Recovering from Shame
As I mentioned in my last post, sales figures for my book SHAME were so weak that my publisher agreed to sell me back the publication rights. That book was (is) deeply important to me, and I had so much invested in its success, that its relative "failure" was a profound shame experience for me. In the book, I talk about one type of shame as "Disappointed Expectation" and another as "Unwanted Exposure." The book's poor sales figures felt to me like both; the shame I felt left me for a long time in a state of mild depression.
The re-acquisition of the right to publish has helped me to recover and I feel newly energized. I also feel that I've regained my feelings of pride in the book I wrote. It's a very good book, a distillation of everything I've learned over the course of my career, and it deserves a wider audience. Part of the problem, I believe, was the wrong title and a scary cover. "SHAME" sounds serious, but the subtitle makes it seem less so, more like any other shallow self-help book. I chose neither one. I liked the cover at first but have since grown to see it as intimidating and off-putting; I selected yellow for the cover and I'll take responsibility for that wrong choice.
