Money Is Not Your Goal. No, Really.

Cyril and Methodius not only brought sections of the Bible in the vernacular to the Slavic peoples, they developed an entire new language (Russian). Who knows what your true potential is? Maybe you shouldn't settle just for making a living, or even for bringing one truth to the world in your lifetime. Maybe your destiny is to create a whole new language for truth to manifest in.

I have been stuck for the past few months on the idea that because money is a benchmark of success, it is also the destination. I just broke through that barrier. Hooray! Feels great. I suspect some other people out there are also stuck on this, as money is pretty sticky stuff. Here’s how I finally got there, after months of trying to talk myself into it with no success.

 

I was reading an article on Erica.biz (recommended to me by Pete Michaud), and Erica mentioned how she would set a financial goal and then work to figure out what was standing in her way–even if it was resistance within herself. When I got to the end of the article and her dream to earn $40,000 per month was realized, I had this brief moment where I thought, “Ah, how disappointing! Money is all she got?” Wait a tick. Figuring out how to make money is the reason I read this article! What happened to my goal?

The article spelled out step by step how Erica set her goal to earn $40,000 per month, and then reached that goal by acting as if it were already reality. She cleaned out old stuff (because someone earning $40k per month doesn’t need to hang on to old stuff) and generally cleaned up and pared down and focused her life to get in line with making that goal a realistic possibility. It happened. But after taking a miniature journey with her in this blog post, my “aha” moment at the end was that money isn’t my goal at all!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have all kinds of plans for my money in the future. I’m not saying I’m not aiming to make some money: In fact I have plans that stretch out to several million dollars. What I’m saying is that I just realized that if I set my goal as earning several million dollars, I will be disappointed. That’s good information to know about myself.

My goal is my passion: to change the world by writing and speaking truthfully with love. How I will do this is still hazy. Part of it begins with the fiction trilogy I’m working on, which packs one wallop of painful, beautiful, hopeful truth. But I’m also writing a blog on green frugal parenting that I love, and I love to teach people how to live efficiently and game the system to make their money work harder for them and get ahead. I love love love to be in the start-up/small business world and work with people who are on the leading edge of media innovations. How does this all come together? I don’t know yet. I’m still in a “try out several good ideas” phase. But I’ve learned along the way that I’m a teacher, not an entertainer. And I love to help people become the people they were born to be and not settle for less. I love to be around honest and passionate people. Those are guideposts.

My realization? I’m not setting out to be a king: I’m setting out to be a king-maker–the authentic, spiritual kind. That shifts my perspective enough that I need to seriously rethink the actions I’m taking to make it to my goal. What a crazy week it has been, and was it all for this nugget of truth? It feels like I’ve found hidden treasure.

Could it be that money isn’t your goal either? What are you really aiming for with your life?

 

Well, Nevermind: Publishing Contract Cancelled….

That sun is gonna come up over the horizon any minute now. Welcome, the most remarkable year yet!

This week has been hilariously weird. The kind of weird that comes from things going on that are clearly connected and clearly not coincidences, but I don’t have enough information to decipher the pattern. Add this to the list of weirdness: my publishing contract was cancelled ONE DAY after I signed it because the managing partners in the publishing company are getting a divorce.

Now, divorce is awful and I’m bummed for them. I know contracts are cancelled all the time, too, and I guess I’m just glad they’re letting me out of the contract rather than dragging this out. But this means I have to find another way around the roadblocks in my path to distribution and sales. This is not the part of publishing that gets me up in the morning, so I need to regroup here and make a plan before heading out to publish edition three of Ecofrugal Baby.

I have to say, though, that God has been pretty clear with me lately that big things and good things are coming soon, so I’m not as upset as I possibly should be about this. I have a sort of peace about it, and it wasn’t a total surprise–just a let-down. God has been faithful enough to me for me to know I can trust him to take care of this (maybe he just did?) and to give him a grownup response instead of rolling around in self-pity. Yeah, this is a bummer. But it’s still early days, and there was so much spiritual activity going on in my vicinity last night that it was like it was too noisy to sleep until 1 am (I told you that the more I tell you, the crazier you’ll think I am). Something is up lately, and I’m just a part of it. On we march into the dawn of 2011, a strange beginning to be sure.

