Watch a swimmer on the high board for the first time.
They climb up ready to jump. They walk to the edge, look down, and stop. Then they walk back. The problem was the half second at the edge where fear got a vote. Most books die on that board. The author is capable, the story is real, and still they walk back.
The high board image moves me, because I think it’s the saddest way a book dies. Nobody rejected it and no editor said no. The author turned around at the edge, and the world never found out what it missed.
On the Leaders and Their Stories podcast, Randy Peyser, who has spent twenty five years getting first time authors book deals, said this is the thing nobody in publishing talks about, and it may be the most important thing of all. She’s watched brilliant people freeze, and she froze herself once. What she learned climbing back onto the board is a practice any author can steal.
What is the hiccup of hesitation that stops authors?
Peyser calls it the hiccup of hesitation: the little backward step of fear or intimidation that hits right when you reach for the thing you want. It’s a half second flinch that stops you approaching the right person, sending the pitch, saying yes to the interview. She was clear about the cost. You may still reach your dream, but every hiccup makes it take longer, and enough of them stretch a year into a decade or stop the book entirely.
The fear is worst for first time authors because all of it is unfamiliar. If you’ve never been in front of a camera, a reporter, or a room, the intimidation is real. It doesn’t care how accomplished you’re in your own field.
Peyser made a point that should free people: everyone has a ceiling, no matter how famous. The fear is a sign you’re doing something new.
That point about ceilings is the line I’d want every nervous author to hear. Accomplished people assume fear means they’re out of their depth, and that assumption keeps a lot of good books unwritten. The fear only means you’re new at this part.
How do you overcome the fear of promoting your book?
Peyser learned the answer at a giant book expo with forty thousand people, where she was, in her words, a deer in the headlights.
She was there with a friend, a national publicity strategist named Jill, who was completely at home. Jill spotted a CNN badge and took off after it, made the connection, moved on. Then USA Today. Then Ladies Home Journal. Peyser trailed behind, frozen.
From the podcast
Richard put the fear plainly on the podcast: Adulting with Autism:
Everybody’s in a box. And the box is something you create. It’s not something people impose on you. It’s a box that you think you have around you.The hesitation that stalls a first book is usually one wall of that self-built box.
Then she did the one thing that changed it.
She decided to physically model her friend. Walking the floor, she saw a badge, and this time she went first. She walked straight up, made the connection, got the card. The fear didn’t vanish. She acted before it could vote. That’s the method. You don’t wait to feel ready, you borrow the posture of someone who is, and you move while the hesitation is still forming.
The modeling trick is the smartest move on this whole page, in my opinion. You don’t have to become a confident person overnight. You borrow somebody else’s confidence for thirty seconds, and the borrowing gets easier each time.
What is the one word that beats hesitation?
Go. That’s the word Peyser says to herself the instant she feels the hiccup, in any part of life. It works because it interrupts the flinch before the flinch becomes a retreat. Years later she proved how far the practice had carried her. She spoke at a planning commission meeting. On her way out she saw a TV reporter packing up his camera, and she walked over to ask if he wanted a public opinion. He set the lights back up and she was on the local news that night.
The woman who once couldn’t approach a badge now creates the interview on her way out the door.
That story delights me. She saw a reporter packing up and walked over anyway, and it cost her nothing but a moment of nerve.
The change came from repetition. She’s given over five hundred talks now, and she built the comfort over time.
The first time is always the hardest, and the fear shrinks every time you say go and move anyway. If you’re waiting to feel brave before you start, I think you’ll wait forever, because the bravery shows up after you act.
How do you prepare so fear has less room?
Preparation is the other half of the answer, because a prepared author has less to fear in the moment.
Peyser gives first time authors a drill. Write a short blurb, a paragraph or two on your topic and what a listener will take away. Then write a list of questions an interviewer could ask you.
Then make a second copy of that list for yourself, with your answers underneath each question as bullet points, a story to tell or a point to hit. Most people skip this step, and it’s how you build the muscle memory of telling your own stories until they come without effort, so you never need to read from it on air.
The second list is the step people skip, a bad habit when it’s so cheap to do. An evening spent writing your own answers down separates sounding like yourself on air from sounding like a hostage reading a statement.
That drill is how you develop into someone comfortable in front of a camera, one rep at a time. It pairs with the same readiness the rest of publishing rewards. The author who has done the work of knowing what their book is for and has stopped waiting to feel qualified enough to begin is the author who says go and means it.
Is your book a priority or an option?
Peyser closes with the line that decides everything. Your book is either a priority or an option. If it’s an option, it’ll never get done. If it’s a priority, you’ll make it happen and nothing will stop you. That’s a diagnosis. The people who finish aren’t braver or more talented. They moved the book from the someday pile to the this matters pile, and then the hesitations stopped being able to win.
Priority or option is the question I’d put to any stalled author, and I don’t think it’s harsh. Most people with an unfinished book already know their answer, and it stings because it’s true.
You made the new car happen. You made the move happen. You’ve made hard, expensive, frightening things happen when they were priorities, and the book is no different once you decide it belongs in that category. The reason your story cannot wait is that the hiccup of hesitation grows, and every year you let it win is a year the book doesn’t exist. Write the blurb. Make the two lists. Say go.
If you want a partner who has walked first time authors off the high board and into print, the publishing and marketing hub is where that work begins, and my services exist for the author who just decided their book is a priority. The swimmer who jumps once never fears the board the same way again.
Fear doesn’t get to decide whether your book exists, and it wins by default far too often. You’ve done harder things than send one pitch. Say go and send it this week.
