year I'll give up trying to build one, and concentrate on finally writing and finishing the follow-up book to the first one which I wrote and published in 1997 - "Perpetual motion - An Ancient Mystery solved?"
I have started and restarted it several times but I kept receiving more information which I tried to include but which didn't really fit in with the lay-out of the first book. So I am starting again and I'm just going to tell it in chronological order and try to get a published to take it on. I realise that I gave up much to soon in trying to get the first book published.
Louis L’Amour received 200 rejections before Bantam took a chance on him. He is now their best ever selling Author with 330 million sales.
"Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling." A rejection letter sent to Dr Seuss. 300 million sales and the 9th best-selling fiction Author of all time.
"You have no business being a writer and should give up." Zane Grey ignores the advice. His 90 books have now sold 250 million copies.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter was rejected so many times she had to initially self publish. To date: 80 million sales.
"It is so badly written." The Author tries Doubleday instead and his little book makes an impression. The Da Vinci Code sells 80 million.
140 rejections stating "Anthologies don’t sell" until Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen sells 80 million copies.
Having sold only 800 copies on its limited first release, the Author finds a new Publisher and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho sells 75 million.
"We feel that we don’t know the central character well enough." The author does a rewrite and his protagonist becomes an icon for a generation as The Catcher In The Rye sells 65 million.
5 Publishers reject L.M. Montgomery's debut novel. L.C. Page & Company does not, and Anne of Green Gables sells 50 million.
"Nobody will want to read a book about a seagull." Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull went on to sell 44 million copies.
"Undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer." But Jacqueline Susann refuses to give up and her book the Valley of the Dolls sells 30 million.
Margaret Mitchell gets 38 rejections from publishers before finding one to publish her novel Gone With The Wind. Sold 30 million.
I could go on, but the lesson to be learned in publishing is never give up - and I won't!
After that date I shall publish on my web sites and here everything I have worked out regarding the way Bessler's wheel worked and why.
JC
