Last weekend, I published my 9th book and first novel, The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller. Since then, I’ve had more downloads, blog subscribers, and emails from fans than I’ve ever had before.
They love the book. And I loved writing it. Pushing myself to try something new and write fiction for the first time was a lot of work. But it was also a ton of fun – I had an absolute blast doing it.
It’s a strange thing going from writing a book and hoping readers want it to writing a book and having readers ask you when you’ll write the next in the series because they want it right now.
This is easily the best book launch I’ve ever had. But my launches haven’t always gone this well.
Four months into my writing career, I had a brilliant idea. It was October 2014 and America was losing their ever-loving mind over this thing called Ebola that somehow found its way to our shores.
I was with them. Partly because of the media. Mostly because I didn’t know much about the virus.
So I decided to do something about it. I read the best books on the topic. I watched documentaries. And I read countless news stories about what was happening in America.
Then I decided to write a book about the deadly virus, infusing absolutely everything that I had learned with a detailed breakdown on how it came to our shores and how unprepared we really were as a nation. There were no other books like it out there. So I was determined to write it.
But my enthusiasm wasn’t sparked by passion. I was motivated by profits. My brilliant idea was to write a book and ride the profit train as far as it could take me. Which didn’t end up being far at all.
The day that I finally published American Ebola: A Deadly Warning for an Unprepared Nation, the last person to contract the virus was released from the hospital. The virus was under control and the story completely dropped off the media’s radar, making my book obsolete. And irrelevant.
My intentions were good. I saw a gap in the marketplace and I intended to write the perfect book to fill that gap. That’s what they taught me in business school, after all. But nobody bought the book.
I just checked a few minutes ago, and in the last 90 days, I’ve sold 1 copy. That book was a failure.
The reason American Ebola failed wasn’t because it was a terrible book. It failed because I had the equation wrong. I was too focused on business and not on my passion. Here’s the right equation:
Enthusiasm + passion = success.
When I wrote American Ebola, I was enthusiastic (about writing something I thought people wanted) but I had no passion. I didn’t spring out of bed in the morning, eager to write that book.
Comparing the writing process to my new book, The Senator, there is no comparison. I couldn’t wait to wake up and write the next chapter of the thriller – I had enthusiasm. And I was passionate about learning how to write a good story from start to finish, even if nobody ever bought it.
I think the success equation is often forgotten in life. Chasing profits instead of passion hardly ever works out in the end. All it does is waste our time and take us further down the wrong path of life.
The easy thing to do would be to unpublish that book. To hide my mistake and make it look like all of my books have been bestsellers. And maybe I should unpublish it at some point down the road.
For now, I’ve decided to keep it out there as a reminder to myself to be enthusiastic and passionate with what I choose to write about and to motivate me to write a better book next time.
I don’t have it all figured out yet. I’m trying to find my purpose in life just like everyone else. But I think the next time I get a brilliant idea, I’ll take some time to test it against the success equation.