My first book signing was back in April when Ever Upward launched. My first book signing was nothing about selling books, as I wrote had I to choose to shift my definition of success. My second book signing was this past weekend, and as He would have it, was also nothing about selling books.
I had a short talk prepared, to which there was no one to give it to which only solidified my lack of expectations for this book signing. But, Chad and I made a day of it, we had already had a great lunch at a local place and enjoyed connecting with people we would have never connected with throughout the day.
For the record, I sold two books.
One less than my first book signing.
You see I don’t have the big publisher behind me. I was just now able to invest in the literary publicist. And, my marketing plan for this first book has remained writing for free for other publications and working my job that pays the bills, seeing clients.
Publishing a book is not for the faint of heart. Publishing a book about a topic that no one wants to talk about, can at times, feel like career self-destruction. Let alone publishing a book about this said topic when your story makes the world very uncomfortable because you are not one of the success stories.
And yet, there is always something churning…
We may not have full understanding in the moment, but have faith there is always something amazing in the works for you.
So I did not deliver my talk and I sold minimal books, but it was the ending to the afternoon that made it, just as with the first signing, this one also ended in a goosebumps kind of way.
In lulls of the two hour book signing I was reading Pam Grout‘s E-Cubed on my phone. I had just read my manifesting assignment for this experiment: Be a love bomber (leave post it’s of love in random places around the world).
A few minutes later as we were getting ready to pack up and I was signing the remaining books we had not sold, Chad said, “That’s weird, look there’s a post it in your book.” Then a Barnes and Noble employee said, “Oh, I found one earlier too!”
It’s a post-it miracle!!
Goosebumps, tears and gratitude along with the deep knowing breath in allowing myself to feel it all; fear of failure, stress that this will never get noticed, trust in knowing it will, belief in myself that is already is, and most of all, knowing trust in that it is all exactly as it is supposed to be.
Needless to say we went out to a nice (early bird) dinner to celebrate and toast our post-it miracle.
