What exactly means to me that I have made it? I think if I have a somewhat "stable" income, then I would have made it.

My friends asked me why I feel sad even though my debut book "Words That I Can't Say --- A Workbook For Journal Therapy" has become available in 14 local Singapore national libraries and 3 tertiary school libraries namely National University of Singapore, Nanyang Polytechnic and Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Yes... I guess that means a lot for any self published author: to be "recognised".

Countries of online bookstores selling the print version include: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Romania, Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, India and Singapore.

What the heck are you thinking, Huishan?!! Look at the achievements you have made! *sigh*

Seriously, I don't know what will make me happy. Maybe I need to work on my deep emotional issues more within my heart. Which is why I am planning my 3rd book. I will be using my pains to mould it into a fictional love story.

What's my 2nd book? It's called "What Comes Naturally... Before I Forget". It is a collection of proses and short stories. Something I did to vent my pain, anger and sadness. There are nice things and then there are moody stuff. I am still waiting as my book is in the queue for being listed on Amazon.com.

I think I just realised something. I don't need anything to be happy. I just need to think beyond the materialistic world, even though it is hard to do that.

I design my books myself so that saves a lot of money. I used to think that I can't possibly make any art but I discovered I could make decent looking covers even though they might not be extremely "professional" looking. :) Yay.

So I shall shamelessly promote my websites here:

www.ohhuishan.com

www.ohhuishanbooks.com

Maybe I need to learn to be kind to myself. I need to cherish myself.

Huishan

UPDATE: It doesn't mean that if my books are listed, that they automatically sell all the time. Some days nobody buys and other days some people buy a few. The thing is my books are not sold in physical bookstores as I am unable to financially provide consignment basis of my books to bookstores. I just hope I can find a way around this.

I guess being a self published author, it usually means the lack of quality to other people BUT it is indeed a new era for indies. Need to self publish a book? Lulu.com and CreateSpace.com helps solve the problem. Need to self publish a digital album of mp3s? CD Baby to the rescue. Need a personal radio show? How about signing up with Spreaker.com? Need to reach out to the world via ebooks? Don't look no further because Ebookit.com is possibly a good answer.

But despite all these avenues (not that I use ALL of them...), I feel mixed up within my heart. On the one hand I should be able to support my family financially as I am 30 in October BUT my lack of skills in the office environment etc plus my schizophrenia all pose an obstacle to my being financially independent. My schizophrenia is very stable now but still it pulls me back from a lot of things normal people take for granted.

The only thing I do well and cheers me up is expressing myself and my imagination through writing. My 1st book is successful in terms of distribution but I am in no position to really push the sales as advertising is rather expensive. My debut book has become listed with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble online and online book retailers in 22 countries. My 2nd book is being listed on Amazon.com these few weeks. All this should really mean that I am well off in terms of money but the real deal is if you don't have even a little bit of money for marketing and advertising about the books, nobody much knows they exist.

Disadvantage: I have been unemployed for the longest time fighting my schizophrenia. Now that I am very sober, it's like a bad dream that still has its side effects in my life.

I only hope that I may be able to find a way out of the financial problems I have.

Meanwhile, I'm just happy that my books are on Amazon.com, I mean, it's Amazon.com!

:D

Huishan