The Life of a Self Help Author

Many have fallen, but few get back up

The Life of a Self Published Author

Christopher A. Pinckley is the author of the spiritual self-help book Reality Creation 101, a book that is currently being sold in bookstores around the world. This is not because he was able to secure a deal with a major publisher or has a literary agency representing him. Rather, this is because Christopher has the one quality that is needed if you want to succeed as a self-published author this day and age, relentlessness.

Life on the edge

Christopher is no stranger to a life lived on the edge having arrived in Los Angeles, in 1998, in a beat up Nissan Sentra with a broken windshield, expired tags, and no car insurance. All he had was $199 in his pocket, and the rumor of a friend of a friend somewhere in Hollywood who would let him stay on the couch for a couple of weeks while he got started. After finding the place where he would be temporarily staying he did two things. First, he found the Gold’s Gym in Venice, CA and used $99 of his $199 to get a 3 month membership. The Gold’s in Venice was part of the reason for moving to L.A. with its amazing array of equipment and it’s incredibly inspiring list of celebrity members and bodybuilders. On his first morning workout he saw Bolo Yeung from Enter the Dragon with Bruce LeeBruce Lee, Kevin SorboKevin Sorbo from Hercules, and Triple HTriple H who was at the time the most popular WWF Wrestler in the world.

His encounters at the gym gave him an adrenaline boost and he quickly got started on his second project, a job. It was his second night in L.A. and he had located the Kinko’s in Hollywood. It was midnight and he was constructing his resume in preparation to hit the pavement the next day when he looked to his right and saw that sitting next to him was Forrest Whitaker. “I couldn’t help it, I had to say hi to him. I mean, after all Forrest always seemed like such a nice guy.” And, sure enough, Forrest was a genuine down to Earth guy that said “hi” back and gave a big smile. “I really felt like I was in the right place, I mean every single person around me was amazing!” Later that night, Christopher went to a small dive bar on Sunset Blvd. with the guy that let him stay on the couch, and there he bumped into Janine Garofalo. “I was at the bar having a beer and just feeling very surreal. I felt someone bump me from behind and turned around to see that there was this really short woman standing with her back to me. I thought, that looks like Janine Garofalo. About the time that I realized it was her, her friends grabbed her and made a protective circle around her as if she was in mortal danger. It’s true, I was a little tipsy from the beer so I was probably just staring at her or something. But I wasn’t like, Oh my God it’s Janine Garofalo!”

The next day he hit the streets and landed two jobs in the first week. His first job he picked up as a bouncer at the infamous Gotham Hall. “This place was amazing, right on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. It had a pool hall, three separate bars, and two dance floors.” While working here he would meet Will Smith during the Wild, Wild West Wrap Party. “That night they stuck me in the alley behind the club to greet people who came in the back entrance. I remember feeling like I was missing all the action until Will Smith pulled up with his private body guard. He was also a very genuine and down to Earth person. He actually spent several minutes just talking with me in the alley before we went inside. I remember thinking to myself that this must be one of the reasons why he made it so far in life, he was just a really great guy.”

The second job he landed was as a personal trainer at The Power House Gym in Venice. Ironically, this gym was only a mere two blocks from the biggest, most popular gym in the world, Gold’s. Yet, the Power House Gym drew a different crowd of people and was able to maintain a regular clientele. He began personal training here and quickly built his own clientele. “In the beginning, because I was living in Hollywood and I didn’t have that much money for gas, I would sleep on the beach between clients. Since I was the new guy I had to take whatever clients I could get, so I would have a 6am client, then a client at 2pm, then another one at 4pm. So in between clients I would go sleep on the beach and I showered at the gym. One time I woke up on the beach with some guy standing over me staring down at me, not fun.”

A Turn in the road

A few months later he was settled into his new life as a personal trainer, bouncer, and wanna-be-actor. In fact, he was so settled in that he began drinking and partying again, completely forgetting the focus of why he came to L.A. in the first place-which was to achieve his dream of becoming an actor or personal trainer to the stars, whichever came first. He had been hitting the weights pretty hard and was on this semi-legal supplement called Renutrient. Renutrient’s main ingredient was GHB, or Gamma Hydroxybutyric Acid. A lot of rave partiers used it as a drug to get high on, but bodybuilders had found that it also helped to release excess amounts of growth hormone at night while sleeping. He had been hanging out with a personal trainer friend who was a bodybuilder that he refers to as “Paco.” “Paco and I had been using Renutrient for both the growth hormone release and as a party enhancing drug as well.” He wound up at a club in Hollywood called The Garden Of Eden one night with Paco while heavily under the influence of Renutrient. “I had been taking this stuff called Blue Nitrous which was an even more potent form of Renutrient. I remember drinking rum and cokes like they were water and wondering why I couldn’t catch a buzz.” The truth was that he was heavily under the influence of GHB and completely unaware of how drug and alcohol induced he had become. While walking through the crowd he managed to knock down three people in a row without knowing it. “Then I ran into one of their big pillars that they used to have inside the club that made it appear more Romanesque. “I remember looking up at this huge thing as it began to slowly rock back and forth. The next thing I know, I’m surrounded by about 8 bouncers as they escort me outside. I was so wacked out of my mind that I remember feeling hurt and wondering why they didn’t like me. The craziest part was, after standing outside for awhile, I simply walked around to the front of the club and went back inside. I couldn’t find Paco anywhere so I went out to my car and actually began driving.” On his way down Santa Monica Blvd he was pulled over in Beverly Hills on suspicion of driving under the influence. “Needless to say I did not pass the DUI test and went directly to jail. Do you know what though? They lay out your tooth paste and tooth brush for you in Beverly Hills and make sure your bed is made. It’s really quite nice.”

