I was reading the interview with John Marsden in the Weekend Australian Review and thought that his story is incredibly inspiring.  That means that I’m going to share it with you if you like it or not.

If you don’t know John Marsden he is the author of the incredibly popular Tomorrow series of books which I only discovered about 5 years ago and devoured.  He was already a published author, two books, before he wrote these but they didn’t sell well.

For those who are not familiar with the series, which is entirely possible, the Tomorrow series follow the adventures of a group of rural teenagers who were on a camping trip when the country, Australia, is invaded by a nameless force.

The story is told by Ellie as the group attempts to find out what has happened and to save their families from the invaders.  The first book “Tomorrow when the war began” is about to be released as a movie and if it is even mildly successful the reamaining 6 books will probably also be turned into screen plays.

The series is going to be re-released a month before the movie and it will be very interesting to discover if it can have the same impact that it had in the early nineties.  It has to compete with witches, warlocks vampires and werewolves.

So how successful was the series and what did the critics say about the first book when it was released?  In John’s own words “The first reviews of the book in the 90s were terrible, absolutely shocking.”  But he said that “I wasn’t bothered, I just thought, ‘These people don’t really know teenagers’.  I was quite confident the books would do well.”

And they did, mostly through word of mouth rather than traditional marketing.  The books sold 2.5 million copies in Australia.  I don’t know about overseas sales but they were significant as well.

Just imagine how well they could have sold if his publisher had really pushed them or if the internet was as well established as it is now and he was able to get people talking about the book the way they do about Harry Potter or the Twilight series.

In the early 90s most school kids didn’t have a mobile phone or a Facebook page or any of the other ways news gets moved around today.

What’s in this for you?  Got a rejection letter recently?  Doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your book, it just means you sent it to the wrong publisher, try a different one.  Find an agent to push it for you, if they like it they’ll get it published because they have the inside track to the publisher.

The critics panned your book or an article you wrote?  Just remember that critics have their own paricular biases and just because one or more don’t like your writing means nothing to the people who read your work.  Many times I have read a critical review of a book I had just finished reading and enjoyed only to find out that it wasn’t worth my time, according to the critic. 

I have stopped reading critical reviews, they’re generally not worth my time, the books are.

Post a sample of your writing here and ask for feedback, no-one here is unkind as we are all going the same way.  There is no benefit to us to be rude or mean to you about your efforts even if there are real problems.  No, we would rather encourage you to write better with gentle guidance not harsh criticism.

I would really love to discover that one of you becomes the next John Marsden and sells millions of copies of your book under the radar, it would be even better if it had happened because you were encouraged by the support provided here.

Go gettum, your readers await.