Portrait of the Artist as a Young Salesman

There are millions of people who would give anything to be in your shoes. How badly do you want this? Enough to step out of your comfort zone and go get it? Enough that you don’t want to have to start this process over again because you were too afraid to promote your first book and it’s failing? If you want it, if you want this life as an author, if you ever want to sell another book, your goal needs to be this: You must do everything in your power to make this book succeed, because if you don’t, and this book fails, nobody gets fired…except you. The ultimate responsibility lies with you. Sure, books still fail even when an author does everything he can. But if you did everything you could possibly do and the book still fails, at least you will never look back on the experience with regret and say, “I wish I had tried harder.”

Lisa McMann