Scary first


This is not my first blog or my first post. But it is my first non-anonymous post so it feels special, liberating and scary. Liberating in the sense where I can share it with all of my friends and family and I can talk about my own writing. Scary ’cause I am using my real name this time around. No hiding behind an alias.

But not as scary as the day I sold my first book on a NYC sidewalk.

Now there are many ways I could describe my fear, so many metaphors I could use, but I think I will just quote my new author friend: “You looked like you were about to walk into a dentist appointment, a scary dentist appointment.” The kind where the dentist is about to pull each one of your teeth – without any kind of anesthesia.

Every excuse in the book not to go sell my book I found. First it was raining, then the poster wasn’t ready, then it stopped raining, but the poster wasn’t ready. Eventually, it was ready, but then I needed a tablecloth for the table. But apparently street vendors didn’t necessarily have one. But I needed one, didn’t I? So I insisted on finding one, probably because subconsciously I knew I was not going to find one. Didn’t find any. So here I was, desperately looking for another idea and I walked into – who knows why – a paper store.

I tried a million different colors and textures, nothing seemed to work. Then I found the one. It looked like old book paper. Perfect, huh? If only there had been more than just the one 8″ by 16″ sheet of paper, perhaps it would have been perfect, but there was just one sheet of that paper – a bit too small to cover my 24″by 48″ table. So no paper, no tablecloth. I was back at zero.

But for some unknown reason – mainly the fact that if I didn’t get out there to sell, every one of my friends would have been asking me how come I hadn’t – I overcame my fear and set up my little table and my little chair and started playing around with my books to create a display.

Now for a perfect story, I should continue on by saying that I sold over a 100 books in the first hour – people even fought each other for it – and I ran out of books and voila, but I will be honest, I sold one. 


First sale :)

And I surprised myself by being happy with that number.

Now I am usually a bit more challenging with myself, but just being out there ended up being a huge challenge and I am not a shy person. No joke I was really scared, and nervous, but I managed to smile and talk to several people and to convince one person that my book was worth reading, and being that I wrote the book, that was more than enough for me to be happy. After all, people walking in the street are a tough crowd. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says “I am going to buy a book this morning.” Do they?

So my question to you is what would make you stop in the street to buy a book? Are there specific websites you go to buy books? Whether a writer, or an avid reader, any feedback is highly appreciated. And if you have self-published as well, please feel free to post a link of your book with a short description in the comment box.


Above is me on Broadway, selling my very first book, LIFE WITHOUT IT, a satire about our addiction to texting, whether in a car seat, a toilet seat, or in a plane seat while taking-off, and our obsession with Facebook, whether stalking people or uploading more pictures per second than Google does.

Click here to check out my book LIFE WITHOUT IT on Amazon. You can even buy it, and read it :)

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