Today’s the day! It’s finally time for the review campaign for Absent All Light, coming June 23, 2026! And this time, I am also opening simultaneous preorders, mostly so reviewers can share their thoughts on all available platforms.
I am delighted to finally share this fast-paced, thrilling adventure with you after many months of impatiently waiting. This novel finally introduces us to Cerie Korviridi’s POV, and we get to see her truly come into her own as a High Poet.
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Blurb and First Chapter
First off, let’s check out the blurb so you know what you’re getting into.
LGBTQ literary fantasy gains a gritty edge in this character-driven thriller, where poetry is a weapon and every verse requires blood.
Cerie Korviridi has trained for over a decade to achieve the greatest torture: having her fingernails torn out as a pledge to the goddess Poesy. With this sacrifice, she gains High Poetry, a form of literature magic. The feminine spiritual force is the very reason that her country, Breme, has never been overtaken by their enemies, a hostile force beyond the mountains.
This ritual was meant to be a sacred moment, a time when she could reflect on the magic of poetry. Instead, she’s drawn into a race against time when her elder brother, the calculating cavalryman Uileac Korviridi, arrives with devastating news.
“Orrinir was captured by the Sinans. I need Cerie’s help.”
Accomplished infantryman Orrinir Relickim is known for two things: his powerful swordsmanship and deep devotion to his husband Uileac. Political intrigue has always been beyond his purview; he does his work and goes home. But international conflicts dig their claws into him when the Sinans break an ancient code against hostage-taking. Dragged into a sacred cave with his best friend and six hostile warriors, he must pray his husband will find him. Or try to fight his way out.
What begins as a simple rescue mission spirals out of control until it challenges the very foundations of Bremish society – and the family ties between all three. Complex loyalties shatter the simple idea of “good vs. evil,” while uncaring institutions use Uileac, Orrinir, and Cerie as political pawns.
Romance is rebellion. Love is pain. And beyond it all, poetry has the power to make miracles or take a human life.
In Absent All Light, the fifth book in the main Eirenic Verses series, readers finally see Cerie come into her own as a sharp-tongued, pragmatic protagonist. An emotionally complex, established queer relationship offers a refreshing spin on the romantasy genre, but with the visceral intensity of military thrillers.
This literary fantasy story, underpinned by an established relationship and sibling bonds, is perfect for those who love The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller or A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske.
If you want a sneak peak at the book to see what it sounds like, you can check out the first chapter that I shared at the end of April.
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Preorders on Most Platforms
Though the book is coming out on June 23, I’m opening preorders now so that my reviewers have all platforms available to them. This is also so those who don’t have the time or energy to review can still know they’ll have the book waiting for them come June.
More platforms are coming soon, so if you don’t see your preferred site, check the Books2Read link in a few days.
It will also eventually be available on OverDrive if you would like to request it from your local library. Be sure to add it to your Goodreads bookshelf as well!
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Booksprout Review Campaign
For those who would like early access (and to help me out so so much), the campaign is now available on Booksprout. Simply sign up for an account, click this link, and join the campaign.
You’ll get a download in your preferred format, a little note to warn you about what’s in the book, and links to all available review platforms.
Because I am a cheapskate, I only have 25 slots available, so sign up fast!
Some important notes for Booksprout campaigns:
Please do not use AI to write your review. This can get me in big trouble.
Booksprout does not automatically port your review to other platforms; you will leave a review on Booksprout and then another one on whatever platforms you choose. It’s set to Goodreads but you can use any of the links once they become available.
Remember to add the disclaimer Booksprout gives you so that platforms know this is a genuine review from a campaign.
If you didn’t like the book, be honest. I won’t be offended. But try to give reasons you did not like it. Negative reviews also help by warning other readers who may also not like it. You’re helping the community.
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Thank you so much to everyone who chooses to preorder or review. Your support is worth its weight in gold, and I am immensely grateful. Be sure to tell your friends if you think they might be interested, too!
I was stupid and spent money advertising my very first book, 9 Years Yearning, before I published the next two books in the series. This was a total waste.
Fortunately I had the money to spend (because I never quit my day job as an SEO writer), but, I still chafe at spending money I do not need to when I could use that on something with an immediate payoff, like more books about my hero Genghis Khan.
And after I did decide to start running Amazon ads, I still wasted some money, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.
First things first; I am not an expert at all. I will freely admit I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. But I want to share my mistakes and successes in hopes that it will be helpful to you.
Let’s dive in.
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Don’t advertise your first book.
I talked about this in my post about marketing pitfalls so we won’t go into it here. Check out that post for more details, but basically, readers don’t have anywhere to jump after they read your book, and they are unlikely to remember you when your next book comes out.
If they’ve read two or three books of yours, you will be more cemented in their minds, and they will be willing to check back. They might follow you on Amazon to get alerted about new releases or preorder anything you have available right then.
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Start saving up money for marketing expenses as soon as possible, preferably before you finish the first book.
Again, you will not be spending on ads yet, but we don’t want you nosediving all the way into the red and not recouping any losses.
I saved up as much as possible from my day job before publishing, and I am so glad I did. My publishing business is bleeding money right now even though I am making sales almost every day.
This is perfectly normal, and it is not a sign that my approach isn’t working. Most businesses operate at a steep loss for five years or more; I’ve only been doing this for about a year and a half. There’s plenty yet to do.
My profit margins will continue to improve as the Eirenic Verses progresses simply because I will have more to sell and my clickthrough rates will go up. After I finish the series, I’ll write other things and advertise the first book of those. Then people have multiple series from me to enjoy, and each ad will get at least 5 sales.
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If you can afford it, have a marketing company set up your ads.
…. But know that you will have to make some adjustments to their work.
