5 Things I Learned Self-Publishing My Tarot Book
I feel it is the right time to share the things I learned from self-publishing my book Tarot Guide for Beginners, and what I’ll do next. If you are unfamiliar with my story, here’s a short update on how this project came about.
When I was still a wee tarot reading pup twenty years ago, I wrote down what I knew about doing tarot readings. It was for personal use only and helped me practice what I had learned. At the time, it surprised me to produce so many pages filled with what I know. When a friend saw what I had done, she was in awe and suggested turning it into a manuscript for a book. As I’m always for a fun project, I went for it. I wrote about the self-publishing journey here, but I will not publish through a publishing company again because it was not a wonderful experience. My book was traditionally published in 2004 and it was a success in the Netherlands.
When the publisher decided to pull the book off the market, I bought the rest of the books and sold them through my website. When they were all sold out, I started to dream about self-publishing, but I didn’t know how to do that. Besides that, there was too much happening in my life to spend the time and the energy to find out.
And then COVID happened
Luckily, in 2017, I got the rights to the book back. By that time, I thought that self-publishing would be a shitload of work. There was still a lot going on and I didn’t have the time. And then COVID happened, and we were all locked down. At some point, I felt so bored that I took the manuscript and started to rewrite it, but for some reason, I also translated it into English. Yes, it was a shitload of work, just as I imagined, but it kept me inside doing “something”.
By the end of 2021, when I finished the project, I felt I had done an excellent job. It was December and in my 2022 plan, I dreamed about self-publishing the book. By that time, I had found out how to do this and it didn’t seem extremely hard. Yes, it was a lot of work, but hey: I had the time! So I chose one project to focus on in 2022: releasing the book and seeing where it would get me. It is the first time in a decade, I’ve fulfilled a goal on my list. I learned so many lessons and it is time to share them.
These are the lessons I learned when I self-published the Tarot Guide for Beginners.
1. I have fought myself for too long
I am not sure if I can call it ambition or that I’ve hit a creative and inspired vein, but the moment I decided to publish the Tarot Guide for Beginners, new ideas for books, courses, and other products popped into my mind, and my mood and energy lifted. It made me super-creative, and ideas started to flow.
It was like turning my boat to go downstream, as Abraham-Hicks says – things started to flow. Looking back on the last couple of years, I feel I’ve been fighting myself for too long while I knew I desired to write. But I didn’t allow myself to go there. It was exhausting to resist the desire.
2. I publish immediately
The next time I finish a book, I will release it immediately. When I planned out the year, I could only see the long list of actions I had to work my way through. I felt anxious and that’s when I started to sabotage myself by feeling overwhelmed. I thought I could publish in October, but while I worked my way through the to-do list, things went quicker than I could have imagined.
By May of 2022, I had finished all my tasks and it didn’t feel right to only release the book in October. It was too far away, and I had to wait too long. So, I set a new date because by that moment the summer vacation was coming up and people were allowed to travel again. Thinking nobody would be interested in my book, I thought it was wiser to publish it after the vacation, but it wasn’t. Even pulling it forward to August was not quick enough. I had many good reasons to do it, but they were invalid because it caused a lot of extra work.
Lesson learned: When my next book comes out, I publish it right away. People are always on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
3. I can manifest with record speed when in the correct flow
I’ve noticed that with the right information, I can manifest in record speed. When I go against the flow and try to peddle my way through the river, all I can think about is, “How the hell can I move forward?” But it doesn’t get me anywhere.
I stopped resisting my desire for self-publishing, and my life turned 180 degrees. It not only changed what I was doing in my spare time but also changed things in other life areas. Suddenly I got a new job, and my partner and I manifested an excellent redo of our home, something we had postponed for years. More things changed as well and are still changing. It is amazing when you decide to turn your boat and go with the flow.
4. I can go from high vibe to sub-zero vibe in seconds
What is most interesting is that I may have mislabeled certain feelings. Somewhere in February, I noticed that I felt scared all the time, and still, it didn’t stop me from doing what I was doing. I was learning new things, and I implemented them right away. It was odd behavior, knowing I would typically give up or go into overwhelm when anxiety happened.
When I journaled on this phenomenon, I noticed that there was a form of excitement under it. Acknowledging that I had labeled excitement with anxiety caused my energy to soar, and I became super productive. Suddenly I wrote long social media posts and blogs while editing the manuscript.
At the end of June, I hit a snag. While uploading my e-book to Amazon, I clicked a couple of wrong buttons, and the book got stuck. It caused a full-blown panic attack. All kinds of fatalistic scenarios passed the scene, including me, failing as an author and being the laughingstock of the year. It took Amazon a week to return with the news to re-upload the file, and that was it. Looking back, it all seems so simple and not worth the panic, but it happened anyway. It took a long time to fully recover from this situation. It’s interesting to see how I can go from high vibe to sub-zero in seconds and stay there for weeks.
One thing I learned in self-publishing is how easily I shift vibes. I need to work on not panicking so quickly. Even though it was short, the aftermath was exhausting and took too long.
5. I need to allow myself to experiment
This year, I became fully aware of how taking different actions creates different results. This is a big “duh!” standing on the outside looking in. But it is much harder to recognize when you’re on the inside. While making my plan for 2022, I saw how I was creating more of the things I didn’t want anymore, so I decided to adopt radical new strategies. I have known Einstein’s quote for years:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
~ Albert Einstein
During 2022, I embraced radical change in more areas of my life with a lot of success. It means I have to experiment with new strategies and drop unproductive ones, which is even more challenging, especially when I’m not sure if the new strategy will work.
What’s up next?
The things I learned from writing this book are essential to me. That is why I want to keep making steps toward what is joyful AND related to my Divine Soul Blueprint. Once I get back from my vacation, I’ll decide on the following three things I learned about creating fun.
- I’m contemplating a tarot program that will create some much-needed in-depth connection I crave. Having tarot talk and discussing readings and interpretations is fun and fills a void that I currently experience.
- I’m most eager to rebuild my tarot business. If there is one thing that is FUN with capitals, it’s that. I love doing that, even more than writing book number Two (so I may need to keep an eye on that).
That’s it for now!
My name is Jolanda Bolt, and I am the author of the Tarot Guide for Beginners. If you are looking for a simple but straight forward (a.k.a. Dutch) way to learn how to read tarot cards, this is your sign to buy it. If you want to learn more about reading tarot cards, then find my blogs here.
My understanding of the metaphysical and how to manifest an abundant life change and evolves all the time.What I hope is that you got something out of this blog. I want you to have a more fulfilling, more authentic life, and one of the ways to do this is to subscribe to my newsletter so you can stay up to date with what I’m creating. Another thing you can do is to decide what this blog taught you, leave your comment below and tell one person you know. Thank you, and I love you.
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- 5 Things I Learned Self-Publishing My Tarot Book - January 15, 2023
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