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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

A testament to perserverence

 

“Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.”  Janet Evanovich

 

Born on April 22,1943 Evanovich now has over two hundred million books in print worldwide, translated into over 40 languages.  After those initial struggles, she gained fame and loyal readers with her contemporary mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum, a former lingerie buyer from Trenton, NJ, who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job.

 

Evanovich’s droll sense of humor (“If you want to cry, you're not going to like my books”) combined with a knack for setting up mystery and suspense keeps her readers involved from start to finish.

 

Another “reader involvement” idea is letting readers help name her books.  “Readers were sending in their ideas for titles,” she explained.  So we thought, ‘Hey, go for it.’ Now we have a contest every year.”

 

During her early writing years she had dozens and dozens of rejection letters but she kept trying and finally connected with a romance novel for which she received $2,000.  “I thought it was an astounding sum,” she recalled.  Today, her net worth is around $140 million.

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