Once I got to Funeral of Hopes, I was finally ready to dip my toes into advertising. Now I had four books to tempt readers with!
I will note that Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix, because it is listed as side content, has not been getting as many sales because readers can’t just click and buy it immediately after finishing 9 Years Yearning. But that’s okay because it is free on most platforms, so it is naturally losing money.
Anyway, reading about marketing was making my head spin. I was intimidated by everything I needed to know and was not sure where to begin.
So I outsourced it. This gave me a starting point to refine and adjust as necessary.
While the marketing team did a good job, they made some strange choices that I had to fix. For example, they added CDs and audiobooks to my title comparison ads for some reason? They also comped me to myself several times, which, while flattering, was not helpful.
And they included some straight romances in my category ads. Heterosexual people looking for girl + guy are not going to jump over to guy + guy, or they will do so very rarely. I eliminated those, added more LGBTQ novels, and saw improvements.
So expect that after they set things up for you, you will have to make some fixes simply because they do not know your book as well as you do, and they have a ton of other clients to work with so they’re not agonizing over your ads. Still, this gives you a foundation.
Honestly, once I started to get the hang of things, I began enjoying the advertising process. I check my ads every day and play around with them once a week; you don’t want to adjust them too often or it screws up the algorithm. I like looking for new comps, identifying high-performing keywords, and pressing pause on those that are destroying my budget.
Maybe you won’t ever start to like Amazon ads, but you will start tolerating them the more you do it. I wouldn’t have even done any ads if I didn’t have that starting material designed for me by a professional.
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Comps and keywords remain important even if you are self-publishing.
Being self-published, I figured I didn’t have to worry about comps. This was true for a little bit, but it became my downfall when I was fixing my ads. I just didn’t know what I should put in as category and ASIN targets, but these are crucial to finding your audience.
Readers want to be suggested their next read so they don’t have to search out everything themselves. If you don’t know what they were reading first, you can’t be that suggestion.
Now, you do have help in this endeavor. Once your ads have been set up for about two weeks, the Amazon algorithm will begin analyzing your campaign and identifying which products are closest aligned with yours. Then you can add them all to your campaigns with the click of a button, or even export them to different ad groups so you don’t have to replicate your work.
Another good tool is Publisher Rocket, which has a one-time license fee; no subscriptions here! This tool connects to the internet and checks for new comps once you input your own book, and it will also analyze keywords and identify those that are best for your project.
The company that designed Publisher Rocket, Kindlepreneur, also has a bunch of fantastic resources and ebooks for book advertising. If you buy Publisher Rocket, they’ll send you several free ebooks. I love their blog and newsletter; it’s full of great advice.
Back to the point. Be sure to check out what categories it suggests for your book so you can make adjustments if your own choices aren’t quite right. Also, Amazon lets you put in up to seven keywords right off the bat: you can audit whether these are the most high-value ones and then adjust them on the book’s listing.
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Do not target highly competitive keywords, even if they are making you a few sales.
This will decimate your budget. For a while, I was spending a quarter of my advertising budget on one single keyword: “romantic fantasy.”
Romantic fantasy is huge right now and there are thousands of traditionally published authors, with the war chests of the Big 5, who are also targeting this keyword. And they’re doing it better than you are because they have professional advertising teams to back them up.
So, pick some less competitive keywords. You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to review keywords and pick out a few in the middle range that can become your primary targets.
Publisher Rocket helps here, too, because you might actually have to target some weird/mispelled keywords, like “fre fantasy book” or “fantsy.” These are not only less competitive, but if you’re able to catch these readers, they will be delighted to find you.
Also, find other selfpub/small authors who have a decent, but not bestselling, following and add them to your target keywords. Not only does this help you grab sales based off their reputation, but you’re helping that author refine their own ads based on who clicks your ad from their name.
Funnily enough, I get a fair few sales from people who found me through ads on danmei product pages, like The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System or Heaven Official’s Blessing. I mean, it makes sense: my characters do look like they belong in an anime. And they are gay.
I like those books too. My readers have exceptional taste.
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Play with your pricing a bit to see what your sweet spot is.
This is something interesting that not a lot of people discuss, but I’ve seen it firsthand in my sales.
Originally, 9 Years Yearning was a cool $0.99. And I got no sales.
You’d imagine that people would want to read a $0.99 book. They get a few hours of content for much cheaper than an iced coffee! Of course they’ll jump on it.
Not really.
Readers assume that a $0.99 book is bad, likely unedited. These are the kinds of crappy books that you take a chance on because you’re bored and broke. That’s not a good way to get people excited about your work.
While you should not price as high as tradpub, pricing higher tells people that your book is quality; it hints that you’ve poured a lot of money into this endeavor and done the best that you can.
Of course, this assumes that your book is quality. Make it perfect before you sell at all. And don’t publish before you’re ready.
I got a big sales bump from raising prices on 9 Years Yearning and the other books, which seems impossible. My sales jumped significantly after price adjustments; I honestly thought it was a fluke at first, but sales continued to rise day after day.
And, frankly, I felt a bit guilty. The book is only 31,000 words, so it feels like I’m ripping people off. But people are willing to pay that much, so I will accept that.
My comp titles were all priced around there, too, helping it align with market pressures. Pricing too low dilutes the pool for everyone and drags pricing down, so you’re hurting other authors too.
And you’re losing money because consumers would have been willing to pay more. Just that one extra dollar dropped my Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS) to a more acceptable level.
However, I then found that people balked at slightly higher prices for my other books, as they likely assumed without checking that they are similarly sized. So now I have to price all my other books the same as 9 Years Yearning. While that’s a bit frustrating, I suppose it’s to be expected, and I’ll eat the cost.
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Keep putting yourself out there through other avenues, too.
