Romance authors
often talk about hockey stick sales.
Sales are fairly flat and low
for many releases
and, then with a single release
(and no one knows
when this magical release will happen),
sales shoot to the million dollar range
and beyond.
The writer is suddenly a success
but this suddenly wouldn’t have happened
without all of the years of work and promo before it.
Readers, the media,
even other writers
don’t want to hear about the flat sales years
so writers usually don’t talk about them.
They allow their success to be seen as sudden.
Seth Godin shares
Trust is earned, value is delivered,
concepts are learned.
Day by day we improve and build an asset,
but none of it seems to be paying off.
Until one day,
quite suddenly,
we become the ten-year overnight success.
This is the way it works,
but we too often make the mistake
of focusing on the ‘suddenly’ part.
The media writes about suddenly,
we notice suddenly,
we talk about suddenly.
That doesn’t mean that
gradually isn’t important.
In fact, it’s the only part
you can actually do something about.”
If you don’t have
sudden and immediate success,
don’t give up hope.
Your ‘sudden’ success might happen
ten years from now.