 

Speaking Event Test #4: Whole Foods Class

Can you read this sign?.... Me either.

I was hoping to get an idea of which speaking event format would work best for promoting Ecofrugal Baby, and today’s experimental class format gave me some unambiguous results, to say the least. Not a single person showed up to my class at Whole Foods!

I attribute this to several things:

1) I didn’t have any local press for this event, which is one of the main reasons my first book signing was a success.

2) I did less promotional work myself, too, just repeating the promotional techniques that worked the first time for the book signing and blogging about the event and sending out a press release. I suspect this is more than most event hosts do to promote their events, but it felt inadequate.

3) The store did a terrible job of advertising the event. Their promotion consisted of posting the class on their hard-to-read board that is placed by the exit (eliminating any chance of walk-ins as people would only see the sign when leaving–and they refused to angle the board toward the entrance when I asked if that would be possible), listing the class in their newsletter (how many pregnant girls do you know of who are signed up for the Whole Foods email newsletter?), and there were no signs leading to the classroom. In fact, I had a hard time finding it myself, and I was teaching the class! I posted a flyer on the classroom door and in the elevator, to encourage people who made it that far that they were headed in the right direction. Thirty minutes after posting the flyer I got back into the elevator and found it had been taken down. For Pete’s sake. They only announced the event over the store loudspeaker because I asked them to, fifteen minutes before the class was supposed to start.

Visions of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know what I mean?

“I finally had to go down to the basement. The plans were in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door reading ‘Beware of the Leopard.’…”

“The lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs!”

4) The primary reason I suspect no one came is that I was charging $30 for this class, which included a copy of the book, or $20 for the class alone. I have noticed a sense of skepticism in the attendees of my talks which fades by the middle of each event, so I think charging up front for this information just doesn’t work because people don’t know ahead of time that the book delivers on its title and is well worth the cost of a class.

In April I will be trying out the final format for this talk: a mom and baby tea at my local Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom, but so far it’s looking like these talks are only worth the time if they come with a speaking fee, which is something most easily arranged at libraries or other venues that host regular talks. I was going to try hosting a paid class out of another location, but given the results of tonight’s class I’m now thinking of skipping that, because I would have even less help promoting the class.

Hey, at least the results were clear, right?

Publishing Contract!

I briefly mentioned this in my last post, but now it’s official: my nonfiction book Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year was just picked up by a traditional publishing company, Kenrose Media!

I have learned so much by publishing and promoting the book myself so far, but I’m super excited about where this new opportunity can take the book. It will remove some roadblocks for selling the book and give it the credibility and backing of a traditional publisher. I will still be doing a lot of promotional work myself, but now the path is clear and open. According to the publisher I was doing everything right to promote it myself (flattering and encouraging!), but I was discovering along the way that many doors were closed to me–even ones that in theory were open. My POD publisher was painfully slow to get my book into Baker & Taylor to make it available to libraries and bookstores, my options for cover design and layout were limited, and so on. Now we really get to see this book realize its potential!

Part of me feels like this is just a practice run, not the destination. That’s probably appropriate, because most authors have to write several books before really getting noticed. But who knows where this will lead? There certainly is a market out there for this book, and I’m having so much fun blogging and doing speaking engagements. So, now I ramp up to do the promotional work all over again, adding a few new to-dos to the marketing list and scaling up all promotional tools where possible. Wish me luck, and may you start checking big items off your bucket list early in the year, too.

 

Speaking Event Test #3: Library Hosted Talk

No professional photographer at this event, sadly.

On we march in the book marketing test environment otherwise known as my life. This week I hosted a free talk and book signing at a local library. I got a decent turnout of just over a half-dozen people. I consider this decent because:

1) I am no celebrity.

2) It was a Wednesday.

3) I didn’t have any coverage for the event in a local paper this time like I did for my first book signing.

4) The size of the little crowd was comfortable, and things seemed to go well.

The library paid me a small speaking fee for coming, which was nice because it made it worth my while regardless of the number of books I sold, which eased the pressure. I do still care more about sales numbers on this book than income (so she says now), because I have a traditional fiction publishing contract in my sights this year for a trilogy I’m working on, and a successful track record of even non-fiction would help make me look like a more attractive prospect. I sold three books at this event. Not many, I know, but that’s a 50% sales rate for the number of people attending. I can scale that up to more significant success with bigger crowds. I think it may mean I have an effective format for presenting good info but letting people know my book is cover-to-cover resources so it’s worth picking up for $20 in addition to the talk.

