The Courage to See Myself as a Successful Author

When my writing coach and editor Brooke Warner recently posted about the return of the investment in marketing and publicity, I started getting heart palpitations. It reminded me of a conversation I had with myself.

Here’s what did me in:

“To make money in book publishing, you are best off looking at your first book as an investment in yourself. It’s unlikely to earn its money back, and its success should be directly measured against how much money you put into publicity.”

If you asked me a year ago to invest ten grand in myself for purposes of publicity, I’d probably give you that “what the hell” look in the face. Like seriously? Do I have to pay so much?

Over the course of 2015, my feeling about publicists changed greatly. I had several dialogues with various local authors and online about publicists. Among various authors, there seemed to be a general consensus that authors shouldn’t invest in a publicist and should do the work themselves to save the money becuase authors don’t have that kind of money. It’s expensive.

There are two problems with this statement:

1. An author just has so many x hours in a given day to do all the book marketing so it isn’t always logical.
2. An author by nature, doesn’t have the money to invest

I found those messages very harmful especially since I held the keys to my book’s future. did I want to follow the path of other authors or forge my own?

Having had a Mom who was a classical pianist of note and who stayed frugal for most of her adult life, I had to combat a variety of limiting beliefs.

You aren’t investable as an author because…

a. You’re poor and authors don’t have money

b. You’re new and people don’t know you so why invest? Do all the publicity and marketing work then yourself…

Do you see where this is going? If you’re poor because you’re an unknown author, therefore, you’re not investable — meaning, not good enough.

Did I want to sabotage my book’s success because of a few lifelong limiting beliefs that concerned feelings about self-worth and money?

Have the courage to see yourself as an investment

To see myself as investable, meant I had to break the stereotypes about authors.

You define success

After doing research and speaking to other authors (beyond the local circle who didn’t believe in hiring a publicist), I decided that I needed to finally break this limiting beliefs cycle.

I am investable. I am worthy of success. I am deserving of any book sale that comes my way for I have earned it. 

This is the beauty of the book world. Today there are so many ways to make a living as an author. You can do workshops, speaking gigs, keynotes, teachings, teleseminars, webinars, talk at book clubs and many others. In fact, that’s how many authors have found monetary success. The key is to define your own version of success. If you don’t, then you’ll be at the mercy of all the voices out there defining success as an author for you.

Having a publicist on your team builds your bottom line and credibility. You’re an unknown but by the second or third book, you’re not with the first so it makes sense that you wouldn’t earn back your investment with the first.

Educate other authors why it’s important to hire a publicist

It took great courage and guts to tell other authors why I felt I was investable enough to hire a publicist. Most authors don’t get it – at least the publicist part. I’ve run into authors who don’t hire editors! How is this even possible?

If you listened to my recent interview with Patti Clark over at Blog Talk Radio, author of This Way Up, then you may have picked up on the fact that women particularly, don’t see themselves as investable until they reach a breaking point.

And the only way to break that cycle, is to first see yourself as an investment.

The courage it takes to see yourself as a successful author is disproportionate to the money you make in the first year of publishing your book.