I’ve been really quiet lately, and it’s somewhat on purpose. I’m trying to launch the book on November 7th, but I’ve been struggling mightily. There have been issues with every format, and several of them still aren’t sorted for sure. I’d hoped to get pre-order links up in the retailers, but very few of them have actually appeared. The Amazon link doesn’t even seem to work–possibly because the eBook never got to them. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if everything runs through the Kindle version.
Here’s where it gets interesting, IMO. I don’t actually care about any of this. I’ve been banging my head, trying so hard to make everything perfect, and getting so stressed out when it wasn’t. Earlier this week, I had an epiphany, and all the stress melted away.
Although this is a relaunch, this is still my debut novel. It takes months to years for a debut to gather any traction, and launch day is really only important to me. Lest you believe that I’m being critical of myself, or saying that my book doesn’t matter, it’s partially true, but nuanced. My book doesn’t matter…YET. It matters immensely to me, of course, and it has for all NINE years since I had the original idea (Oct. 2014). The sequel also matters to me, my characters matter to me, and I want my book to be successful. But I get to decide how that success is defined, and right now, success is defined by having all three formats out in the world ready for an audience to consume.
Who’s the audience? I don’t know yet. I will find them, but it’s not something I have to figure out now. Have I done enough marketing? Who cares. I deleted all of the social media apps from my phone and it has given me immense peace. I’m not against hustle and I’m not giving up on anything, but herein lies the key point: I HAVE MORE TIME THAN I GAVE MYSELF. I don’t have to have everything figured out by launch day.
My literary guru, J.V. Hilliard, told me something while he was discussing his own wonderful High Fantasy series. He’s just released the third book of four planned, and only now is it really taking off. His publisher told him that it often takes 1-2 books before attention builds, and he’s actually ahead of the curve at Book 3. That told me a lot, and it seems like that could be useful information for debut authors, especially if you’re working on a series.
I had also been beating myself up about my content and what’s hot in the market right now. If you look through BookTok, if you ain’t spicy, you ain’t anything. My book is very much not spicy, and that is neither a capability I have in me nor is it one I want to develop. I don’t enjoy reading it and I’m immensely uncomfortable with the thought of writing it; furthermore, I don’t believe that it advances my stories at all. If I were to believe BookTok, my book is instantly doomed, but it’s absolutely not. Someone on BookTok somewhere needs to read this story, and though it may take time to find them, it’s time that I have. See my point two paragraphs above. Also, BookTok is not the ultimate arbiter of success, so it’s not my concern at present.
If you’ve gotten this far in my ramblings, kudos to you. I hope something in here helped you in some way, which is really all I can offer at this point. It’s a tough business I’ve put myself into, but I feel like I’ve learned plenty about the industry, but I’ve also learned a lot more about myself along the way. I’ve done a lot of journaling and introspection on what my strong opinions might indicate, and in doing so, I was able to let many of them fall to the wayside. I really can’t recommend this strongly enough if you’re doubting yourself.