Fail Your Way To The Top Is Selfhelp BS

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas Edison.

This quotation is almost always mentioned when it comes to convincing us of the beauty of failure.

Now Edison has invented something that did not exist until then. He could not build on the findings of other researchers and avoid mistakes that others before him had made.

But let's be honest: Which of us usually tries to make a groundbreaking invention that changes the world and for which there are no references yet?

As authors, we write books or articles. Both have existed for a long time. Tens of thousands of people before us have had success in this field and have passed on their knowledge to future generations.

Anyone can read about how a story has to be structured to captivate readers. We can know what kind of cover will appeal to the readers of a particular genre.

There are courses and tutorials on book marketing, Facebook ads, how to build a newsletter, and a thousand other things that are important to be commercially successful as an author.

There's no reason to dismiss all this advice and insist on reinventing the wheel.

Failing sucks

I have made many mistakes in my career that I could slap myself for today because I could have known better.

My first book had a lousy, homemade cover. I have heard from experienced authors that this cover would scare off any reader because you could tell it was unprofessional. I used the cover anyway and therefore sold ridiculously few copies.

I made horrendous losses with my first Facebook ads because I thought it didn't matter to select the target audience carefully. I felt that all I had to do was spend a lot of money, and readers would flock to me and rip the book out of my hands.

Those were just two of the many avoidable mistakes I made. I could have known better and been successful much earlier.

Many inexperienced authors are just as I was then. They are impatient, unteachable, and lazy. I only made these mistakes back then because I was too lazy to acquire and implement the necessary knowledge.

I didn't want to bother looking for a professional cover designer who had experience with my genre. It seemed easier to look for a stock picture and to use rudimentary Photoshop knowledge to put together a cover.

I didn't have the patience to watch a dozen videos that explained in detail how to create a promising advertising campaign on Facebook. Just creating any ad and putting it online immediately seemed more comfortable.

Beginners like to take the supposedly easy way and then justify their inevitable failure with the above mentioned Edison quote. This puts them on a par with one of the greatest inventors of modernity, although in reality, they were simply lazy and uninformed.

I am not saying that mistakes are forbidden. Mistakes are inevitable. But that doesn't mean that mistakes are a good thing. Mistakes are crap. I get very upset when I make mistakes, and so should you.

Most of the mistakes we make do not stem from the famous courage to fail but from our negligence.

You don't want to make a mistake in choosing your cover.

You don't want plot holes in your book.

You don't want to bore your readers.

You don't want to make mistakes on your tax returns.

You don't want to screw up your ad campaign.

In short, you don't want to make any mistakes that you could easily avoid.

We are not discoverers and inventors who set off for unknown shores that no one has ever seen before. We write books, stories, tales, articles, or essays.

If we make a living from writing, we are also entrepreneurs, taxpayers, advertisers, and communicators.

There are enough literature and experts in all these fields to show us the way.

Conclusion

If some self-help guru tells you that you should just go ahead without thinking much, run the other way. Put as much distance as possible between you and these people.

If you make mistakes, learn from them, and never make them again. But most of all, avoid mistakes wherever possible.

Mistakes are crap and always will be.