A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about my goal of seeing my own book on the shelf of a bookstore one day.  Well, today, I got really close.

When I self-published Twenty-Five in July of last year, I thought that maybe a few years (or a decade) down the road, I’d have developed a large backlist and possibly draw the attention of an agent or a big publisher.  That would lead to my dream of seeing my work on a bookshelf in a store.

Well, turns out, getting my book on the shelf of a library feels pretty damn good, too, and it only took eight months!

I’m a member of a writer’s critique group that meets at Durham’s South Regional Library.  The leader of the group is one of the librarians, and when I published the book, he put in a request with the library to order a copy.  It took some time for the request to be approved, but he played up the local author angle and my good reviews on Amazon helped to gain the final approval needed and they purchased 2 copies!

After our group was over tonight, the librarian checked the catalog to see if the request had been completed and sure enough!!!  Going to find the actual copy on the shelf was exhilarating.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  The excitement of finding it, pointing to my name on a book sitting on the shelf of the library was probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

Next goal: Actual bookstore.