This is another one of those posts that I really hesitate to write because it would be nice to live the myth that publishing my first book equates to instant success. But I’ve always tried to tell the real story here, even when it’s not so pretty. So here goes…

Sigh… my business life was so simple when I started out as a copywriter. I could reach out to thousands of contacts in my database, and I just needed a handful of people to engage my services, and POOF — I was making a living. When I had ten active clients, I was swamped with work. So a 1% or less response rate was fine with me.

But now I’m an author, and I need to sell books. Lots of books. Thousands of books. Which means that if I have 5000 people connected to me through various means, and 1% buy the book, I’m in horrible shape.

And right now, frankly, I’m kinda in horrible shape. The publishing world is black and white. If you sell enough books, you’re a good bet for other books. If you don’t, you’re not going to get other contracts. So if this book doesn’t do well, my life as an author may be over before it begins. I’m really not counting on becoming rich from the book sales — it’s the speaking gigs that will help me make a living. But being an author makes me a more desirable speaker, so I need to sell some books.

But having a good product is just a minuscule part of the selling process. I need to do SO MUCH MORE. The problem is there’s so much to do and so many avenues to take that I have no idea where to start or what to do. I follow up on media contacts, tweet out a new tool, call a bookstore, run a Facebook ad…. The list goes on and on. Sometimes I sell a couple three books from an effort, but often I hit a roadblock and change direction.

I actually thought I had a great plan to sell the book. I enlisted the help of several awesome (and big-name) contributors to share their favorite tools, including THE Seth Godin, author Dan Pink, social media superstar Chris Brogan and more. And they all agreed to receive an advanced copy of the book for a possible review. And then they all said they were too busy to write the review. Then I met Steve Strauss, the small business columnist from USA Today, who said he’d LOVE to do a column about the tools and the book and how it helps small businesses. He’s too busy, too, seems like — I’ve written him twice with no response. I don’t blame them, of course, for not being able to write a review — I’m sure they get requests all the time. But they were part of my plan to get the word out, and the dead ends are disheartening.

There are companies who will help you sell your book. But frankly I couldn’t buy a cup of Starbucks coffee with the royalties I get from the sale of one book, so paying thousands of dollars to sell my books doesn’t make much financial sense. The food and champagne for the fabulous Book Launch Party cost about three times the money I made on book sales from the event, even though the AMAZING cupcakes were donated by Jennywennycakes. Yes, I said “three times.”

So there you have it — writing a book is hard, but selling a book is much, much harder. And so far, I haven’t figured it out.

So now that I’ve shared my challenges and aired my laundry, do you have any advice on where to go from here? I’m all ears.

PS – In my many years of fundraising for Team In Training, I’ve learned that you never get anything unless you ask. So I’m going to ask you, my readers, if you can help. Here are three things that would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Really.

1. Buy the book. It’s just ten bucks on Amazon, cheaper for the Kindle. When people buy through Amazon, the ranking goes up, and the sales go up. It helps. A lot.
2. Like the Facebook page. Tell your friends to like the Facebook page. Help me get some critical mass.
3. Tell people you know a good speaker. Attendees leave my sessions with smiles on their faces and tools they can use right away. I’d appreciate an introduction to anyone you know who books speakers for events.

This weekend I sent off the final file for the final project for the final client of Avenue Z Writing Solutions. Yep. That’s it. I retired from the copywriting biz to write more books and make a living speaking around the country. Or something. I haven’t really convinced myself that being a full-time author and speaker will pay the bills, but I’m jumping off the cliff to give it a try.

Strangely enough, the move comes almost four years to the day since I quit my sales job in a tearful phone call to my boss. “I can’t do this anymore!” I wailed. And when I got off the phone, I said, “Uh oh. Now what?” I was daunted by the idea of looking for a real job (even before the economy tanked), so I decided the easiest thing to do would be to start my own writing business.

It was very, very tough to make the phone calls to those clients, many of whom I’ve had almost since the beginning. It took me several months to finish all the work in progress, and when I pushed the send button on Sunday, there were a couple of tears.

So, here I am again starting completely from scratch on a new career I know very little about. That’s not exactly true because I’ve been booking speaking gigs for about three years, plus the first book is in the bag (and on the shelf — check it out!). But I have to create new marketing techniques, new online strategies, new connections — really a whole new identity.

So before I begin a new chapter, I thought I’d share a pictorial look back at the last four years of Avenue Z:

Now… on to the future as Your Nerdy Best Friend!

