To dot all the i's right away — I'll say up front that I'm a person who doesn't regret what she's done. That's strange, since it's already done, nothing can be taken back or fixed. I just accept it as experience — experience I might not have gotten any other way.

But here's what I paid for the first time around that I wouldn't pay for today.

  • Editing, proofreading, and layout. One hundred percent. While I was writing my second book, my husband Ivan built a service for all these tedious tasks — editroast.com. We tested it on the second book right away, and I was floored!

Look how far progress has come, to wonders never seen before. It's plunged into the depths and risen to the heavens.

No more fuss, no more running around. The robots do the grinding now, not people.

(Yuri Entin, from the film Adventures of Elektronik)

I ran the manuscript through it three times, and it became something I could actually show to readers.

Then I ran my first book through the same service. And I was stunned at how much work turned up. I rolled up my sleeves and ran it through three times, correcting and correcting and correcting the text. I deleted whole paragraphs, rewrote chapters, wrote new ones. But I saw with my own eyes — the text started to breathe!

  • I won't spend money printing a paper copy again. That itch is scratched — I did it with the first book. Yes, it's moving to hold your own book in your hands. As my husband put it: "Whoever got your book in its first edition can be proud, because every version after that will be polished and corrected. The first books are like rarities — like coins with a flaw, printed in a limited batch. Collectors value those far more." The publishing house will print the next books.

I can't say all that spending brought no results the first time around. I got experience or satisfaction out of every bit of it. Even the money spent on Amazon ads that didn't bring in a single sale — that was experience too.

So my suggestion is: do what feels right to you, what you sense is right, and whatever didn't work out, in your view — just accept it.

I'll keep repeating it like a parrot: everything that happens in life is the path where we learn. If we skip it, we'd miss something. It can't be shortened, and it shouldn't be. You just have to live it and enjoy every new skill, every bit of knowledge, every experience.