Sell Your Self-Published Book the DREAMS Cycle ™ Way

Photo by   Pixabay  from  Pexels When I joined the Ottawa Independent Writers (OIW) in the fall of 2016, I had never heard of a book reading. A few months later, the OIW advertised that they would have a poem reading at the Christmas Party. I am not a poet and I was not available the day of the party, so I missed out on the readings. The next spring, I participated in the OIW Writer’s Workshop. It was held in the beautiful village of Westport, Ontario, right by the lake. During the workshop, there was an evening dedicated to readings. This would be my first reading ever. I selected a flash fiction story, Take It Away Sam , that I had written the previous year and that was published online on the Flash Fiction Press website. When it was my turn to read, I was surprised at how nervous I was. I regularly present in front of audiences of up to 100 for my job, but this was a new context and I doubted my writing and delivery skills. My nervousness brought out some ol...

  Photo by  rawpixel.com  from  Pexels I published my book, Frankenstein’s Science Project , through the Lulu platform . I have used it in the past for a running manual, Plan on Running Your Best , and a running memoir, Take 10 and Reach the Boston Marathon . Lulu has many advantages such as reasonable prices for publishing your book, wide international distribution, you control the publishing and it is pretty easy to use. When I was ready to publish, I had to decide on the price of my book. There were quite a few elements I needed to consider. The first element was the cost of printing and shipping. My book is a softcover children’s chapter book of 136 pages with one black and white illustration for each of the 19 chapters. The dimensions are A5 (14.8x21.0 cm or 5.83x8.26 in). The printing cost from Lulu is $5.78 per book. Shipping varies by the number of copies; if you only ship one book it would cost about $5. Lulu often offers rebates of up to 20% ...

Photo by icon0.com from Pexels Once you captured your dreams for selling your self-published book and you know why you want to sell that masterpiece, you need to set a goal. To be realistic in your expectations, you will want a thorough understand of where you are currently in your life. This is where the Dice of Life and the 5 L’s of Life can be useful as presented in a previous blog post. Now is time to explore your dreams and establish your goal. Explore Your Dreams Exploring your dreams and desires corresponds to the first E in the DREAMS Cycle ™ . This involves examining your dreams and how they fit with your purpose. This will assist in determining what you want to achieve. My dreams for selling my book were the following: Become rich. Become a bestselling author. Get positive reviews of my books in newspapers, magazines, television and social media. Become rich To me, becoming rich means earning a million dollars. This comes from my yo...

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels 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...

Photo by Tamás  Mészáros from Pexels Deep down, wouldn’t we all love to sell a million copies of our book. That is certainly a dream I have for my self-published book, Frankenstein’s Science Project . Once my book was published through Lulu Press in January 2018, it was time to focus on marketing and selling this masterpiece. Publishers and successful authors recommend starting your marketing campaign 6-9 months before publishing . I had done some marketing activities prior to publishing the book, like creating an author website at www.normanmarcotte.com and an author page on Facebook. Unfortunately, I ran out of time for marketing activities as I really wanted to publish my book early in 2018 to coincide with the 200 th anniversary of the writing of the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley . When I was ready to sell my book, I decided to follow the DREAMS Cycle ™ process. The start of the DREAMS Cycle ™ is D for “Dreams and Desires” as mentioned in a previou...

I resigned from my job for love. The year was 1995 and I decided to move from Kingston to Ottawa to join my future wife. The move also provided an opportunity to redirect my life and career from a research scientist to a more people-oriented profession. I returned to graduate school at the University of Ottawa to study Educational Counselling. One of the courses I completed as part of my degree was on counseling approaches. The major assignment for the course consisted of developing your own personal counseling model. After much soul-searching, I created the DREAM cycle approach. DREAM was an acronym for Dreams, Reality, Explore options, Action plan, and Monitor. The visual that I associated with the DREAM cycle was of a bicycle, which was appropriate at the time as I was heavily involved in triathlons. The spoke on the wheels of the bicycle represented the letters of the acronym, while the wheel represented a continuous cycle. The bicycle also meant to indicate that the perso...