The Quiet Launch

At thirty-seven, I never thought of myself as an author. I taught high school English by day and scribbled in journals by night—poems, fragments, essays, pieces of things that never really felt finished. Over the years, I’d filled shelves with notebooks and hard drives with half-baked files, most of which I never looked at again.

As a child, my parents had encouraged my writing. Later, in high school and college, certain teachers and professors offered a more critical perspective, but the basic message was still there: if I developed my latent talent and my own unique voice, I may have a future as an author.

But life went on, as did my career in teaching. I went into the educational field starry eyed and naïve, certain I was going to reach those kids, and reach them deeply. And every now and then, my assumption proved correct. But more often than not, I found myself teaching lessons and droning on about topics of which the vast majority of the students cared nothing. I administered tests, I graded papers, I encountered far too many instances of academic dishonesty. And in time, I stopped caring.

One icy January evening, wind rattling the windows of my apartment, I was cleaning up old files on my laptop when I found one called Ink Between Stars. I clicked it open, more out of curiosity than intention, and there it was—thirty-seven pages of something that looked suspiciously like a book.

I started reading.

It was raw. Imperfect. But there was something there—scenes from my twenties, snippets of memory: awkward conversations, lonely subway rides, my grandmother’s kitchen, the sterile smell of a hospital hallway. I didn’t remember writing all of it, but it felt like truth.

And then this small idea crept in:

What if I published it?

I laughed at myself. Who would want to read this? But the idea didn’t go away. So I started editing.

Every night, after grading student essays and answering emails, I returned to the manuscript. I rewrote, rearranged, deleted entire sections. By the time I was done, the file had a new name: Winter’s Notebook.

I sent it to a few agents. No responses. Then a rejection. Then silence.

That’s when I started looking into self-publishing. I fell down a rabbit hole—YouTube tutorials, blog posts, Reddit threads full of people talking about margins and royalties. I had no idea it was possible to publish a book without someone’s permission.

No gatekeepers. Just the work.

So I taught myself how to do it. I downloaded formatting software, fought with the layout, learned what bleed lines were. A friend of mine who worked in design offered to create a cover. We kept it simple: navy blue, clean lines, white serif text. Quiet, like the writing inside.

Next, I did a lot of research about how best to begin my self publishing journey. I weighed the pros and cons of publishing an e-book only, using Amazon's KDP platform, printing small runs with an online book printing company, and other DIY options.

I finally decided that, for simplicity's sake, I would use Amazon for my first run, despite the limits this placed on my customization options. Uploading took longer than expected. There were glitches with the formatting. I found a typo in the dedication. But finally, one Thursday night, I hit "Publish."

Just like that, Winter’s Notebook was live.

At first, I didn’t tell anyone.

I checked the dashboard every day. One sale. Then another. Maybe a friend, maybe a stranger—I didn’t know. A few more sales trickled in. Then, one morning, I got a message from a former student:

“I read your book. It made me cry. I didn’t know writing could feel like that.”

I just sat there for a while, reading that message over and over.

Eventually, I started talking about the book a little. I added the link to my Instagram bio. Posted once on Facebook: I wrote something. It’s about quiet things and memory. If you feel like reading, here it is.

People shared it. A few left reviews. A local indie bookstore reached out and asked if they could carry a few copies.

By summer, I’d sold about 200 copies. It wasn’t a bestseller, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that strangers had read something I’d written—and found something of themselves in it.

I started receiving messages. People telling me they saw their own solitude in my words, or that the book reminded them of someone they’d lost. Those notes meant more than numbers ever could.

Then, one morning in July, I was working in a café when someone walked by, paused, and turned to me.

“Sorry—are you the author of Winter’s Notebook?”

I blinked. “Yeah. That’s me.”

The person smiled. “I read it. Just wanted to say... it stayed with me.”

After they left, I sat with my coffee, staring at my screen. I opened a blank document. I didn’t know what I was going to write. I didn’t even know if I’d publish again.

But the page didn’t scare me anymore.

I started typing.

Since that cold winter night, I've published four books, with a fifth on its way. I stopped using Amazon's publishing service and started trying independent printing companies instead. I order in bulk and distribute them to local booksellers as well as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other national sellers.

While I haven't made a ton of money or had a title placed on the New York Times' best-sellers list, it still feels like a huge success. What was once a latent talent, and later a lazy hobby, has now become a passionate and fulfilling avenue of creative expression.

The moral of the story? Don't sell yourself short. If you have a creative talent, don't tuck it away for some proverbial rainy day that may never arrive. Get to work creating. You never know where it will take you until until it takes you.