Lori Duff Writes

An Open Letter to Everyone Who Has Ever Crossed My Path:

Dear Friends, Business Associates, Colleagues, Random Stranger I Struck Up A Conversation With On Line At Wendy’s, People I Went To School With, and Anyone Else Who Might Know Who I Am:

I wrote a book. Actually, I wrote three books. (Ok, four, but one is never getting out of my basement.) But I’m only talking about one right now, my latest one called “You Know I Love You Because You’re Still Alive.” The Subtitle, for those keeping score, is “Confessions of a Middle Aged Working Mom.”

I debated for a while whether or not it should be Middle Aged or Middle-Aged. These are the kinds of things that keep me awake at night.

It’s scary writing a book. The actual work looks an awful lot like sitting still and staring. Only your fingers move. If you were screwing around on Facebook or playing Words with Friends, it wouldn’t look a whole lot different to an outside observer. But you know you’re working. You know you’re pouring out your soul, or something equally as dramatic, in the hopes that someone might take a look at it.

For just $3.99, you can have a piece of my soul. Free with Kindle Unlimited. A bargain, right?

After a year or more of work, I threw my work out there, hoping that someone besides my Mom gives a crap. Lots of people – a hundred or more – clicked ‘like’ on my social media posts. Not that many shelled out $3.99.

Every thirty-five seconds or so I refresh the landing page to see where the book ranks. Eventually, I give up and buy it myself to see how that one sale affects the rankings.

Every sale. I mean EVERY sale matters. When that little graph line edges upwards, even when I have to get out my dollar store reading glasses to see the barely perceptible change, I get very happy.

Some people want me to give the book to them for free, or will only buy it if it is on ‘sale.’ I get that. I love free stuff, and I love a good bargain. But seriously, even if I made every penny of the $3.99 (which I don’t) I’d have to sell 251 books to make a whopping thousand dollars. For a whole year’s worth of work.

No one writes to get rich. We write because we can’t help it.

I admit to getting a little irritated by people I know who haven’t bought my book for $3.99 who are walking around with a $4.99 cardboard cup of Venti-Decaf-Soy-Skinny-Tapwater that took a barista twenty seconds to make and will be gone in twenty minutes. But I’d never say that to them. Or maybe I’m saying that to them now.

And I’m just one person. There are plenty of talented independent authors (meaning, people who aren’t Stephen King or JK Rowling) who sit there, like I do, obsessively refreshing the sales page to see if anyone has validated the insane number of hours we’ve spent in front of a keyboard. I buy a ton of books for less than $5 that I will probably never get around to reading, just because I know it will make someone happy. And I’ve found a few gems and a lot of wisdom that way.

SO. In the interest of shameless self promotion, I am asking, nay, begging you to buy my book by clicking the link below. And, if you are one of my many talented author friends, please put a link to your book in the comments and I hope someone buys your books, too.

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Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.