How to publish a book when you're scared stiff

AKA What the hell am I doing?

There’s always that moment. Usually somewhere between uploading your file and hovering over “Publish”, when your stomach turns into some sort of warm, anxious soup and your brain pipes up with, “What the hell are you doing?” And not in a helpful, curious way. In a full-blown, arms-folded, sarcastic voice that sounds suspiciously like your Year 10 English teacher.

It doesn’t matter what kind of book it is. It could be a journal, a workbook, a collection of vegan recipes written entirely in haiku. If you made it, there’s you in it; your effort, your ideas, your energy, and that one sentence you rewrote seventeen times and still think might be a bit naff but left in anyway because honestly, you just wanted the draft done.

So, of course it’s terrifying. Not because publishing is inherently hard (though yes, thank you, KDP, for your wildly inconsistent formatting errors) but because it’s vulnerable. You are literally saying, “Here, world. I made this thing. Please don’t laugh or throw it back at me or tell me I should’ve used Garamond.”

The genre question that broke her

I’ve seen people crumble at the weirdest points. I had a client once who walked away from her book for three whole months because someone casually asked what genre it was. That’s all it took. One innocent question and she vanished like a puff of smoke. Laptop closed. Confidence gone. No backup plan, no message, just vanished into a self-doubt spiral. Because she didn’t know the answer. That was it - the entire launch derailed over a label.

I get that. Because fear doesn’t show up waving a sign that says “HELLO, I’M FEAR.” It shows up as:

Maybe I’ll just tidy up my intro again.

I’m not ready yet, I’ll wait until next month.

This is a terrible idea and I’ll be publicly shamed forever.

Fear is ridiculous, but it’s also really convincing.

Don’t scrap the goal, shrink the step

The only way I’ve ever known to get through it is to stop thinking in terms of “publish my book” and start thinking in terms of “open the file.” That’s it. Not finish it, not fix it, not make it perfect - just open it. Then check the margins, then preview it, then stare at the screen for an hour and eat something beige. Then maybe, maybe, press the button.

You need a tiny action your inner critic can’t talk you out of, rather than a heroic, fearless moment where you throw off your cloak and gallop into the literary sunset.

And now, a word from someone far wiser…

Calvin Coolidge said it best (and I rarely quote dead American presidents, but here we are):

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not… Genius will not… Education will not… Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Not confidence. Not fearlessness. Not even knowing your genre. Not mastering the algorithm or having the world’s most polished About page. Just showing up again, and again, and again - just sticking with it (a bit like me here on Substack).

You can do this. Even if your brain is having a tantrum. Even if you’ve got six different drafts with increasingly desperate filenames. Even if you secretly think maybe you’re not “a real author.”

You just have to keep going. And if your brain says otherwise, tell it to sit down. You’ve got a book to finish.

J.x