Last year I published my first book. Since I’d never done that before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be taking a look at the making and aftermath of my book, Ruin Your Life.
I’m going to start by talking about the response to the book.
Part 1 Feedback
When I published Ruin Your Life, my main hope wasn’t to make a bunch of money. It was to get a reaction. In that regard, I was very successful.
My mom thought it was great and bought copies for all her friends, but she’s my mom. Of course she liked it. My dad read some of it and decided he couldn’t have a book like that in his home. This is just one of the things that happens when you have a born again Christian father and a lesbian mother. Family of course is no test for this sort of thing though. They’re going to behave how they always have.
Friends aren’t much better in that regard. Most friends told me they loved it, even if some of them probably didn’t read it. All friends told me they’d buy a copy and those who haven’t to this day will still say they’re going to buy a copy. But really, these are friends. If they buy a copy of my book or not, they’re still friends. And I know they’re not going to tell me my book sucks.
And then the president of the company I work for decided to buy a copy of the book for every employee there. This was fantastic, except that now everyone I worked with would be reading my thoughts about getting drunk, doing drugs, and fucking the wrong women. This isn’t exactly information you usually want your supervisors to have. At the same time though, this was good in that it put the book in the hands of people who know me but might not like me. In other words, people who would tell me the truth.
The feedback I received was interesting. For one, I’ve apparently written a book that people like to pick up and read random chapters of. One coworker read it to her boyfriend while they were on a road trip. For another, people seemed to really enjoy reading the book. One of my wife’s coworkers sent it to her brother in prison. She told me he said, “I now know where I went wrong.”
The thing that surprised me the most was the amount of people who responded to my book by telling me how much they enjoyed it and that they had never finished a book before. I heard this from no less than five people. It seems I’ve written a book for people who don’t like books. It’s at this point that I’m glad I wasn’t banking my retirement on this book because from a marketing standpoint, I’m not sure how to sell that one. I mean it’s hard for bookstores to sell to people who don’t go to bookstores.
I was approached by a production company to turn Ruin Your Life into a movie, but I just didn’t see it as a movie and the production company seemed a little shady. They wanted a piece of the book profits and since they had nothing to do with making the book, I couldn’t imagine why I would do that.
While I’m satisfied with how Ruin Your Life turned out, I’m still convinced that the book has more legs than it has shown so far. That’s one of the reasons I’m lowering the cover price and planning a few other things.
I’m all out of the signed and numbered editions, but I’m still selling copies of the book. If you’re interested in buying a copy, click the Ruin Your Life tab above.
And if you’ve already read Ruin Your Life and want to let me know what you think, don’t hesitate to write me at jack@jackcameron.com.
Thanks for reading.
-Jack
