Reflections upon a recent accomplishment

Those who know me well, know that I don’t feel comfortable blowing my own trumpet. Looking back, I have treated all the important accomplishments in my life with a deep sense of humility. This new business of self-marketing doesn’t sit too well with my nature as a result. What’s more, fervent praise from others tends to make me cringe with discomfort. However, a recent accomplishment has made me feel so proud that I wound up telling everyone I know. I even went to the local patisserie to get some sweets and offer them to friends and family – the way it is customary in Greece to share with others every cause for celebration.

So here it is – and I am comfortable to blow my own trumpet for a change, only because I know the amount of hard work it has taken to make it here:

During the first free promo that I ran 10 days ago, my debut novel – The Necklace of Goddess Athena – has reached Amazon’s #1 in Mythology and #2 in Fairy Tales. A total of 1600 people downloaded the eBook during the 3-day promotion even in countries I didn’t expect, like India and Japan!

To say the least, I feel redeemed and quite relieved that the approximately 60  hours spent weekly at my desk for the last 6 months have paid off.  The readers’ comments give me encouragement to not give up – no matter how overwhelmed I often feel about the ground yet to be covered and about the knowledge I am yet to acquire both as an author and a marketer.

As I ponder upon this amazing accomplishment, I feel an immense gratitude towards my readers for their lovely comments and friendship across the social media.  Furthermore, I am particularly thankful to the ones who went the extra mile and added a review for my book on Amazon. Thanks to them, I have 11 reviews at the moment – all 5 stars – and I still pinch myself from time to time to check that it’s true!

An author writes because it’s a compulsion but it comes only from within. Unlike a career in Medicine or Law, no parent can ever push you or guilt-trip you into becoming one: It is something that you have in you or you don’t because it comes straight from the heart. Authors write because they feel they have to. In that sense, one could reason that they write for themselves and they don’t mind what the world thinks about it but of course that’s not true. All authors aspire to give their books to the world but not all of them have the dedication to finish the book or the courage to actually go ahead and publish it. But the ones who do, then have to face the greatest challenge of all and that one, feels like standing naked in the middle of a crowd – something that is not by coincidence one of the most dreaded nightmares one can ever have. This is because all authors know that at the end of the day, it is the readers that have the last word. Without them, no book holds any merit and no author can survive. It is the readers’ acceptance that makes the whole painful process of writing a novel worthwhile in the end – including the nerve-racking procedures of beta reading and editing.

So to my readers I simply say this today:
“You guys rock! Many, many thanks for your support!”