I didn’t make this mistake – after all, I still have a blog, a newsletter, and social media accounts – but many others have. They will set up their Amazon ads, sit back, and not do anything else to market themselves.
But this is a problem, especially if you are using wide distribution (as you should be if you’re writing anything other than romance or thrillers). Many of your readers may be coming from elsewhere; some even may be real-life friends, acquaintances, old classmates and coworkers, or friends of friends.
If you’re not enticing them with good content on your blog, a newletter, social media posts, or in-person conversations, then they will not find you because they’re not actively searching for books at that very second. So keep talking about your stuff.
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Yes, self-published authors have to wear a lot of hats, but there is help out there. I work with a team consisting of a cover designer, several beta readers, the marketing company mentioned above, and a variety of services like Booksprout, WordPress, and Canva.
You do not have to do this all alone, nor should you. The pressure will drive you crazy.
Traditional publishing has full teams that are dedicated to polishing a few books at a time, everyone managing one element of the book. It is almost impossible to do every single thing involved in successful self-publishing all by yourself.
And again, you will operate at a loss for several years or more. This is totally normal. You are not failing if you’re not receiving an immediate return on investment. Very few businesses start making money in the first five years; they had investors pay their expenses or they saved up for it all by themselves.
Your success is my success. We can uplift one another through hard work and careful adjustment of our advertising strategies. I want you to sell a metric buttload of books – and maybe you’ll comp me in your ads. That’d be a huge honor!
Get out there and conquer the Amazon. I’m cheering you on.
In my post about choosing between tradpub and self-pub, I tried to give tradpub a fair shake, recognizing that this more institutionalized publishing system appeals to a different mindset than I hold.
However, I don’t think tradpub is really giving itself a fair shake. In fact, traditional publishing’s rampant trend-chasing is doing us all a major disservice.
My brutal and very mean thesis is this: tradpub loves shit books because the general public loves shit books. And that’s fine if you want to make money, but not so good if you care about making great art.
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There are still good tradpub books, but they are drowned in debut garbage.
I have read plenty of quality tradpub books in the past year, both new releases and slightly older ones.
The thing, though, is that if you take a look at the good books being released, they are from established authors who began writing long before the past five-ish years.
These authors already have the star power and proven revenue from a “before time” that reassures publishers. However, even these authors are getting hammered in reviews.
Take China Mieville, one of my favorite writers. He has been writing for over 20 years now; he could put out the dumbest, weirdest book alive and still keep his contract. But his reviews have dropped sharply in recent years. People complain incessantly about how odd his books are, how they’re hard to follow, how the prose is dense and complicated.
China Mieville did not deteriorate since 2020. The readership has. And tradpub knows this, which is why debut authors put out slop.
Here is the uncomfortable truth that tradpub authors don’t like to hear: the quality of your book absolutely does not matter to publishers. The keywords, tropes, marketing hype, and packaging does.
Yes, yes, we can argue about the subjectivity of quality. We can say, “Well, if people like it, then it’s good!” But let me vary the analogy I used in my post about bad books: fast food is utter garbage, but it makes billions in revenue per year.
Very few of us, save Donald Trump and RFK Jr., would argue that McDonald’s is the height of culinary purity. We know it’s terrible and that we only like it because it pushes primal buttons in our heads. We like fat, salt, sugar, and carbs because our ancestors didn’t have those things in abudance.
Tradpub is, unfortunately, pushing primal buttons by pandering to a specific, and growing, audience: not-very-literate people who want to appear very smart.
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Low literacy shifts the goalposts for “good writing.”
It’s not a secret that people are becoming more illiterate; I covered the problem in depth last July. Given that tradpub cares about marketability, this inevitably influences which books are pitched and sold.
There’s a reason that adult literature has morphed into YA style. Recent debut novels I’ve read, even those which include gratuitous violence or sex, read more like a teenager trying to be a grownup rather than an actual Adult Book.
Newer books use very simple sentences; the plots are straightfoward. Dialogue is stilted, designed more for quotability than realism. Random twists appear out of nowhere, shocking readers into paying attention after sleepwalking through a billion hours of introspection.
Rather than lingering on impactful scenes, the authors brush past them to avoid grossing anyone out. My repulsive climax in What Is Cannot Be Unwritten would be obliterated by an editor. These books even use euphemisms like “sicked up” instead of “vomited,” as if they’re being censored by YouTube Kids.
I’ve also noticed a proliferation of first-person POV in books that would be much better served by third-person POV. While first person is a respected literary tradition, it is also most prevalent in YA fiction; children are self-centered and want to imagine themselves as the protagonist. I highly doubt that most modern authors who use first-person POV are trying to emulate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the Japanese “I” novel.
When you’re pushing books to a stupider population (sorry), you’ve got to get down to their level. There isn’t room for unique turns of phrase lest the reader get upset, assuming that you’re actually saying someone is a teapot rather than feeling like one.
I am, unfortunately, quite serious about that. College students who tried to read Charles Dickens thought that characters had cat whiskers rather than facial hair.
This means that even the most beautiful work will be macerated by the tradpub machine, turning it into an easily-digestible slurry gulped up by the lowest common denominator.
Tradpub does not want to sell good books. They want to sell books, period. The best way to do this is by hooking readers with a few flashy first pages so that they’ll buy. Once the money hits, tradpub doesn’t care anymore. Their part of the transaction is done.
This is why literary agents obsess over the first five pages of a book, and why those seeking to query may agonize over the first chapter for a whole year. Agents and publishers push impulse buys through bait-and-switch tactics: great first few pages, trash after that.
The Atlas Six, in my opinion, is a keystone example of this approach, a book that was published as a “BookTok favorite.” The prologue is superb; it’s sharp, catchy, and suggests real danger.
