Authors: Know Your Enemy
Some authors are of the opinion that Amazon is our enemy.
It reminded me of the old days, when Harlequin used to be the enemy. Everyone not writing for Harlequin was criticizing everyone who was for selling out to the evil empire.
I’ve had my ups and downs with Harlequin, and they are far from perfect, but I also made a lot of money there. I established my name and my brand there. Working with their brilliant editors made me a better writer.
My time with Harlequin was time well-spent. When it was time to move on, I moved on. I really like where I am now. So how can I regret having taken any of the roads that got me here?
The New Evil Empire
Today, the prophets of doom have dubbed Amazon the new evil empire, largely because of things Amazon hasn’t done and will probably never do. Bezos’ evil plan, according to these fortune-tellers, is to undersell everyone else until they are the only game in town, and then slash royalty rates and make impoverished slaves of its authors.
Amazon has done absolutely nothing to indicate this is true.
The sky is not falling. I promise.
I’ve been in this business for 23 years. There has never been a time when someone wasn’t running around prophesying doom and gloom. First the sky was falling because of Dime Novels, then Precious Gems. Then it was subscription book clubs, then Harlequin. Then it was ebooks. Now it’s Amazon. With lots of other culprits and villains in between.
The sky has never yet fallen. Not once. And it’s not going to.
Well, except maybe for the people running around in fear, believing with everything in them that it is. For them, it actually might fall. But the rest of us will still be standing in the sunshine, wondering where they went. We’ll bask, blissful in our happy careers, loving the quiet, until the next batch of chickens start clucking the same warning with a different name attached. It never ends.
What if Amazon Really Does Want World Domination?
What if it does? I’ve made a lot of money with Amazon. Way more than with Harlequin. (Contrary to 23 years of doom-gloom predictions, things just keep getting better and better.) I’ve expanded my brand, increased my sales, and launched my own business largely because of this company. My time with Amazon is time well spent. It’s a road I’m traveling to get where I’m going. And right now it’s a very good road. If it takes a turn in the wrong direction, I’ll change course.
It’s just that simple. If and when things change, I’ll move to something better. That’s what life is. That’s what evolution is. That’s what growth is.
Know Your Enemy
The real enemy of any creative entrepreneur is the habit of looking for enemies. Because we will always find what we’re looking for. The enemy of one person can be the most valuable asset of another. And what determines which of those becomes true for me…is me.
The fact is, when we’re not as successful as we want to be, the easiest thing to do is find someone else to blame. But that’s robbing ourselves of the immense power we have to create the reality we want. We cannot claim that power, or learn how to wield it, until we can accept responsibility and take ownership of the lives we have.
Maybe our lives are not perfect, but if we didn’t realize we were creating them with our every thought, word, deed and belief, then how could they be? It’s fine, whatever it is. It was the best we could do with the tools we had. Now we know more. Now we can create better.
Everything around us springs from within us. Learning that, owning that, being at peace with that, gives us the greatest power in existence. The power of creation. And we’re creators at our hearts, so this is something we can master very easily.
How to Wield Our Power
Stop beating the battle drums in agreement every time someone opines about what Amazon, or BN, or Apple or Harlequin are up to and how they’re going to destroy the world. Instead, we can take a step back and look beyond what they’re saying to try to see where it’s coming from. It’s usually an unfounded rumor that was never true to begin with, or speculation created from whole cloth by a pessimist.
To wield our innate power, we must stop looking for evidence that someone else is to blame for our failures. Instead, we must realize that we are to blame for our own successes, and that every failure is just part of doing our research, building our knowledge pool, honing our focus, and drawing closer to success.
Instead of looking for enemies, we should look for cooperative components. Every company, app, program, course, site, and person, can be an opportunity if we let them be. We’ll know which ones to play with just based on how we feel when we try. If it feels good, keep going. If it feels bad, try something else. We must never decide something must be evil and vile just because it wasn’t for us. We should just let it go and find something that fits us better.
Why is Everyone So Negative?
All the doom and gloom predictions and conspiracy theories are based on one thing: fear. Some would argue it’s also jealousy, but jealousy is nothing more than an extension of fear. Fear that I’m not as worthy of success as the person I’m comparing myself to. Fear of failure. Fear of loss.
