I can’t be the only writer who feels this way. I believe in my work. I am my own worst critic, so it’s not like I lay around eating sugar sandwiches knowing the gravy train can only be a few minutes from the station. Okay, the part about sugar sandwiches, maybe—but I only eat them when WRITING.

Seriously, though. Let’s say for the sake of argument that your writing is decent. Damn decent. And the people who read your work? Love it. Rave about it. Can’t wait for the next in the series.

Just as you planned, right? Well it’s how I planned it. Be good. Entertain your readers. Build strong characters, but characters with human flaws. Care that your product is worth plunking down a few bucks on the old virtual counter top.

So you’ve arrived, right?

Not with a only few dozen readers in your saddlebags you haven’t. You’ll be lucky to cover the cost of the book cover.

The challenge you face could be one you never really planned for: getting your product in the readers’ hands.

Your readers.

Doesn’t help you much if you can’t reach them. You know they want your book. You know they’ll love it. But they are all out reading someone else’s masterpiece.

Then you start really looking around. I mean, how many alternatives can there be?

One million eBooks.

Two.

And that’s just in YOUR genre!

A veritable stack of needles.

Forget the haystack. Finding a needle in a haystack is freaking nothing. Try finding a needle in a stack of needles.

The cogent question really is, are there enough readers for us all?

Probably not. Not for every needle, er, book out there. But I think there are plenty of readers for the good books. Books aren’t like cars. They’re like pizza:

It’s okay to have several favorites.

(I know, you can have several favorite autos, too, but that gets cost prohibitive pretty quickly.)

The bottom line? It’s a matter of finding the readership, good squire. Therein lies the rub.

So how do we do it?

We blog. But then, it’s just as difficult (if not more so) garnering a blog readership.

We give away free stuff. The problem with people that line up for free stuff is they usually aren’t the people who line up to buy stuff. Drop by Costco or Sam’s Club anywhere near the lunch hour (and by that I mean pretty much any time they are OPEN). Watch the people clucking like chickens for a quarter-filled Dixie cup of some microwaved schlock they probably wouldn’t shovel out to their worst enemy.

But damn it, it’s FREE.

Num, num, num, num.

It’s disgusting. Like watching the Cookie Monster decapitate a chocolate chip delicacy, crumbs flying every which way.

Let’s face it. Cookie Monster doesn’t pay for his bakery products and neither do these schlubs.

So what else? We tweet. We REtweet. And that’s a good start. But who are we mostly tweeting with, to, and from? Other writers. It’s been my experience that other writers aren’t our best customers. Advocates? Collaborators? Sure. If we’re fortunate. But market space? Probably not a huge share.

So times like these, at least for me, I feel a bit like Sir Robin in search of the Holy Grail with my horse made from the sound of a pair of coconuts being banged together. And my squire, he’s singing about what a chickenshit I am.

Not good for the ego.

So here’s the best advice I have: keep plugging. Little by little. Build your own mountain of needles. Tweet by tweet. Giveaway by giveaway. Blog entry by blog entry. And you don’t have to take it from me. I am currently reading The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. It’s pretty eye-opening (and I’m not a big self-help book kind of guy).

You’d also do a LOT worse than to download a copy of The Path to Self-Publishing Success by Michael R. Hicks. Hicks has made a living (writing) in part by following the Slight Edge concepts, and frankly, both of these authors make a ton of sense. The kind that sneaks up on you and makes you slap your head. Yeah, sure, you could have had a V8—but maybe all you needed was just a good dose of long term work ethic. And patience.

(BTW, that last one has always kind of been the thorn in my paw, but Olson and Hicks are helping me pull it out.)

Oh, last piece of advice (for now): it doesn’t hurt to be GOOD. This way, when you break for the light of day (and you WILL break for the light of day), the gathering crowd will not only want to read what you wrote, they’ll want to keep reading it.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.