What did I learn? Well, I learned that if I listen, my audience can teach me as much as I can teach them! For one thing, I had a massage therapist show me how I could sign up for a program called Square Up that provides mobile credit card scanners to folks like me who would like to be able to accept credit card payments in the middle of a library or other non-retail environment. Duly noted! I might have been able to make more sales if I had worked that out ahead of time. I also learned some things about my audience and had a good time. I actually wish I had been less nervous so I could have taken a breath more often and listened more. Still working on that. My talk was a little less organized than my first book signing talk, but funnier, so I also learned that this will vary from event to event and that’s okay.

Verdict: Library talks are worth pursuing if they come with a speaking fee. Otherwise, they’re only good for publicity.

I just contracted with a publishing company to re-publish Ecofrugal Baby (yay!), so I may never get the chance to take all these marketing tests to the limit and see how far I can take this on my own–but that’s okay. I signed up with a publisher whom I’m confident can make this book more of a success than I can on my own–even if that just means they open up more opportunities for me to market it myself. I’m thrilled to be given the opportunity to reach more parents with this book, which really does deliver on its title to save new parents 70% off the average cost of baby’s first year. Hooray for moving forward into the new year!

 

Don’t Despise The Day of Small Things

Just a quick post today. A lot has been happening lately with the book, the blog, and my novel in progress (more on that later!) but through all the little steps forward and the big steps forward I have felt in my spirit a repeated reminder:

“Don’t despise the day of small things.”

Big things are coming, and they’re coming soon. I could write so many posts on how I know that, but you’d think me even crazier than you already do, so I’ll skip that part and just tell you that I’m looking forward to an AMAZING year in 2011. But all that success had to start with a seed. And that seed has to sprout before it can bloom. We’re at the sprout stage now. And when I start to get angsty about things not moving forward fast enough, I remind myself to enjoy what may possibly be the last days of the seed stage: I have time to relax. I have relative anonymity (yes, at some point that may go out the window, and I’m feeling good and bad about that).

If you are on your way to big successes, or you hope you are, take the time to enjoy the little steps forward as part of the journey. Someday you’ll look back and remember this time as the last time you had time to relax before the big time hit and your world changed. Your day is coming. Don’t despise the day of small things, which is when you are tested to see if you’re ready to handle more.

Peace!

–Laura

A Look Back at 2010, The Year of Acceleration

Look out 2011! We are coming in hot!

I tend to focus on my goals obsessively, so it’s good for me to take a moment to look back and enjoy what I have experienced and accomplished in 2010, the year in which my dreams began to come true. Will you celebrate with me? If only you knew how far I’ve come!

1) I launched my first blog. I have known I could run my own blog for several years, and I finally found my niche! (Cloth diapers, of all things, lol.) Not only that, but I figured out how to promote it on a dime, and as of this posting have 18,000 monthly hits. Next year I think I can easily increase this 10-fold.

2) I published my first book. Could end the list right here and be happy. HUGE step for someone claiming to want to write for a living long-term.

3) I wrote my first novel/fiction book. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was, like, 8 years old. In 2009 I started putting it together, and in 2010 it’s coming together nicely! In fact, I’m turning it into a 3-part novel or trilogy, and I have written the first 10 chapters of the second book in the last 2 weeks. Talk about acceleration!

4) I called myself a writer. In public. At parties. On my email signature. We’re getting there in my head too.

Survey Says…

The feedback for my nonfiction book has been incredibly positive. “A must-have for new parents!” “Packed with useful information.” “Really delivers on its title.” “I LOVE Ecofrugal Baby! It has been such a life-saver (MONEY-saver!)!”

My novel made the two people critiquing it cry. Given its difficult but non-sensationalist subject matter, I’ll take that as a hearty two thumbs up! My mother, a ghost writer and book editor, will be reviewing it on the plane to Austin next week. On first perusal she assures me it looks neither bizarre nor boring (and this mother does not sugar coat). Fingers crossed I can find a publisher next year once I finish the whole trilogy.