I was intrigued and hoping the author would follow through on the stakes. But they didn’t. The whole thing falls to shit within the first chapter. Everything after the prologue feels like pulling teeth, and I gave up after a few chapters. I did try, I really did. But I am only human.
See, I’m the kind of person that doesn’t necessarily need a dopamine hit on the first page to keep reading. If you start a book by slamming me into a brick wall with nonstop action (a la The Hurricane Wars), I will stop reading. I want to bond with an interesting character and enjoy superb prose, which doesn’t always equate with thrilling initial stakes.
But for a certain sector of the population, this doesn’t matter, because they already stopped paying attention.
Performative reading has always been a thing, but it was typically an interpersonal thing. What I mean by this is that people would carry books with them on the subway in hopes of getting a cute girl’s attention, or reference a “smart” book they glossed over.
Now, though, performative reading is a mass trend. Readers brag about how many books they read in a year and give each other tips for how to skim as fast as possible.
Goodreads is no longer a repository of the books you liked, but a high score for your reading output. Authors complain about getting fewer reviews since BookTok exploded because readers aren’t following the text close enough to form an opinion. They want to check it off, maybe leave a star rating, and move on.
As such, books designed for fast reading are going to perform better than slower, more difficult books that require close attention. The more people can skim, the more readthroughs, the more ratings, the more visibility. Challenging plotlines go away; unusual words disappear. And tradpub ruthlessly slashes books to ensure readers can rip through them as quickly as possible.
We see this new performative trend not just in book text, but also in book packaging.
Recent releases are gorgeous: gold foil, sparkly paper, embossing, soft textures and cutouts. These special touches used to be reserved for commemorative editions of beloved tomes, such as the collected works of Shakespeare or pocket editions of Emily Dickinson. Now they are produced for debut novels from unknown authors, of dubious quality and untested fame.
Such luxury materials did not become more readily available in recent years; you can find similar productions from decades ago. Rather, the market started to care far more about presentation than about substance.
Consider TikTok reviews of ARCs or recent releases. I won’t link any, to avoid shaming anyone, but I’ve watched quite a few. Every time a BookTok girlie does an “unboxing,” their immediate conversation is about the book’s visual appearance; they squeal about the sprayed edges and gush authoritatively about paper weight. Books that include little extras, like bookmarks or stickers, send reviewers into the stratosphere.
Then the TikTok star inevitably rushes through the review, their eyes dimming as they’re forced to discuss what actually matters about a book. Often they’ll cheap out by coyly entreating the viewer to read it and see for themselves. In other words, they don’t feel like summarizing anything. Any true analysis is flattened into fun tropes or which “spicy” scene was the best.
BookTok ARC readers also spurn ebook editions; other authors tell me how they get more requests if they offer a paperback versus an ebook. That’s because the BookTok reviewers want something to hold up and ooh and ahh over, not necessarily something to read. The book must look very cool on their shelf so everyone knows they are a Very Cool Reader.
One can argue that publishers could provide quality on both fronts: prose and packaging. That’s true, they could. But that doesn’t satisfy performative readers, who don’t really give a damn about the inside.
Book revision requires months of labor-intensive editing, while cover development requires a few weeks. Given that tradpub wants to make a quick buck, it’s obvious what they will choose to prioritize.
As such, the scales tip toward pretty books that provide absolutely nothing but a few “oh damn!” quotes. Millions of dollars are not spent on developmental editing, but on quality control for book covers. And everyone suffers as a result.
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AI pressures publishing firms to make more easily digestible content.
Last December, Amazon rolled out an atrocious feature called “Ask This Book.” Pretty much every author group, from The Authors Guild to Writer Beware, fucking hates this thing.
Kindlepreneur rightly pointed out that this could pose major legal concerns because it is essentially remixing a copyrighted material without the author’s consent. Kindepreneur’s founder, Dave Chesson, was even blunter: “This should be illegal.”
Now, I was heartened to see that readers also despise this feature. Some have canceled their Kindle Unlimited subscriptions over it. They can’t opt out of it any more than authors can opt out of having it incorporated into their books, unlike other things we have control over like X-Ray.
But, time and time again, corporations have proven that they simply do not care whether we like AI or not. They’re full steam ahead on their useless investments, and they will not take no for an answer.
Some have pointed out a very insidious reason for this product, which is that Amazon has essentially turned all of our ebooks into training material for Large Language Models without our consent. I don’t think it’s really for readers; it’s so that Amazon can snatch all our books and start generating soulless, bastardized versions of what we produced.
Another way for corporations to deprive authors of income and hoard it all for themselves – with the added bonus of destroying the planet so none of us can profit off anything ever again! Yay!
Now, I don’t know what goes on behind publishing houses’ doors, but I can tell you this: Amazon and all the rest of them do talk to one another. Of course they do. Why else would Amazon be able to roll out things like giving Prime members free books every month? They had to sign contracts with those traditional publishers; after all, you don’t see any selfpub books in the ranks.
If you think of your publishing corpus as training material, then you nudge authors toward prose that is easy for LLMs to understand. You penalize complex plots that require close reading. You ensure stupid features like “Ask This Book” won’t give wrong answers because it couldn’t comprehend the subtext.
You strip out intriguing or archaic words that an AI may misuse. You encourage simplistic, quotable phrases that could be reused in new AI-generated content.
In short, you tear the copper wiring out of every book. Pure, tidy, inhuman profit built off our bleeding hearts.
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We are reaching a fork in the road: quick returns versus lasting respect.
So maybe it’s not that tradpub is cooked, really. Corporations will get their bag one way or another.
It’s that tradpub debut authors – who do not have an established reputation or full creative freedom – are chopped, cooked, and burnt.
If you value your craft, if you prioritize quality prose, and if you delight in complex plots, then you’re fucked. Unless you let tradpub fuck your book up.
