[Personal Update] - I Need to Do Better

It’s been a while since I wrote anything. Which is a shame. Life has been busy lately. Which is not necessarily all bad. So I thought I’d write a short post updating you on everything that is going on with me. If that doesn’t interest you, that’s cool, just go here instead. 😉

On the personal front, I’ve been trying to relax more in order to get more done. That might sound a little contradictory to some of you. But apparently it’s the way to go. I’m yet to find out, but I’m giving it a go.

Why? Well writing a book wasn’t that difficult once I got into it, but selling it is. There is just so much to learn and put in to practice; from marketing, to advertising, to accounts, and data points. It’s all a bit overwhelming. So I decided to try to not let things overwhelm me by taking a step back. This also seemed to coincide with my planned vacation to my home town, which I just returned from. It was great to see all my family and friends again. This was the first time I had returned since emigrating to the U.S., which was two and half years ago.

Aside from the stress of trying to sell a book (we’ll get onto that more in a bit), I’ve been wrestling with ideas and the decisions I need to make in order to start a new business. When I moved to the U.S. I became a stay-at-home dad. A role in which I intend to keep for the foreseeable future. But at some point in the very near future, my two delightful and noisy children will be at school and pre-school. I’ve been aware of this, and decided a long time ago that when that day came, I would work for myself from home. So over that last year or so I’ve been slowly teaching myself to code. And that’s the career path I intend to take. If you’re interested I’ve started writing about it on my other blog. If you code too, I’d love to hear from you.

Starting a business isn’t easy. But I’m getting on top of things slowly. I’ll not likely speak of it again on this blog, a side from occasional updates like this post. But I’m not against people telling me where I’m going wrong, giving support, or helping me along on my journey. If you want to reach out to me for any reason, I’d love to hear from you. My contact page is here.

The book

I’m going to be honest here: I was hoping my book would sell a little better than it has. And that’s adding to my stress. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy to have published it, and feel immensely proud to have done so. The book is good! And the response from those that have read it has been extremely positive. It’s an incredible feeling to know you’ve helped just one person, let alone a whole bunch.

But at the end of the day I need to do better to sell more copies. Not because I’m hoping to make a lot of money. But because I do want it to break even. It’s not cheap to publish a book, not if you want a professional product. Editors, cover designers, advertising, web hosting – none of it is cheap. And that’s my secondary goal for this book – to break even (my first being to help people, obviously.)

Again, I’m still learning. I welcome advise and tips.

What next

In the next few weeks my book will be available on more online stores. That’s definitely a positive. It’s currently exclusive to Amazon, but that deal ends on April 14th. After that I will be publishing on iBooks, Kobo, and Nook. Part of my workload has been around this, as I’ve been updating the book files (fixing the odd typo and formatting issue) ready for this. I also have coded the landing page myself, as well as completely rewritten my sales copy. It’s a lot of work.

After that is done, and the promo around it, I will be taking a step back to concentrate on my other business. I have a lot to still learn to be a proficient developer, so the bulk of my time will be aimed at completing courses and creating portfolio projects. Oh and while we are on the subject, if you have something you need doing (a website building, for example), then I’d love to hear from you. I need projects to add for my portfolio. And if you quote this article, I will do it for FREE. And don’t worry, if it’s beyond what I am able to do, I will tell you. I won’t bullshit my way through it.

Anyway, I think I’ve bored you enough.

If you want to read the guest posts and interviews that have been keeping me busy lately, you can find them all here in one place.

Until next time.

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