29Diapers.com’s popularity just landed it its first advertiser, hooray! I may make money at this thing yet, lol. But I am also trying to separate income from my idea of success, since many of these projects are just seeds for future success that will take time. But here’s an email I received yesterday: “I am so excited to have the chance to tell you just how GREAT this website is. I am new to cloth diapering and have learned just about everything from this site! From how big my “stash” should be to what all the different words mean!” That’s exactly the mission of this website, fulfilled.

But I have big dreams! The website is expanding next year, I’m already working on a fundraiser and two huge giveaway events, figuring out where to take Ecofrugal Baby from here in the third edition of the book, and aiming to finish the whole fiction series I’m working on and decide on the next project.

What are you proud of that you accomplished in 2010? What are your goals for 2011? I have found in the last few years that it really does make a big difference to write it all down (no pun intended!).

Many blessings in the new year.

–Laura

 

Bucket List: Book Signing–Check!

Signing a copy of Ecofrugal Baby for a fan.

I hosted my first talk and book signing last night at the Ann Arbor Barnes & Noble as part of their National Authors Day, and it was a resounding success! I had 2-3 dozen attendees to my talk while the five other authors on the floor had maybe one person to talk to at a time. This was no accident. I’m glad I read up on how to host a good book signing before the event, because several key tips made all the difference, and I wanted to share those, plus what I learned from doing the signing, with you:

1) Arrange to speak as well as sign books. I billed my event as a free talk as well as a book signing. Not only did this attract dozens of people who wanted to hear what I had to say before buying a book, but it meant that the bookstore prepared for the event by giving me a table 3 times the size of the other tables on the floor, brought balloons to identify the table as the location of the talk, and agreed to set up chairs for my event. Now, they didn’t actually set up the chairs, but this ended up being a great thing because so many people showed up (right after the event planner apologetically told me that traffic was nearly dead that day and she didn’t expect anyone to come) that they moved my table to the other side of the floor where there was enough space for everyone. How cool to be able to say in my post-book signing press release, “Local author Laura K. Cowan’s book signing such a draw for Barnes & Noble’s National Authors Day that event had to be moved to location with more space”!

2) Never sit down. This is one of the tips I picked up from Jump Start Your Book Sales, and I’m so glad I read it because I always imagined authors at book signings sitting behind the table signing books. The table is really a barrier between the host and the attendees, so I didn’t even put a chair behind the table to tempt myself. I stood in front of my table and greeted people, offered them a brochure, asked them if they had any questions, told them about the giveaway I was doing for a cloth diaper and invited them to put their name in the box, and so on. The other reason this was a great move is that I’m a little shy and it would be hard for me to approach people and stay in the groove of being sociable if I were sitting behind a table looking authorly (no, that’s not a real word, but it should be).

They did make a sign with my mug on it for my own table, at least. I saved it and will frame it over my desk as a memento.

3) Promote your own event. I’ve been told before that neither bookstores nor publishers put much effort into promoting book signings sometimes, so it’s important for the author to be involved in promoting their own event. Well, in my case my print-on-demand publisher won’t be doing any promotional work for me, and I could tell from my interaction with the event planner that the bookstore wouldn’t be doing much of anything either. She encouraged us authors to email our contact lists and invite them to the event, so we would have a good start to some traffic for the event. Yikes. When I got to the event, there was one sign in the atrium that said “National Authors Day” with the covers of five books, none of them mine, below the text. Double yikes. If I hadn’t promoted my own event, no one would have come at all. So what did I do? I posted or distributed 150 flyers; I got a local natural childbirth education center to email their customer list about the event; I sent out press releases to the local media (I ended up with one article in my local “paper,” AnnArbor.com, which was reprinted on the front page of their Sunday print edition) and obstetricians at the local hospitals and called the TV and radio stations; I blogged about the event on my cloth diapering blog 29Diapers.com and posted about the event on Facebook and Twitter using both my personal accounts and my 29 Diapers fan accounts; I told EVERYONE who seemed remotely interested about the event; and I cross-promoted the event with my Christmas giveaway event on 29Diapers.com via press release and blog posts, billing the book signing as a virtual book signing as well as a talk, so my more remote readers could “attend” as well if they were interested. It takes a lot of work to gather 3 dozen people to a no-name new author’s book signing.

