Becoming a Published Author: The Story of Completing My First Book

[Rage]

Hey what's up guys,

I know I had mentioned in a report that I had written a book sometime recently. I had been debating about whether I would share further about it on the boards or not, just because I wasn’t sure it would be relevant or not to the boards since it’s not primarily about seduction.

But my book is about achievement and making yourself a better man, and I realized that that topic was something that was pertinent to the site and was something that was in fact a bigger core concept of the site than just getting better with girls to begin with.

Many of the guys on here are achievement-oriented, goal-oriented and like-minded and have similar interests and endeavors in life. So in regards to that, I figured yeah, my book is perhaps pertinent and in fact a lot of the guys on the board would get value from it (being similarly practical and tactic oriented to me, and not interested in any emotional, pure inspirational work; instead interested only in methodically and meticulously thought out, practical work).

I had set my goal of writing a book before the age of 21. And I achieved it with this book (though doing so just barely). I had the idea and concept of this book percolating in my mind for several months prior to its inception.

The premise I had begun with for this book had been that there are some universal principles that are certain necessarily and always hold true in our world. For achievement, for goals, for success, for happiness, for relationships (women and others): for all these things and all other things. There are parallel principles that hold and are always true.

They are kind of like the laws of physics in this way: they are incontrovertible and self-evident, and shape and form the foundation of our world undeniably.

Outside of the fundamental laws: everything else is, well, kind of chaos. Everything else is uncertain and unpredictable; life is unfair and dark and tough, in that respect, and most people try to delude themselves, convince themselves the opposite of that, and distract themselves from it.

As I came to learn growing up: the key to progress and growth in life is accepting and embracing this uncertainty, and after this: relying only on self and on universal principles.

From my book,

Everyone’s Got an Answer For You

Everywhere on the internet there are these guides for success and achievement, wealth and fulfillment.

X entrepreneur’s top 10 tips to success” or “Top 15 ways to acquiring fame, fortune and fulfillment”.

It can be very easy if you are a curious soul, ambitious and well meaning (but not discriminating enough about what you take in) to become an insight junkie and spend years looking for all these valuable insights, and paging through truckloads of various tips, ideas and strategies over and over again.

I largely did that myself. And maybe learned some things and had some positive effects from it sure. Certainly more than someone not actively seeking to learn any of this might ever get I suppose.

I learned a few things, but soon the cognitive dissonance of running into the same ideas, advice, and strategies multiple times and then even more times kind of bugged me.

These rules and tips were just coming up again and again and were just being repackaged or rephrased much of the time as the material of other people. Or they weren’t even having that done to them and were just being said verbatim over and over again.

Well what should I figure to be true? What could be said to be right or wrong, and what information should I trust? I asked myself this but wasn’t sure.

Learning From the Greats?

Later, stemming out of the dissonance and dissatisfaction for the material I was reading, I grew out of my insight junkie phase and transitioned into a phase of studying great minds.

I learned from others that I should in large part disregard what the business articles are saying or random books or people might say, and should instead look at the greats and what they did. And seek to imitate those steps that they took. This seemed like a great solution… at the very best, it was a bold step up from eternally reading through another “top 10 ways of how to be the best business man”.

I studied some of the greatest minds of history: of the recent past, of centuries and millennia ago, and of current and present time.

I studied and studied and upon studying many of these individuals at length, I realized that another shift in what I read and how I conducted my self-education had to be made (perhaps this would be the final leap).

I realized and learned that the great men: the greatest of history, relied very primarily not on what was right or proper or correct or any rules or basic guides. But in addition, they didn’t exactly follow the great ones before them either. In fact none of them really did. Even if they did learn anything basic or foundational they would soon always go off and mature: branch off onto their own path and take their work/studies/creations onto a new unique route.

I came to the conclusion that each of them went solely off of universal principles, and then after that said “to hell with the rest!” They rewrote the books, broke all the rules, went completely off of convention and often went so far off that many thought they were crazy or mad or even a danger to themselves or others. But they went with these principles and that was the only way they could be great, was to align and do what would always necessarily be true, and then to everything else established, norm or pedestrian they would do away with and do things in a unique way that they at essence felt was a direction they wanted to go (often the likes of which had never been seen or experienced before).

Universal principles and screw the rest.

It could be tricky for them from there, because people would dislike you going against the rules and the norms and doing your own thing. It can be this way for any achiever. You may find yourself loathed by many, for the direction you go and choices you make… but even more so later on for any momentous fortune and successes you end up having.

But with those intense loathing individuals will be others who intensely believe in you, support you and deeply trust in you to continue on your journey and in what worthy endeavors you happen to pursue and build towards.

So there’s a little tease for you all. Feel free to check out more detailed preview and table of contents of my book; you can preview it here http://amzn.to/1IKqmh4 and find out more about it.

I am selling my book for cheap, only 2.99.

The reason for this is because I want to get it into the hands of as many people as I can, and care about that much more than the money it makes right now. Further, having it low priced for the time being just helps me in building a following.

If you feel it is relevant to you, please check out and get my book on amazon here http://amzn.to/1IKqmh4

And if you like my book, please do write me a review on amazon to let me know.

I’m just beginning to market and further promote my book (working with a number of people for this, am very excited for it); and at the moment don’t have any reviews but any reviews I can get in the future help tremendously.

I think you guys will thoroughly enjoy it, so by all means check out, read, and enjoy my book. Hope you get something out of it.

Cheers,

Gem

 

[ray_zorse]

I have bought the book.

Can you tell me if you used a publishing company, and what was the process like, did you send to a number of publishers to check their interest, etc? How long from writing to publishing? Or was the book commissioned / did they give you an advance? Do you have plans for writing any further books?

Ray

 

[Rage]

Hey Ray,

This book was done 100% by me (with the good and bad that comes with that I supposed) bootstrapped all by me. Self published books come with pros and cons of their own; one of the purposes of self publishing your own book though is that you get to step over and be free of the gatekeepers that are publishing companies. You get to kind of just do it all yourself instead of having to deal with the gatekeeper and all the bullshit and cuts of money and hoops to jump through that comes with using them.

Still this is what I have heard though and I don't like to say these things as hard and fast true (about publishing being companies being the devil and whatnot), because they aren't from my own expereince. I learned a ton from this project of mine, so many things I did ok, did completely wrong or semi wrong or could massively fix. It was kind of that fall on your face first experience akin to so many different fields: if we use the example of pickup, this was like approaching 500 different girls and fucking upa ton making a ton of mistakes and getting bruised and beat up pretty badly but learning a ton, and learning it all very quickly all in the brief span of those experiments conducted. I have future plans for other books yeah, and a much more realistic and clear vision of what those all should look like, and the business model and modes of creation and all that that they should follow.

Will PM you a bit more in length

-Gem