If You Think My Book is Too "Negative", Buy Two Copies

At the end of Woody Allen's classic "Standup Comic" album, one of the few, if not only recordings of his live standup act of the 1960's, he says to the audience "I'd really like to leave you with a positive statement, but I can't. Would you accept two negative statements?"



I was thinking about this yesterday when not one but two people told me that the title of my book "Don't Let Your Dream Business Turn Into a Nightmare" is too negative. "People don't want to read a negative book", I was told, not once but twice on the same day. "You need a more positive title."



Okay - let me make this perfectly clear. My book, "Don't Let Your Dream Business Turn Into a Nightmare" tells the story of how I created one of the first spas for men in the world - my dream business - and how that dream business turned into a nightmare for me.



I don't think the book is negative at all. What I think it is, is truthful. Which is not to say that the book presents the truth. It doesn't. I don't know how any book can claim to present the truth, as there are always numerous sides to any story. But my book presents - to the best of my ability within reasonable parameters, that is, a 126-page account - my truth. And my truth just happens to be that founding one of the first spas in the world for men was a very painful and damaging experience for me. If you want to know why - and feel that by reading my book, you might just avoid making some of the mistakes that I made - then I urge you to buy a copy. And read it.



Helping people avoid making painful and expensive mistakes is not a negative enterprise in my view. I actually believe that it can be a very positive one. And I can assure you of this: I wrote my book myself. I did not have an agent, an editor or a publisher. I told my truth exactly the way I wanted to tell it because it is my truth and it belongs to me. I knew that the first thing that any publisher or agent who came along would do is change the title to something more "positive" - like what? "Your Dream Business Doesn't Have to Turn Into a Nightmare Just Because Mine Did".Wow, that is an improvement!



If you have a really good idea for a business - your dream business - and you think that you are going to launch it with someone else's money - then you might just learn a thing or two from my book. I wish I had read it before I started my dream business with someone else's money.



And, if you think that the title of my book - or the book itself - is too negative, then follow Woddy Allen's lead, and buy two copies.