While this blog post is quite negative, I very strongly acknowledge that I am in an extremely lucky position in a lot of ways, including regarding my writing. Also, a large number of people have gone out of their way to help and support me on my writing journey (including this latest stage), and I’m incredibly grateful to all of them.

 

That said, I just want to complain for a bit!

 

My debut novel, The Defiant Spark, came out in 2021, published by a small independent press. My second novel, A Spectrum of Heroes, came out in 2022, published by a different small independent press.

 

I made quite a lot of effort to boost sales of both – and have had very little success.

 

This summer, my first publisher contacted me to say they were dropping me from their list at the end of June, due to lack of sales. I cannot criticise them for that – though I do wish it would have been possible to work together with them more to help my book reach a wider audience (which they themselves say it deserves).

 

I don’t know what that would have looked like and I’m fully aware that I was part of that potential lack. I also know nothing about being a successful small independent press and I am sure they must have a lot of struggles and not much money to spend on marketing.

 

I decided it might be a good idea to use an existing book, with existing formatted print and e-book files and an existing cover I like (which the publisher has very kindly let me keep), to test out the process of self-publishing. I’ve always been resistant to this, because it seemed like a lot of work in areas I know nothing about, so this seemed like an easy way to dip my toe.

 

I also, erroneously it turns out, thought that self-publishing would mean a greater share of profits from sales for me. But no. Ah, well.

 

Anyway, my very lovely editor, Amie, offered to help me with the whole process for free and spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to get the existing files into the right format to be uploaded to both Amazon and IngramSpark.

 

This proved extremely stressful, frustrating, time-consuming and annoying – and at least partially unsuccessful.

 

The Amazon uploads went okay-ish, despite needing to resize a lot of things – but it remains to be seen whether or not the book will be correctly produced (I’m currently awaiting a print copy to check, which cost me about the same in total as the cost to a consumer). I have also lost all of (admittedly few) existing ratings and reviews on Amazon, because the new edition apparently doesn’t get linked to the old one, which has now vanished from the platform.

 

The less said about the non-Amazon avenues, the better. I don’t know where the blame should lie, so I’m not going to blame anyone – but there was so much faffing around, incomprehensible errors, confusing information fields I didn’t know how to complete accurately – and I ended up not being able to upload an e-book version elsewhere at all.

 

I thought I had achieved an alternative print version – but I just reviewed the e-proof and the margins were all wrong.

 

Considering I have no way to amend the interior content file I received from the publisher – and considering the price the platform forced me to put it at in order to receive any royalties at all was so high, I can’t imagine anyone actually buying a copy – I’ve decided just not to bother.

 

So, all my self-publishing eggs are in the Amazon basket, which I’m not particularly happy about. But then, when the book was available through the publisher, you could only buy it from Amazon anyway, so I guess I haven’t lost anything.

 

And now I’m back to the age-old problem of marketing. The book is available for sale, but nobody knows it’s there. And that’s basically been the case since it first came out as well.

 

I do have some plans – I have a successful YouTuber willing to promote it and an Instagram book tour that’s already paid for. So, we’ll see.

 

But, if I’m honest, the whole thing (from initial publication and lack of sales, to now with the self-publishing endeavour) has been very demoralising. I’ve never expected to make a lot of money from my writing, but the total lack of success on that front does make me wonder why I’m bothering.

 

I’ve been trying for well over a year to get an agent for my third novel, with zero response other than a lot of form rejections – so that doesn’t seem to be a valid option either.

 

Should the re-launch of The Defiant Spark gain no traction, there’s little chance of any success with self-publishing any of my other books. And I really don’t know where that leaves me.

 

However, I’m excited to tell the story of my next novel and the first draft is going well so far, so it doesn’t seem likely that I’m going to stop writing books any time soon, even if I know I’ll never sell them.

 

And at least I now have a great job that I love and I’m really good at – and a lot of wonderful writer friends to share the ups and downs of authorship – all of which I remain tremendously grateful for every day.

 

 

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