Wholistic Fitness

When asked, “Ilg, when will your next book be out!?”  I answer,  given my Taoist training,  “well, there is a spiritual reason, why ilg has not published a book in several years,”  the reason being?  Used to be?  Becoming a book author required several years of training,  even more years of refusals and rejection slips, a couple more years of rejection matched by your own commitment to persevere.  Then?  A chance for the big shot, an Agent contacts you, informs you to go to NYC and charm the various Book Publishers to see if you met their ‘fit’ under their guidance…

nowdadays with the Internet and all?

Anybody with $ can become a Self Published Author and the word “author” means nothing any more…i was first book published in 1985 (THE OUTDOOR ATHLETE).

That meant s(om)ething.

To be published in 2016?  Sorry, no longer interests me.  I’d rather do online Wholistic Fitness® coaching, training, and bodywork and be a Conscious Parent to my 8 year-old than write another book only to be lost in the quagmire of supposed self-published ‘authors’…”

whenever i read of a Self Published Book Author giving a Book Signing?
i run the other way…

so,  i did s(om)ething different to my natural mode of staying-away-from-all-outside-stupid-offerings the other day.   i attended a lecture for becoming authors.  i know.  anyway, the guy that was doing the lecture was a published author of ‘several books.’

back in the day?

that actually had weight to it.

back before the SELF PUBLISHED days?

we peer-reviewed authors had to go through an excruciatingly long process that typically went like this (mind you, this was BEFORE the INTERNET was invented):
1) hand-write and then type out at LEAST 50 book proposals
2) mail them out in Legal-sized manilla envelopes to all these amazingly addresses and contact names from such impossibility possibilities as New York City and Los Angeles, CA…
3) then wait….
4) then wait longer…and RESEND at your expense the same Book Proposal and a Follow Up letter that took you at least 14 hours of hair-pulling effort…
5) then wait some more and try NOT to make the waiting for a reply kindling to your already bonfire of doubt that you would EVER be considered as an ACTUAL BOOK AUTHOR…
6) repeat steps 1-5 at LEAST 3 to 7 to 21 times
7) wait longer or,  kill yourself
8) receive rejection slips on all your Follow Ups
9) give up or transform accumulated Rejection Slips into a complete and total re-work of Prosposal To Be Published which comes out inevitably squeaky clean and polished like a fine fem surviving the firing process;  the friction has polished your final gem of a Proposal
10)  all of your Gem of Proposal’s are matched by sterile rejection slips
11) you begin to psychospiritually dismantle…
12) at the depth of your capacity to carry on as an actual book author?  a phone call comes.
13) a Literary Agent is interested and thinks he/she could sell it to a Publisher.
14) you do whatever it takes to meet with the Publisher to prove to he/her you can deliver a manuscript that is capable of turning thousands of minds toward about which you are writing.
15)  Agent is signed. Agent contacts his/her Contacts in NYC.  you travel to NYC to do “dog-and-pony” interviews before usually marbled long-tabled interior high-rise suites before panels of book publisher executives.  your armpit sweat alone is enough to have each of these Big City literary wigs look at you with disgust as if saying, “YOU,  a BOOK AUTHOR?!?!  As if!!!??”

16) you actually made a favorable impression upon at least ONE of the book Publishers during your panel interview who then contacted your Agent.

the rest?  is pure, beautiful her- or History….YOU did what it TOOK to become a BOOK AUTHOR!!!

these Kali Yuga days?   most of you reading this won’t even use Google to research what Kali Yuga means,  let alone do what it USED to take to become a Book AUTHOR before the internet and SELF PUBLISHED BOOK AUTHORS became the…ugh…norm.