The Patient Entrepreneur Gets The Fattest Bowl Of Oxygen
One question I get asked a lot is “Why did you self-publish?” I normally answer it with the usual because-self-publishing-rocks or self-publishing-is-simple answer. Normally this works on radio, TV and print media…but for my blog I have decided to tell the truth! And the truth is I self-published because I am impatient and life is too damn short to wait around for other peoples approval.
Several years ago I decided to check the process for submitting a book manuscript to a popular Nigeria publisher(rhymes with Palava)… First of all you had to submit a summary of your book along with 3 sample chapters (easy stuff right). If your sample writings looks promising enough…your full manuscript will be requested. Upon receipt of your manuscript you would have to wait 4-6 months before you knew if it would be accepted for publishing. In that time your manuscript would be reviewed by a team of anonymous readers and others. If you finally pass through that hurdle, you will be brought in for additional questioning to vet your character and personality to ensure you are a fit with the publishing company. After all that, the real work (which could last a year) in transforming your manuscript into am actual book begins…a total of one and a half years and more…
Do you know the time it takes a self-publisher to know if they want to publish their books? Precisely zero and a half seconds. Because we know we want to get it done and we go ahead and get it done.
As a child I was told that the patient dog gets the fattest bone, but in life I have seen time and time again that the patient dog gets nothing…you need to have a certain level of impatience in you. Impatience is what drives entrepreneurs who are tired of going to work every day for a monthly paycheck to start a business, impatience is what drives a blogger to self-publish a book after getting turned down numerous times, impatience is what makes a kid drop out of college to revolutionize the internet and computers as we know it. Impatience is what drives and what makes a difference…be impatient and stop waiting around…remember again that the patient dog monster gets the FATTEST bowl of Oxygen!
Wishing You Extreme Success,
Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.
Hope this inspires you: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297519465/the-icarus-deception-why-make-art-new-from-seth-go
Wow! I actually learnt something quite awesome today! Thanks for sharing that link…Seth is a genius marketer!
Great words! My take away “Impatience is what drives and what makes a difference…be impatient and stop waiting around”. Thanks for the nudging
Segun Akiode latest post is #BookFocus: ‘How Laziness Saved My Life’ By Okechukwu Ofili, @ofilispeaks
Thanks Segun and thanks for the post =)
That should get me to stop waiting, and sitting on my butt expecting my book to magically publish itself. Would love to know the self publishing process for you though, if you haven’t posted about it already!
Ayokunle Falomo (@aeWHYoh) latest post is Father’s Day
Sup Ayo! As you guessed I wrote a blog post on it http://bit.ly/selfpublished check it out…also check out the awesome article “How Amazon Saved My Life” hope that helps =)
Thank you Ofili, I checked both posts out. I only skimmed through them as of now, but will come back to them by the end of today. Thanks again.
Ayokunle Falomo (@aeWHYoh) latest post is Father’s Day
“Impatience is what drives and what makes a difference/ be impatient and stop waiting around” The hungry monsters will always change the world.
Yes o…I like that phrase “The hungry monsters will always change the world.”