It is, all about, failure and success. What constitutes a failure backed up against what is the meaning of success?
The meandering route one of my texts took, the core of that first book? That’s the example I like for Failure and Success. It’s a telling tale.
Early on, that one, good editor I worked with? He suggested that do the text for a book about relationships. “Does (insert sign) get along with (insert sign)?” In reality, it is a much more complicated question, but I worked at dealing with the generalities in specific ways.
The outline for the text was started early, in the naughty 90s. Didn’t finish it until 2003, and at that, the material went from the website to the book, then, eventually, back to a website, then, finally, as a resting place, linked out of the main site, just off the Table of Contents.
Failure and Success
As commercial piece of work, not an abysmal failure, but not a blockbuster success. As SEO-targeted material, oddly enough, that’s been some good, evergreen material. Didn’t intend it that way, but whatever works. For some, I should add a shrug emoticon.
So what is a failure? Opposite of success? I’m not sure, I run it up the flagpole and see if any salutes it.
I’ve enjoyed a fair number of successes, and the relative SEO function of the text has severed well enough. Commercially? Never made the front page of Amazon. Didn’t crack any bestseller list. Got rejected by a series of new age/astrology publishers, and one copy wound up remaindered at Half-Price Books.
Failure and Success
Media, the various mediums, and consider, too, that I started publishing online at the inception of web pages, and with that, perhaps that dictates the nature of my work, wherein the geography of the publishing landscape provides the framework for what — and how — I work.
The results suggest that the text itself is successful, but as a book, or pay-per-view web page, a failure.