Listen to me: tradpub does not care about how good your book is. Literary agents don’t care. You can have the most beautiful book imaginable, and it doesn’t matter a whit.
They care about whether you can instantly produce a return on investment that justifies your insultingly low advance. If you can be their next golden goose. Which means pandering to insipid BookTok girlies who are more excited about spray-brushed edges than inspiring prose.
I do believe that tradpub authors are extremely competent and passionate artists. Their first drafts were probably much better than what appeared on the page, before developmental editors and publishers dug their nails into stuff. I’m not fully blaming writers for the final product, because I know there are dozens of intermediaries between query and release.
My quibble is never with my fellow authors. Rather, I despise the publishing companies that have decided putting out gilded trash is more important than offering true value.
Yes, if you want to (partially) pay the bills off your writing, then you can grin and bear it, maybe. If you really want the money, then go for it – I can’t tell you what to do.
But personally, I care more about my own feelings toward my work. I never expect self-publishing to be a moneymaker because I understand the realities of the industry. I keep my day job, and I don’t spend more than I can afford to completely lose. What matters to me is that I am proud of what I have created, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it.
If you’re like me, then maybe you should cancel your Query Tracker subscription and go your own way.
Last post, I talked to non-writers who may want to befriend, bamboozle, or perhaps bed a writer. Now I am speaking to the rest of my little group: the gremlins who chew on our enclosures if we can’t find a good plot.
Yes, we have etiquette rules as well. Being good and kind is important, but sometimes it gets lost along the way when we’re so excited about what we’re doing. Let’s discuss.
Here’s a little thing that I, myself, am pretty bad at remembering, but it does matter.
Writers know how long a given word count is in terms of time to read or produce. We’re often curious about how long our favorite books are by this specific metric, and we track our progress via word count.
Readers don’t think this way because they don’t have a clear concept of what word counts really mean. They think in page counts, because that is how they experience books.
The problem is that page counts are not actually that reliable of a metric, and they aren’t always trackable for writers. We know how long the page count is on the manuscript itself, but that’s based on whatever program we use and whatever the font is. It doesn’t track one-for-one with the page count in the finished project, especially because books have different sizes.
I can’t tell people how many pages a book is until I hit publish or bother to count the pages in the KDP file. Given that I’ve published multiple books around the same page length, I can guesstimate to an extent, but this isn’t always helpful either.
One valuable way I’ve learned to get around this is another metric readers can understand: reading time. If I say, “this book takes around four hours to read,” that’s understandable, even if it’s not as comprehensible to readers as page count.
Keep this in mind when you’re discussing your projects outside of writer circles. While you’re working on the project, you can say whatever the Microsoft Word/Google Docs page count is and remind readers that isn’t necessarily the same page count that will be in the finished project. Still, it gives your listeners an idea of how far along you are, given that they’ve likely worked with Microsoft documents before.
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Remember that being a writer doesn’t make you better or smarter than anyone else.
I said what I said. Writing well is a skill, just like any other skill. Yes, it is a useful skill, and it does require significant effort and intellect, but it is not an arbiter of general intelligence or human value.
There are many wonderful, brilliant, exceptional, and highly accomplished individuals I know who cannot write well. As I mentioned in my other post, many well-spoken people completely fall apart when you ask them to write something because it’s a different skill.
This is not to mention the many other forms of intelligence that are out there. In fact, I value my emotional intelligence far more than my eloquence because it has more practical value.
Understanding how to influence people, how to frame conversations, how to read body language, and how to deescalate situations serves me very well in every facet of life – and it also enhances my writing. But just knowing how to string words together did not imbue me with that power; I had to cultivate it through therapy and practice.
Your writing skill is just a tiny example of how humans can be smart and interesting. There is no hierarchy of useful skills because any skill can be valuable in the right context.
Get off your high horse, honey. Don’t want you to fall.
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Do not dominate conversations with monologues about your books.
A significant proportion of the human population is absolutely shit at talking to others for one simple reason: they don’t really care about what anyone else says. They are waiting impatiently for their chance to chime in and take over with what they wanted to talk about.
Writers, of course, have a ready-made Domination Topic that they can muse for hours on without even feeling the time slip by. This is such an interesting and important subject to you, so why wouldn’t it be for your listeners?
Well, it’s not. I have trouble listening to other writers yammer about their projects because I have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.
The thing is that your book feels alive to you because you are busy making it. You understand all the facets, the plot, the characters, etc, and can refer back to them at any time.
Your listeners are coming in cold, and it’s almost impossible to fully explain the plot of a book to someone without taking multiple hours – and jumping in between points when you remember something else important. I often struggle to explain the plots of books I have recently read, even though I was playing close attention, because summarizing such a large chunk of material is quite difficult in real time.
People will care about your books when you complete them and they can experience it for themselves. Listening to someone summarize their book is like following a vacation monologue: boring as hell.
Am I saying that you should not ever talk about your books? Of course not. But I encourage you to keep it vague and simple, especially during the active writing process (when you should not really be talking about it at all lest you lose motivation).
Always remember that conversations should be a two way street: you give a little, they give a little. Consider how many sentences you are saying, just as you would in dialogue, and keep it to four sentences or less.
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Respect your contractors.
The number one most disarming statement you can make to any professional, from any field, is this:
“You’re the expert here. I trust your judgment.”
Every single time I have used this phrase, I have gotten drastically better work – often at a discount.
But I’m not saying it to manipulate anyone; I really do trust their judgment. I have learned that as a layperson, I do not have the skills or experience to make good decisions. This was revealed through working with my exceptional cover artist, Katarina.
Now, I adore Katarina. She does amazing work and is a true gem of a human being. However, there is a distinct difference between how these three covers came out, and it comes down to my own attitude.
