Being Happy and Following Your Heart

Follow Your Heart

During the Deepavali holidays, I got a chance to read Andrew Matthew’s book, Follow Your Heart. There is a section in this book that is extremely inspiring for any author. I’ve copied out the relevant text (which appears on page 87 of his book).

***

‘Being Happy!’

Being Happy!

When I took the manuscript of my first book, ‘BEING HAPPY!” to publishers, they all said: “The last thing the world needs is another self-improvement manual.” They also said that, to be writing books like ‘BEING HAPPY!’ I should be a psychiatrist – except for one fellow, and the thought I should see one~

But after a year and a half of rejections I found Media Masters, a publisher with a vision, in Singapore. Media Masters soon told me that the book market is extremely competitive, and that newspapers and TV have little interest in unknown authors. We needed a strategy.

We decided to take ‘BEING HAPPY!’ direct to the people. When we launched the book in Singapore, I took my easel and microphone into almost every book store in the city. I drew my cartoons, talked about my philosophies and signed books. In the high schools and universities, I talked to the students and in the corporations, I talked to the staff. We stuck with this plan until ‘BEING HAPPY!’ hit the Singapore best-seller lists, and then we used the same strategy in Malaysia, then Australia, and so on.

I spent six years travelling countries all over the globe. I spoke in warehouses and prions, and cartooned in a thousand shopping centres – my next book should be “Shopping Malls of the World”. For the most part I revelled in the project. But there were days when I would wake up in some hotel room and think: “If I go into another book store I’ll vomit!”

One book store at a time, one city at a time, one country at a time, we took ‘BEING HAPPY!’ to the international marketplace. And gradually, the newspapers and TV stations began to call us!

We had some fun along the way. We did a whole promotional tour in Australia during an airline strike. In New Zealand, they had me drawing cartoons on radio!

To launch ‘BEING HAPPY!’ in America, we organised a cocktail party for the media at the Australian Embassy on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. We sent out invitations to what seemed like every newspaper, news bureau, TV station and radio station on the East Coast of the USA. We catered for two hundred people. I flew to New York for the launch on June 20^th, 1990.

As it happened, June 20^th, was the day a fellow called Nelson Mandela also flew to New York. How many media people thought little Andrew was bigger news that Nelson Mandela? Zero.

If you have ever had a cocktail party by yourself, just you and eleven waiters, you’ll know that the service is unforgettable.

People ask me: “What did you do to sell a million books?” I tell them: “I flew a million miles, gave five hundred speeches, a thousand interviews – and lost my baggage twenty-three times!”

This story is not about books or business – it’s about any successful project you care to name. You start wherever you can. You do everything you can. It’s more about effort than luck.

***

I’d love to hear from you if you have similar stories.