It’s Monday morning after NaNoWriMo. That was a fun month. I put together a beta version of The Quest for Confidence and I put it out there for you to find and read. I already know that there are some things it is missing (this article would be one thing), but I’d like your input before I go through the full re-write phase.
Today, I want to talk to you about your book. The dream you have is to turn that book into a New York Times Best Seller. You want it top of the page in every single home in America. You want Oprah Winfrey begging to have your book to use in her book club. That’s how amazing you want your book to be, and that’s awesome.
Now, let’s talk about the realities of what it’s going to take you to make that happen. Obviously, you’re going to have to write a book that is amazing. You’re going to have to go out there and do the research required to figure out what your book has to offer that no other book out there is offering. That means doing the tedious work of sifting through book after book that’s been published on your topic, looking at their rankings and their reviews, and picking through the 1-star and 2-star comments to find what the book didn’t include that people wanted and to find the things the book DID include that nobody wanted.
Once you’ve done that, you’re going to have to make sure your book offers the things that people wanted but weren’t getting and avoids the things that people got they didn’t want. Yes – this includes fiction writers. If you want your book to be amazing, and to stand out, you’re going to have to figure out how to offer what nobody else is offering that people want to see. Then you’re going to have to WRITE that amazingly awesome book.
After writing that rough draft, you’re going to have to go through the painstaking work involved in editing and rewriting and proof-reading and beta testing that book. You’re going to have to polish it until it gleams and every page that comes off of it is filled with solid gold that people just can’t resist mining.
Now, you’re ready to give birth to that book. To make it to the New York Times best seller list, you’re going to have to sell 9,000 copies of that book in a single week. That’s a daunting task for anyone to undertake. To sell that many copies, you’re going to have to find 90,000 people who will seriously consider buying your book. To find the 90,000 people who will seriously consider your book, you must be sure that 900,000 people at least LOOK at your book. And for 900,000 people to at least LOOK at your book, you must see to it that 9,000,000 people KNOW about that book.
That’s where the 8,991,000 number comes into play.
You must be prepared for 8,100,000 of those people who know about your book to REJECT it before they’ve even seen it. They’re not rejecting it because they hate you or because they think your book is terrible. They’re rejecting it because the message of it doesn’t appeal to them or because they don’t care for the genre. That doesn’t mean it won’t feel personal. It will.
You have to be so confident in the value that your book brings to the table and to the world that you are willing to fight through those 8,100,000 “No” answers in order to find those 900,000 people that who will give the book a look. And your gauntlet of rejection isn’t finished when you do find them.
There will be 810,000 people who look at your book and pass it by. Again, it isn’t likely to be personal. Maybe they don’t have the money to buy it, or the time to read it, or maybe they have a problem that’s more pressing on their mind than the one your book offers to solve. Maybe your cover doesn’t speak to them. So they pass on by.
Can you keep going when they do? Will you continue to press on when 8,910,000 people have rejected that book? It’s not going to be easy. Your ego is going to take a beating.
You’ve found the 90,000 who are going to seriously consider buying your book, but they don’t. 81,000 of them will like what you’ve produced, want what you’ve produced, but they won’t buy it. That stings on a whole new level. But, again, it’s not personal although it may feel that way. And now you’ll have faced 8,991,000 rejections.
If you can make it this far, if you can keep believing and dreaming when facing so many rejections, you have what it takes to be a bestselling author. And you’re the exact kind of person that I want to work with in 2017. I want to invite you to join my Transformational Author Club.
We’re going to be encouraging and supporting one another in this club, working together to do what it takes to hit the numbers we need to hit in order to achieve the success we desire. We’re going to write books that aren’t just good, they’re so great people can’t stop talking about them. And when – not if – I hit that number 1 slot on the New York Times Best Seller List, I’m going to share with you everything I learned on my way there and give you a hand getting your book in the slot right next to mine.