Do You Have a Publishing a Book Dis-ease?

You have one chance and one chance alone to impress a person with your writing and, what is more important, to earn money on your published book.

For most writers this sounds like a challenge — in a good way.  Just write something (or something more) and publish it.  If you want to, you can go and have a book self-published, (spend a bit of money on editing and interior design) and have your book out on Amazon when you envision it will be sold, so that you will earn some profits.  All it takes is time and a bit of energy on your part.  It simply means that you have to write and publish that manuscript, the idea is simple enough.

Wait? What, did I say something wrong?  Most people don’t worry about writing, unless that dreaded writers block has bitten them, and then it’s a hard thing to break.  But, there is the publishing dis-ease — and it can stop you dead in your tracks.  It is a dangerous one to have, and one which is harder to fix, as opposed to sitting down in front of a computer until you are finished 500 words in one day. (For the record, one of our blog posts is between 300-500 words, so even writing a blog post can help break even the nastiest case of writer’s block.)

Publishing dis-ease is much worse. You can find it in the person who constantly makes edits on their work. This is the one who complains about how much money it is costing them to have an editor, or a cover designer, or just generally complaints about money. It’s found in the ones for whom there is an excuse of the day for not having sent off the manuscript, or for, well, anything, and they need (insert vague thing here) to help them before that book is published.

The other form of this dis-ease is the “never enough”.  Published one book this year? Oh, well how about another 8 more?  Is that enough to earn you the money back for the time you spent writing and editing it?  These writers are focused on quantity of published material as opposed to writing the quality work that their readers want or need.

Here are a few ways to break out of the publishing dis-ease:

1) Realize that you are only one person, and you can only fix one thing at a time, and there will always be something that someone won’t like.  Not everyone likes every author or every book they write.

2) Some books need to be published NOW… and some don’t.  It’s your job to figure out which ones are which.

3) Publishing a book will cost you money, but it can also earn you money.  Breathe deeply and deal with it.

4) It’s an adventure you might be on for the first time, or the hundredth time, but each trip is unique.  It’s your book, and this year is the year you will publish it.