The Difficulties, Obstacles and Triumphs of writing a book.
The Difficulties, Obstacles and Triumphs of writing a book.
Writing a book involves a lot more moving pieces than you might imagine. When I wrote my first book, it was produced by a team of people who all specialized in one portion of the final result. There were editors, photographers, graphic designers, food stylists, prop specialists, and SO many more people that all got paid. You know who didn’t get paid? Me. My book was part of my “prize”.
This go around, I chose to do everything myself. Partially to lower overall costs, but mostly because I wanted to hold my project in my hands and say, “I did this”.
When you’re first starting out, there’s a lot of what feels like circular work that needs to be completed. I say circular like in thoughts. Like getting on and off a highway without reaching the next exit. You need offerings to sell, but a platform to sell them on. You need a platform to sell on, but an Llc to use the platform. You need an Llc, but you have to come up with a business name, and a registered agent to represent it. You need a business location to receive mail, but you don’t want it to be your personal address to protect your safely, and it can’t be a PO Box, either…. You come up with a name for your Llc, but need to check with the registry whether or not it’s already been taken. Then you have to provide a purpose for your business, categorize it under what type of goods and services it provides, and finally submit a handful of paperwork with signatures to the State.
You can bypass a lot of this with money, but you’re not going to learn how to do it yourself. Pay attention to that part, it comes up again and again.
So, you have the llc, the paperwork, and the platform. You’re ready to create products and offer your services, right? Wrong, you have so much more work to do.
The platform you chose, at bare minimum, is a couple hundred dollars a year, but you have no idea how to use it or optimize it to your benefit. It’s like walking into a kitchen with every single piece of equipment you could imagine, but not knowing how to use any of them…. Been there…. It’s an entirely empty slate, and every informational video you watch, and ‘learn more’ icon you touch, is just a slightly different approach to a sales pitch;
“Sorry you don’t know how to do this yourself, you can watch these 15 videos on our YouTube which are loaded with ads to make us money, or you can hire someone to do everything for you, which also makes us money. We won't tell you how we did it though, because if you know how, we won't make money next time. If you watch the videos, we’re going to assume you bought the premier package at a few thousand dollars a year, and that your business generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Oh that’s not you? Well, the videos might not be helpful to you then, perhaps you should pay someone to build your site for you, let us show you how to hire someone”...
That’s what it felt like designing this site, for two whole years. At one point I was so frustrated, I *did* look up how much it would cost to pay someone to build it for me. Entry level, basic set up starting price was FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. I even saw ads for services that cost $25,000.00. Hell to the no.
I took a deep breath and said, I’m going to do this my fucking self, whether I want to or not.
The website sat on the back burner, hidden behind a password. I learned how to design a little bit of merch. I told myself I completed enough of ‘that side of things’ to take a break, and focused on my actual project- to make an offering for Strippers.
I had a lot to say, but not a real strategy of how to deliver it. It didn’t start off as an idea for a book. It felt like a course, a project, a process. However I chose to share this information, I had to create it from scratch. What better way than to do something I already knew how to do.
I thought to myself, ‘what is working for me, that would work for other people?’ That felt like a good place to start. I also wanted to lay the groundwork to have more in-depth conversations, and teach more involved skills. I took a good assessment of myself and my career in the industry- what was I doing that worked and how could I teach others to do the same? Not the same as me, but the same for them.
That’s when I knew it had to be about patterns. Because that was the key to applying the lessons to every person, situation, and location possible. If you recognize a pattern, you have the power to repeat, enhance or change it. And how do you recognize a pattern? By tracking your behaviors. What behaviors was I tracking? My earnings.
BOOM. Now I knew the focus of my book. It was going to be an income and behavior tracker, with a deep dive into self-reflection, and a thorough explanation of WHY I was choosing to track certain patterns.
I had no idea how to graphically design a book. I paid for a graphic design program, because once again, if I wanted to use ANY higher quality program or have access to tools necessary to make this project one of value, it wasn’t going to come to me for free. So I paid the subscription and was on my way. Kind of.
When the book was complete in digital form, I had to turn it into a physical product, next. Same for the tracker journal. Both products are designed to go hand in hand. The book is essentially the manual of how to use the tracker. But the program I designed them on only offered me up to 10 prints at a time for a very high cost. That’s not what I wanted.
I wanted an ISBN number. A number that made my book REAL. Every book you’ve ever bought has an ISBN number. It’s the series of numbers with the barcode on the back. I needed a publisher to do that.
With the publisher I found myself in a similar situation of ‘pay to play’. They were there to help me, but more like help me pay them to complete things for me. I found myself downloading adobe, learning what ‘pagination’ was, and how books have to be bound with pages in multiples of four. I wouldn’t have learned any of that if I shelled a few more hundred dollars to have someone do it for me. When it came time to print it all, I had to pay for the massive order of books before even holding one in my hand. That was scary. What if there was an error I didn’t notice?? (There was, and I don’t mind). The Tracker Journal was a slightly different story-at least I got to hold a hard copy proof of that before hundreds were delivered to my door. I was so happy I cried when it arrived.
The Tracker Journal is 6 months worth of tables that are explained in ‘My Best Stripper Self’. It’s my intellectual property, so I wanted to put my name ALL over it. I thought, if I had a copyright on My Best Stripper Self, then I could license the tracker tables to my Llc to print in the Tracker Journal. I could have a publisher print as many copies of my book as I needed, while a printer could create as many tracker journals as necessary, all while protecting my Intellectual Property. So thats what I did.
I registered My Best Stripper Self’s copyright with the Library of Congress. Partially because I wanted to, and partially because I love the fact that the Library of Congress now has a book with the word Stripper in the title, and one of my nudes on the cover. It cost me about $80 and 3 hours of paperwork. Capricorn, Virgo, Leo. In that order.
Alllllll that work to create the tools that encourage longevity and sustainability in an industry that likes to countdown the viability of its workers. I feel like this is an example of a ‘passion project’. I didn’t make this book as a means to make money. I made it as a means to educate and share information. And I’d do it all over again too, because I’m already working on the next project. There are so many aspects to being your Best Stripper Self, and tracking your patterns is just the beginning.
Read more and get your copy here:
xo,c