4) Rinse and repeat. I have learned from planning other events that most people who say they’ll come will not, for one reason or another, so I didn’t stop promoting my event until the day before, when I took a short break to rest before I had to be on-stage. Sure enough, dozens of people who promised to come had surprise funerals, worked late, didn’t feel well, forgot–my book signing was not on the top of everyone’s priority list.

5) Book signings are not for selling books. No, really. Book signings are famously bad for selling any real quantity of books. My sales goals are modest since I’m just starting out, so I was happy with my small returns, but I actually did the event to help me get my foot in the door for other speaking engagements and signings. Being able to say I had a successful book signing with Barnes & Noble when talking to someone who has the power to let me use their facility for a class or book signing is a gold key that opens doors to more opportunities. I also did it because I wanted a local debut for the book with some visibility that I could use to not only build a loyal local fan base (who doesn’t love to be part of a “local author makes good” story?) but also as material to send out more press releases after the event and keep myself in contact with the media, who will mostly ignore me until I have half a dozen worthwhile news stories I’ve sent them.

Do you have more tips for me to use for my next event? I’d love to hear your feedback on these tips in comments. Thanks for reading!

First Book Sale! (and it’s not to my mother)

I just checked my Lulu account and discovered I sold my first e-book copy of Ecofrugal Baby last week, yay! I’m realizing just how much work it is going to take to promote this book and get some real sales numbers via self-publishing. Blah. That’s something I would prefer to leave to a traditional publishing house, but until I find a traditional publisher to pick up this title, it’s all on me to sell some copies and recoup some of the hours I’ve spent on this project.

It’s not really about the money, though this first sale is gratifying. I’m following Pete Michaud’s advice to just get out there and start trying, and boy is it paying dividends, even if that doesn’t translate to royalties. In the last year I have written a non-fiction book, written the first part of what is shaping up to be a paranormal/spiritual/YA series, learned all about the formatting requirements and ISBN what-nots for self-publishing, put together multiple book proposals and queries for both book publishers and agents, and am starting to work on the second part of my fiction series. All this while maintaining the appearances of being a part-time book editor and being a full-time mom–oh, and mommy blogger: an eco labor of love and my platform for Ecofrugal Baby. Holy cow! That totally would not have happened if I had sat around thinking about how I was going to be a novelist or published non-fiction author someday. None of my current work is perfect, but I think I really have something here in both books that has value: the non-fiction content sells itself since it can save new parents $7000 off baby’s first year, and the novel may not be expertly written (it’s not that bad, though) but it has a unique and (I think) fascinating hook and the story will carry my writing until I learn how to polish up my style (if J.K. Rowling could get away with it, so can I).

Darn it, I’m proud of myself. I have to celebrate these milestones–every single one!–as they go by, to keep my chin up while I start to fend off the barrage of inevitable rejection slips. It’s just the way it is. Next step, keeping on keeping on! So that’s one more check on the bucket list: I’ve published and sold a book.

My Very First Rejection Slip!

I checked another box off my bucket list last week–sending out my first book proposal to a publisher–and then this week received my very first rejection “slip” (in quotes because it was an email, not a slip of paper I could frame on my wall and throw spitballs at). All things considered, it was a very nice rejection letter, listing two problems with my book:

1) the book spends too much time referring readers to my website, which, even though I’m not selling anything on my site, makes it sound like a sales pitch and reduces my perceived objectivity.

2) the book relies heavily on information sources such as Twitter, Facebook, flash sale sites, and other online resources for saving money that are very modern, which made the publisher doubt that a book–even and ebook like the ones he publishes–would be the right format for my content since it might need to be updated quickly.

As far as number one, I am extremely grateful to this publisher for pointing out that problem, and I will revise the book to cut out that tone. That will get me one step closer to a “yes” from a publisher, or if not that, to creating a better book for myself.

Number two? Well, I still think that a book or ebook would be a good format for this info (which is already on my blog) because it should be in one place so busy parents can read through it and learn what I can teach them (and revisit the info) without having to scroll through the backlogs of my website. I thought an ebook would solve the problem of needing quick updates when website info changes or companies went out of business, but this guy doesn’t think so.

So, should I consider another format for this content or just forge ahead? Until I can come up with an answer, I forge ahead, after a little revision work.

Just thought you might like a little peek into this side of the publishing process, which is brand new to me as well. Blessings!