But there is absolutely no reason to fear things that haven’t happened and might never happen. Contrary to what insurance companies try to sell us in their horrible ad campaigns, living in fear does not make us more prepared for disasters. It just makes us more apt to manifest them.
Living a connected, awake, aware, present life is what makes us more prepared, not to mention, more able to steer around disasters. They get to be more like speed bumps. They shake us only enough to help us correct our course.
Fear impacts parts of our DNA, giving it a clenched up, defensive posture that is unhealthy.
Fear prevents our bodies from performing their natural self-healing and regenerative processes.
Fear causes our bodies to stay in fight-or-flight mode, releasing harmful cortisol and epinephrine into our bloodstreams.
Long term existence in this state can lead to heart disease, cancer, auto-immune disease, and all other kinds of illness.
Most important of all, fear is the very act of creating the thing we’re so afraid of. It attunes us to the vibration of it. It’s like tuning our radio dial. If we tune into the station playing scary music, all we’re going to hear is scary music. We can’t expect to hear Hakuna Matata on Fear 99.9. We need to change the station.
How Do I Tune Out Fear?
We can’t. If we say, “stop being scared, stop being worried, stop being stressed” our focus is on being scared, worried and stressed. We’re just reinforcing it. To get rid of our fear mentality, we have to tune in to something else.
Joy. Tune in to Joy.
Every day, we can notice what’s going RIGHT. Not the opposite.
With every task, we can focus on doing just that one thing, and on doing it the best we can.
When something goes badly, we can learn from it, and try again with the newfound knowledge. Those tiny failures are our best teachers, and eventually will lead to our greatest successes. So really, there’s no such thing as failure.
When something goes well, we should congratulate ourselves and take credit for it. Say outloud, “I did that!”
Who Can I Trust?
The only voice we should be listening to is the voice of our higher self. When we relax, when we go silent, (as in meditation,) when we attune and align, and approach everything in our life from a place of love, joy and gratitude, we will always know when it’s time to adjust our course. Not because of any panicked squawking online. But because we’re plugged into the most powerful, all-knowing source there is.
The force that creates worlds is just waiting for us to plug in and download all the information we could possibly need to know. And it’s a far more reliable source than the internet.
Of course, we can take courses, read articles and blogs, listen to lectures and attend workshops. Of course we can. But we have to plug in first. We should be so in tune that we can tell the difference between valuable information we’ve been guided to find, and nonsense drawn to us by inner fears we haven’t quite replaced yet.
Tune in, tap in, turn on, as Esther Hicks says. And don’t worry about the sky falling. When you’re aligned, everything is always working out for you.
Try This!
Stay positive.
Refuse to engage in the evil-empire bashing, no matter who it’s trendy to hate and mistrust this week.
Stop complaining.
Stop discussing every little thing that goes wrong on every single YahooGroup, and start discussing what’s going right.
Stop being against things. Be for things instead.
Stay upbeat and happy and friendly and positive and grateful.
Also when this works wonders for you, and it will, you must resist the urge to share it with those who are still hating, fearing, clucking and dooming and glooming, because they can’t hear it until they change their radio dial.
I trip over this one all the time. I’m broadcasting on Happy 107.9 and they’re tuned to Fear 99.9. I sound like static to them. My static interferes with their enjoyment of their horror movie pipe organ songs, and they get angry and lash out. It’s no fun. I don’t know how many times I need to learn that lesson before I get it permanently. Maybe never.
If you're reading this post....
If you’re reading this and getting mad, then you now know I’m not writing anything you’ll want to read. You can go away and never come back. This blog isn’t for you.
I’m writing this for the creative entrepreneurs who are asking for a more spiritually enlightened approach to business. They’re the people who get it, and want to get it even more.
I’m writing this, too, for those creators who’ve taken the bitch, bitch, bitch approach long enough to know it’s not working for them. (If we’re bitching, we’re creating more things to bitch about.) And who are ready to take a different approach, just to see how it works out.
I’m writing this for those who sense they have more control over their lives than they’ve been wielding up to now, and who want to learn how to take control. How to be a freaking boss.
If you’re reading this and you feel like shouting EUREKA, then yeah. You belong here. Let’s hang out.
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