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Celebrating zero

Zero salesI’m celebrating zero this week. I’ve just finished the process of publishing my first ebook (Trojan Moments: Experiences that Ambush). It has zero sales (sounds like a weird thing to celebrate, but I will explain) and zero costs (obvious win there). It’s a poetry collection, so there was never much expectation that it would be big, but celebrating zero? Come on, that’s pathetic.

Why I’m celebrating zero sales

Like a lot of people, I procrastinate, I get depressed, I work a day job. Life happens, and the months and years really roll by. Sometimes I doubt my creativity and I don’t always finish my projects. I’ve been wanting to get this book out in this format since 25 May 2006.

Yeah, you read right, more than ten years. It was first published that Thursday in paperback (a whole other story). In the decade since then I’ve fought a lot of demons and ghosts, but the desire to finish that job wouldn’t die. So yes, I’m embarrassed that it took twelve years, five months, and five days to put a tick in the box but here’s the thing, I did do it. You only get a sales dashboard when you have something to sell, something finished and listed, ready to download.

That’s what that big chunky zero means to me – success. A milestone that haunted and mocked me for over a decade is finally tamed. It sounds so easy, it is such a short sentence ‘publish an ebook’. Three little words, and I’d already written the book!

What it takes to get to zero

You might be curious about what it takes to fulfil that three-word task. Here are some of the tasks it involved:

  • Edit and revise the existing text
  • Create new content (reading group material and a quirky summary of the inspiration)
  • Reformat the revised text in MS Word and then in Scrivener and then in Word and then in Scrivener until I finally had it right
  • Redo the cover, make new covers, test out covers, get contradictory feedback, nearly toss the whole thing out because the cover issue was so painful, remembered this is a hobby and meant to be fun, went back to the original design and moved on with my life.
  • Research the current ebook market and decide on a marketing strategy for the book (quite a similar emotional process to that outlined for the cover)
  • With the strategy “nailed down” (ha!) I researched options for publishing, including evaluating the costs, time and services available and if it would be possible for me to DIY (and how long that might take me)
  • Because I decided to “go wide” (ie publish on more than Kindle Select) I chose an aggregator that would take a single file and publish it to multiple platforms on my behalf. They take a cut of my royalties for this.

*whew*

The file formatted, I went ahead and clicked on that little grey ‘submit’ button. And … nothing happened. Two days later I got an email saying the file was rejected. I fixed that one metadata field and reloaded, resubmit. This time, happy little green notifications started popping up within an hour and it was underway. It took a full week to appear on Amazon (and with the wrong price!) but finally, after years and a learning curve like The Wall, I was here, celebrating zero. Happy dance ensued.

A zero full of potential

Celebrating that zero makes perfect sense when you know a bit of the story to getting there. It is a private pleasure. To the rest of the world it is “so what?” but to any indie published author that first book is a stack of achievements and the zero symbolises accomplishment and a transition into the next level.

Just as with the zero card in tarot (usually The Fool) it heralds the inception of a new beginning. With this act of stepping off my known path and into the unknown future there is potential for the rest of my dreams to begin to come to life too. The nature of the moment is ephemeral. In another week or month that zero may begin to feel like a judgement. One hopes it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. All it will take to turn that zero into profit (the other key success measure in sales) is just one sale.

When zero turns to one

Everything changes when you can say “Yes I have made money selling my books.” I did that in 2006, hand-selling a poetry book (bless every one of you and thank you) and I will do it again this year.

Want to know my secret? Realistic expectations and zero costs.

Poetry is not hugely popular (unless you’re lovelorn on Instagram) and up until recently few people would admit to it at all. Honestly, you’d think it was the ninth deadly vice or something, but I digress. Realistically, I knew it would be hard to sell copies.

I knew that I couldn’t count on high (or possibly even double-digit) sales in the first three months. But I did want this publication to break even quickly so it could hold it’s head high on my (eventual) backlist. Knowing that made it easy for me to select an approach and services that would keep my costs down.

