The Wonderful Life of a Traveling Author

A lot of people think that once you have a book published life is easy. You wrote the book and now you let everyone else just send you money. It’s easy street, right?

Actually, it’s much the opposite.

After you spend hundreds of hours or more writing a book and going through the process of editing and finally getting a real, honest-to-gosh book in your hands, the real work just begin.

In today’s market, few publishers can afford to give any authors (excluding the really huge names that will sell a million books in a few months) a “tour” or even lots of publicity. Sure, they do their best, but they can only do so much. The real person responsible for helping a book to become popular is the author.

One way to do this is through personal appearances. Some people think it must be wonderful to travel all over. Well, you might want to think again.

This morning I arose at 5:00 a.m., finished packing, drove to the airport and took an Air Alaska flight to Seattle-Tacoma airport in Washington. I’m making this post from the airport. Soon, I’ll be boarding a United Airlines flight to Washington D.C., then I’ll take another flight to Orlando, Florida. I’ll be arriving around midnight, local time.

It’s going to be a long day.

So does this sound terrible? An entire day in the air and on airports, lousy food, just to go to a festival? And frankly, this is not unusual. Would you want to do something like this?

I  love it!

I have had the opportunity to travel all over the U.S. and Europe. I’ve met incredible, wonderful people. No, I don’t travel first class. No, I’m not taken in long, chauffeur-driven limos. Instead, I’m feet on the ground, meeting people and sharing information with people who are really seeking it.

So the life of an author may not be the way you envision it. It’s not martinis and parties with politicians and movie stars. A lot of it is uncomfortable and boring. It’s work.

It’s probably not the way you envisioned. I just wanted to share that…

It’s better!