Musings on What It Means to be a Successful Author

The recording of the Great Author Promotions interview with Noah St. John is ready.

Those who were on the live call and frustrated by the sound level of my voice on the webcast will be pleased to know that the recording is MUCH better. I had no control over the webcast quality, but because I don’t trust technology, I had a good backup system in place and thankfully, that worked.

(You’ll be introduced to my dog, Millie, barking in the background at one point. She’s usually nice and quiet but missing her walk for two days due to rain made her jumpy, I guess.)

Anyway, Noah had some interesting things to say.

But I did not agree with EVERYTHING he said.

In fact, I want to say a couple of things before you even listen.

First, I think that “success” can mean a lot of things to different people. Noah’s approach is to assume you want to be “famous,” and to do that, you need to come to grips with the fact that you need to become a celebrity.

That’s one view.

Personally, I don’t care about becoming “famous.” I want to be “well heard” by people who care about my message, and whose lives might be improved somewhat.

I refuse to strive for some outward, arbitrary view of success. I am one author who does NOT aspire to be on Oprah. (We talked about what it takes and frankly, I don’t want it that badly.)

Also, I know that while mainstream publishers do care about platform, you do NOT have to be a Joel Olstein to become published.

Another aspect I’m not sure I agree with is that you need to wait until you’ve got a big audience to create a community. I have my own ideas on how, when, and why to start a Groupsite, and I don’t think it’s in the “upper branches” as Noah said.

I plan to “noodle” some more on all this, and write up more responses.

For now, I invite you to listen to the replay and let me know what you think. Post your comments here!

BTW, no Action Guide, per se, but there are, as usual, action steps suggested.