Reality Is What Is Between You And Selling Your Book

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You want to sell a million copies of your book because of your desire to share your stories with the world. What a wonderful and invigorating desire! Now is time to face reality. To paraphrase John Lennon, reality is what happens when you’re busy trying to sell your book.

Reality represents the second R in the DREAMS Cycle ™. Reality reflects what is happening in your life that will impact the achievement of your dreams. Two dimensions of reality need to be considered: The Dice of Life and the 5 L’s of Life.

 

The Dice of Life

The Dice of Life is just a metaphor for what life throws at you. More importantly, just like a dice, it has six facets that represent the six elements that will allow you to reach your dreams and desires. The six elements are: money, time, energy, opportunity, talent and support, in no particular order. In your lifetime, and at any particular time, these elements will be available to you in a certain quantity. How much of each you have and how much you need to achieve your dreams will determine where you need to spend your efforts to succeed and how successful you will be. Each of these elements will be explained in the context of selling your self-published book with personal examples related to selling my own children book, Frankenstein’s Science Project. You should explore how these relate to your own reality.

Money

Money makes the world go round, and it’s basically a requirement to help you promote and sell your self-published book. Before you can actually make money selling your book, you’ll need to spend money. For example, up-front money is required to print your self-published book and then to market that gem. How much money you have and are willing to dedicate to selling your book can impact its success.

Personally, as a public service employee with a good job, I bring in a certain amount of income that allows me to invest in selling my book. However, I have no desire to spend a lot of money for little in return. My philosophy, being right or wrong, is to actually start with activities and actions for selling my book that cost little or no money before spending oodles of dollars on marketing. My initial comfort limit for marketing resides at around $500. This does not sound like much, but for me, I am not convinced investing more will have a higher return. I hope that within $500, I will succeed in selling sufficient books to generate money to further invest in selling more books.

Time

Selling your book can be a full time job. To be truly successful at selling your book, you will need to invest countless hours, especially in the first 6-12 months of your book being self-published. Unfortunately, the amount of hours in a day and in a week is limited, and you have other priorities in life besides selling uour book. I found a few videos on time that are worth spending time on: Ted Talks, The Creative Penn.

I am employed in a full time job. I also have three wonderful kids under 15. I also run regularly and I enjoy competing in road races. I figure that out of the 168 hours we each have in a week, I need to sleep, work and commute, pursue family obligations, stay healthy, take personal care like eating and grooming; I can thus only dedicate about 6-8 hours per week to sell my book. What I found over the years however, is that time will find itself for the important things in life. What defines the priorities in your life will be covered in the 5 L’s of Life.

Energy

Energy represents the amount of effort you can put into selling your book. Spending five hours behind a table signing your book takes energy. Sending out and responding to emails takes energy. The available energy you have depends on a few factors with the main ones being health and fitness, diet, and sleep. Of course, this energy gets consumed by other activities besides selling your book, such as by work, chasing kids around, and exercising. Interesting enough, exercising takes energy, but it gives back even more in the long term.

My energy is taken up by my work where I can sometimes feel drained at the end of the day. Some of my energy is dedicated to assisting the kids with their homework. I also find that dealing with simple house chores and maintenance sucks up energy. This leaves a limited amount of energy for selling my book.

Talent

Selling books does not required very developed talent, but it does take some skills. The most critical ones are writing skills, business skills, and marketing skills. These skills can be developed, although it can be easier for outgoing people, which writers often are not.

Of the three skills required, I need to develop all of them to varying degrees. My writing skills are just acceptable, but I lack experience with running a business or marketing. I consider myself an introvert, but over the years, my level of comfort with putting myself out there has increased. Through work, I present to audiences of various sizes so I am no longer petrified of talking in public like I used to in school and university. I have also sat behind exhibit booths which will help when signing books.

Opportunity

Opportunity refers to the doors that open to you in your journey to selling your book. These can be nurtured or more importantly grasped when they come up. To grasp these opportunities, you need to keep your eyes open and take action when you encounter them.

I joined the Ottawa Independent Writers (OIW) a couple of years ago. This group offers many opportunities for connecting and selling books. The first opportunity that presented itself was a book reading night. OIW members were invited to read from their book. Although a little late in responding, I was lucky enough to squeak in as the second to last speaker. The day of the reading night, I was nervous, having only done a short reading in a workshop once. After the OIW reading, I actually sold my first book to another member.

Support

Support for your dreams and desires comes for other people. These are your family, friends and co-workers. These are the people you can count on when you need help. They can provide moral support, financial support, and even liberate some time for you by taking care of some of your time-consuming activities.

I am fortunate enough to be married to my wonderful wife who supports me fully. My sister has also always provided encouragement for my crazy endeavors.

 

The 5 L’s of Life

Life is comprised of more than just selling your book. Other aspects of your life need to be considered, such as work and family. These priorities need to be examined to determine how they fit with your book selling desire. In order to determine how much of the Dice of Life you want to dedicate to selling your book, you will need to identify the other priorities in your life and how much they mean to you. This exercise starts with identifying your 5 L’s of Life: Labor, Love, Learning, Lifestyle and Leisure, in no particular order.

Labor

Labor represents the activities that earn an income. This relates to being employed, self-employed or even retired. Work creates various demands on people related to, for example, available time, income, stress, and even opportunities. For me, my public servant job is generally restricted to normal weekday working hours. Only occasionally do I travel or work on weekends.

Love

Love refers to family and friends. Relationships must be nurtured to be meaningful and lasting. Depending on where you are in your life, you might have to make a bigger commitment to your loved ones. One of the most demanding times can be around the birth of a child and the first few years after. My children are growing up, but during the school year, there are so many demands related to school and activities that it can become all consuming.

Learning

Since a large portion of people’s lives is spent at school or in learning situations, the time spent learning will affect your available time and the knowledge gained. Studying for an exam or taking courses nightly would impact your book selling activities. You might also want to learn more about business and marketing. I personally have had my share of school time (21 years of formal schooling) so my learning is focused on the tasks at hand, such as for marketing my book.

Lifestyle

The area identified as lifestyle refers to how you live and what you have, such as health and wealth. For me, health is a critical component in my life and I am dedicated to staying fit. In addition, I love to compete in races. This involves major commitments to exercising, so I put some extra effort into this aspect of my life.

Leisure

Leisure encompasses the activities you do for fun and relaxation. This includes simple activities such as going out to dinner or watching television, to exciting hiking adventures in the Amazon. Although I love to relax and enjoy a good book or movie, some people say I rarely take it easy. There is some validity to this, but my projects keep me very occupied and satisfied.

 

Now Picture Reality

Through exploring the Dice of Life and the 5L’s of Life, a better sense of what is your reality should emerge. This will assist in determining the right goal for selling your self-published book.