A Celebration of Breaking Even

After the event at Faith United Methodist Church on January 31st, I am now nearly breaking even financially with the self-publication of my first work, 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves.  One of the things that I have talked to my fiancee about is how hard it can be for a writer/artist, or anyone really, to continue doing what they love for the sake of doing what they love when financial considerations come into play.  Are we good enough people to not care about money, to do what it is we love without any seeking after money?  As a Christian, and as a Christian writer, I have to say that any seeking after money lessens our potential, even if the money seeking is secondary.  To be the best that we can be, as a person and as a professional in a vocation, we should only do what it is we want to do and then let the money come to us.  In real life this is a hard principle to follow, since we're often in need of money any way we can get it.  But still, I have written a book: do I sell that book because I want people to read it and possibly gain something from it, or do I sell the book because I want to make some money?  Does it matter?

Well, first of all, I think that breaking even is an event to be celebrated. Whether I am writing for my own financial well-being, my own satisfaction, or for the betterment of the world, breaking even means something: I've sold about 150 copies.  Stop the trains! 150 copies!  No way!  That must have killed at least 10 million trees!  Okay, so 150 copies is not 1,000 copies, nor is it 10,000 copies.  I'm not setting any records.  And let's say only half the people who have bought the book have actually read it.  That means a mere 75 people have read the book.  Though that number is much smaller than a writer with big dreams may like, it's still something to be celebrated.

In the case of 27 Million Revolutions, I know that many of those 75 people have found the book helpful in some way.  A student in Florida asked me to record a little talk for her, one of my brother's friends was strongly moved by the book and started up a conversation with me about the book, and residents of my former hometown have said that they are starting to be more aware of slavery in the news and in their daily lives.  Those are just a few examples.  As a writer, what else could you ask for?  As a Christian, what else could you ask for?  People's lives are being changed for the better.  Yes, the numbers are small, but if the impact is large, how can I or anyone else complain?

Self-publishing has had the unintended consequence of forcing me to think about finances a little too much.  For any budding writers out there, self-publishing will have the same negative consequence on you as well, unless a financial boom is why you are writing.  But I suppose I am choosing to ignore all the more serious questions and just remember that breaking even with 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves means that a good number of people have been positively impacted and influenced by reading the book.

Here's to hoping that celebrating this milestone will lead to more lives changed, bringing us closer to the end of slavery.  If you want to help change lives and make the world a better place--aka, a world without slavery--recommend 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves.  It's already worked wonders in a number of lives.

Self-Publishing and Confidence

After reading my last post you might understand why it's been such a struggle for me to really, indeed, come to terms with self-publishing.  It seems like a failure to me and has caused a great many rifts in the canyon of my mind.  The concept of self-publishing contrasted to getting published by a real publishing company is bad enough, but the fact that to self-publish you then have to coordinate various things on your own adds another struggle.  For instance, you have to provide your own cover art, do your own editing and formatting, find a company to print the book, and advertise yourself.  Most of these tasks I have covered with the hard work and support of my mother and parents--we are learning together; and the cover art will be provided by my ever great, supportive and understanding artist-friend Ms. Sherman.  I'm not worried about the final product.  However, having to learn all this and do it on our own has caused a great many delays, long delays, that have drastically pushed back my hoped-for publication date.  It's no one's fault, just the nature of self-publishing, especially for newcomers.  On top of that, and this is the worst part, I have constantly questioned how supported I really am... which in turn leads to serious questions of self-esteem.  You can only hear, "I don't have the time," or, worse, "I haven't made the time," so often before you think that some of the people you were most relying on can't really be relied on.

For a new, struggling, new, dreamy, new, inexperienced, new, very new writer, general emotions and confidence are apparently of the utmost importance.  I didn't know that when I first set out on this journey a year ago.  I thought that my love of writing and self-assessed skill as a writer would carry me through any issues.  That hasn't been the case at all.  Until I get a couple of publications out of the way I think that even the smallest of cracks in my confidence will continue to turn me against writing and change my assessment of my writing skill.  At the moment, for instance, I think I rank lower as a writer than Stephanie Meyer, or whatever the heck her name is.  Coming from my lips, or fingers, that's saying a lot.  And though Alexandra (aka Ms. Sherman) has tried to lift my spirits by saying that writing on my blog counts as writing, I beg to differ.  My writing on this blog has been a hate-hate relationship from the start, and now I'm on the hate side: the hate side of realizing that I'm only writing on the blog because I'm afraid to write anything real.

You could say that I'm a big baby.  You'd be absolutely right.  I am.  I'm begging for attention.  Am I wrong for doing that?  The answer is probably, "yes," no matter what, but I wonder if maybe I should beg for attention if it will help me serve the universal community by writing.  But then, do I still think that I can help anyone, or even hurt anyone, by writing?  Not at the moment.  I don't have the confidence, mostly because I don't have the support.  Can you believe that?  Since I feel like I don't have enough support, I have such a low opinion of my writing that I don't even think that I can hurt anyone.  If I pointed out the person reading this blog from two rows back, three seats from center, and said, "Hey, you're a *$#*$& and a &@$_@$, why do you continue to $(@@*^% live?" they would laugh at me.

How much of this has to do with self-publishing?  Only a little, but every little bit of insecurity gets magnified when you self-publish.  That's what I'm learning anyway.  And this process of self-publishing for the first time, to finally put the story of my bike trip, 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves, has been absolutely brutal.

If you plan on self-publishing, good for you.  But understand that you'll either be the laughingstock of others or the laughingstock of yourself.  It should be an occasion of pride when the publication comes to fruition, especially if it's not just a bunch of blabber, but getting to that point, and even after, will almost certainly be full of a great many of occasions of self-questioning, depression, waywardness, and distancing from some of those people you are closest to.