I love both publishing and gardening. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized how similar these two activities are. How? Well, you never know whether your efforts will be rewarded.
No matter how much you study and how much effort you put into your book or your veggie plants, the outcome could go either way. You might be fabulously successful, you could fail miserably or experience many scenarios in between.
You certainly have a much better chance of a successful garden if you follow known protocol—prepare your garden bed with amendments during the right time of year, plant fresh plants or seeds, care properly for the seedlings, etc. And your success potential in publishing is maximized if you study the industry, produce a good product and take your responsibility as a published author seriously during the promotional phase. But still things can happen to thwart all of your good intentions.
There are sometimes things outside of yourself that can interfere with your success. Your garden might suffer due to varmints, insects, disease or severe weather situations, for example. And the success of your book could take a nose dive in a poor economy, due to an upsurge in competition or a shift in reader interests or the loss of your best bookselling outlet.
You can’t predict the weather and you can’t predict the publishing climate, especially in light of so many changes taking place so quickly within this industry.
So what will you do? Will you give up on planting a vegetable garden this year in case things go south and it fails? Or will you do some additional research and put in more effort to give it the best chance for success?
Will you stop production on your book or stop promoting it in case it isn’t well accepted? Or will you educate yourself to a greater degree and step up your game a notch?
Farming is hard work. There are many things to consider before you ever begin to harvest. Publishing is equally difficult and should be taken every bit as seriously as any gardening attempt or any other business. For an introduction into the reality of publishing—covering every aspect and every option—study my latest book, Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. It’s at Amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.