R.L. Kramer

I spent ten years on my book, Hocus Focus. I am proud of what I have done and I feel released from the burden of writing it to pursue the challenge of trying to tell everyone and their dog about my book without being desperate or pushy. Still, it’s nice that I have shifted from casual conversation about writing a book, to having written a book.

I think by investing so much into the fantasy surrounding completion, I created an imagined outcome. This is naive, but it was hard to resist. I think I hoped for positive reception, prepared myself mentally for a negative (bad reviews, etc.) However, I hadn’t considered enough the reality of a neutral response. The book came out, a few happy days, words from friends and loved ones. It’s a personal landmark.

I want this book to help initiate a dialogue and I know I am eager to have this dialogue about amphetamines and ADD. I want to go deeper into the potential and present risks and rewards associated with taking amphetamines on a regular basis.

For marketing and selling this book and the momentum of this dialogue, I have few resources. There are networks of pathways I see to market through internet avenues. Amazon ads, facebook ads, pay for reviews or make a viral tik-tok, which is akin to finding a four leaf clover. Staring at the ground for some time. Get on podcasts, start a podcast. It’s all worth a try, but it comes with embarrassment to try things that don’t work in the name of ambition.

I send a lot of cold emails. People don’t reject anyone anymore. This drives me a bit mad. I don’t know how many emails I have sent out to people, typically with an offer to send a free book and I am unpleasantly not surprised to receive back radio silence. I also understand whoever is reading the email is successful. At their prominent station–they don’t waste time. Writing back to emails that do nothing but suck up time. Something in my heart is happy even receiving the rare “no thanks.” I have a newfound appreciation for direct and polite rejection. On a few occasions, I’ve gotten this — and once, when followed up on, was given advice.

Perhaps what lingers beyond readership of those who know me and a few who’ve found my book is great criticism. Harsh criticism. Potentially potent psychic pain of people picking apart my writing and denying my presented perspective on people who have ADD. I am curious what people think. I want to grow as a writer.

I know that to some degree, I cannot know if my book has value to readers until it is presented with the opportunity to present value (Of which, there very well may be very little!) But it has to see the light of day to be weighed on its value. All books deserve a chance. But as a reader, I know, it’s really gotta get to some people someone to be worth the money and the time.

Forgive my grievances. I was on the fence when it came to publishing this blog but I keep adding thoughts to this essay and want to call it done and move on from thinking about this. Free up energy to write about things other than my personal feelings about writing and publishing. I wrote Hocus Focus because it felt like an important thing to do and in the process, I learned to be a better writer than I was when I started and learned so much more along the way. And for that growth, I am grateful to the process.

Loved ones who console me in this sore spot have said, “You did it – you published a book, you should be proud of yourself.” They are right and I am. Sometimes though, I edge into being just delusional enough to be slightly ambitious. It was about helping people who are in this position of contention with ADD meds. Not about going on cool podcasts. I should find the people who need the book. Not need people to give the book to. That’s a hard switch.

My current tact is to just put myself out there as I am. Make small bites of it and serve it through many digital dishes. Blogs being one of them.

Self publishing a book reminds me of buying a lottery ticket. With a lottery ticket, from the moment you buy it, to the moment you realize you wasted a few bucks, you participate in a fantasy of success. You can’t resist thinking about what you’ll buy, how you think it would change you. Then you realize you are still here. without hundreds and million more numbers representing value attached to your name. You are still here. And maybe by thinking so much about what you want to have and not being grateful for the path to get there without miraculous intervention, you are diminishing the gratitude you should be distributing towards all the wonderful things going on right now.

But with the book, there’s no drawing at eleven. There is a daily glance at an analytics site.

There I am, sitting at a computer, trying to understand online advertisement, search engine optimization, A/B testing and a whole world of information for the first time. The back-end of a system that surely has helped me into buying things that may have improved my life. I have avoided it. Maybe it’s time to stop antagonizing advertising if I want to dabble in it.

Hocus Focus is still a baby and its my baby. Writing it was gestation, and I was pregnant for many years. Now it is just a 3 month old book baby. I still am the one who spends the most time with it. I try to find places for it to go, people to play with. I have made a gigantic, ever expanding to do list of everything I think could give it its opportunity to be self actualized. People to email, videos to make, blogs to write. All this hustle. This blog was on the list, for some reason, not because it will sell books, but because I have committed to writing 52 blogs this year and at this level of the game, 3/52, it feels harmless to write something this personal and inconsequential.

At the time of writing right up to the end, my book felt like a massively significant endeavor, it felt huge. For weeks leading up to the release and days after, in my car and at work when listening the book’s playlist, tears somersaulted over my eyelids just thinking about this book. Now the action is a shrug and a crunching of the lips…for some reason. Much like after the wedding, is the marriage, after the birth, the childhood. After the writing, the…everything that comes with that.

If it’s true that I want to change lives with books, I can rest soundly at night knowing that it has changed mine and that is enough.