In the end it cost me nothing to publish the ebook internationally (Here are my costs – pdf ). I’ve listed it at $0.99 and at that price I need to make one sale to make a profit. One sale. Sure, the profit is as low as 29c but hey, the numbers don’t lie and that is cold hard digits into my PayPal account (90 days later). Boom.

Not everyone can love a zero

It takes an author to be excited at the prospect of making 29c but that’s how this game plays for little fish like me. There are shoals of sharks ready to tear thousands of dollars out of you if you don’t know how to navigate these waters. You may not believe it, but publishing is a ruthless industry. It isn’t all cups of tea, overdue library notices and polite book clubs. I hope you’ve enjoyed this foray into some of what it took to publish this book and can join me in celebrating zero.

Why not splash out and buy a copy? Trojan Moments is on sale at the celebratory price of 99c in your favourite ebook store during October 2018.  But you know, totally cool if you’re not into it.

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Get uncomfortable

uncomfortableSometimes, when things aren’t working, the best thing to do is to get uncomfortable. Start again, this time outside of your existing comfort zone. Let yourself be a beginner with a fresh slate and no expectations. For example, I’m someone who “can’t draw” but I really value my ability to be creative with words, so this month I’m doing InkTober as my warmup for Nanowrimo. A month of producing a drawing every day – crazy! That makes no sense! I feel uncomfortable doing it, looking at the outcomes and of course sharing it here. Lady Liberty never looked so wonky did she? (Maybe she’s uncomfortable there on her feet all day…)

Last week was uncomfortable in a different way

I shared some of my perspective of living with depression and although that was an uncomfortable thing to do, it opened up the floodgates of conversation about this topic in every realm of my life. People far and wide share their perspectives either publicly or privately and that changed the experience for me. What are you experiencing that you wish was different for you? How are you comfortable in a way that is actually unsatisfying for you? Is it in a job where you don’t feel valued or heard, or perhaps in your relationships where somehow the conversations don’t feel as real as they once did? Perhaps it is with yourself – are you a little bit bored with yourself? Do you know exactly what’s coming next?

Change is uncomfortable

Like travel, change is uncomfortable at an immediate level and yet satisfying from a larger perspective. This is one of those contradictions of life, that comfort feels secure and gives us happiness until too much comfort is smothering or boring. *sigh*  That is a bad deal, but that is how it is. You’re the one in charge and it is your sense of happiness, freedom or fulfilment that ultimately sets the compass on this topic. It takes a little bravery though – to accept the truth of what you’re feeling and to start over.

We start over in all kinds of little ways all the time, and yet we carry so much from one place to another. The sense of new beginnings can be palpable and yet we don’t usually change our name, or throw out all of our clothes and change our favourite meal. So take comfort from the fact that it is just uncomfortable, not annihilating and give yourself permission to try something new.

Go ahead, get uncomfortable. It might be the secret to a happy you.

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Boldly go in your direction

keep-calm-and-boldly-goWe’ve talked about starting over and it is worth touching on that idea again, because the pressure is often to do Big Things. You know, Those Boldly go where no man has gone before expectations*. That’s fun for a while if you are an intergalactic adventurer, or a woman. (I mean I even got to make a pennyfarthing where no wo-man had gone before) but at a certain point, most of us just want some help with the basic “boldly go” part.  Those first steps or stumble in a new (for us) journey are their own bold adventure. It could be asking for help to plan an overseas holiday when you’ve never left the city but everyone around you is infecting you with their itchy feet.

Taking action in alignment with your own values put you back into the driver seat of your own life. Freedom is in being bold on your own terms. Maybe committing to a slow shift in your eating habits, or starting to go for walks again or maybe a gym session or saving money. Whatever it is for you, where you’ve had a hint of fear, or worry about what other people are going to say, or if you’ll look silly, or fail, or or or … well, that’s an opportunity for some bold baby stepping.

