Talented author, Kate Harvie is coming back with a new inspiring guest post on “How to know when to publish your book.”  Kate is the Author of the upcoming Believe It and Behave It: How to restart, Reset, and Reframe your Life.

 

Kate Harvie is an author, editor, and brand strategist. She was born in New York City and grew up in Cleveland. After grad school, she decided to live where she was born. She defines herself as a combination of denim and satin, Cleveland and Manhattan.  

 

A trained singer, Kate always has been and always will be immersed in and dedicated to music. She loves to drive, cook, read, and be a voice for those who don’t quite know what to say or how to make their point.

Going to Wal-Mart at 8pm on Thanksgiving night to beat Black Friday is something that many people do.

 

Why? Because the prices are better that day than they will be the next day. Because Wal-Mart will run out of the 124” TV that the family wants. Because the memory of taking the kids to Wal-Mart on Thanksgiving night will be more meaningful than seeing Santa at the mall during Christmas week.

 

Or, so people tell themselves.

 

Authors who are working on their books can have a few things in common with people who halve their Thanksgiving Days to shop.

 

These folks believe the sooner, the better or not at all. They act with a non-existent hourglass, believing that every passing grain of sand is a lost opportunity.

 

Each of them thinks that if they don’t do something with immediacy, it may as well not happen. And I am going to dismantle those beliefs.

 

The sooner, the better is for running in the rain without an umbrella and eventually we find shelter; your story is everlasting.

 

Writers often want to be authors. Writers write. Authors write books. The idea of people purchasing a book, as opposed to subscribing to a magazine or reading an article online, carries a great deal of weight.

 

Books exist forever. Their margins provide space for notes. Books smell like something new and old at the same time. They are sold all over the place, reviewed, gifted, passed by ancestors, and endure until they are lost or they disintegrate.

 

Paper books are somewhat complicated to manufacture. The transition from hardcover to paperback alone takes longer than painting a house (or so I’d surmise). Books’ words are perceived, questioned, understood, challenged, and shared between people who have nothing in common other than a shared reading of a book.

 

The finest spirits, symphonies, and sculptures are not made overnight. While it could be possible to accelerate, doing so would move the necessary focus and details, resulting in a hurried item that, as good and solid as it looks, will lack its fundamental element: soul.

 

There is a reason that Snapchat videos expire: you film something and after just two viewings, if you look ugly or you regret capturing whatever you were doing, you never have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands (yes, hackers can find the imagery and for our intents and purposes, there will be no cinematographer’s remorse).

 

Other than Snapchat, things exist forever online. And they are not necessarily easy to locate once they’re no longer the hottest, newest, celebrity-endorsed, influencer-promoted, blog-mentioned, trending, and on and on with superlatives.

 

The online space is a never-ending universe of resources, classes, gossip, news, trend reporting, and people paying attention to everything and nothing. The human attention span continues to diminish and the mind always seeks new things to distract, inform, and inspire it.

 

People will read something or watch and listen to it and move as quickly as they can click to something else. That includes your semi-complete book, regardless of its awesome title and terrific cover art.

 

Your legacy, which includes your book, deserves real attention not only from you, and from your target audience and every person whose life will be made better by reading what you’ve written.

 

For something so important and perfect, there is no reason to speed up the publishing process. All things of value require creation, dedication, and development. 

 

Trust that your message will reach everyone who needs it when it is ready; your audience (whose members may change) always awaits.

 

Your story is worth time, effort, sweat, change, risk, and a slower moving clock. 

 

And so are you.