Letting go is not a process that comes naturally to us. In this series of honest and poignant essays, Heidi Priebe explores the harsh reality of what it means to let go of the people and situations we love most — often before we are ready to — and how to embrace what comes next. Icame to Medium out of frustration. Unfortunately, I had already manifested, through my furiously dancing fingertips, a 2, word essay pointing out the ignorance I felt strongly present in the magazine article, only to find there was no way to share it — cue Medium.
I was impressed with the response to the article on Medium, which was my first — 26K views, 7K reads, fans, and euros in my pocket to date.
And I was even more impressed the tools that Medium provides an author. While the interface is as simple as paper, knog what passages a reader highlights, how many views turn into full reads, how many people follow you after reading something that you write, what their interests are — so that you can see how people coming from different backgrounds engage with your writing — and of course, being able to have detailed responses to your work, are just nothing short of a godsend for an author.
And this led me to try publishing a book on Medium. The book is a big one, nearly pages in paperback format. However, the practices use an unusual support in place of the breath — which is the more common, but deficient in particular ways, support today.
But these all come from various spiritual traditions, and none of them are framed within our modern mechanistic materialism, thus there is a necessity to explain how things differ from how they are understood today, in order that the reader understand exactly what they are using.
You might think this is totally inappropriate for Medium, and there are some shortcomings, but for me the biggest reason to attempt publishing this book here is the potential audience, and the availability that Medium affords me as a writer. While there are still many physical book readers — myself among them — the option to have a book on a mobile device is just such a no-brainer.
And in fact, the tools that Medium provides, which I mentioned above, are absent from ebooks. So the biggest reason for launching a book on Medium has two aspects: availability and readers. With Medium it is different. Anyone can access Medium. And of course, the potential audience on Medium is not limited to merely members and current readers of Medium, but can be garnered via social media, word of mouth, and friends, all of whom can be directed to the Medium site, with little effort.
There is also the cost and hassle savings of not hosting your own blog, which was another alternative I considered. I still buy the domain names and setup email addresses as appropriate, but I no longer see any reason to host a website.
Such small websites have the same security and hacking worries as the biggest names, and it is all on your shoulders. I never realized just how much of a problem it is until I subscribed to a service available to Wordpress sites via a plugin called Wordfence, which not only scanned my server for hacks on a daily basis, but also monitored all traffic in and out. Once that was installed I could sit and watch the dozens of daily automated login attempts by hackers around the world trying to break into my site in order to hijack it into their botnets.
If you have a personal website it is very likely part of a botnet, or even part of a crypto-currency mining operation. For a small writer it makes little sense anymore. Pursuit of Honor. The Last Man. The Survivor. Order to Kill. Enemy of the State. Red War. Note: by Vince Flynn. Letting go is not a process that comes naturally to us. Bloom Discovery Award , garnered several starred reviews, had multiple books on important lists, and worked hard on author-branding and social media.
What other job would lower your salary after getting such great performance reviews? But no one tells you your numbers, so I really had no idea where I stood. Never mind that the book was critically praised and had made some of those nice lists. It is a business, after all. Which is fair… to a point. In reality, they were paying me less than half the salary of a local public-school teacher. I do more marketing than most marketing professionals, including loads of promotional work such as interviews, guest posts, and podcast appearances.
My publishers have never made so much as a bookmark for me though twice they agreed to design them if I paid for the printing. If I wanted to go to a book festival or important industry conference out of town, I had to pay, unless the festival organizer covered the costs, which they rarely do.
I have a book coming out next year that is getting more marketing attention already, but I know better than to get my hopes up. None of the people in the room so to speak warned that the next time around the advance might be lower. At the end of the day, I decided that this book deal was better than no book deal. We signed the papers, and made a wish. In retrospect, I should have taken that two-book deal. The smaller the advances got, the more strain I began to experience.
While no amount of mentorship could have determined the outcome of my book sales, it would have helped me make more informed decisions about the books I did sell, and how I spent the money I earned.
Added to the financial despair was shame, depression, and fear. All I could think was that I had wasted the one opportunity the universe had given me to write my way out. This, as an author published by Big Five publishers, with multiple books out, still more under contract, a PEN award, and critical acclaim. I pivoted, creating new projects that challenged me to no end and were way outside my comfort zone. While I was genuinely excited by them, I was also fighting with everything in me to stay in the game, to not let my dream of being a lifelong professional writer slip through my grasp after a brief flirtation with the big time.
Of course, I also needed to keep money coming in while trying very hard to write things I cared about, and improve my craft with each project. Perhaps I put on too good a face. So prolific!
So productive! The level of work was the same regardless of the advance, maybe even higher. The expectation placed on me — and that I placed on myself — to write these books well soared, but I had the sinking suspicion I was on the verge of being an acquisitions pariah, a financial liability.
While I still have four books under contract and am hopeful they will do well, my sense of vocation has expanded. Now, much of my passion is invested in helping other writers avoid the mistakes I made; writing pieces like this, that shed light on the issues, toxicity, and dangers of the publishing industry. We need more writers who are willing to mentor debut authors like the one I once was, as well as aspiring writers.
There is such a strong focus on how to break into the industry, yet very little guidance once a writer finds herself walking past those gatekeepers. You do yourself no favors when you apologize for yourself. You have a seat at the table.
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