I’m going to admit this right up front: I’m terrible at marketing myself.
Even though I get paid very well by others for consulting services advising them how to market themselves, and that advice has been very successful, I’m not good at applying those techniques and strategies to myself.
Not a small part of my reticence it is having witnessed people who are very talented at self-promotion succeed even though they lacked talent, ability and ethics.
Given that fact, you might understand how painfully difficult it is for me to join what I perceive as a negative modern trend of endless and ubiquitous self-promotion.
But these numbers struck me.
Today I learned that there were a total of 560,626 book titles published in 2008 (275,232 long run, 285,394 on-demand).
My book, How the World Works, was one of the books out of the 560,626 titles that won a national award.
When it happened, I wasn’t fully aware of the magnitude of the situation. It has more impact on me now when viewed in this context.
I guess this means I should dig the medal out of the awards ceremony envelope stuffed in the corner and treat it with more respect…
Source: Bowker