By Jim Whitt
Years ago I attended a writer’s conference where the attendees consisted of people who wanted to be writers and a few people like me who had gotten their feet wet but weren’t quite swimming in the sea of publishing. The conference speakers were those who had already attained varying levels of success as writers.
Attendees could sign up for a one-on-one coaching session with one of the speakers. I had been publishing a weekly faxletter for a couple of years and had an idea my articles could be turned into a book. In my coaching session I shared some of these articles with a successful author who told me he didn’t think they could be repackaged into a book. I decided to do it anyway.
I edited what I thought were the best of those articles and put them into a book entitled Road Signs For Success which I published myself. That was 17 years ago. Several thousands of copies have been sold since then and I’ve received testimonials for the book from people like Hyrum Smith, Vice-Chairman of FranklinCovey and Ken Blanchard, one of the world’s most renowned experts in the field of personal and organizational development.
A couple of weeks ago a book distributor in India emailed to tell me that a corporate client wanted to order a couple of thousand copies. In addition to the order, the distributor wanted to secure the distribution rights for all of India and translate the book into Hindi.
When I received that email I thought about my coaching session with the author at the writer’s conference. I don’t fault him. He was giving me his honest opinion. But the only person’s opinion who counts is the reader’s.
So, after I closed the deal with the Indian book distributor I picked up a copy of Road Signs For Success off my shelf and started reading. You know, there’s some pretty good stuff in that book. It inspired me — and I wrote it! In fact, I think it’s good enough that I’m going to share excerpts with you in upcoming Eletters. Some of you who were subscribers from the old faxletter days may remember them.
It just goes to show that you never know what you can do until you do it. Don’t sell yourself short. I’m glad I didn’t.
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