After losing his car and paying around $7000 in fines and fees, he had arrived at a turning point. For an entire year he didn’t have a drop of alcohol and focused on building his own personal training business. For Christopher, this was the wake up call he needed to get a little more serious about life and grow up a bit. “Things could have been so much worse, I’m really glad that I didn’t hurt myself or anyone else that night.” It was at this point that he began to focus on self improvement and becoming a better person. Since this was almost like starting over, he had to find a new place to live that was closer to the bus line. He landed at a small efficiency unit in Venice, CA and rode the bus for the next two years while he built his business and poured over self-help books.

Back on track

2 years later he had his license back, an apartment in West L.A. near Brentwood, and a new used BMW. He had a full schedule of personal training clients and things were looking good. He enjoyed his new life of focus and financial stability for another year until he finally got his first big break when an associate of his referred Pierce BrosnanPierce Brosnan to him as a new client. “Pierce was another really great guy; he was a family man. He was not one of those people who were full of themselves, neurotic, and out sleeping with every other person. He was about his family, his career, and enjoying life. The best part was, he could take a joke and my feeling was that he preferred being treated like a normal guy.”

Too good to be true

Although things seemed like they couldn’t get any better, all was not well for Christopher as he began to fall into depression. “I remember the very first time I felt depressed I was like, where the hell did THIS come from?!” After 2 years of running a successful business and getting his life back on track things began to fall apart again. “I only worked with Pierce a short time, but I had started to become depressed and moody towards the end of our working relationship. One time he said to me, “Don’t get angry man, it’s no good.” Right then I knew I had a problem, you don’t bring anger to work with you; you can’t.”

In 2002, despite the fact that he had a thriving business and things had been going really well, he decided to shut down his business and move North to the San Francisco Bay Area. Christopher knew something was missing and decided that it was time to turn towards spirituality for the answers. When he got to the Bay Area he was surprised to find that he arrived in circumstances very similar to the ones in which he first arrived in LA. He had a place to stay, although this time it was for 2 months instead of 2 weeks. He had traded his new used BMW for a Honda accord which had an expired registration and insurance, just as his Nissan Sentra had years earlier. He became ill and was bed ridden for the first two weeks of his stay in the Bay Area.

Re-establishmentarianism

Two years later and after many ups and downs, he had re-established his personal training business and read close to one hundred self-help and spirituality books. He was so intrigued and inspired by many of these writers that he decided that he wanted to become one of them. As his self awareness level grew he began to document his journey, taking notes on areas of his life where he had improved and how the improvement had occurred. This journey of learning and growth was to become the impetus for his first book and he began writing it in 2004.

In 2005 he had compiled enough notes to be able to create a full length book out of it and so he began writing his book. In 2006, after a year of feverishly writing in his spare minutes between clients, he worked up the courage to contact an editor. He found one and submitted his manuscript via email to her in New York. What he got back was so diced up with red lines, question marks, slashes, and otherwise that he decided to scrap the entire thing and rewrite it from scratch. After three months he had completed his rewrite and resubmitted it to his editor. Although there would be a lot of editing ahead of him, he was happy to see that she was very impressed with his rewrite. Her first comment of “I don’t know what this is…?” had changed to “This is great, let’s get started!”

After an exhausting endeavor of editing and emailing back and forth, a year later they were done. In the meantime, Christopher had spent all of his spare time, when not running a full time personal training business and editing his book, studying the world of book publishing. “I remember feeling very excited at all the possibilities. I studied Jeff Herman’s Literary Guide from cover to cover.” Indeed, it appeared a magical world, full of endless possibilities. However, Christopher had also gained a healthy sense of the book business as well. He knew that for every person who becomes a published author, there are thousands of would be writers who don’t. And thus, he began to create a strategy for himself long before his book was completed and ready to market to publishers and agents.

The Master Strategist at work

“I was feeling pretty invulnerable; a little full of myself. I reasoned that I would market it to agents and publishers for about three months and if no one was interested I would simply self publish it and market it myself.” Christopher hit around 60 literary agencies and 20 publishing entities with only mild interest. “I held no illusions, for new writers breaking in is the greatest challenge.” Three months later he had self published his book through Booksurge, Amazon’s subsidiary self publishing entity. “The best part about this is it automatically goes on Amazon, which is the world’s biggest book seller and you get 35% royalties. Most other self publishing entities are only giving you around 25%. In the meantime, for those who don’t know, you still keep the rights to your book.”

