Sunday 5 February 2012

It's my birthday - 67!

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

23 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday, John. Good luck with the book. I'm still holding out hope for a movie adaptation. How many copies did your first book sell?

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  2. Yes!,..All the best for this years endeavor.

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  3. Happy Birthday John, All best wishes to you

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  4. Happy Birthday John, and here's to many, healthy more!

    My admiration for you is twofold. First, your lifelong quest and dedication to Bessler and his Wheels. Secondly, for your ability to find that critical level of balance between your pursuits and your family and friends; something that I have always found very difficult.

    Happy 67th!

    Hutch

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  5. Happy birthday JC!

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  6. Thanks guys! I had a brilliant birthday today with family.

    Doug,I don't know how many copies of my book I sold but it wasn't enough!

    JC

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  7. Happy birthday John!

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  8. Hi John,

    Happy Birthday!

    I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago, so I've a little catching up to do!

    As with everyone else, I'm intrigued with what you have decoded and the principle on which the wheel worked but You'll disclose when you're ready. It will be interesting when you do!

    JohnnyD.

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  9. Hi John. Happy birthday again. Do you have a problem accepting constructive criticism?

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  10. Happy Birthday!

    What will the title of the new book be? Publish soon as we need more clues.

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  11. Come on guys,lets get this clear once and for all,if we are not grounded with the definite clues,we are going to get no where.
    Bessler's reference to weights and springs meant that they were not used to wind up the wheel.At the risk of sounding pedantic,I don't have to remind you that apart from springs,clocks were also wound up using weights on chains,just like the cuckoo clocks of Switzerland.
    Bessler did say though that we must use heavy weights,but what is a bit contradictory is he also said that in the wheel there are many small weights!
    This I am puzzling over,unless there are errors in translation!

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  12. Thanks to all for your kind wishes.

    I don't think I have a problem accepting constructive criticism - try me, anon 4.44 PM.

    I haven't decided on the title yet and knowing publishers they'll probably want to change it when I have decided.

    JC

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  13. Happy B'day, John.

    I'm looking forward to seeing the clue justifications for you present approach to Bessler's wheels. I can guess it will have much to do with those DT portrait pentagrams which, as you know, I think represent interconnecting cords and not five levers swinging through 36° inside of the drum.

    Yes, a VERY small percentage of new books "make it big". Interestingly the writing style isn't that important (as long as it's readable, that is!), but rather the theme which captures the mood of the public at the time. It can happen...but then too so can wining the lottery since the odds are about the same!

    Sorry to read that you are getting ready to call it quits with regards to building wheels. But, then again, you've done enough already through your efforts to make the Bessler literature available to a new generation of mobilists. I DO believe that you (and the rest of us, of course) will live long enough to see THE solution to Bessler's wheels. We ARE getting a bit closer everyday.

    We look forward to your updated version of your "classic" work on Bessler and his wheels...wouldn't it be cool if the back cover had a pocket in it that contained the English version of that Italian tv Bessler documentary on DVD in it!!! Instant best seller!

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  14. Try you John? I did. I suggested you get an editor. And then you'll you erased my post.

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  15. I never erase a post unless the language is unacceptable and if I do, I post that I have done so.

    How do you mean - get an editor? If I write a book, I'm an author. An editor is someone who commissions a book and then edits it. A publisher who accepts a book for publication can offer suggestions to improve the book for his own purposes, and that is what they always do. Did you mean some other kind of editor?

    JC

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  16. @ JC

    I don't feel your PM:AAMS? really needs an editor. I'm more interested in as much detailed information about his wheel's structures and the tests than I am about "great' writing.

    The only problem I had about the book was the end where you go into a gravity "wind" theory of how the wheels worked. I would have left that out and replaced it with a theory of how a mechanism might keep the CoM of its weights on a wheel's descending side during rotation. That, I believe, is the real "heart" of the matter and what your mobilist audience is looking for.

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  17. I think you need a graphic designer. The book is very good and convicing; but the visual presentation must be improved with a better cover, some neat graphics and better typography work. May be anon wanted to say you should find someone to arrange such things.

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  18. That all very well,..If you would like to pay the earth for a gold leaf leather-bound book.Surely it's the intellectual content that's important.
    John I know you have done your best to give us the true unadulterated facts at a price we can afford.

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  19. The point is not about what all of you want. It's about what a publisher wants. John, to borrow from technoguy, it's not great writing. It's got great information but it should be restructured. An independant editor could help you to polish it before you submit it, that's all I meant.

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...