A few months before my book released, I went to the book store and snapped a picture of a store shelf.
I then “photoshopped” my book on the shelf, and visualized it one day being there. Here is the picture of the fantasy visualization (Notice the poor photoshopping job I did!)
So why do I do this? Was I using a visualization, Law of Attraction technique?
One of my GOALS of The Millionaire Fastlane was to walk into any Barnes and Noble bookstore and see my book on the shelf.
Now if you’re wondering why is this even a goal, let me give you some background and statistics.
The odds of getting a one-book publisher, self-published one title-author, into a bookstore is SLIM-AND-NONE.
First, many trade distributors won’t even carry your book in their catalog to make it “eligible” to show up on the shelf.
Second, even if you do get a distributor to carry your book, the Barnes and Noble has to make the order.
Third, according to Bowker, there are over 250,000 books published EVERY YEAR. This means a bookstore has an inventory sampling of over 1,000,000 to fill their shelves. For a book store to make room for your book, in their store, your book has to be considered in the top 1% of that number, OR, have a heavy backing from a major publisher. (Penguin, Wiley, etc.)
So fast forward to present day.
Last night I was at dinner and there just happened to be a Barnes and Noble next door. After dinner, I took a quick detour and went inside B&N to see if my book was there.
Guess what!? IT WAS! (Ha Ha, and next to Suze Orman no less!)
Goal achieved!
So I ask you this … how did I accomplish this goal? Positive thinking? Visualization of the end goal by snapping that photo so many months ago? Or just plain old FN hard work?
The answer is probably not something you want to hear. The LOA had nothing to do with it. It’s called HARD WORK and RESPECT FOR PROCESS.
Snapping a picture of a store shelf and photoshopping my book on the shelf took 7 minutes. (An Event).
Driving demand for my book took OVER A YEAR. (A Process).
You see, the only way I was going to get my book on the B&N store shelf was to drive customers into the store and have them ASK for the book.
You do that through DEMAND. NEED. WANT.
When that happens repeatedly, the bookstore finally makes a decision and says “We’re getting a lot of inquiries for this book–we have to put this on the shelf!” Steve Martin said it best … “Be so good, they CAN’T ignore you.” I guess selling tens of thousands of book in webspace was enough to translated to realspace.
Whatever your goal, you have to understand the process that will get you there. Three months after my book was released, I finally got a distributor to carry my book. IT TOOK THREE MONTHS! Would you have given up at 3 weeks? 3 months? 6 months? Extraordinary results is going to require an extraordinary effort, and that effort is repeated FOCUSED action toward a specified goal. For this particular goal, the FIRST STEP was simply getting a booktrade distributor to carry my book.
Positive thinking had nothing to do with it.
So I leave you with this … Your Fastlane business should always have a “The Sky’s The Limit” potential, but you must be willing to start on the ground. So when someone sees my book on the shelf at the local bookstore, they will immediately discount and overlook the process that took to get it there. For them, the existence of that book and all of its neighbors on the shelf, was luck. Or happenstance. Or “being in the right place at the right time.”
They will never understand that overnight success can take months, if not years.
~ MJ
And Stop The Prostitution of Monday Through Friday!
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