I began writing my first book, The Love of Being Loving, in 2005. The book came from decades of spiritual work and lifetimes before that. It is a small book of 23,000 words, but it took me three years to write because I was a new writer and, true to my writing style ever since, I like to make every word count. After finishing it, I tried to get it accepted by a few publishing companies. As is generally the case, that went nowhere. In fact, I gave up after trying four publishing houses, which isn’t many, but I felt I needed to go a different route. The manuscript sat in my desk drawer for another three years.
Life took a different turn, and I took the dormant book out of the drawer and got the momentum to self-publish it. The whole process of forming the idea, learning about self-publishing, and rewriting the book took another two years. The massive advances in self-publishing, which sprang from the ability to print on demand, were very timely for me. Finally, my book was published in 2013, having had an eight-year journey from inception to birth.
All authors know that the birth of a book is a huge milestone, but it also marks the beginning of the equally challenging journey to get it in front of people. That involves making oneself into a public persona with a distinct voice. It involves marketing and selling. Otherwise, the manuscript might be out of the drawer and into the market, but it will be so invisible that it will not be doing much more than sitting in the drawer.
