It will take effort, it will take work, it will take time. You can do it. And if you don’t get it good enough the first time you can always go back and change an ebook.
One audio book producer told me that most of the books he narrates have to have changes to make them to sound better. Can you believe that? The words in an audio book are not the same as the words in the ebook. Warning, audio book narrators/producers are very expensive editors.
You’re sitting there and your book doesn’t sing, doesn’t read right, just doesn’t have it. What do you do? You edit it, you send it to an editor, you round up a bunch of beta readers, you join a critique group and they cut your book to pieces. You don’t have to go it alone, and you’ll do it again and again. Why? Because you are one of the one tenth of one percenters. You not only wrote a book, but you put a book or books out there in front of the world. You’re an author and that what authors do. They work, they feel insignificant, they feel not good enough, and they publish.
I’ve seen articles that say most first books only sell 100 copies or less. If that average includes the likes of J. K. Rowling with her millions of sold copies of her first book then a lot of us will only sell one copy of our first book, if that.
But, we will write another book. We will have learned from writing our first book We will have learned from our professional editor. We will have learned from courses we have taken, from conventions we have attended.
We writers, like our character will have completed an arc. Think of it, your first book is your mini-character-arc. After the first book you are different. If you don’t change, if you don’t do things different then maybe you should change from writing to something else. Change is good, but it hurts. It means that you didn’t and don’t know it all. You weren’t as good as you thought you were. It could mean that the world changed and you didn’t. The perfect world is now different. Adapt or be buried.
I can not help you if you’re paralyzed by fear, or if you feel inadequate or have too many thing going on in your life. No one can help me over come my writing procrastination, my life full of things I need to do (well, if I could afford a personal assistant that would help, so would winning the lottery, I gotta stop dreaming and write). I can urge you to write, I make time to write even in my depressingly overcrowded days. Write, you’re not alone in fear.
I can tell you about the speaker that gives talks to thousands of people at one time. And how, just before he goes on stage to give his talk, he is so racked by uncertainty that he throws up. But he goes out and gives the speech.
So, put on your lucky socks, or go to your favorite coffee shop, and write. But don’t forget to learn and change.
Do it, be one of the one tenth of one percenters, a writer that has a published a book – an author.
Stay strong, write on, and see you on the book shelf.
Professor Hyram Voltage “May your next book sell a million copies.”