📚 Publishing Pivots (Part Two)
Or, even my books can't pay their rent 😭
Catch up on part one first:
Where we left off . . .
We were behind schedule. I started the Pivot proposal in early 2013 and then landed a book deal in October 2014. Now, instead of launching in March 2016 as I had been counting on, my editor emailed saying we needed to push publication back by six months; otherwise, it would damage the book’s chances to rush the process.
How would I pay the bills? How would I sustain myself and my life? Fear and worry gripped me. This can’t be happening, I repeated.
After a few days of pouting, I realized the mistake I had been making: I was treating my not-yet-born baby book like an overbearing stage mother shoving her child into a beauty pageant: You have to win, or else the family won’t eat! It was too much pressure to put on a nascent creative project.
Nine years later, a full epicycle numerology-wise,1 I received another publisher email with the same energetic fingerprint: tough love with a kick.
Date: Monday, October 14, 2024
Subject: Royalty Balance
Ooh! I normally don’t check emails first thing in the morning, but this one caught my eye. I was feeling extra hopeful (aka needy) after paying yet another tax bill resulting from a cascade of errors my accounting team made earlier in the year; itself a stressful ordeal with lingering fallout that seems never-ending.
My eyes scanned quickly for an amount. I looked for the dollar sign . . . lord knows I need every cent I can scrounge up at the moment . . . and I found it!
$2,500!!!
Maybe I’m doing better with Free Time sales than I thought?!
Then I gave the email a closer read, slowly focusing on each word this time. The little glee balloon my heart had sent zooming for the sky popped, flailing limply back to earth.