Grave Mistake I Made While Publishing My First Poetry Book

When they are offering you any sort of service or help for free get it documented unlike me.

We all make mistakes and it’s okay to make mistakes. But what’s not okay is getting blamed for the mistakes which you haven’t committed. — Gurpreet Dhariwal

In November 2019, I came up with an idea of publishing my first poetry book. I tentatively named it ‘Rantings of My Soul’ and later on I locked it with ‘My Soul Rants’ as it’s the title.

I was active on LinkedIn so I came across various self-proclaimed authors and helpers. But in reality, they were not offering any help without an agenda. I met my mentor there. I shared a post on LinkedIn to find out the best editor for my book and this lady approached me saying “You are like my younger sister and should share the book with me”. She further added “I will edit your book for free”. And I fell prey to her sweet words.

Being naïve is not a good habit. Trust me, it is not.

I trusted her words and shared the sample of my unedited book with her. I didn’t ask for any written editing contract and that made me pay a very heavy price this year.

This lady edited my book for the first time and on my request wrote a few lines for my book too. I thanked her and started considering her my mentor but in reality, she was a snake who was shedding her skin on my work.

She never asked me about money although I promised her to pay she never shared her bank account details with me. After a few months in March 2020, she approached me for writing a true story on the street vendor. At this stage, she never shared about me paying her money for contributing a story for her book. She never mentioned that part at all.

The book gets published and she sent me one document stating editorial charges. I again asked her about bank account details but she never shared and this cycle she repeated with other authors as well who contributed their stories in the same book. As usual, she blocked them too.

In June this year, she took my number on LinkedIn and called me up for the first time. She wanted my consent to convert my story from English to the Hindi language as one of her friends was coming up with his Hindi magazine.

I gave her my consent and she further inquired about what am I doing at present? I genuinely told her that the business idea I was working on along with others failed after we discovered that the founder was a fake guy. We closed that idea and came with our idea to start a new venture.

She didn’t wait at all and in fraction of seconds she blocked me everywhere on all social media platforms including medium. I was thinking all this while that she took a break from social media but that wasn’t a case.

After a month, she wrote a post on LinkedIn badmouthing me from all corners and stating that I look for intellectuals to get my work done. She targeted me personally too that I am selling wrong stories on my personal life too. That proved to me how sick she has been all this while and of course high rate of jealousy I could see in her words.

I gave it back to her on WhatsApp and she had to take that post down. She also mentioned about I am writing plagiarism content here on medium and she told others I have paid people on medium to write reviews on my book. That was utter bullshit from her sick brain.

How did I feel?

She broke me into pieces by ruining my faith in people. I trusted her as a mentor and she taught me how not to entertain mentally unstable people because at some point in time they will hit you too with their insanity and emotional abusive behavior.

What did I learn?

Don’t be so stupid in believing the words of others. When they are offering you any sort of service or help for free get it documented unlike me. They would come after you and shake your world upside down. Always ask for the written document signed by both parties so that everyone is on the same wavelength.

I am sharing this with you because this is one of the biggest mistakes I have done while interacting with her and she left no stone unturned in biting me back once my book started gaining momentum.

There are all sorts of people in this world. I have re-edited my book more than 15 times on my own so her being a Ph.D. in English literature didn’t help me at all.

I have no respect for her anymore because I don’t say anything at all if I have nothing good to say about someone. She needs to learn that in life.

I will be sharing more experiences that I have had while publishing my book.

Thank you for reading my words.

Read more from me:

Gurpreet Dhariwal is the author of “My Soul Rants: Poems of a Born Spectator.” Her eBook is now available at Google PlayStore, Amazon, and Kindle. Connect with Gurpreet on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube.