Why I Stopped Waiting to Win the Lottery and Just Published My Book
It was nearly midnight when I desperately tweeted to my 300 precious followers, “Does anyone have any sort of literary agent connection they could hook me up with?”
I had little to no idea how to go about getting the book burning inside me published. It felt impossible to get a publisher to bat an eye at little ol’ me. Because really, I had little to no platform and in order to win the lottery of a traditional publisher, I needed a platform.
None of my blog posts had gone viral.
I had been blogging for six years and had 56 dear subscribers.
I felt really successful when a single blog post had over 100 views.
Combining my Facebook friends, Facebook page fans, Twitter and Instagram followers, I had about 1,500 names in my social circle.
Platform? What is that? Surely someone will just notice me.
Though my online community was small, I still had countless people asking me when I was going to start writing books. I wanted to have started yesterday, but I didn’t know where to begin or if I could start with so little of a following.
Nine months after tweeting that desperate request, my book This Undeserved Life was released. It became a bestseller in six different Amazon categories, sold over 500 copies the first week and 1,000 copies the first month. It remained number one in the Family Health and Adoption category for most of its release. Within 3 weeks it had over 50 reviews on Amazon.
