@Joseph Keeler  I know the frustration you’re feeling right now. This is not an easy thing, especially during the course of a contest. We all are facing the same struggle, hustling to make that front page the best we can. Last year I was in the Nerdist contest, and my book never once made the front page. It was hard, it was frustrating, but in the end, even after the campaign ended, I was a better writer, and a better person because of it.

You have to push past the guilt and promote yourself constantly. Your friends will get sick of it, people will tune you out, but you have to push past that. We all want to win, and you’re going to get support from a lot of friends, but the biggest source of support you are going to get is the other writers here on Inkshares.

A failed campaign sucks. It’s a kick to the gut, and can rattle the faith you have in yourself as a writer. When I failed last time, I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and ignore the world. I was broken, battered, and angry. I let the pressure get to me. I blamed myself for the failures. Now, a year later, I’m trying it again.

Do your best. Push yourself. Develop your pitch, and talk about your book constantly. This is going to be hard. You’re going to feel a hundred different emotions at once, but know you really are amazing. You’ve put the thing you love, your book, out into the world. Not everyone can say that.

Thank you guys for this thread, all of you. I have been stressing out *hard* these past couple of days trying to get people to pre-order my book. Posting about it to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr, you name it. I’m trying so hard and am getting very little in the way of interaction/response, and I’ve only gotten 4 orders. It’s super stressful! I’m going to try to keep pushing through that "I’m posting about this too often" guilt, though, and hope that it pays off... :/