She’s not the problem here. I am.
Don’t get me wrong; they are all good. But the cover for Absent All Light is miles away better, in my opinion.
The reason isn’t that Katarina magically got better at her job between What Is Cannot Be Unwritten and Absent All Light. She has always been an exceptional artist.
The reason is that for the last cover, I stepped back and stopped being controlling.
For Funeral of Hopes and What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, I gave her mockups and a lot of references. I thought this was helpful; I really was just trying to guide her so that she didn’t put in a bunch of work for something I did not like. In reality, it probably annoyed the shit out of her because she couldn’t put her own spin on it.
She was constrained by what I told her to do, so the work didn’t come out with as much heart. It feels stilted and static, whereas the cover for Absent All Light feels dynamic, visceral, and intense.
That is my fault, and I will always defend Katarina against anyone who complains about the cover art. But you can genuinely see how much better she felt about the work when I went, “I don’t really know what I want. Here are some references, here’s the general plot. I trust your judgment and know you’ll do a great job.”
When the series is over, I will likely ask Katarina to redo these two covers, just to refresh them and better align with the later parts of the series. That’s not a slam on her work; in fact, it’s because I trust her so much. I know she can do even better work if I stop white-knuckling the creative process.
And then she gets paid more. That’s always good, right?
So if you are working with an artist, an editor, a beta reader, whoever: let them do their job. You hired them for a reason. You saw their reviews. You decided they were worth your money. Trust them instead of controlling them.
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People who like you as a person do not necessarily like your books.
Your writing doesn’t even have to be bad for your friends or family to just … not like them. They may not like your genre, they may not like your writing style, they may not be big readers. And that’s okay.
My mom does not like my books. At all. She has told me this to my face, multiple times. She isn’t a fan of literary fantasy and doesn’t like the gross themes in my books. The sex scenes make her feel icky. Her favorite fiction books are popcorn romance or cozy mysteries, and she gravitates toward academic nonfiction in her field.
There is nothing I can do to change this. Her opinion on the fantasy genre was established before I was even born, and my work isn’t going to rewire her brain to suddenly like the kind of work I do.
Does it hurt a little bit? Yes. It does.
Is it going to change the way I write? Hell no, it won’t. No one’s opinion would ever make me abandon my vision or contort myself for their approval – not even my own mother’s.
I have very strong intrinsic motivation, which is why I can excel in self-publishing. I am also able to separate someone liking me as a person and someone liking my work.
Many of my friends have never read anything I have written: not my blog, not my newsletter, not even my free novella. And that is fine, because that’s not the reason we are friends. I surround myself with people who have shared interests but very different lifestyles because I like to learn how others think, and I find that associating with those too like me causes an echo chamber.
In fact, most of my close friends are STEM people whose eyes glaze over when I talk about writing, or whose reading preferences lean toward highly graphic gay smut. Whatever, I don’t judge.
As I have discussed in multiple posts before, separating yourself from your writing is one of the best things you can do for your self-esteem. Writing is something you do – and, for someone like me, a lifestyle – but it has no bearing on your value as a human being. Nor does it determine whether people will like you as a friend.
You can be a trash writer but a great human, or a trash human and a great writer. Many such cases of the latter. And, frankly, I’d prioritize being a great human over being a great writer any day.
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Don’t get into pissing matches with other authors.
For some reason, and for some people, being an author seems to come preloaded with a big ego. I speculated on the reasons for this in my post about why some authors are mean, but the outcome is the same: everyone feels bad.
You see this all the time in Writing World; it’s practically a tradition at this point. See Mark Twain’s decades-long hate-fest for Jane Austin and you will completely understand. We continued that storied history today through petty genre roasts, bitching about trends, review-bombing other authors, or dick-measuring contests about sales metrics and awards.
While there is definitely bad writing in the world, everything becomes subjective at a certain skill level. You’re not winning any fans by being a little bitch to everyone around you, and you’re not convincing anyone of your authority.
You just look like a rude idiot. Who wants to read something by you, then?
There are books I hate. There are authors I despise. There are trends that make me want to rip my eyes out and swing them around like maces.
But I don’t say that directly to anyone’s face. In fact, I rarely leave reviews anymore. If I review a book, it’s through my newsletter, which has no direct contact with the author.
I recognize the immense value of reviews, but I also have to protect my own brand. Not every author is very sane or rational when it comes to getting an unpleasant review, as I have learned firsthand. Sharing a public opinion on a bad book is not worth the potential damage it could cause.
So, if you want to be conscientious, do not air these aggressive opinions in front of other authors. Don’t fight with them in comments, don’t leave nasty reviews, don’t publicly bash a fellow indie or small-potato author. Not only is it not polite, but it could have far deeper repercussions than you recognize.
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Once you get to a certain level of infamy, people will dislike you. Let them.
Even authors with a small following are going to get detractors. I am apparently one of the rudest authors alive, if you trust this Goodreads list of (primarily female) authors.
Hmm. Wonder why most of them are women. Ah, well; not my problem. Kind of flattering to be included in a list of much more well-known authors, if you think about it. I’d love to know precisely what I did to piss this reader off, though. Maybe telling them to write a million words?
Anyway, part of etiquette is ignoring the haters. This is a natural consequence of putting yourself out there for thousands of people to see. Don’t get into pissing matches with authors or readers.
I do not respond to reviewers on places like Goodreads or Amazon. I don’t defend my work on social media, though I like to write breakdowns of why I made certain choices, like my fridging post. If someone doesn’t like my books, I shrug and move on.
And I don’t allow comments on my blog because this is my curated space. I’m not going to fight for my life in the comments section of a website I pay to host.
