Launching this book was a journey of MANY ups and downs!
The first challenge was back in November 2022 on my book writing retreat in San Diego. I went out to dinner and our rental car was involved in a hit and run accident while we were in the restaurant and I lost half a day of my 3 day writing retreat dealing with police, rental car company, etc. As you might expect there were many unforeseen scheduling conflicts that came up during the writing, editing, and publishing process.
The most recent challenge was Amazon fighting me about book categories. There’s no real rules (we checked) on category placement for what was happening, it seems like it’s based in someone’s personal assessment of fit. Each time I reached out to customer support, I got a completely different answer of why it’s not working out (6 radically different answers). We were down to the wire & it was an emotional rollercoaster this week. They have arbitrary guidelines about what categories (apparently self-help and psychology books can’t co-exist). Last week I went back and forth with them and got nowhere. My vision was to get #1 best seller and one of the categories they were fighting me on was one that fit the book well that would make it an easy best seller.
I STAYED 100% COMMITTED TO MY VISION OF THIS BOOK BEING A BEST SELLER! I quadrupled down on my visualization. I kept mental chatter in check and flipped the “what if (negative thing)” to “everything is going to turn out the way it’s meant to be!” I kept singing “just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming” in my head on repeat for hours. I choose to release my fears and bring out my inner cheerleader!
I never stopped believing in myself! Because I didn’t let fear get the best of me, I was able to come from a place of creative problem solving. If the one way to my goal wasn’t going to work out, I would find a new way. I stay committed to my dream and found new categories to put it in that were also appropriate.
AND GUESS WHAT?! The new “replacement” category I added in on Saturday landed me on the #1 Best New Release list on Sunday!
What an amazing reminder: there are many different ways to reach your vision. When you’re committed to your vision and the first way you try doesn’t work, find a new way that does… and it might turn out even better than you expected!
