Announcing Leading to Change
This article contains an associate link to a book I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
We were on a road trip from our home in Los Angeles to pick up our new kitten in Sacramento. Along the way, we stopped at the Tamarack Lodge in Mammoth Lakes for a couple of nights. The lodge was very isolated, and I remembered all of those books I used to read about a plague that ended the world. In such stories, one person always had been in the snowy mountains only to discover civilization had disappeared upon returning to the nearest city. That was the foreboding sense of the future developing in my mind as we watched events unfold on the news from our wintery cabin in the middle of nowhere. COVID-19 was about to change everything.
Upon returning to Los Angeles with our new kitten, Adi, we received a work-from-home order. The order meant I no longer had to wake up at 5:00 am and catch a bus to my office. So, every morning, during the time I would have spent commuting, I wrote instead.
What started as a reflection of my career grew longer, and eventually, I recognized a theme flowing throughout my writings that reflected my current situation: change.
“Maybe the lessons I’ve learned about change can help people,” I thought. “I’m going to self-publish this as a book.”
So, that’s how Leading to Change started. It’s been a long journey… most of the writing was done by early 2021. I sat on the manuscript, unsure if I should publish or not. I had poured my heart and soul into writing this book. “What if no one buys it?” I thought. “What if it gets bad reviews….” I ruminated. “What if it’s too personal?”
Through talking with my partner, David, I decided I did want to proceed with publication. So I bought a book on self-publishing, Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should (Fourth Edition) (Let's Get Publishing Book 1) by David Gaughran.
Let’s Get Digital told me everything I needed to do to publish and sell copies of Leading to Change. Some of these things were easy; they just required paying someone; an editor, a cover designer, etc.
Gaughran also says you will need a social media following, including a Facebook page, a mailing list, a website, and a Twitter account. He proposes you need to build an audience before publication to see any long-term success.
I’m aiming for a publication date of early April 2023, though I have heard some advice from various self-publishing podcasts that non-fiction books don’t do very well leading up to and throughout the summer. So I may wait until September. We’ll see.
So that’s where I am right now; building my brand. I’ve got some content written for my newsletter. The newsletter is called Perspectives. If you sign up for my mailing list, you can be the first to get valuable information about leadership and change and updates on Leading to Change.
Please sign up for Perspectives
I’m preparing to launch Prespectives, my weekly newsletter about all things change and leadership! You can sign up by clicking here.
