I made a friend about four years ago, a fairly well known psychic who has a decent platform. She’s not nationally known…yet. But she’s been on radio shows with famous celebs, and TV talk shows with the comcast network. She’s worked hard, she’s damn good at what she does, and she’s been trying to get a book published for a long time.

Four years ago when I met her, she asked me advice about getting a non-fiction book published. I gave her links, I showed her how to write a decent query/proposal for non-fiction, and I even recommended her to my friend who is a literary agent. And in all the years we’ve been friends, I’ve only recommended two people to my agent friend.

My agent friend rejected her. He focuses more on fiction and already had enough good non-fiction authors at the time. My non-fiction writer friend understood and continued to query. And since then, she’s been building her platform, traveling all over the country doing radio shows and TV talk shows, and helping people through her psychic abilities with their problems.

I think it’s important to mention that I believe in her talents and her abilities as a pychic, and I’m the biggest skeptic there is. I met her at a time when a family member was going through a life and death crisis and she helped me with some great advice. And she was absolutely correct in everything she told me, and she made me a believer.

I truly thought that by now this wonderful, talented psychic would have found an agent and publisher. But that’s not the case. She contacted me this weekend asking for advice about querying again. And this time, four years later, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t have much faith in the query system. It only works for a few lucky authors, and it’s designed for failure. Though I never queried my best selling book, The Virgin Billionaire, to any agents, I can guarantee it would have been rejected by all of them if I had queried. The same goes for my other books and short stories.

So I gave my non-fiction author friend the best advice I possibly could based on my own personal information. Things have changed so much in publishing it’s hard to give good advice. I told her to continue querying…you never know…but not to get her hopes up too high. Even if you do get an agent, trying to get a “traditional” publisher interested nowadays is a long shot. They only seem to be interested in Snookie and Bristol Palin books.

Then I told my non-fiction author friend to run over to amazon and check out self-publishing a kindle e-book. With her platform, her large following, and her excellent promotional skills, I doubt she’ll have any problems selling e-books and gaining a readership. She’s been managing her own career for years, why not take the next step by publishing her own .99 e-books.