Indie-publishing a novel was a risk. Writing it was a Big Audacious Goal, but I could have left the book in a file folder forever. Letting it out there for people to read was a big risk.
What is the risk of putting my work out there for others to read? There’s a risk of being ridiculed, of being ignored, of losing one’s confidence in oneself. These bring up a lot of fear, like standing in front of a door, not knowing what is on the other side.
I took the risk by walking through that door. My first book published was a Christmas romance, The Kringle Conspiracy. It was a project whose seeds were planted in a high school short story I’d written. To publish, I had to edit the document, run it across some beta readers, and then the hard part: uploading it onto KDP (Kindle’s publishing arm) and hitting the button to publish.
I could have walked it back. I could have unpublished it before the wheels of KDP released it to the public, but I did not. I took the risk.
My results have been mixed. On one hand, I have not had a lot of readers (except for the 3300 who read it for free in exchange for getting put on my newsletter list.) On the other, the few people who have reviewed it have given it 4.5 stars out of five. It’s a modest success, but that’s not the reason I took the risk. I took it because it was another Big Audacious Goal, one that I could only accomplish through stepping through the door.
Words Like Me 