Golf famous

Photo by Scott Warman on Unsplash

I always hoped that my kids, if they decided they wanted to be professional athletes, would choose golf. The thing about golfers is that you can probably name the top 3-5 most famous golfers of all time. But can you be sure that you’d recognize them if you saw them at the grocery store? And aside from that small handful of players, unless you’re a huge golf fan, you probably can’t name too many more. But there are almost 160 golfers playing in the PGA Tour events! With middle-of-the-pack golfers making $125k—$250k from the tour, it’s not a bad living. So if my kids played golf well enough to be a middling pro, they could earn the equivalent of a great salary and they wouldn’t have to worry that people would harass them on the street. They wouldn’t even be recognized.

This will all come full-circle in a moment.

One of my Author Club members, who has a book coming out VERY soon, asked what you do when your book is about to come out and you’re crippled by self-doubt. When you can barely bring yourself to talk about the book, let alone to mention it to everyone you meet.

Another member chimed in to say that she’d caught herself downplaying her book for months after it came out, before finally listening to all the great feedback she was getting and believing people when they told her it was a great book.

If you’re feeling that way, understand that you’re not the only one. Most of the authors you admire probably felt like that at first. But aren’t you glad they persevered? Do the little things than you can do—the things that are under your control—and before too long it won’t feel so awkward.

Don’t get me wrong here: as the author, you will have a huge influence on the success of your book, so you have to do the big things too. If you don’t get comfortable putting yourself out there (or do it despite being uncomfortable), even the best efforts of your publisher—or a publicist who you hire for tons of money—won’t go far.

---

Maybe you struggle with getting started—you wish somebody would just ask you about your book, then you’d be fine! Well, I’ve got you covered there. I’ve dipped my toes in the fashion pool to design a t-shirt just for you. It says “Ask me about my book” so you don’t have to! If you want a silly thing like that, check it out on this Etsy shop I made (what if it works!? Certainly can’t hurt).

---

One of the most useful ways that I’ve found to talk authors through this is to suggest that they shift their perspective—or their tactics—just a little bit. You don’t go around running up to people on the street and shouting “buy my book!” Sure, you’d look a little unhinged, but I’d be okay with if it worked. But it doesn’t. So instead, all you need to do is talk about the issues and ideas at the heart of your book, wherever it’s even vaguely appropriate to do so. Most often, this will come up when your book publicist has gotten you an opportunity to be interviewed somewhere. Highlight the fascinating things that you know about the issue, the highest-impact stories or ideas, and people will go looking for your book without you telling them to.

Then, the best part happens. After you promote the ideas, and the ideas promote your book, the book promotes you so you’ll be more likely to get another chance to talk about the ideas—maybe even bigger and bigger chances as the process snowballs.

I wrote about this at some length in this post (with original artwork by me).

And if you’re really struggling to build your confidence, check out this guest post by Jelena Kecmanovic, a psychologist, writer, and Author Club member.

One other thing that might help is to remember the golfers. You feel like you’re doing something risky, stepping out onto a big stage under a big spotlight. But the truth is that there just aren’t that many people watching at any given moment. So don’t worry too much about stepping into the spotlight. It’s not that big a spotlight.