I can’t stop selling for the life of me. Really, it’s like I was born to sell. I do it with everyone, everywhere, at all times. I used to be ashamed of it. I used to not even understand what it was I was doing. When I was a little girl, I learned to survive by talking people into selling them on the idea of not hurting me. I had to. So I practiced it every day, from very early on. Then, when I understood I could make money with it, I was told it was an egoistic, capitalistic desire that was shameful, and I shouldn’t be selfish, and I’d never be able to do it, and I must be altruistic and self-sacrificing, and on and on and on, the glorious bullshit of patriarchy teaching me to be subservient and non-ambitious and mediocre and quiet and compliant.

Several times in my life I tried breaking out of it. With jobs as an architectural student in Moscow (I got a job by selling my non-existent skills with my friend’s portfolio as I had none at the time, and I beat all other applicants, but I was a single mom and I had to survive), and then as an interior designer in Seattle (got a job right out of the BFA show by selling myself without knowing much about what I was doing), and then later with my start-up (again, wrote a business plan without understanding what it was but spinning such a good story that it won a prize at the UW Business Plan Competition), and finally with my books (once again, I did my first sales on instinct and often shrunk back, feeling ashamed and trashing my own work).

It’s only in these last several months that I finally stopped being ashamed of it—my ability to sell. It’s only now that I saw how all this negative talk was happening in my head, years and years of conditioning. Finally gone. Finally DEAD. 

Good riddance.

So I’m selling like crazy right now. And I’m loving it. And I’m getting better at it, every day. And I know I’ll make my millions, this is not longer a dream. It’s a reality that has started happening. My income has doubled in the last three months, twice, in succession. And I plan on doubling it next month again. I already doubled my hourly rate, and doubled it again, and I sell even more. I raised the prices on my books, as you can see, and I’m selling them. I’m also going to raise my book prices on Amazon and other distributor’s sites, but I’m making most of my sales from my commerce site, just like any other small business does. 

I’m also teaching writers how to do this for their books as well. In fact, it’s happening so fast, I don’t even have a page set up for this, and I’m already booked out into December as of this writing. I’m scrambling to start offering classes to teach even more of you—still figuring out the logistics, and still figuring out the accounting, the profit and loss and all that jazz (I was spending too much on shipping and lost money on it), but I’m beginning to breathe. I told Royce, “I will actually be able to contribute to our home budget again.” He smiled and said, "I never had any doubt." 

Why am I telling you this? 

To make you see that if I can do it, you can do it too. And you will.

It took me almost 40 years to get here, and damn right I won’t stop now. Too many lost years to catch up on. Join me on my wild ride. Let’s do this together. Let’s get out of this rut, of this negative thinking, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” And start thinking, “ I can. I can. I can.” 

I suspect I’ll have all of the logistics figured out after TUBE launches in March, since writing Draft 8 is taking up most of my time. Email me if you’re interested in booking a session, or getting first dibs on the Author Book Selling Guide, or taking classes. Also, subscribe to my newsletter where I’ll be talking about it in more detail closer to the date when I officially launch it. For now this exciting development is for your eyes only, so shhhh. I can only do so many sessions. And I want to be alive for you, not dead. Unless you’ve got a taste for human liver like I do…YUM.