Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Badly Broken Garrett and Company Bottle Found A Few Minutes Ago. |
I was away for a few days and then caught a cold so I hadn't done much lately, but I was feeling a little better and decided to take a little walk to see what was going on. It wasn't really a hunt - more of a scouting expedition. I first found a few pieces of glass, then continued just a little farther and started to see bigger pieces, and then came to some intact bottles. That is the way it often goes.
As you can see the bottle is badly damaged. If it wasn't broken, I'd consider it a keeper. As is, it has no value but it does tell me it might be worth taking a more serious look later.
Garrett and Co. was established in 1835 in North Carolina and was a manufacturer of American wines using the Scuppernong grape. Virginia Dare was their most popular wine. Pochahontas and Minnehaha were names of two other Garrett & Co wines.
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Athlit Castle, which was built by the Knights Templar in the early thirteenth century, now sits inside the perimeter of an Israeli Defense Force training camp on the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Its cemetery, the largest known Crusader resting place in the Middle East, lies just outside the camp’s fence. Here, over a period of about eight decades, the remains of thousands of people were buried in an orderly rectangular space a football field long, and almost as wide....
Here is the link for more about that.
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Lets get some things straight. Even though it is more difficult than most people think, "writing" a book is the easy part, but "writing" a book is seldom the real goal. You can write a lot about something, but if nobody ever reads it, that doesn't accomplish much. '
Book publishing has changed a lot in the last few decades. People used send manuscripts or book proposals to publishing houses such as Random House or Penguin Books and try to get a publisher that would edit, produce and market the book. Now it usually doesn't work that way unless you are some well-known writer or celebrity that already has a big audience.
A publishing house would publish your book if they knew that there were enough people who would pay to read what you had to say. That is the most important thing for a publisher. They can fix your writing or do most anything else if they know they can easily sell enough copies of your book. If you are famous and they know you have a large and eager audience, they will even get somebody else to write the book for you. That is how it is often done. So it is not so much about your ability to write or even what you have to say. It is more about having an established audience.
So what do you do if you are not somebody that already has a a willing and eager audience. Well, you create one. One thing you can do is self-publish. By that I mean you can pay to have your book produced and marketed. There are a lot of companies that will do that, but many will not do it effectively. You pay them to publish and market your book and hope that enough people buy it to cover your expenses. That is one way to show a publishing house that you can sell books. People generally think that it is the publisher's job to sell the books, but any publisher will expect you to do a lot of marketing. That is why authors go on book tours and on TV and radio.
The vast majority of books are not successful - even those that are published by a major publishing house. And most publishing houses don't even accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore. You have to be a proven author or have an agent.
Never get discouraged if a publishing house or many publishing houses reject your proposals. Publishing houses reject good manuscripts and book proposals all the time. Chicken Soup for the Soul, for example, is an all-time best-seller and was rejected by virtually every major publishing house before it was finally published. Don't think that your book is so good that everyone will want to publish it. Even if it is the best thing ever written, don't expect a publisher to recognize it.
This is not to discourage anyone. The publishing industry has changed a lot in recent years and continues to change. There are a lot of good alternatives such as self-publishing, ebooks, Facebook pages, and YouTube videos, just to name a few. And if your message fits (not everything does), you can contribute to a blog such as the one you are reading today.
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On the Treasure Coast the tides are moderate and the surf small.
I'm eager to get out and take a little longer walk to see what I can find.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
