Coming to grips with becoming a Bestselling Author

Words: 5918
Time: 1:30 - Midnight (2 hrs break)
Mood: Good
Impression: It's all blending together for me

Belated Merry Christmas everyone. I was very lucky to have a great Christmas. And the thing that started me off in a great way was that I found out on Christmas day that my book Everybody Masturbates had become a category bestseller on Amazon. In the Sexuality section, my book had made it to # 5 on the list. I can't even tell you how good that felt?

You know it's amazing. A few months ago I was in the depth of despair. My world wasn't even making sense to me. Where as I had the feeling that I was a good writer that wrote about interesting things, no one was buying my books. I had always believed that if people knew about my books they would buy them but I couldn't figure out how to tell people. Now, a few months later, my life is what I always imagined it to be.

Ya know it's funny, if you look at my list of books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, you will see a hell of a lot of 5 star reviews. That's pretty awesome. And if you were to see my erotic books you would see a lot of bestsellers. Until Christmas day, I hadn't been able to get good reviews on a bestseller, but finally I've broken through. Yay!

It's actually kind of funny to see how many bad reviews I get on my erotic titles. In the beginning it really bothered me, and then I realized that they don't really hurt sales that much. But I'm glad to say that sometimes even when my book gets bad reviews, the reviewer gives the author praise. It's true that not everyone can like everything, but I had 2 star review on a book say that the book turned them off more than on. But within the next two sentences the reviewer said that I was a skilled author because I perfectly painted everything into the readers mind. It just so happened that they didn't like what I painted.

Well, that's not complete true. They said the book would be great if it were a tragic romance, but she just didn't care for it as erotica. But of course on the same book I've gotten two 4 star reviews calling the book excellent and a 5 star review calling it outstanding. Erotica, even more so than other books, are about personal preference in terms of... well, in every way. And I've never read another erotic book, so I'm not sure, but I get the impression that my style is kind of unique.

On another topic, approaching pretty quickly is my 3 week vacation. I just have to finish at least 30 erotica stories and I'm good to go. But I have to say that the idea that my sales will decline for 3 straight weeks is kind of hard to stomach. I know I need and deserve a break. I have been working almost non-stop for a year and will have published something like 38 titles since February. There are a lot of people that would consider that worthy of a break. I would like to be one of those people but I don't know if I can be.

There are also a lot of people that would say that performing the almost impossible feat of earning a living from writing is worthy of treating yourself to a rest that will prevent you from losing your mind and your ability to keep writing. I wish I could be one of them.

I guess what I should really remember is that guy who become the first person to make it to Arctic Circle. He rested, unlike the team that left at the same time and then died on the way back. He did his march for the day and then rested. Even when he could get more done in a day, he was disciplined enough to say "enough." And if I want to be the first person to make it to the Arctic Circle, that is what I will have to do... as well as eat my dogs to stay alive, but let's focus on one thing at a time. Maybe I should take this 2 weeks thing off seriously. Maybe I shouldn't even write my non-fiction book during that time. Hmmm... I have to seriously think about this.