Writing a book is like starting a snowball rolling down a hill—you never know exactly where it’s going or who it might bump into along the way. I am astounded at the places my books have surfaced. Last week I talked about my first book showing up on a medical books site. This week I found my second novel, Refugee Without Refuge, on a website about weight loss. Amazing—check out http://letslim.info/products/Refugee.html# and see for yourself.
I racked my brains for a while trying to figure out why this might have happened. I didn’t come up with any answers, but I decided not to worry about it. The important thing is that I now have more exposure AND the customer rating was FIVE STARS! What could be better? The way I see it, this gives me a lot more exposure. Having another website where people can run into my book is a big deal, and this one has a potentially large readership (no pun intended, really). If everyone who wants to lose weight sees my book I could have an audience of millions. It is entirely possible that the number of people who are trying to lose weight outnumber the people who browse through Amazon books! It is a little hard to pin down numbers, but some studies estimate that as high as 86% of Americans could be overweight—I just hope they browse the web and find my book.
Writing a book is a tremendously satisfying accomplishment. It is especially satisfying if the book also tells the reader something important. I wrote my books about refugees to help people understand that Palestinian refugees are very much like the rest of us. They have hopes and dreams, they want better things for their children, and they love their families.
It gives me great pleasure to know that my books are getting wider and wider distribution on the internet. Readers have given the books excellent reviews, calling them haunting, compelling, fast-moving, interesting, and a must-read. I hope that wider web coverage means wider readership and just maybe a wider understanding of some of human issues involve in the Palestine problem.
You can find links to my books on my website: http://www.hallajs.com
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