As many of you may know, I published a new book the end of January.
Talk about stress! And the worst part is that when the book is finally out there on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, your work has just begun. In my case I still had to get it converted to Kindle and uploaded, provide the necessary files to offer the “inside the book” feature on Amazon, and begin the endless (and seemingly thankless!) task of getting the word out online and in “real life” about what my book has to offer the world. Major decisions must be made about investing in national press releases and who to ask for a review. In retrospect I must say I overdid it a bit. And when I got finished I felt absolutely disillusioned and exhausted!
Then the hardest part began for me, waiting to see what the overall response would be. Patience has never been my strong suit, and I have learned the hard way that the response online is much slower than I would like. Talking to people face-to-face is so simple. You tell them about the book and they either want a copy or not. Online you must get the word out as best you can, and then wait to see if it’s working.
I remember how exposed I felt after my book was out. It seemed at the time that either no one would read my book and that felt bad, or everyone would and the criticism would be devastating.
Turns out none of that happened. It has simply been growing in popularity slowly as a few people have taken a chance on buying it, and they then tell their friends about it.
Want to learn a lot about yourself? Write a book and publish it! I have learned how truly impatient I am. But I have also learned that there are good people everywhere in the world, people who will write and tell you how great your book really is. And boy, do you need that after making such a gigantic effort, and taking what feels like the risk of a lifetime!
Congrats on getting the book ‘out the door’! Will you now do a follow-up book on how to wriite a book?