My First eBook

“26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier You”

is live and kicking with 400 downloads (WHICH I NEVER EXPECTED)

Today I will be sharing my experience with you all, how I traveled the nooks and corner of the internet and made my way from a blogger to a published author.

Insight:

A journey of two years and trust me I am still traveling and discovering new ways. I still feel hesitant to call myself an author, because it is not only a term for me it is a designation, a respectable position which is very hard to earn. Not everyone who writes becomes a writer or everyone who publishes some work becomes an author.

I always believed and still believe that writing is a serious business, it needs a lot of dedication, patience, and perseverance for one to reach to that height where his/her piece of writing could be termed as brilliant or magnificent one.

I do not believe in perfectionism, I feel when we touch perfectionism we cease to learn. We stop learning and we stop growing. We stop experimenting and we stop learning from our own mistakes. From my trials and tribulations, from my failures and achievements, I have learned a lot, moreover, I have learned to stay humble and respectful towards others and I still intend to learn more in order to grow more.

Blogger to Author:

It takes years to draft that first manuscript, it takes a lot of courage to pen down your thought process and give them means and ways to flow in a direction such which connects to the reader’s heart directly to form a never-ending connection.

It took me one year to understand the blogging geometric and call myself a blogger, I just used to write, expressing things I experience around me. Later I realized there is more to it, no no not the monetization part, but the connection part, reading the part, commenting part, getting recognized for your thoughts, your writing skills, your authenticity, your originality is no less than a reward for me.

I took blogging seriously in 2018 and started researching and studying a lot about it, started writing on various platforms, started sharing my work on different social media handles by creating a dedicated Facebook Page, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube Handle.

Trust me it is not as easy as it appears to be for many, just writing a few lines and boasting about it, as it looks like. In order to make some space for myslef, I had to;

• Shed my inhibitions
• Overcome my fear
• Be confident about my thoughts and beliefs
• Be assertive and firm
• Follow a niche
• Develop quality content
• Stay raw and original
• and respecting others’ work too.

I left no stone unturned, I tried and tested my abilities, I upgraded my skills, I learned new skills and I was open to feedbacks always.

I focused on things that matter, I stayed away from the toxic people, I reduced my circle by filtering out the unhealthy particles and unfamiliar notions.

I learned to say NO, I started reasoning and questioning to know more and learn more.

Testing Times:

Recently I took up a one-month writing challenge for the very first time and trust me I was little unsure if I would be able to finish it because writing daily following a single theme and then I had my traveling plans and a family wedding to attend too, but I registered for the challenge.

The theme I decided was Mental Health Awareness because I wanted to do my bit by spreading some awareness and I thought this could be the best time to make it reachable to the maximum readers.

As I started with this challenge, you know what happened?

• I realized my own capabilities
• I realized I could write at least 600 words daily
• I could connect with people from different walks of life
• I had regular visitors to my blog
• My stats increased
• My follower count increased
• My thought process was accepted and appreciated by many readers which ultimately motivated me to write more effectively
• and with all this, I survived the challenge

I completed the challenge and after a month what I was amused to discover was that my book was ready, my first manuscript was ready to be shaped into a book.

Now blogging was tough to understand and implement and imagine how troubling my book editing and beautification part would have been? Again absolutely clueless about the editing part I still went ahead.

I opted for MS Word and no other software, sticking to the basic justified formatting, following the basic book publishing norms to acknowledge people who helped you, table of contents, Introduction of the book and then the BOOK, I read, re-read and was still skeptical before hitting that send button to the publisher.

Book Publishing and Promotion:

The publisher here is Blogchatter, who had organized the whole one-month writing challenge, which has become a ten-year-old custom now. On the successful completion of the challenge, one can register for the ebook publishing through them and I thought why not test my abilities right away and here I hit that send button and emailed my very first book draft.

It was approved and the ebook link was live very soon. Now the challenging part was to promote it and I applied all my marketing skills which I have acquired from my basic R&D and deep digging from the Internet.

Still pretty much unsure about the response, I started posting about my books on my Social Media Handles and to my surprise my ebook was out of stock on the very first day. All the 200 free links were exhausted in the same day.

My happiness was immeasurable and beyond my expectation and I requested for more stock and got my ebook stock refilled and today I have 400 and counting downloads and I am getting wonderful and very honest feedback from the readers.

In the end, I would say, there is no right time to do things you love or you believe in.

If you have an idea do not sit on it, grab every opportunity which comes in your way.

Leave no stone unturned, even if you feel like giving up in between remember why you started and push yourself to complete thinking, why and what you started for.

I would like to thank all my fellow bloggers and friends who have downloaded my eBook and made it possible for me to believe in my work and enhance my confidence. Thank you so much!

I am sharing the free link to my eBook here, feedback and reviews will be awaited.

https://www.theblogchatter.com/download/priyanka-nairs-26-days-26-ways-for-a-happier-you/

Much love and gratitude

Priyanka
#VirtualSiyahi