The writer/publisher – part 37

Feedback – what a writer lives for

I appreciate the feedback I receive, and it inspires me to keep writing.  Sometimes the feedback helps me to focus on topics I haven’t been covering in depth and sometimes the feedback makes me redouble my efforts to get my books out into the hands of more readers.

I write to help others and I use humor when possible to lighten the seriousness of the topics I deal with. The underlying message I try to deliver is that you can handle almost any situation if you take responsibility for it and if you have enough information to make the correct decisions.

I often write about employment, which is one of the biggest challenges we face. I try to entertain while educating readers about this often depressing part of life. I don’t believe that education has to be a bloody serious activity. It should be more of an adventure, possibly scary, but eventually inspiring. On the whole, I feel that my writing has helped people.

Sometimes I miss the mark, as revealed in a phone call with a reader yesterday. She hadn’t bought my book because she thought it would be like a Dilbert book. She wanted real advice on changing jobs. After talking with me she said, "I can see that you really are serious about helping people. Maybe I should read your book."

On the other hand, I received a comment recently that makes all of the work on my first book worthwhile. This is the kind of result I worked to achieve.

Melinda wrote:

I purchased this book last week for my husband who has lived most of this book. He is like a different person after having read it.

I am extremely thankful and grateful for this book and to IowaHawk for advertising it. Most of all I am grateful to Mr. St. Lawrence for taking the time to write it.

Melinda and other readers have given me feedback that will help me to communicate more effectively in my books and in my online articles. If you have thoughts you would like me to hear, please fire away. This blog is the result of a lot of earlier feedback. Yours can only help to make it more useful.

Tag: self publishing self-publishing