I Published a Book and Did Almost Nothing to Sell It. Then This Happened.
Two years ago, I was walking on a beach with my daughter, her hand in mine, the sound of waves filling the gaps in our conversation. Family holidays have a way of clearing the noise, and somewhere in that quiet, a decision arrived. I was going to publish my book.
Not someday, before Deepawali.
I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I wanted it out before the festival of lights, because Deepawali is also about gifting, and I genuinely believed my book could be a gift worth giving. Not in a self-congratulatory way, but in the quiet, considered way that a book can sit with someone and shift something, if they’re open to it.
I barely made the deadline; the book arrived a day before the festival. But a day before, as it turns out, is too late for Deepawali gifting.
I met the deadline without achieving its purpose.
What I Did Next (and What I Didn't)
Having published the book, I did almost nothing to market it.
All I did was share it on my social handles. No outreach, no PR, no approaching publications, podcasts or influencers. No asking for favours, except to request a few senior industry leaders for a blurb, who happily provided.
I received invitations to speak on a few podcasts and at a couple of events. All of it happened organically, without me nudging anyone toward it.
The reason was simple, even if it wasn't entirely rational: promoting my own book felt like self-promotion. And self-promotion is something I have never been comfortable with. Not for my work, not for myself, not in any form that requires me to walk up to someone and say — directly or indirectly — please pay attention to me.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of the consequences.
A book that nobody knows about is a book that nobody reads. Discoverability doesn’t happen by wishful thinking. A good book still needs to reach people before people can decide it’s good.
I knew that, I know it still, and I did it my way regardless.
When Nature Fills the Gap You Leave
Nearly a year after publication, a banker I had recently been introduced to through a mutual friend reached out after reading the book. He told me he loved it and that it had the potential to impact far more people than it currently was. And then, with the directness of someone who means well and doesn’t mince words, he told me how little I had done to make that happen.
He was right.
Some months later, he published his first book. It sold many times as many copies as mine. He did everything he could to get his book in front of as many people as possible. And he kept urging me to do more with mine.
At some point, I think he quietly accepted that I wasn’t going to, but he didn’t give up on himself, or, as it turned out, on my book either.
The Phone Call Last Week
Last week, my phone rang. It was the banker. He alerted me that I’d receive a call from his colleague requesting fifty signed copies of my book, to be delivered by the end of this month.Â
The same banker who had gifted his colleagues my book as a New Year’s present in January this year had now recommended my book as a prize at a team event, rather than the usual awards handed out at such functions.
Think about this for a moment because it deserves to be properly appreciated.
This is a senior person in banking. He has his own book — published, successful, selling well.Â
And when it came to choosing what to give his colleagues for the new year, he chose mine because he genuinely believed it would make a difference to the people receiving it.
What struck me about this person — someone I had met just once and spoken to a few times on the phone — was how genuinely invested he was. There was no long history between us. Just a reader who had encountered something he believed in and decided, without being asked, to care about it.
That is not a small thing; that is an act of real generosity.
The Thread That Connects
Here is what I keep returning to when I think about this chain of events.
Narendranath Mishra, the banker, was introduced to me by another recent connection, Dushyant Mishra, someone whose posts I had been reading online, struck by his simplicity and the quiet wisdom in his writing, and I sent him a connection request. In the short period that we connected, I’ve benefited from his innate kindness.
The people who sometimes believe most fiercely in what you've created are the ones who have the least obligation to. No reason to be generous except that they encountered something they thought was worth championing, and decided, simply, to champion it. That kind of belief, when it arrives from someone who owes you nothing, is the rarest and most humbling thing.
What This Taught Me
I haven’t changed my position on self-promotion, and I’m not about to start doing something that feels fundamentally at odds with who I am.
But this experience has reminded me that work which is genuinely useful tends to travel — not always quickly, not always loudly, but through the quiet advocacy of people who believed in it before they were given any particular reason to. It’s also reminded me that sometimes, connections formed quickly can carry more weight than relationships built over years.
The banker who showed up for my book was someone I recently got to know.
He showed up anyway. And it’s reminded me of something I already knew but sometimes forget: do the work as well as you can, put it out honestly, and trust that the right people will find it.
Your Takeaway
Two years ago, a beach walk with my daughter produced a decision. The book that came from that decision has had a quieter life than it might have had if I were a different kind of person. I've made my peace with that. What I didn't plan for — what arrived entirely on its own terms — was a friend-of-a-friend who gave my book as a gift rather than his own, and in six months, another fifty signed copies, as giveaways at a corporate event. You can't manufacture that. You can only be worthy of it when it comes.
Sometimes, the most remarkable things arrive from people you’d least expect. Keep the door open. You never know who’s about to walk through it with your book in their hand.
This post is part of an ongoing series sharing life lessons from lived experience — including, occasionally, the ones that arrive as a surprise phone call.
About Me
I am a thinker at all times. I see, I think. I hear, I think. I read, I think. Every weekend I write. I would love to know what you think.