Everyone Sells

My father was a salesman. He loved being a salesman, was good at it, and considered it to be a noble profession. In fact, he believed that any successful person was, in essence, a good salesperson. "Everyone sells," he used to tell me. "Doesn't matter if you're a doctor, a teacher, or a ditch-digger. If you're any good at what you do, you're always selling: a new idea, a better way of doing something, or maybe even just a reason for listening and learning."

Not me, I thought as I listened to his stories of victory over buyers. From my all-knowing teen-aged perspective, sales was about as unsavory a career as one could choose. I'm not going into sales. I'm going to be a writer.

And now that my novel is about to be released, what's on my mind? Figuring out how to get people to buy it. Getting it reviewed, getting it mentioned on blogs, getting others to talk about it... whatever it takes to persuade people that it's worth plunking down their hard-earned money for a copy.

In other words, I'm selling.

Too bad my father isn't around to see all this happen. He would have enjoyed seeing my dream come true. And he probably would have sold a helluva lot of books.