THE OPTIMISTIC AUTHOR
You can approach your writing with optimism or pessimism—your choice.
(Though complaints, worries, and frustrations may become more of a habit and less of a conscious decision.)
Optimism can be an asset to your authorship.
When you believe that your book will be successful, you are more likely to:
- motivate yourself to work hard
- stay focused while writing
- do the necessary research
- proofread carefully
- put time and effort into cover design and formatting
- put a small investment in cover design or editing
- make a full effort to market your book
- find a way to harness your creativity in your marketing
On the other hand, if you are pessimistic about the outcome of your book, you are less likely to put in the work needed to help make your book successful.
Thus, your outlook may pull a pivotal role in the success or failure of your book launch.
Once you start getting sales, if sales are slower than you expected, optimism can carry you through the slow times. If you are optimistic that you can improve your sales, you are more likely to try new marketing ideas and eventually discover strategies that work for you. You will be more likely to write additional books—and put the proper effort into those, too—if you remain optimistic that your writing will take off (and it sometimes takes multiple good books to gain traction). But if you are pessimistic, it’s easy to give up without really putting the effort into it.
The optimistic author will find the good in a bad review, while the pessimistic author will see something bad in a good review. The optimistic author appreciates the neutral review, whereas the pessimistic author is upset that it wasn’t a five-star review.
When a potential customer visits the optimistic author’s social media sites and blog, the customer has a positive experience.
When a potential customer sees complaints and frustration in the author’s social interactions, the customer is seeing publicized negativity.
Write happy, be happy. 🙂
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2017
Click here to view my Goodreads author page.
Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
- Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
- Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
- 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
- Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)
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chrismcmullen 
I love this post, Chris. It raised my spirits and reminded me of the truth. I recently launched a book and sales were strong, but now I have some promotional work to do to get sales back up. It’s my third book (though one is a journal), and they’re definitely helping to sell each other even though they’re unrelated. I can see how additional titles will strengthen the sales for these as well.
Thank you. I’m glad to hear that. 🙂 Thank you for sharing your experience with multiple books.
Good luck with your books.
It’s still a choice, every time. I prefer being a realist. I know things I need to do (hint: research book descriptions is one of them – to see if I can figure out how to target the right readers). I also know the very real limitations on my energy and brain function – and there is nothing to spare to do reasearch with.
So I tell myself the marketing will go better WHEN the research is done; and that I shouldn’t worry about it until then. Which is true, just not easy to do.
But your commenter above, dr. stone, is probably right: ANY additional works published are better than a single novel on an author’s page. And it may be worth it to let the writing wait a short time, and publish the ready to go short works.
From everything I can tell (from all of your comments through the years), you have put ample effort into your writing, research, and beyond. Marketing isn’t easy, of course, but a few books can help to market one another. I hope it does go better: Good luck.
What is it they say? You can have it fast, cheap, or good – pick two. Not sure I have that right. And I don’t think I qualify for fast – good thing I’m truly indie – including financially, because it’s going to be years still.
This writing bug doesn’t give up – I don’t know what the rest of life will be like (we’re planning a move to a retirment community), but, if it’s up to me, PC WILL get finished.
And I hope more stories after that.
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Check out this post from Chris McMullen on the topic of Optimistic Authorship
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