I'm an artist and have spent a lot of time working through my own weird belief snarls about my work and my audience - I'm in a different place than I was, but not to the full place I want to be yet. So for whatever it's worth, here's what occurred to me as I read your question:

Whatever happens in our personal realities is a match to the vibrations we're putting out. Many of us are blind/deaf/numb to our emotions/vibrations because we've been ignoring them and pretending "it's fine" for so long, so events can be really useful in terms of rubbing our noses in what we're trying to ignore. For me, when I look back on times when my work has been rejected, I can see that I was vibrating (but trying to ignore) several things: "It's very important that other people agree that my work is good - in fact I am only allowed to feel good about my work if other people like it" and "I am afraid that other people will not understand/appreciate my work". So rejection, for me, was a perfect match to those feelings. Although I would not have seen that at the time, I can see now that it's really true for me.

The first thing I would do is try to get very real about how I feel right now, about my work, about other peoples' reception of it, what that means, etc. Watch out for pretending that you feel better than you do. You're just looking for a general "I feel guarded, I love what I make but fear what other people will think/what that will mean for me" check-in. Then I'd make a list to flip that around. Abraham (a LOA teacher facilitated by Esther Hicks) often says "You know what you don't want, so you know what you do want." I think this can be a literal, practical approach. You know, for instance, that you DON'T want to feel bad that people are rejecting your work, so what do you want? I think we tend to think "Okay, I want to feel great because people love my work", but that (to me, as an artist) is another version of the same trap. What we really want is to be so in love with the rightness of our own work that we just don't care very much what other people think about it. And it's that alignment that actually draws enthusiastic audiences, I believe, not actually the work itself. (Okay, it's the work, too. But I think it's the artist's alignment with their work that is what really rings an audience's bells.)

Then, as @Stingray says, start a new project, dive in, love what you do and make.

Thanks for asking this question! It was a great opportunity for me to work through my thoughts about this.

Do you appreciate your own book? Immerse yourself in that appreciation and admiration of your own work and you must see it reflected in time.

Also agree with what Stingray says about writing new stuff and really getting into it.

Ever since I was a child I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a writer and a pianist, and I spent my life studying to become what I wanted to be. I don't do any of these things professionally because: 1. I guess I am not a writer of things that interest others, and 2. I guess studying is not a way of getting what people call "talent". But I will tell you something that helps me enormously through hard times of low self-esteem: I am who I am and nobody will ever tell me I am not an artist.

I looked into the eyes of a person the other day and said: I don't generate money, that's who I am and there's nothing I can do about it.

The universe always finds a way, and I do live a prosperous life, having all I want when I want it - not a luxurious life, but one that makes me happy and grateful everyday.

What I want to say here, for the benefit of artists with the same hopes and problems, is that we cannot mold ourselves to be whatever other people want us to be just to please them and get their attention and sell them books or whatever. You may write a book you consider great and simply have your book rejected because people are not interested and don't get what you want to express.

Does that matter?

Yes, because artists want to make a living from their art. But there's a more profound reason that makes us to struggle to be artists, and the reason is that we cannot be anything else.

As a writer, you know when your book is finished. You have that feeling that you have done your best and that there's nothing else you can do to improve that work - you gave it all you had, it expresses everything you are at that moment. So, what if people don't like it? Isn't that feeling of satisfaction the most delicious feeling in the whole world? And after finishing that work, you do feel you are not the same person, right? That somehow the writing of the book made you different, more or less "whole" at that moment. Isn't this feeling the greatest reward?

I still care about what people think of my writings, but because I don't make money from them, it's less of a problem if people get them or not, if they read them or not. First and foremost I want the experience of being a writer, and that I get everytime I sit down and write something I like to read.

The more you write, the better. Don't get so focused on selling your work or being famous or successful. Most people don't get their work published, but that does not mean their work is not valuable, or not interesting, just that they are not commercial enough (and I am not criticizing commercial, nor saying that commercial is wrong or not valuable. I read commercial all the time and I love it :)

You might want to look at some answers I got here: http://www.inwardquest.com/questions/97134/how-to-go-on-believing-when-your-hopes-have-been-dashed

JK Rowling's Harry Potter got rejected numerous times.

Nothing good comes in this life easy. You asked this question and I don't like to sugar coat my answers. If your ears are sincerely open this is what needs to happen.

Develop a thick skin and persistence will win.

KFC became the leading distribution of fast food chicken because Colonel Sanders was willing to pitch his recipe to chef owners over 1,000 times. It is a remarkably famous story worth checking out.

My point here is not to dabble around in pseudo- magic ways to feel better. You will feel better based on the rising numerals of book publishers you send it off to. If youre not willing to take that action to get this done, which is something that needs to get done, then please, dont whine and keep it to yourself.

Business people that create results ive noticed tend to be aggressive people. They welcome obstacles. Perhaps you should invite the same tenacity into your personality.