Starting Over Again In Writing And Self-Publishing

When you work online, nothing stays the same. Constant change means starting over in writing and publishing to adapt to changes.

If you are an author, blogger, content writer, book cover designer, or freelance writer, the way you work is changing all the time.

Almost without fail, you have updates to the online tools you use or changes to your promotional and sales platforms almost every week.

Your new book was selling well for a few months, but now sales have suddenly fallen.

Every day, you start afresh

If you are a blogger, regular core and plugin updates can cause problems.

Or worse, you realize that your site security is not as good as you thought because you discover that a hacker accessed your site.

Perhaps you find out that a Google algorithm update has negatively affected your organic traffic.

In many ways, your online work routines can change in the short term.

This usually means stepping out of your comfort zone to either adapt to them or, in most cases, make changes to them.

If your relationship with work involves being a creature of habit, working online may not sit well with you.

There will be days when you start feeling overwhelmed.

When you self-publish online in any form, you have to enjoy the challenges that come with it and be ready to change your habits and routines regularly.

But these are all changes that you can’t control. All you can do is react to them as well as you can.

The best changes are the ones that you make happen yourself.

Start with a clean slate

I am sure you have heard the expression, fail again, fail better.

In my case, it describes my years of publishing adventures exceedingly well.

I have tried and discovered so many ways to fail.

But I must add that some of my efforts have failed less spectacularly than others.

From time to time, though, there has been a rare success.

When I look back now, I know how these few triumphs happened.

I decided to break free from my ingrained habits, thinking, and ideas and start anew.

I must admit, it didn’t work every time.

Sometimes a little success came by accident or perhaps by a fluke.

But it was only by being proactive and making change happen that I managed to turn also-rans into a few winners.

Do you know the feeling?

I’m not entirely sure what I did, but it worked.

But change is always a good thing.

Make change instead of letting change happen

It’s okay; it just needs more time. I don’t feel like changing anything because it would be too difficult.

I know I need to think about starting over again in my writing and making changes, but I don’t know if I can do it.

You know all the excuses you can make to avoid the obvious.

Starting again in life, or any part of it, means making a change. It involves expanding your comfort zone and learning how to do things differently.

Often, it means acquiring a lot of new skills and techniques.

Sometimes it even means admitting that your long-held assumptions were wrong.

Plan B, C, or D are all there waiting for you. However, you have to decide to take the plunge and begin again with your writing.

Making changes

A few years ago, my blog was doing okay-ish. Three hundred visits per day, and I spent hours replying to comments and writing piles of new content.

But no matter how hard I tried, I felt stuck. The income from my blog was nearly nil.

When I looked at more successful bloggers, they were getting thousands of visits per day. What was I doing wrong?

After a lot of research and reading, I discovered that I wasn’t doing things wrong. It was that I wasn’t doing a lot more things that were right.

My bucket list of changes I needed to make included a new domain name, a new and faster server, a cleaner theme, and a coding upgrade.

My knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) was very limited. So I had to consider investing in professional SEO software.

The 300 articles I had already published were mostly too short and not keyword optimized. Each article also lacked a standardized featured image.

It took me two months to decide to make all the necessary changes and invest in the tools I needed, in addition to the cost of hiring a developer for extensive coding.

It took me six months to learn how to use the new functionality and tools, and to complete the upgrade of my site and all its content.

Two years on, my site averages over 3,000 visitors per day and continues to improve.

My site recouped my investment in less than three months and is now a steady income earner for me.

Making change happen works.

My book isn’t selling

If you have self-published more than three or four books, you will know that not every title is a raging success. You can make mistakes.

There is always one that lags well behind in sales, or worse, doesn’t sell at all.

In this case, change and a lot of it is the best option to take. I have withdrawn three books from sale over the years because they were flops.

It is always tough to admit that a book you have worked on for months to write will never work.

But it doesn’t mean that you have wasted all your work.

It is an opportunity to learn from what went wrong and start over in writing by turning it into a new book and giving it a fresh start.

Start with a complete rewrite and much better editing, then a new title and cover. Write a far better book description and plan a new book launch.

Treat the process as a new project and give your book a second chance to attract readers.

Of the three times I have been through this process, it worked twice in attracting sales.

There is no guarantee, but two out of three isn’t a bad result.

Adapting to change

Everyone loves to talk about change.

However, when change happens unexpectedly, it usually means starting over, rebuilding your life, and leaving one of your comfort zones behind you.

It doesn’t matter what the cause is: a relationship, a job, or where you live.

When your stability and routine are upset, knowing how to find a fresh start and start living your life again can be challenging.

But when we look back on the changes in our lives, such as an old job, a previous relationship, or where we lived ten years ago today is better.

It can take time to adapt. But in the end, we generally feel good about our choices and decisions.

Adapting to change in life is not always easy.

Summary

When it comes to publishing and blogging today, making changes is the only way to move ahead.

Leaving your comfort zone and making change happen is not always easy.

You can let things drift and hope that a slice of good fortune might eventuate.

However, in all types of pursuits, it rarely works this way.

Accepting changes that are thrust upon us is an ever-present reality.

But pushing yourself to force things to change is not.

It takes courage to start again, and there is no guarantee that you will succeed.

However, fortune sometimes favors the brave.

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