Echo 3: Discounted: The Discomfort of Asking for Support
Length: 365 words • 2 min read
Themes: Vulnerability, Ego, Creativity, Asking for Support
Heartbeat: Exploring the quiet tension and vulnerability creators and authors experience when openly asking readers for support.
There’s a kind of discomfort that bruises the ego—a vulnerability in openly asking for support for creative, ideas-based work. It stirs up the fear of rejection, and worse, it makes the simple act of inviting someone to buy or review the work feel painfully transactional. Both feelings cut deep, especially when the work was made with care—with heart and time—because it mattered.
I always understood the process to be different: that the author would stay behind the scenes, while publishers or influencers stepped forward to do the asking. In that arrangement, the author remains untouched, admired purely as a creator. Maybe that's how it should be. But I have no one to hide behind. The gatekeepers, particularly in Canada, have their own complexities—something I’ll explore further—but for now, their absence leaves me fully exposed.
It’s already frightening enough to offer your work to the world. It’s a piece of your soul, your integrity, laid bare. An editor I worked with once reminded me of something often said about the creative process—how painful and exposing it can be. Some liken it to childbirth, others to being possessed by a relentless force that drags the work out of you. And now, beyond that deep fear, there is another: the need to step forward and ask. To risk transforming something crafted with depth and sincerity into something transactional.
And underneath it all, another quiet fear:
How do you ask someone, gently, to consider your work—to read the sample, to see the reviews—without worrying you've somehow cheapened it by asking?
This feeling of vulnerability—of the work, or even myself, somehow being discounted simply by asking—is something I've been wrestling with deeply.
Social proof—preorders, engagement, visible support—can help ease that vulnerability. But even then, you still have to send the message, still have to find a way to say: Would you please consider preordering? Engaging? Supporting the work?
I’ve struggled with this all of last week, trying to accelerate my social media campaign. Perhaps it’s not only the discomfort of asking, but the nature of social media itself—so removed from the layered, introspective discipline that shaped the novel in the first place.
Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s also in my heart.
Maybe it’s both.
A layered novel, told through voices rarely heard. Stories like this only travel because of readers like you.
If the story behind the book resonates with you — if it feels like a perspective worth hearing — thank you for sitting with it.
I’d be grateful if you helped it travel, whether by sharing, recommending, or leaving a quick review. It all makes a difference.
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