Boldly go (but in bitty bubby steps)

We yearn for big wins and particularly successful people who are used to achievement forget that starting over is all about starting small. By small, we mean really small. Simple. Two minute tasks, being mindful, remembering to make a choice rather than react. These are the baby-what’s the next thing I could do that takes me towards what I want? Take a little action, bitty bubby ones but bold, feel bold. You’re courageous! You’re brave! You can totally do this!

Be bold baby!

By the way, it doesn’t even have to be about fulfilling your dreams, maybe just do the things that are bugging you and that let you simplify that endless to-do list.

Sometimes being bold is saying “no, thanks.”

No to more commitments, things that serve other people, or things that aren’t helping you get your own stuff sorted. Maybe being bold for you is asking for some help (maybe from all those people you’ve already been helping all this time?) or be bold and be brutally honest with yourself about what is really important to you.

So muddle onwards in your own direction and boldly be yourself. There honestly is no one better suited to it than you.

*Like discovering new galaxies or intelligent alien life. No pressure, right?

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Travel resets the wonder button

Republic square PARISThe recent hiatus and travel provided some time to experience the broader world and consider the themes of happiness, belonging, compassion and so on from a perspective outside of my normal (narrow?) day to day. Being exposed to centuries of foreign culture for weeks at a time was thrilling and at the same time the flood of details was enormously overwhelming in person. That’s what’s nice about armchair travelling or documentaries – the focus is supplied, the details are managed, the experience is curated for you by the book editor or narrator. In person, the reality is that you’re in queues, desperate to find a loo (or to find the right change to use the loo), hungry, and/or transfixed by the fact that each street has different ornate light posts (or some other mindboggling thing that everyone else is able to walk past but you want to scream to the world “LOOK AT THIS!”).

It is of course an evolutionary survival mechanism that all animals have developed a way of filtering information to only that which is most likely of value to them. Humans have loads of biologically initiated filters. For example, we are good at depth perception and spotting movement (as for a long time we were a prey species) once we got the hang of tools we’ve worked to our strengths ever since. We create more tools that work mostly by combining our sight with our hands (every thought about the inputs and outputs of a computer?) rather than, say, through sound and other frequencies of vibration. Because we build all the things we use, we tend to reinforce our own preferences and strengths, we also send ourselves the message that we’re increasingly successful by this filtering. So to travel to somewhere completely different, where comparatively few things were familiar, was to bypass the existing filters and be opened up all over again to confusion, curiosity and wonder.

Wonder is exhausting.

Great, but exhausting. Confusing too, and when you come home you go through it all over again with things that you used to comfortable with and now you’re not that sure about. That’s also amazing (and exhausting). Before you know it the day-to-day of going to work intrudes and you find yourself back in the harness of being a wage slave, but this is the gift of travel. It is possible (necessary) to remember that we have a choice about the way we see and experience the world. It is not just fun to go somewhere else, it helps train our brain in remember that our filters aren’t truths. For us to find ways to solve the problems we’ve created in our worlds, the most useful thing to do is to think differently about it.

You would probably like to punch the next person who suggests to you that you “think outside of the box” about something causing trouble. I know I’d love to. It is useless. If we could, we would! So instead let’s share ways of learning to shift our perspective, and one of the critical steps to that is to realise what things actions or ‘realities’ we’re taking for granted, what we’re valuing and filtering for, then we can put those assumptions aside and invite in some wonder. A recent article talked about how cities, by their man-mad nature, reinforce some of our mental models and that this creates a (another) blind spot in how we face challenges. Especially ecological challenges.

The difference between watching a documentary about a city and being lost in the metro there is an experience of being ‘reset’, of being a beginner, a foreigner. How valuable it can be to know that you know nothing. We can be the best kind of stranger to ourselves and to others by sharing perspectives and becoming more than the sum of our filters. Let’s get wonder-ful together.

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