Dear Silviano, Your subjectline caught my attention. While a dose of self-depreciating humour can sometimes be healthy (specially for us guys with super-bloated egos on Goanet!), I think it can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the negative sense.
Because of my interest in the subject, I have been trying to understand what makes a book a success (or not) in the Goa market. Quality is obviously important, as is focussing on an interesting topic. With fiction, I agree it is more difficult, because people can easily ignore one's work as a non-essential read. But what strikes me as most important is that a book should be given a fair chance, if it is to succeed. It should be fairly easily available (always a difficult job given the scattered Goa and diaspora market, but not impossible if one uses the fairly efficient Indian postal system), and temptingly priced. What tends to happen is that potential readers ignore a book -- or don't get the chance to read it -- meaning it loses the race even before starting on it! I do hope there would be more writing on Goa, more of it turns viable, and this helps us all to understand ourselves and our communities. Please don't give up on your own work; you never know when there might be light at the end of the tunnel. (I do agree that postage and air-freight to Canada can be a killer, unlike the far-more-bearable costs to say the UK or, even better, to the Gulf.) FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 On 26 September 2010 03:42, Silviano Barbosa <[email protected]> wrote: > Chapter 19 > Linda got up in the morning, said her prayers, brushed
