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[quote=Anonymous]There's this concept in psychology, I'm sleepy so I forget the details, but basically...

When you succeed, you write it off as a one-off, undeserved, a lucky chance, not going to happen again.

When you fail, you assume it's your fault, representative of who you are, and will always keep happening.

I see you employing this thinking - obviously it is flawed and makes no sense.

Your book didn't do as well as you hoped. You can try again, right? With another book, another agent, or another type of project entirely. This one specific "failure" does not say anything about you as a person.

By the way, having spoken to a couple of authors in similar situations, what I understand is that authors are supposed to heavily promote their own books now. Publishers aren't going to do it for you. The books that do well have a built-in audience (usually from your blog, newsletter, or social media). Otherwise, how would people know about them to buy them? So, maybe work on building up an audience before trying again.

Also, the fact that you finished and for-real published a book is HUGE. I wrote a book that I self-published on Amazon and sold 58 copies (and a few hundred pirated ones), and I was pretty proud of myself. Because it still puts me ahead of the vast majority of people who say they want to write a book and never do.

I went to a top university so some of my classmates are "successful", but I feel like they all made tradeoffs. With personal life, family, health, etc. No one gets to have it all. I was just reading today the Google founder's wife cheated on him with Elon Musk. Success and billions can't buy happiness. [/quote]

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