Release day for Her Violet Empire has now come and gone, and while I’m absolutely thrilled to have it out there, the anticlimax of it all is really hitting me. I was so caught up with marketing and ordering and trying to launch the Maximum Cat Press website, I never had the time to catch up with my thoughts.
For a start, the wonderful Curious Capybara Bookshop shelved my book without a second thought. I can’t thank Fawn enough for supporting a first-time local author and putting me in such elite company:
Secondly, I have really had to learn some patience with this. The book has been out for a week and no one has reached out to me about it. Although the book only weighs in at 278pp in paperback, 75k words in eBook format, I have to remember that people read at different speeds. Also, I’m screaming “Silencio, Bruno” at the voice in the back of my head that says, “If you haven’t heard anything by now, they hate it and they’re trying to save your feelings by not telling you so.” Sidebar, it’s also very odd for me to be airing this kind of insecurity, but I’ve been doing a lot of new things this year.
Thirdly, the costs of just running a simple website are at least an order of magnitude higher than I’d have expected. Atop just hosting the site, every plugin, every sub-site, every auxiliary piece of the process wants money, and usually on an annual basis. Here’s a probably incomplete list of things that I’ve had to pay for just in the last 6 months or so:
- Scrivener (one-time)
- ProWritingAid (annual)
- Bowker (ISBNs) (one-time)
- Bluehost (annual)
- Domains (biannual)
- WooCommerce USPS Shipping (annual)
- Canva (annual)
- BookFunnel (annual)
- QuickBooks (monthly)
- Google Workspace (monthly)
- Microsoft Office 365 (monthly)
- Looking at Jetpack Security
- Looking at CreativeMail
You can guess how quickly that adds up. Understanding that many of these are setup costs that may not recur, or will come staggered in a renewal, it’s still a lot of outflow. These are the hidden costs of DIY publishing for sure. I want to be very clear that I’m not complaining, and there are probably things I could do without or save money on, but it’s more to illustrate the costs.
Anyway, my day job calls and I appreciate everyone who has hung with me through all of this nonsense and tomfoolery. If you’ve read and enjoyed the book, please leave me a review somewhere!