It’s not what you’re doing — it’s how you’re doing it
Writing a book, publishing it, and making millions off the royalty fee – that’s the dream, isn’t it? We all want to reach that stage one day, where we wake up to a topped up bank account, full of money coming in from our latest book release. The laurels, the fame – it’s all amazingly tantalising.
But God knows writing a book isn’t that easy – otherwise, everyone would write a book. It requires careful planning and outlining, completing the first draft, editing and polishing it to produce a second draft, possibly even a third. Finishing a book alone is a lot of work, but the job doesn’t end there. Next comes publishing. Whether you choose to go traditional or pick self-publishing as your preferred route, publishing is definitely more taxing than actually writing. You also have to build an audience who are just jumping at the chance to buy your book, regardless of which route you pick. That can take a while too. After that, there are book signings and events to take care of, in addition to the endless marketing you’re going to have to undertake.
And so you turn to the experts from around the web for help. After all, if you just do the exact same thing as them, you’ll strike rich too. You try everything possible. Follow all the steps outlined by every single one of the experts. You scour the net for countless resources, wasting immeasurable hours. Maybe even try enrolling in one of those classes that promise you a finished book by the end of the course (we all know how well that works out). You’ve given it your all, but your book just refuses to be written.
Don’t tell me that you’ve never had that feeling — we all have, at some point or another. I, myself, have started and successfully failed to complete (I’ll tell you why this was a success in a bit) seven books. Yep, seven. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s not something I have to be embarrassed by either. Ditching seven books taught me one thing — novels just aren’t for me. I could partly formulate an idea, but couldn’t carry it on for very long (my highest word count has been 8,000 words).
After a while, I stumbled upon an article that suggested accountability as the key to the success of numerous published authors, so I gave it a go. I began offering free previews of the two books I was working on to email subscribers, in hope of gaining some accountability. Alas, it was for naught (although I did get some valuable feedback from it, and learned that previews are not a very good lead magnet).
