So there you are, at long last. The writing, the revision (and revision, and revision and revision…) are over; the proofreading, too, and the cover design. The files are uploaded, and in due course your book has winked live at Amazon, for all the world to buy.
Or, well, not.
It’s not too bad with a first book. Sure, you knew objectively that the odds were long, but you also knew that some books go viral, and hope springs eternal. If you just master the mysteries of social media, surely your book will be the exception rather than hew to the rule.
And so you list your book not only at GoodReads, but at a half dozen wanne-be imitator sites as well. Twitter becomes a twice daily ritual of puzzlement and non-results, and only true friendship prevents your circle from unfriending you at Facebook in the face of your unremitting onslaught of (first) upbeat notices of how Now! your Book! is Available! (followed by) insecure announcements that Josie and Her Friends is now on sale for only 99 cents, and (eventually) avoidance of any mention of the book at all. Otherwise, your friends will see that it’s Amazon rank has sunk to 2,475, 342.
But you’re a writer, damn it. Writing is what you do. Well, after work, anyway, when you’re not putting the kids to bed, or shopping, or doing something else. So you cowboy up, put your promotional tools away, and get back to writing. Will this time be different? That’s a thought best left unthunk.
So here you are, months or years later, again. The writing, the revision (and revision, and revision and revision…) are over; the proofreading, too, and the cover design. The files are uploaded, and in due course your book has winked live at Amazon, for all the world to buy. Or, well, you know.
But something’s different this time. You already know how much your Amazon rank changes with one sale. You’ve even discovered free tools to show you on a single page how many days (or weeks, or months) its been since you sold a single copy not just in the U.S., but in the U.K., Canada – even India, just to rub it in.
This time, you also already know about all of the things you can theoretically do to promote your book, and also how little they’re likely to move the needle.
So there you sit, alone at your desk. Your newest creation lies nearby, screaming and crying for the attention it deserves.
Suddenly it descends upon you, like a dark, claustrophobic, all enveloping, paralyzing cloud.
You’ve become a victim of Post Printum Depression, self-inflicted.
Of course, you’re not the only victim. Your spouse, after suffering through all of the angst and emotional swings of those many months of pre-printum gestation, must now travel this new road with you as well. Efforts to cheer you up are more likely to be punished than appreciated, because, after all, You Just Don’t Understand, do you?
Actually, you don’t. Spouses that become concerned enough may start buying books on the sly to boost their spouse’s Amazon rank. A truly desperate companion may imperil the family budget, becoming a covert pusher to the sales addiction of the love of their life. Not to mention wondering what to do with all of those unneeded extra copies of Josie and her Friends (Part II), the Saga Continues.
Other sympathetic significant others may try to help by embarking on their own promotional journeys of social medic self-discovery, assaulting their Facebook friends and mounting Twitter monkeys on their own backs. They won’t succeed, either, but at least they’ll Start to Know How it Feels, on the promotional front, anyway.
Eventually, the author will successfully transit the five phases of grief, and blessed acceptance will set in. The marriage or relationship (if it has survived) will stabilize once again. Things will, thank goodness, get back to normal.
Except for one little hitch. The concept of “normal” now includes the process of…writing another book.
Not because this time it will be different. We’re not lunatics, after all, thinking that if we repeat the same action over and over again, eventually it will come out different. It’s because we’re Writers!
Right?
Okay. So maybe we’re lunatics, too.
PS: This week I self-published my second thriller, focusing on the hacking of a presidential election. It’s called The Lafayette Campaign, and can be found here. Not that you’re actually going to buy it of course. But still.
Andrew–
You have made me more grateful for my own domestic circumstances. My wife and her interests aren’t literary, and sometimes this fact makes me a little wistful. But generally I’m glad she’s not in the indie publishing roller coaster with me. it’s fraught with enough angst as it is. How much more of it would there be, knowing my wonderful wife was sharing in the hand-wringing and gnashing? Better by far NOT to be wondering whether she’s surreptitiously buying my latest, just to cheer me up.
Barry, I’m in the same situation. And happily, while I thought people might be amused by the idea behind this piece, I’m also sufficiently realistic about the whole self-publishing game that I don’t dive headfirst into a black hole of my own making when my books don’t sell.
Now if I could just bring the same level of detachment to the other things that go on in my life, I’d be a much happier man. Perhaps there’s a moral hiding in here for me.
Another great post, Andrew, and one that leaves me conflicted. Its upbeat tone brings a smile to my face; your post-printum state brings nothing but envy. Agonising, but fun.
Thanks very much, Marcus. While on the subject (how to ask delicately?) can we look forward to your entering a similar state of anguish in the near future? Impatient Bomb Makers readers want to know!