There are eight billion people on the planet. You can’t please all of them, nor should you attempt to. That’s how you get mealy-mouthed, bland writing so aghast about bad press that it says nothing.
Good writing is contentious, spicy, debatable. Good authors are not universally beloved. They – and their work – have sharp points that grind against some readers’ psyches while turning others into devotees.
This is okay – admirable, even. But it will backfire if you’re so desperate for all-encompassing praise that you get defensive, or if you are terrified of rejection.
So if someone hates you or calls you a rude author, don’t bother responding. It’s not worth the reputation loss.
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You don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to.
I know, this sounds like such no-brainer advice, but you’d be surprised at how many people just … forget that a question isn’t a contract.
Someone can ask you whatever they want about your books. They could ask about themes, when you plan to publish, why you did a certain thing, whether there’s a sex scene. And you can choose not to answer it.
I am very protective of my writing process because that is what keeps me productive. When I am working on something, it only exists to me. Thankfully, most people in my life respect this boundary, or perhaps just don’t care enough to ask, which is a blessing in disguise.
You don’t have to be rude, and a good person won’t be offended by you declining to answer. Simply say you like to keep your work process private or that you’re still workshopping things.
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Well, there we go. Of course, most of this applies to almost any field, but it’s still crucial to keep us writers humble and polite. Not only because this helps sell books, but it also ensures we can, you know, have friends and not make everyone hate us.
So go forth and influence people. Tip your freelancers, respect your readers, and, please … shut up about your books.
Self-publishing is not a consolation prize or compromise for those who couldn’t “make it” in traditional publishing.
Both readers and traditionally published authors assume that self-publishing is for writers who aren’t good enough. They insist that selfpub authors are poseurs who were rejected by every literary agent so they gave up.
For many writers, that is true. They did not do their million practice words, thoroughly proof their work, or learn their craft. They wanted instant results.
These are often one-book wonders. They don’t have the stamina necessary to keep going through lackluster sales periods, aggressive reviews, or simple burnout from minimal validation.
We will leave those authors to the side and discuss those who are certain they want to embark on a long publishing journey. How do you choose the right path for you?
I’m a self-published author, but I have nothing against those who pursue tradpub. There are benefits to that route, too. Let’s discuss.
Tradpub authors have certain qualities, personality traits, and needs that may not align with self-publishing. What are those?
Writing to market.
Publishers want books they know can fly off the shelves. They are risk-averse and refuse to waste time on experimental fiction. You may be able to get away with it later in your career, but at the outset, you usually have to play it safe.
This requires a strong understanding of your market and niche. Not only do you need to get a literary agent interested with particular keywords, but you must ensure your first five pages immediately grab the reader. There’s no time for slow, meandering works (like the ones I make) or unusual structures.
Authors who don’t give a shit about trends will not succeed in traditional publishing unless they get really, really lucky. And that typically requires some connections to the literary world before querying. A weird cold query isn’t going to succeed.
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Need for external structure and motivation.
As I discussed in my post about intrinsic motivation, extrinsically motivated people do well in traditional publishing. This model has multiple layers of built-in feedback and demonstrable benchmarks to hit.
Being accepted by an agent is like winning the jackpot: immediate evidence that you’re doing a good job. Some literary agents will work with promising authors to get their projects up to standard before shopping for publishers, but this isn’t guaranteed.
After that, you have support from publishers, editors, and marketers. For many people, having so many cooks is comforting, as each assures you that your project can reach a wider audience. For others (including me), that sounds like torture.
Getting a book in readers’ hands the traditional way requires a lot of compromises. Literary agents may request a full rehaul before offering representation, while editors will nitpick every word. You don’t get to pick your cover artist, though you might have input in this. You also don’t get to decide exactly how and to whom your book is marketed.
Those willing to give up some creative freedom in service of the ultimate goal can withstand this kind of pressure.
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Patience and self-confidence.
This is not to say that self-published authors cannot be confident and patient; I wouldn’t be writing a ten-book series if I couldn’t handle some delayed gratification.
However, the journey to release day is often much, much longer for those seeking traditional publication. Some authors have to spend multiple years querying, and they may write several books before one is accepted. Even then, agents have to sell the book to a publisher, and then the publisher decides on a release date, which could be over a year in advance.
Querying can also be brutal on someone’s self-esteem. Getting dozens of rejections hurts, and not everyone can handle that. You have to truly believe you can make it.
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Primary focus is writing, not marketing or logistics.
Tradpub authors don’t have to wear a lot of hats. They are allowed to work almost entirely on their writing rather than editing or marketing; someone else does that.
While presses are outsourcing a lot of their marketing to authors nowadays, they still offer a full suite of services to their authors that self-published writers have to do on their own. These include proofreading, preparing manuscripts for digital and paperback editions, contracting cover artists, managing ARC campaigns, generating sales material, negotiating with bookstores, and a general marketing push.
Presses may expect authors to do some aspects of marketing, such as press tours, social media posts, and interviews. However, there is comprehensive guidance here.
For authors who get overwhelmed by going it alone – or simply don’t have the time and energy to wear every hat – it is very helpful to have this structure from trusted experts.
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Lack of upfront funds.
And finally, we get to the cold hard truth: self-publishing is expensive, with no ROI guarantee. You have to pay for everything upfront and hope you might make it back someday.
In contrast, querying only requires a few upfront, optional investments. You can pay for beta readers, developmental editors, coaches, and Querytracker subscriptions … or you could not. Those who are very confident and experienced may need none of these things; they could rely on advice from seasoned authors, review free resources, and talk to other querying authors.
You will also receive an advance if you get accepted by a publisher. These aren’t typically life-changing sums, maybe $5,000, but that’s still money you got without spending much.
And now we get to self-publishing: my realm. Unfortunately, a lot of people get self-publishing all twisted up; they think it’s easy. All you have to do is write an okay book and stick it on Amazon.
