Looking Up from the Instruments
For months, I have spent entirely too much time watching numbers on a screen. Website visitors, Amazon impressions, ad clicks, book sales, pages read—you name it, I've probably checked it. Some of those numbers are useful, and some probably aren't nearly as important as I've convinced myself they are. Of course, there was one number that became particularly familiar: zero. If you've followed along for a while, you may know that I eventually named my Amazon sales dashboard Pet Rock 0. He wasn't very exciting, but at least he was dependable.
Last Thursday, I got a reminder that there is a big difference between watching numbers on a screen and meeting the actual people on the other side of them. I held my first author meet-and-greet at my shop in downtown Clarksville during the First Thursday Art Walk. Even saying "author meet-and-greet" still sounds a little strange to me. When I started The Journey of a Salty Soul, I wasn't trying to become an author. I just wanted to write a book. Somewhere along the way, apparently the two became connected.
The setup was pretty simple. I had two tables, copies of the book, a few things from Salty Soul Chronicles, and no real idea what I was supposed to do for the next several hours. The event wasn't scheduled to begin until 4:00, but around 1:30 a couple of customers came into the shop and noticed the books. We talked for a while, I told them about the event later that afternoon, and eventually they left. A few hours later, they came back and bought books.
That probably meant more to me than they realized. They didn't click on an ad or accidentally land on the website while searching for something else. They had gone on with their afternoon, remembered our conversation, and made the effort to come back. After spending weeks looking at impressions, clicks, visitors and all the other things we're told we're supposed to measure, there was something refreshing about that. I didn't need an analytics report to explain what had happened. Two people heard about the book, were interested enough to return, and bought it.
As the evening went on, more people stopped by. Some bought books, some browsed, and quite a few asked questions about how the book came about. We talked about writing, publishing, boating, where the idea for Damian came from, and whether I had actually traveled the route in the story. Those conversations ended up being my favorite part of the evening. For months, most of this journey had taken place behind a computer screen, and suddenly I was talking face-to-face with people who were genuinely interested in something that had existed only in my imagination not very long ago.
Then there was the part I hadn't given much thought to before the event: signing the books. The first few were a little awkward because I suddenly felt like I was supposed to write something profound inside every cover. Apparently signing your own name becomes considerably more complicated when someone is standing on the other side of the table waiting for you to do it. After a while, I stopped thinking so much about it. I started writing short personal notes, signing my name, and handing the books back. It became less about figuring out what an author was supposed to write and more about saying thank you to someone who had decided to take my story home with them.
The event was scheduled to end at 7:00, but conversations kept going and we ended up staying until around 8:00. I sold books, answered questions, met some new people and talked with some familiar ones. More than anything, though, I walked away with a different perspective on this whole publishing adventure. For weeks I had been measuring progress through dashboards and reports. That evening, the numbers finally had faces.
There is nothing wrong with watching the numbers. I still want to know whether people are finding the website, whether the ads are doing anything, and whether the book is reaching readers. That's part of publishing a book, especially when you're doing nearly everything yourself. But boating has taught me that you can spend so much time watching the instruments that you forget to look out the window. The GPS, charts, depth finder and gauges all matter, but so does lifting your head every once in a while and seeing where you actually are.
I think writing and publishing may work the same way. I've spent a lot of time watching the instruments since Journey of a Salty Soul was released, trying to determine whether this little adventure was actually going anywhere. Last Thursday gave me a chance to look up from them for a while. There were people standing there asking about the story, buying the book and telling me about their own connections to boats, travel, writing and starting something new. No dashboard could have shown me that.
As for Pet Rock 0, he's currently on vacation, but not because I finally developed the self-control to stop checking Amazon. Let's not get carried away. I still look, probably more often than I should. Pet Rock 0 went on vacation because someone actually bought a book and, for the first time, there was something other than a zero staring back at me. I decided right then that Pet Rock 0 had earned some time off, so officially he's gone until October 1. Pet Rock 0 is somewhere on a beach enjoying his vacation, and I'm certainly not going to call him back early.
For now, I'm discovering that there are other ways to measure a journey. Sometimes progress isn't a number on a screen. Sometimes it's a conversation across a table, a book in someone's hand, or two people who said they'd come back later and actually did.
You just have to look up from the instruments long enough to notice.
Until next time, fair winds and following seas,
Michael