There’s no substitute for just doing it. Publishing with IngramSpark and Amazon.

You can read about it, listen to others who did it, but nothing is the same as experience.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I read loads of books. I talk to colleagues, titans of industry, and gather information pretty much all the time.

But when you do something, it crushes everything else.

Here’s a small example, but it’s annoying, so it gets my attention.

I’ll just lay it out for you in bullet points to get it over with.

1. I’m doing a reading at a bookstore in May. Fun!
2. They asked if I could bring some books and/or make them available to the bookstore. Hmm. Challenge: my books have mostly been exclusive to Amazon. That’s OK. Time to Go Wide.
3. I signed up with, filled out the endless documentation, and uploaded, re-formatted, and painstakingly got my book into IngramSpark. Whew.
4. As far as I understood it, I could choose where they would distribute. (HINT: I understood wrong.)
5. They accepted, I altered, we hit publish. It was live!
6. Turns out, you can’t pick and choose where it goes. That means it’s also on Amazon. Problem: I’m already on Amazon for the ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
7. Now there are two versions of the paperback on Amazon. Ugh.
8. IngramSpark said I should contact Amazon and have them take it down.
9. Amazon said I should contact IngramSpark and have Amazon remove it.
10. Both sides said they can’t do that.
11. Now I have two versions of my paperback on Amazon.
12. It’s also on Kobo where I’d prefer to deliver it myself as then I have more options (I’ll try to still do that).
13. I’m a little stuck.

OK, 13 bullet points too many. But #5 was the key: I did it. I wouldn’t have learned (the hard way) about 6 through 13 had I not done it. Is it the end of the world? Of course not. Is it irreversible? No, not really, but there are repercussions.

What am I going to do?

I don’t know yet.

But that’s experience. You do, you learn, you regroup, you figure it out.

Had I never taken action, I’d be at step zero: nowhere.

This is how you learn, grow, and move on.