My book cover design for my latest novel has just arrived…my new book cover design! Wow! Didn’t the Pointer Sisters sing it best? ‘I’m so excited…and I just can’t hide it…’ You know how the song goes, depending on your age, of course. Wink wink. How to give a gal a rush of the happiness hormones, Serotonin and Endorphin…I tell you! I know you may be thinking, cool your britches, honey, that’s about two percent of book publishing and marketing. But hey, let a gal have her moment in the sun. And allow me to explain, if I may, why it’s important for an Author to celebrate every little step along the way of this Herculean process.
Writing a fiction novel can take years of blood, sweat and laptop slog. Maybe less if you’re someone like James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks and you know how to crank out this creative craft at pace, along with having the justifiable and due rewards of a large team of support. I’m currently not at this stage of Authorship. However, I am about to publish again – for the second time. Yes indeed. Her Eight Limbs of Love, is on its way down the birth canal shoot. I can tell you, it’s a reasonably sizeable labor, per usual. After all, I’m a budding International Bestseller. Not an actual one, as yet, therefore I don’t have the scale of team and resources behind me – as yet, I add again. So the birthing pains are still pretty sizeable. Not to whine, as this generally comes with the territory of birthing a grand project, ie a book. For those of you not fully familiar with this gargantuan feat, let me break it down a touch for you:
First, you have to have the IDEA. Then you require COURAGE and ACTION to proceed. For fiction Authors, in particular, you also need a great dose of CREATIVITY AND INSPIRATION for the story to flow and drop into your human flesh-and-blood existence and make its way into some sort of COHERENT FORM. And then you must, most disconcertingly, throw in a massive dollop of DISCIPLINE to sit your butt at the computer hour after hour to complete the colossal task. This is conjoined with BELIEF that anybody will want to read your musings…and then actually do that ie. not just say it…they actually READ YOUR BOOK. And then, if the tasks required for completing such a mammoth mission don’t rattle the heartiest of souls, you are told, and discover, that writing the book is actually only FIVE PERCENT of the job. FIVE PERCENT, that’s all!! By all accounts, the other NINETY-FIVE PERCENT is MARKETING, Marketing, and more Marketing. Or as one incredibly helpful email outlining the five most critical steps to becoming a successful Author mentioned: 1) Platform, 2) Platform, 3) Platform, 4) Platform, and 5) (super surprising) Platform.
I would rather be writing, TRUST ME. But I have to pull thy finger out and become, what any artistic soul generally prefers NOT to be…VISIBLE.
Uggh!
Along with a multitude of other aspects of completing a novel, including the hideous EDITING phase we must endure and expose ourselves to, I almost forgot the two last central and critical parts of the formula: SUPPORT ie a mountain of – or a few – amazing people in your life who believe in you. Thankfully I have this and am truly grateful. And lastly, a READERSHIP – those dear souls around the globe who have faith in your creativity (or no idea at all), take a punt, and throw a few small dollars at your monumental and lengthy undertaking.
Even better, they love it. And better still, they pop a review about it onto Amazon. And please know, for an Author to see a nice review pop up, after all those arduous years, warms the cockles of our hearts – versus the thought of knowing our meteoric crater of slog has been thrown recklessly by the side of the bed and crushed underfoot in the midnight haste to get to the bathroom.
And note, before you shuffle about nervously with your mind shouting some overblown rumour like ‘paperback books are virtually extinct in the face of online books’, in short, that’s not true. But this is a whole other blog.
That’s how simple writing and publishing a book is. Oh, I almost forgot, Tequila…also helpful on occasion. It’s possibly one of the few times where a baby in gestation and birth, albeit a book baby (and its Author), can actually feel the welcome relief of said alcohol and its assistance for such a ridiculously long project. Writing a book can, after all, contain the kind of equivalent time and input it takes to gain a University Degree. If so, that’s good news – I have two. Three, if you consider my ‘real’ one. And I’m picking up my pace.
Holding a positive intention and positive affirmations surely help, too. I bet Sir Edmund Hillary had to have an optimistic mindset when scaling Everest. And I liken getting a book completed and in the hands of readers as my Everest. So I hope you’ll both read and enjoy my pending new release: Her Eight Limbs of Love. I’d even rejoice in the knowledge it may be trampled beneath your feet in an early hours dash to the bathroom.
Marketing, over and out. Time to scurry away and hide in my next creative endeavor.