Publish Your Story

What Do You Want to Publish and Why?

About fifteen years ago I was part of a group of experts traveling around the country delivering seminars and training on the subject or entrepreneurship and professional practice development. One of the experts asked the audience: “Do you want to be rich? Or do you want to be right?”

That really made me shift my stance and hyperventilate. My immediate reaction was “I want both.”
With total clarity, just like he could anticipate my response, he said: “It’s like a law in the universe; you can one, or the other; you can’t have both. One or the other; you make the choice.”

At that point in my life I had lived long enough to know being rich was better than being right. I grew up with people who insisted on being right and even fought for it and the result was pain, and poverty, exhaustion and enemies. It wasn’t worth it.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

So if you want to publish because you need to “get it out there - to share your story, to pound on your chest and the keyboard, to release the demons” - go for it.

It is a very cathartic and existential experience to write it down and let it go. It can be therapeutic, liberating beneficial and even healing. But rarely is it profitable, unless you are a really good writer with the ability make the story dynamic, suspenseful and exciting. And even then, the odds are against you. (Remember, I promised I would be direct.) I am an optimist and a realist, but usually not in that order.

Anything written to please the author is worthless. - Blaise Pascal 1623 -1662

If you insist on writing your life story, then ask the important questions first: Who is going to publish it? Who is going to read it? Who is going to want to buy it and recommend it? Who is going to review it? What will they be inclined to say about it? And WHY?

 Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. - Samuel Jackson

I am not a therapist, just a humble author, publisher and highly regarded public speaker. Every week I talk with people about their ideas, and look at peoples work. This happens in airplanes and airports, hide-a-ways and hotels, beaches and bars. (Mostly the upscale ones and sometimes, not so upscale ones like Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Hemingways favorite bar.)

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, bull shit detector. - Ernest Hemingway

I have made some very good calls and a few bad calls along the way. But I know what people want, how to produce it, package it, position it, promote it, sell it, and make money. I would rather be rich. How about you?

The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business. - John Steinbeck

Want to talk about your ideas? Your audience? Who follows you? Who would follow you if they knew about you? How are you going to promote it?

What is a leader with no one following him? Answer: Just a person taking a walk. Frank Candy

How much do you know about them? Do you know what keeps them awake at night? Will they spend their money to buy and own what you have to sell? When you are ready, contact me.  The answer lies within you.

Frank Candy