Month: September 2013

How to deal with Failure

How to deal with failure – an observation and commentary.


By Daniel Ottalini

man-yelling-at-computerEveryone fails. Be honest here. At some point in your life, you will fail at something. Maybe it’s not getting that promotion or being told you’re being let go. Maybe it is part of your hobby or something within your family. Maybe it even involves your writing. But everyone has that point where they are face to face with failure.

So…how do you deal with it? How do you get beyond the feeling that you’ve done everything wrong and it is all your fault?

First, get back on your feet. Realize that sometimes, you did everything right (or ‘write’ so-to-speak), and it still wasn’t good enough for the situation.

Second, learn from the failure. Thomas Edison spent years trying to invent a lightbulb. When asked why he didn’t give up, he responded (paraphrase form) that he didn’t just fail to invent a lightbulb, but he discovered 100 ways how not to make a lightbulb. So learn from your mistakes and failures. Personally, I’ve learned how to be a better communicator, a better author, and even a (slightly) better publicist because of my mistakes.

Third, be willing to ask for help. Sometimes, you will not know why it was that you failed. Your submission wasn’t accepted, or your proposal wasn’t picked. Obviously, not all situations will provide the opportunity to ask for feedback, but still it is helpful to ask. Any decent person in most fields with time and desire can provide you with feedback, and some will.

Finally, look for the support of your peers. This is why it is good practice for authors to get novels beta read before sending it off to the editor, and why professional authors have multiple editors examine their work. One person is not the end-all, be-all of authority and wisdom. Find a good support group and see how you can grow.

And when in doubt, take a hot shower, eat some chocolate, and go to bed early. That always helps too.

What is your novel worth?

For my self-published friends: What exactly is your book worth?


Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of postings/tweets/facebook messages, I’ve been stuck without my main computer! It died about two weeks ago and I’m still in limbo with it. I could replace the hard drive, but at this point, It may make more sense to simply get a new computer. Not sure yet.

Anywho, onto my main post.

As self-published authors, we are always facing the latest push to devalue our work. The average pricing for an ebook dropped roughly 50% this last year, according to a recent study. (I’ll find the source, but heard it on the radio!) So even the main stream publishers are facing pressure to reduce the price of their work. Understandably, there is pressure on self-published authors to get our work in ‘under the wire’ so to speak, at a reduced price, because hey, everyone likes a deal, right?

Consider what goes into making a book: Time + Money + Effort = Finished Product. You spend hours writing, revising, fixing a novel. Then you probably spend money sending it to someone else to be edited, revised, tweaked. You spend money on getting good cover art because, hey, people DO judge a book by it’s cover. You put in effort to promote, to network, to do all the legwork yourself or with only a few volunteers.

Face it: You, the self-published (or small-published) author works incredibly hard for your money. Why should you not ask people to pay for your work? And not just a pittance either. $0.99? for a full length novel?

If you spent $1,000 crafting your novel, and you sell it for 99 cents, using Amazon’s algorithm (i.e – 35% of each sale is yours), you would have to sell 2800 copies of your novel just to break even. Before any advertising & such. I once heard a quote somewhere that said the vast majority of self-published authors never sell more than 50 books.

Sell your novel for 1.99, you make 66 cents each book – you’ve cut the number of books needed to break even down to 1500. Already you’re doing a lot better. Up it to $2.99, and now you’re making 70% of each sale, 2.09 – now you only need to sell 478 novels sold.

If you truly think your work is only worth 99 cents, then sell it for that amount. Sometimes people ask me why my novella isn’t 99 cents. Because I don’t think it is worth that. Will I reduce the price in the future? Maybe. It is a short novella. But true fans will buy your work, regardless of whether it is 99 cents or 1.99 or 2.99. A true fan will not ignore your work because it costs a dollar more. Then it is simply someone who is out looking for 99 cent books, not someone looking for you.

So what is the point of this? Readers believe that everything should be cheap or free. But quality has a price. If you want readers to come to you because of the quality of your work, price it accordingly.

Thanks for letting me rant 🙂

Here’s what some other people have said…

Related articles