Challenge completed! The world according to Betty is available!

It’s April 17th 2015. I set the timer on the website to start the challenge. “The Betty Book is finished in 365 days” was the title of the challenge. It’s seemed a long time ahead and I wasn’t worried about it. A few days ago I felt stress going up towards my neck. “Just two more days!” I yelled. Writing a book isn’t the biggest challenge, I can tell you. A special department in my brain with ‘creativity’ on the door is opened and a flow of words starts coming down from my head towards my fingers on to the screen. The biggest challenge was getting the book published.

“Publish your book in just a few easy steps” it said. Filled with enthusiasm I took the first step, only to stop walking due to the first difficulty I had to face… The IRS. “Well, hello Uncle Sam. Did I ask to meet you?” I’m not very happy about the Dutch tax people, so meeting the American tax people wasn’t on my bucket list. It seemed that a certain document was blocking the birth of my baby. Just like a mother in labour I sighed and sighed, looking across the table. There was the midwife, or rather the midman. I often sigh about his ability to investigate almost everything he sees on internet, but now I was counting my blessings for this habit. Of course my boyfriend jumped up and was ready for battle with the IRS. He filled the form with all the details and that was one obstacle less on the road to giving birth to my book.

Little did I know that there were more to come. Titles aren’t allowed to be written without Caps and book sizes that didn’t match… “How many hours do you think you have put in writing the book?” my boyfriend asks. “Well certainly less than you have put into getting my baby on amazon” I answer jokingly.

Once I got to the end of the journey in the world of amazon, there was a last sweet surprise. I looked proudly at the title of my book and tried to order a printed version. It seems that amazon isn’t ready for printing books in the Netherlands. Payment methods were limited… It felt like the last few minutes before the baby is finally born.