I’m at the airport again, and I’m people watching, as I often do. Among the people traveling alone, see tense faces, frustrated faces, sleepy faces and occasionally someone who looks amused. It seems that when people are concentrating on getting somewhere, their contenace reflects their mood. And more interestingly, if they simply sport a blank face, I seem to interpolate a personality.

Perhaps it’s just me, but my first reaction when I see a particularly downward sloping face is, “That person must be unpleasant to have over for Thanksgiving.” I assume a dour personality, and that’s a shame. Frequently my assumptions have been proven wrong when a
scowling person breaks into an infectious smile and ends up becoming a delightful friend.

Before you stop reading this post because it has nothing to do with success in business, let me link my reflections on expressions to happiness in life. Many years ago I read a study that showed that women in the 1950s who smiled in their yearbook pictures were more likely to have judged their lives as happy. And more recent study showed that the bigger the smile in an adult’s schoolage photo, the less likely that the person had ended a marriage in divorce.

So this tells me that perhaps my assuptions about people based on an unsmiling face may be true. Perhaps they’re harder to get along with, or maybe we assume they’re harder to get along with and don’t like to hang out with them as much.

Either way, this revelation has to have an effect on our business lives. People like to do business with people they like, and if your facial expression makes you less likeable, for whatever reason, perhaps you won’t get ahead like a more pleasant colleague.

Now I wonder how my theory relates to the differences between men and women in business. I’ve written before, as have many, about the fact that aggressive, even unpleasant men in the workplace can get things done and be perceived as leaders, while aggressive women are frequently considered bitchy. Not sure if the facial expression theory works there.

But I’d rather be pleasant than aggressive, and I’d rather wear a smile than a frown. And I’d like people to think I’d be a pleasing addition to a Thanksgiving meal. So I try to consciously relax my face and am ready with a smile in an airport and everywhere else. It’s tougher than I want it to be, and I often catch myself with a downturned mouth. Perhaps it’ll be permanently natural one day.

Look in the mirror one day when you’re just out and about. Would you invite you to Thanksgiving dinner?

Butterflies in the stomach. My publisher is sending out what they call the Mondo Press Kits with advance review copies of my book, cupcake magnets and marketing material to about 60 people today, including THE Seth Godin, who not only has stopped by this blog a couple of times but who also contributed to the book and is generally an awesome, authentic guy.

It’s amazing that bestselling authors like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and Dan Pink plus 57 more people will soon hold my work in their hands, and more amazing that they even agreed to review it.

But it’s that word that’s killing me: review. They are going to judge the book by its cover, its contents, its layout — everything. They’re going to catch typos (we spelled “charitable” wrong on Seth Godin’s page, and he caught it in the screenshot. Horrors!), examine my headshot (why is she with a piggy bank and a cupcake?), question my choice of tools…. whatever. Or they may flip through in a second, find it uninteresting and ignore it.

For whatever reason, I chose two professions with major exposure… author and speaker. An author prints thousands of copies of his heart and soul and spreads it around the world, completely open to criticism and perhaps praise. And a speaker puts herself on display in front of dozens or hundreds or thousands, has the job of entertaining people for an hour or so, then frequently gets immediate feedback in the form of evaluations about how she did. In both cases, there’s no shrinking away from how people feel about you. You’re putting yourself out there for them to tell you.

When I worked at McDonald’s in high school, the only person who really criticized your work was your manager during a quarterly review. I remember one time they said I was really good with the French fry machine but my uniform was too dingy so I wouldn’t get the full 15-cent raise I was due. I went home crying, and I started drycleaning my polyester uniform once every two weeks to keep it more spiffy. I ended up winning an award for my French fry prowess, but I still worried about the uniform.

After a presentation when I get my evaluations, I frequently read comments like, “Bring Beth back!” and “Most practical session I’ve been to in years!” But there’s always someone who writes something like, “Nice chick, but she talks about her ex-boyfriends too much” or “Session wasn’t what I expected.” And instead of focusing on the good stuff, I read and re-read the bad — obsess over them, even.

So now the books are out of my hands, and I’m inviting true scrutiny. There’s a chance that I won’t get unending praise from all 60 people. But perhaps a few people may really like the book, and a couple of people won’t. I have to remember to look at the big picture and not get hung up on a couple of bad reviews. And I also have to remember that Seth and Brian and Dan and the other 57 people are not judging me… they’re judging a book. And I am much more than this one book.