Success Is Not A Seamless Highway – Be Prepared For Road Bumps

Success is not a seamless highway.

It’s paved with road bumps.

After previously self-publishing three best selling books, because no literary agent or publisher would accept my work, this year a publisher finally accepted me for my fourth book If We Screw Each Other, We’re All Screwed.

Through the submission process I created a fresh title for the book that I knew would have it leaping off the shelves.

The problem was that the publishers decided that they wouldn’t accept it – as my title in their words was ‘too brash’ for what my editor termed as wisdom literature. They wanted me to keep the conservative title that I originally had for the book.

No surprise really. To be totally honest with you – my life has been a series of stops, starts, fast bursts, long hauls, desert treks, jungle manoeuvres plus a whole lot more – and yet even when a brick wall stands between me and success I have learnt to stand back – size up the opposition and simply shout – ‘THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY THROUGH.’

And do you know what?

There always is.

Willing To Walk Away

So I put my case to them forcefully yet professionally – and they overturned their original decision. I had been willing to walk away if they didn’t accept my title. The good news was that my provocative, and ‘brash’ title stayed.

So after seventeen years, since self-publishing my first bestselling book, my latest work has been published by WestBow Press – a division of Thomas Nelson.

Part of my journey during those seventeen years included the writing of seven books plus hundreds of blogs and other materials – some of which I self-published while others to this point have simply sat on a shelf.

But I persisted. I never stopped writing. I never stopped trying.

Just over twelve months before being published I made the decision that it was time to be picked up by a publisher.

In the past I had sent my material to hundreds of literary agents and publishers all over the world.

Not a whisper. Only ever rejection.

But now – here I was to go…

I signed my first publishing agreement.

Why do I share this?

To encourage you to NEVER, EVER, EVER QUIT!

The Journey Of A Book Starts With The First Written Word

I trust you won’t mind if I take you on my journey of the creation of my book.

I’d like to provide you with a behind the scenes look at what actually happens when an author is working with their publisher.

To be totally honest I wondered if this day would ever come – after seventeen long years since first self-publishing.

The first step was to finish off all the writing – not only the internal content, but also the book format – hard and soft cover, dust jacket, design information, marketing information, softcover back cover copy, hardbound book dust jacket cover copy, website free preview copy along with my answers to eight questions that would help the designers give me the best cover possible.

Then I waited…

There was one week my publisher couldn’t get to their office because of the snow in the U.S.A. – while I was bathing in beautiful Australian sunshine here on the other side of the world.

So what to do?

I started strategizing how to market the book once it was released.

But before I go on, let me put a question to you: ‘What are you planning at the moment?’

I’ve always been planning on becoming an internationally acclaimed best selling author.

Reminds me of a great quote – ‘he who fails to plan, plans to fail’. Don’t let that be you.

And on the flip side – he who plans, plans to succeed!

Never The Right Time

Throughout the past seventeen years – since setting up my company Outasight Enterprises – though I owned my first business years before at the age of eighteen – there has never been a right time to expand.

There has never been enough time, never been enough money, never been enough staff, never been enough skill, never been enough clientele – when it came to pushing forward to the next level, or through the next challenge.

But experience has taught me this – that though it is NEVER the right time – it is ALWAYS the right time.

Sounds like a bit of a contradiction doesn’t it?

And yet my business continues to go from strength to strength while, as I look around at many of my peers, they continue on their path to nowhere that leads to the land of no opportunity. Sad.

This Is What Is Required

To be where we are now has involved risk. It has taken guts. It has required faith. But most of all it has necessitated action. Just like what was required to get this book published.

Never have I had all the answers. Never have I had all the understanding. Never have I known if what I was about to set out to do would come to pass or not. And yet through the years of experience I have learnt valuable lessons that assist me along the road called success. And it is these lessons that I pass on to my children and to my readers.

So again why do I write this?

I want to encourage you to press on in the pursuit of your dreams. Don’t allow anyone or anything to steal them from you.

I have found that the most glorious part of all this dreaming is actually not the acquisition of the dream itself – but in fact the chase towards it and what one becomes in the process – for therein lays the exhilaration and the satisfaction.

And once one dream is reached, as if like magic, another appears on the horizon. The pursuit continues.