Several years ago, feeling suave and sophisticated, I
decided to publish a book on Amazon.com. At the time not only were all of the
cool kids doing it, but it just sounded like fun. I mean, I'd be a (self)
published author! How cool would that be?! Unfortunately, my plan quickly ran
into a snag when I realized that in order to publish a book, I'd have to first
write one. Distraught by this revelation, I frantically scanned the hard drive
of my computer, hoping to find some manuscript that I'd at some point written but
had long since forgotten, but to no avail. Left with little choice, I was forced to call upon the can-do, never-say-die attitude that's made this country great and
do it the old-fashioned way, by which I mean cheat.
Not wanting to invest the time and effort into
writing a book from scratch, I took a bunch of old essays and blog entries,
cleaned them up a little, and compiled them into a collection. Problem solved!
I had a book! (A cheater book, yes, but still a book!) Happy with my ingenuity,
I then published Who Says You Shouldn't Smile Today? which quickly went
on to sell upwards of eight total copies! Success!
This project was supposed to be my one and only foray
into the self-publishing world, mainly because it'd been a total pain in the you-know-what.
You see, even though most of the writing had already been done,
self-publishing Who Says You Shouldn't Smile Today? was way more work
than I ever expected it to be. Besides putting the book together, I also had to
edit it, obtain a cover for it, re-edit it, write the promotional blurb for
Amazon.com, re-re-edit it, and – worst of all – compile it into a viable
e-reader format, all of which took a staggering amount of time. So, once I'd
finally finished, I had no intention of ever repeating that horrible process.
However, deep down inside I was never really 100% satisfied
with my efforts. Sure, I was technically the author of a book, but it was really
more of a bolted-together, Frankenstein's Monster of random essays than it was a
work with any sort of cohesive narrative. This always bugged me, and every now
and again I'd toy with the idea of writing a real book from scratch, despite
the fact that it would mean even more work. However, since I could never
come up with an interesting enough topic to write about, it wasn't something I strongly considered.
Until that fateful day when I suddenly had an idea.
At first I tried to ignore it, mainly because acting upon it
would mean I'd have to devote a lot of long nights and weekends to writing,
which would cut deeply into my treasured free time. However, I subconsciously knew it was what I really wanted. I mean, if I went through with it, I'd no
longer have to consider myself a cheater author! (Also, it's not like I was
doing anything useful with my nights and weekends, anyway.)
And so, sometime last summer, I allowed myself to put
together a rudimentary outline. At the time I pretended I wasn't yet fully committed
to the project, but I now realize that I was only fooling myself. The decision
had been made, and it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.
With the outline complete, I got down to some
serious writing. It was agonizingly slow work – mainly because I spent most of
my time distracting myself with random videos on the internet – but eventually the
chapters began to come together, and late last year I finally found myself with
a finished first draft of an honest-to-goodness book!
Now, I'll spare you the rest of the details, as I'm
sure you've already figured out that the point of this blog post is to
advertise my new book, which I've just published on Amazon.com. It's called Fat
Budge, Skinny Budge, and it's about health and fitness. So, if it sounds in
any way interesting to you, click on the image below and check it
out.
As for me, I'm so sick of writing and editing that
I never, ever, want to self-publish a book again. Still, that's what I said
last time, so I guess I should really keep an open mind. I mean, if this thing
does really well and happens to sell nine or ten copies, you never know what
might happen next!!