In 2008, Reality Creation 101 was available for sale on amazon.com and all seemed according to plan. “I was very excited and telling everyone I knew to go see it: Hey, check it out, my book is on amazon!” He began his marketing campaign by developing his social networking sites. “I built up my Myspace, Facebook, Plaxo, and Twitter accounts getting literally thousands of followers. For awhile, I was on over 20 different networking sites going crazy marketing my book.” At the same time he also sent out his book to a variety of reviewers and test readers. The only problem was, the entire process didn’t merely cost him his time, it also cost a lot of money. “As a personal trainer, I made some money, but I wasn’t flushed with cash. The catch was that I needed every single extra second to market my book, but I also needed time to train my clients. I ended up working less to spend more time promoting my book, but that meant less money to spend on promoting my book. In the meantime, I had already spent around $5000 on my graphics designer, editor, copies of my book for reviewers, and a book publishing package with Booksurge. It’s not a lot of money for some people, but for me it was a small fortune.”

He spent hundreds of hours online, marketing to whoever he thought would review his book or put it on their website. Three months later he was exhausted, having spent a couple thousand hours marketing his book and trying to get the word out. He decided to do something that he had purposefully avoided, he went online to check his book sales. Right away he wished he hadn’t because he saw that he had only sold around 67 copies of his book. Depression set in again for the second time in his life, he couldn’t believe it. He had received over two hundred affirmative “yes I will buy your book” statements from the people in his social networking sites alone. How was this possible? “I was shocked and horrified, I can’t even tell you. I was thinking maybe I would see five hundred, or even a thousand sales, but to see only 67 really put a damper on my self publishing parade.” Then he read a statistic while trying to market his book to Barnes & Noble that read: “The reason most bookstores won’t carry self published books is because most self published books only sell around 200 copies.” Christopher was not most self published authors though, he had started this project with a goal in mind and he planned to see it through to the end. Determined not to become another statistic, he began to look for new ways to market his book.

Publishers, Agents, and Editors…Oh my!

Throughout the remainder of 2008 and into the beginning of 2009, he didn’t fair much better. At one point he gave up his resolve to do it on his own and began marketing his book to literary agents again. He hit another 102 agents with query letters and proposals. The vast majority simply responded with a “We appreciate your interest, but we are not interested at this time.” Some responded simply with “This is not for us.” The worst, though, turned out to be the agents that actually responded, as they tended not to have anything positive to say. One such agent actually responded by telling Christopher that he thought all spiritual self-help writers, except a few, were “rip offs.” Another agent proceeded to describe to Christopher how strong he was (physically), how much he had accomplished, and how little he was impressed by writers. “I couldn’t believe it. This agent actually proceeded to tell me how great he was in an email. It was in response to me describing my background about how I grew up on the poverty line. This guy couldn’t stop talking about how great he was and how great I wasn’t, and he was from a top agency! Unfortunately, between that and some other experiences, I began to get a bad taste in my mouth for agents. I know that there are a lot of very passionate agents out there who love the writers and the work they represent, but I think that it’s probably very easy for an agent to become a bit full of themselves if they are not careful. After all, some of them have thousands of writers each week trying to prove that they are worthy of their attention. Just like the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and I think it could be easy to accidentally abuse it.”

The Game Plan

His plan had been to get up enough publicity, hype, and book sales to get a major book deal. In the beginning this hadn’t seemed to be such a far off goal. He had studied many cases, including the book The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans. “I studied every single self published and/or self started successful author I could get my hands on. I wanted to know that A) It could be done and B) How was it done? I began to put together and connect a common theme: all of these people had two things in common. They had marketing skills and the ability to be relentless in the pursuit of their dreams.”

Thus it was with renewed resolve that Christopher changed his strategy yet again. He began to call and email small, independent bookstores all around the world. And sure enough, slowly, and one at a time, he began to get orders from many of these bookstores from countries including New Zealand, Australia, UK, and even India. He was selling books! “I remember, one day alone when I sent out over 300 emails to all of these bookstores around the world. You might not think that sending emails is a lot of work, but think again. The most tedious aspect of emailing businesses you find online is that many times the email address is wrong, or they are no longer in business. So, you find yourself sometimes spending a half an hour just to get one email address. Try doing that 300 times a day!”

In the meantime some big endorsements came through, one of which was NY Times best selling author T. Harv Eker who wrote Secrets of The Millionaire Mind. He also received endorsements from best selling authors Joe Vitale who wrote The Attractor Factor and John Randolph Price who wrote The Super Beings. He was also booked on some radio talk shows including the UK radio talk show Inspire A Nation with Elliot Kay. Even better, he began to receive calls from publicists of celebrities requesting books to review.

While this was happening he also self published his book on the amazon kindle in digital format as well as published his Holisticfitness4U blog on the kindle. Christopher also became a volunteer on allexperts.com where he takes questions about spiritual healing and empowerment from people all around the world. While his book hasn’t risen to number one best seller yet, he is confident that one day it will. “For artists who want to achieve their dreams, whether they are actors, dancers, singers, painters, sculptors, or writers, you need to be unstoppable. If you are stoppable, then you need to find another profession.”

Christopher A. Pinckley now resides in Lafayette, CA where he writes, speaks, and performs workshops full time.