I wrote a book.
And this is where I expected to be able to exhale. That things would take care of themselves from here. That the work was done.
It wasn't done. It was only just beginning — just a different part of it.
Before this, I naively thought: you write the book, and readers show up. A good book sells itself. That was a lovely delusion. A good book with no visibility is just a manuscript in a drawer, only digitized. For people to read it, they need to know it exists. And that's an entirely different job.
I wrote to everyone in my chats: family, friends, a few acquaintances, my Telegram channel. I got a wave of warm words — "congratulations," "so proud of you," "I'll definitely read it." That felt good, it was warming. What next?
On one hand, I'd spent twenty years in business — I know how to think about promotion, about audience, about how to communicate the value of what you're doing to people. On the other hand, it filled me with dread. I understood what needed to be done for promotion, but I didn't want to do it. Marketing was never my strong suit even with mattresses, and with a book it became a real trial.
My previous knowledge was only useful up to the point of accepting this fact. In reality I had to dive into every aspect: where to find readers and how to reach them. The internet is full of writers and readers (which is, of course, wonderful), and over the last two years I've watched a whole crop of mentors appear, teaching people how to write a book. The deeper I got into writing circles, the more I noticed that writers were popping up like mushrooms after the rain. But looking at what these mentors offered, I saw: plenty of people willing to teach you how to write a book, but almost no one willing to teach you how to promote it, or guarantee that a publisher would take your creation. No surprise there — that's a whole separate job. Even harder than writing the book. And writing the book, as it turned out, was the easiest part of all of it.
The first two weeks I spent figuring out how self-publishing works: how distribution is set up, where to promote, how to write about a book so people actually want to read it.
At the same time, another part of the work was happening: editing. That wasn't a trivial task either, because the moment you happily type THE END at the bottom of your manuscript — that's not actually the end. And a manuscript isn't a book yet. It's a collection of an author's thoughts. Every manuscript needs editing. Then proofreading and layout, tailored to different needs and platforms.
And if the author has decided on, say, illustrations (I had), then that means working with an artist. Plus the cover, plus what the endpapers will look like.
And I'm sure I'm still forgetting something... like the fact that you also have to find all these people: an editor, a proofreader, an artist, a publisher, and make sense of the countless self-publishing platforms to decide where to put your book.
So, have I piled on enough cringe yet? :)))
So when a reader holds a printed book in their hands, or listens to an audio file, behind it stands complicated, long work by the author and an entire team of people. A book, in any format, has value. It costs money precisely because of the enormous work behind it. And if you're holding a book right now — it means that work wasn't for nothing.