This post was hard for me to write.
I want to be seen as calm, cool and collected. Always confident in my decisions and confident in my business. Of course, that isn’t always true. There are times I worry, times I’m freaked out, and times I want to bury my head in the sand and let the world pass by without my notice.
However, after the dozenth person said something about how “confident” I was in the launch of Your First 1000 Copies and how I must have known it would be a success since, you know, I wrote the book on book marketing, I decided it was time to be real.
The truth is, leading up to the release of my book, I was petrified. And I use that word on purpose because there were several times I just sat at my desk staring at, but not seeing, my computer screen. I was unable to move or make a decision because I was so worried about letting my book into the world. There was also a moment in time when my editor was working on the last piece of the book that I realized every version of the book was still digital and I could delete it completely and walk away and not have to face this anymore.
About a month before the book came out one of my clients suggested that I keep a journal through the process. “It might be helpful to your readers some day” he said. So I did. I started writing out both the details of finishing the book along with my feelings around the launch. Some of it’s not pretty. Some of it is embarrassing. But it’s an honest recap of the book launch from my perspective.
Now, I’ve wrapped the whole Book Launch Journal into a PDF for you. If you’ve ever thought that you’re alone in your anxiety to release your writing into the world, I hope it will help you feel more normal. And if you’re sitting on your own project petrified to release it, I hope it will give you the courage to move forward.
And if you’ve ever wanted a peek into my crazy, well, you’ll get a bit of that too.
Click here to download The Book Launch Journal.
Enjoy the read.
[Note: This was originally an email to the Out:think Insider’s list and has been reposted here several months later]
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