Ah, the opening sentence of your post below about opportunity and inspiration answers this query for me! The sales will come, Andrew (I have no doubt about that).
Thanks, Marcus. Here’s hoping!
It’s hard for me to believe there’s any danger of that, Julia, having read Selkie. I’d just let the words flow, and they’ll convince you that you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Finding the conjunction of opportunity and inspiration in a busy life certainly is a challenge, and one of the reasons it took 4 years for me to get book 2 out. Some morals from that experience or me will be to try to keep to a shorter book and a simpler plot next time, at least to the extent that self-disciplined allows (a great weakness there).
Thanks for asking about the sales. I’ve been holding off on significant promotion so far, but rather on trying to attract a decent number of reviews on the Amazon page first. That said, it’s still a bit sobering to see only 20 sales so far. Surprisingly, half have been print copies, despite the fact that the CreateSpace formula wouldn’t allow me to price it at less than $14 through CreateSpace.
On that front, I’m also loading files to Lightning Source, and will then try to get those books listed at other sites at a lower price, which hopefully Amazon will then match.
I’ll be very interested to discover your thoughts/opinions/experiences of getting your book to print through various different avenues. I’m a little daunted by the thought but am determined, one way or another, to make 2016 the year of Julia Lund in print …
disciplining 😀
Writing a detailed blog entry on this topic is on my to do list, but leaving the finer details aside, this time I went a la carte, hiring a proof reader (didn’t turn out well) and cover/layout/file conversion person (turned out brilliantly) and decided to go exclusively with Amazon Kindle Direct for 90 days, after which I expect I’ll upload the files I got as part of the package to Apple, Google, and Kobo (at least) or perhaps through the systems through SmashWords. I’m also uploading a print file directly to Lightning Source, since their quality is higher than Createspace and their pricing more flexible.
I had some trepidation about going this way, but don’t think I would ever go a different route again. The price for the design/layout/conversion was extremely reasonable, I could reach them any time almost immediately by email, and the files uploaded flawlessly. For $585 I got eBook and print covers, internal layout and conversion, multiple rounds of corrections, lots of good advice, a promotional logo, multiple files and covers covering formatted for every major outlet, and, perhaps most gratefully (as noted) flawless uploading and presentation. When I read about the agony that others go through setting up their files, fixing them, and then correcting the mistakes at CreateSpace, I consider it the best money I’ve ever spent on self-publishing.
Andrew, I have published two shorts and one collection of short stories via Amazon–under another pen name. ( Neither are my real name.) I tried to do a print version using CreateSpace of my collection, but it turned into an unending nightmare. I finally gave up. I’m currently suffering “post printum depression”, and have been for some months now, so much so that I made my old blog private, unpublished my Facebook page, and closed my Twitter account.
But I still write.
How I wish I had been born long before the eBook explosion. I think one had a better chance years ago to actually acquire an agent and publisher–if one had talent. Oh, to able to just write and let someone else take care of everything else.
Cathy
Cathy, I’m sorry not only that you had such a terrible experience, but that you are experiencing my tongue in cheek imagined syndrome in real life as well. I’m also sorry that formatting is such a needlessly difficult experience, something I’ve written about previously here: https://updegrove.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/why-johnny-cant-format-a-book/
I think that self-published authors today are also suffering from self-imposed “I need to do it all” pressures, thinking that if they’re serious, they should be able to do things that are difficult and time consuming, and have nothing to with being an author at all – they’re just mechanical tasks. What makes it worse is that it’s so hard to get reliable information and services. For example, there are sites where you can do a conversion of a Word file, sometimes even for free. But that doesn’t always mean that it works perfectly.
And other sites, like SmashWords, which will handle uploading the files for you to the various distributions sites, but where apparently the conversion tools are a real pain to use, leaving you right back where you started.
I think the moral of the story is that if an author can afford it, paying for someone else to do the file conversions is more than worth it in saved time and aggravation. I can’t speak too highly of the job the group that I used did, and their prices are very reasonable in light of the time it must take them to do the job. They’re pricing page is here, and as you’ll see, they’ll create all the different print files you need to access all channels for $100: http://www.streetlightgraphics.com/pricing/ Note that this also includes their help in doing an attractive, tailored layout design, which would be really painful to do on your own.
I have seen one other option, although I don’t recall who offered it (I think you might be able to find them in the comments to the blog entry I provided the link to above). What they did was to create pre-formatted Word templates that you drop your text into, which then supposedly should upload perfectly. However, that would cost c. half as much as the full service, and I assume you would only get a Mobi or an ePub file, so I’d still go with the hands-on provider. And you’d also be limited to choosing from one of the handful of layouts that they provide.
So my advice to the suffering author is to cut herself a break, and give herself permission not do it all. She might also suggest to a certain someone that a print format check might make a great birthday present.