The Author Guy Blog by Larry B. Gildersleeve

 24 th July 2024

Hello out there,

Welcome back. So many in our industry are promoted as one or all of this trinity: acclaimed

author, award-winning author, bestselling author. But here’s what’s often frustrating, at least for

me. Most are not entitled to lay claim to the distinction, and most offer little if any validation to

their claim.

If one or more readers or professional reviewers praise my writing to others, as they have, does

that constitute “acclimation?” I ask because I have no idea if there is a publishing industry

standard for such recognition. There’s no penalty that I’m aware of for self-anointing, and who’s

to say, or would say, it isn’t true?

I was in a Zoom audience for an “award-winning” author instructing us on how to enhance our

web sites to increase book sales. Her advice didn’t ring true, so I went to her web site and

learned two thing. She’d never published a book herself, thus she’d never experienced book sales

arising from the advice she was giving others. And her “award-winning” designation came from

a writer’s conference somewhere that anointed her as “the most promising attendee.”

Finally, “best-selling author” can be just about anything for at least three reasons: (1) nowhere,

that I could find over the past ten years, is there a universally accepted criteria of books sold to

earn the title; (2) algorithms imbedded in online distribution channels can be “gamed” such that a

relatively small number of sales in a short period of time will land a book and its author on that

week’s “bestseller “ ranking; and (3) it’s whispered around, but to my knowledge never actually

documented, that prestigious bestseller rankings are sometimes “curated” and thus not actually

based upon unbiased empirical sales results.

I’ve legitimately achieved one (award-winning; proof is at www.larrygildersleeve.com) while

still pursuing the other two. But mine is an author journey, not an award destination. If it

happens, it happens.

Until next week … Vaya con Dios

Larry B. Gildersleeve