Technically true, but unlikely to get any returns. There’s a lot more involved if you want to do it right.
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Unusual, niche, or difficult books.
As I said, traditional publishing is very risk-averse – and fickle. What got accepted last year might get a pass this year, even if the writing is exactly the same. Trends change quickly; publishers are running forecasts to decide what will be hot next year, or the year after that.
So books that refuse to play it safe will not fly. This includes:
Hard to comp
Challenging prose
Difficult to categorize, with no clear-cut keywords
Unusual structures
Highly sexual
Gratuitous violence
Strange or “quiet” plots
Remember, literary agents are looking at books not entirely on prose quality, characterization, or plot, but also on what keywords they might assign to the work and how they could pitch it to a publisher. They need to immediately identify what audience this would work for and why someone might read it.
Books without clearly definable “hooks” will get a pass no matter how good they are. If you struggle to find clear comps or cannot distill your book down into “this plus this,” you’ll have a hard time querying.
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Need for total control.
You might hate to hear it, but yes: self-published authors often do not play well with others. They don’t want anyone else to touch their book, even if those suggestions may make the book more marketable.
Changing a plot sounds abominable. Removing a scene is torture. Getting nitpicky with word choice makes them explode with rage.
I am firmly in this category. I know my artistic vision and I won’t compromise no matter who tells me what to do. I don’t necessarily like marketing, but I do like having total control over my work from start to finish. Its success lives and dies by my efforts; that’s very satisfying to me.
One reason selfpub authors burn out is that they cannot build their own structure. If someone isn’t encouraging them to write, they don’t. They get choice paralysis about plots and need someone to give them a sanity check.
They also might get extremely demoralized if they don’t get immediate sales because that end goal is the primary objective. These authors want to be famous; lack of interest is soul-shattering.
Self-publishing requires that you enjoy the process more than the result. If you want to make it, you have to write because you love it, not because you want others to love it.
This is not to say that traditionally published authors don’t love writing. However, I suspect that they place a little more emphasis on the exposure they can receive than career self-published authors do.
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Strong project management.
Traditional publishing takes much of the work out of the author’s hands. They do not have to do all the editing, all the ARC campaign management, all the cover design or blurb writing. This is a huge benefit and one that many self-published authors fail to consider when they start out.
In general, the self-publishing process includes the following:
Outlining
Drafting
Percolating (letting the draft rest)
First revisions
Beta read
Second revisions
Percolation 2.0
Editing
Percolation 3.0
Final pass
Set release date
Advertise release date
Manuscript setup
Cover commission
Queue sales pages
ARC campaign setup
ARC marketing
Pre-release marketing push
Release day marketing
Advertising
Advertising monitoring and adjustment
Of course, this is for ebook-only. There are additional steps for paperback publishing, and those doing in-person sales also have to account for that.
Tradpub authors stop at the final pass and skip to querying. In contrast, I am responsible for every aspect of the process. No one is breathing down my neck telling me to do everything in preparation for release day.
Plus, you have to continue to market and advertise throughout this whole cycle, such as through social media and SEO. Good selfpub authors do not disappear for months on end while they’re working, so this often means queueing content in advance.
Authors who are unused to self-directed work and individual project management will struggle mightily to keep everything together. They may skip steps, procrastinate, and then panic as that deadline starts looming.
Traditionally published authors get paid by their publisher; in many cases, the publisher provides them with 1099 forms or other tax information. Because they don’t have expenses after that first investment, they don’t need to track spending, set up a business account, or prepare their own tax returns.
Self-published authors, again, have to do this all on their own. We have to decide what to spend money on, how to track it, whether to set up a business, and how to calculate their income versus their expenses.
At first, selfpub authors may not have to deal with this much because they’re not making money. However, as their income grows, so do their business burdens.
Learning how to run a business is difficult and can be frustrating for some authors, so they give up.
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Initial funding.
Again, people think that self-publishing is free because it doesn’t cost anything to list on Amazon. This is true, but that’s not how to make a good product.
Yes, you’ve got to spend money to make money. Expenses may include:
Beta readers
Developmental editors
Editing software
Cover artists
ARC platforms
Advertising spend
A website (highly recommended!)
And there’s the time investment, too. If you don’t have the time to market, such as by writing blog posts (hello), managing socials, or tracking your ad performance, you won’t do very well. Self-publishing is a highly competitive field, where you must fight for every sale. Pouring time and money in will ensure you get at least some returns.
For example, I’ve had some money difficulty lately so I’ve paused my ads. Sales plummet! I don’t have the upfront capital right now, which is fine. I’ll save up and start over later; books don’t expire.
I’m also not relying on royalties to pay my bills. That’s when self-published authors get into the danger zone, which is why it’s so important not to quit your job unless you are sure you have a steady royalty income.
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Each publishing avenue has its benefits and ideal match.
Do not have the time or money to manage all aspects of publishing
And self-publishing is good for those who:
Do not want to compromise
Can work independently
Do not write to market
Have strong project management skills
Have investment capital and ample time
Neither is inherently superior. Neither says anything about book quality.
Traditionally published authors often go, “Someone says this is good so it is good! I got someone to listen to me, so I am better than you. You slapped garbage together because you couldn’t make it in the publishing world.”
Well, a bunch of shit books get published either way, so it doesn’t really say much. It only says you prefer a more structured environment and have extrinsic motivation. Those are personal qualities and not talent indicators.
Meanwhile, self-published authors argue, “I’m an iconoclast and rebel! I’m making real art that speaks to a select audience, unlike those sellouts who pander to a bunch of stuck-up gatekeepers.”
And again, a bunch of shit books get self-published. Choosing this route says you want complete artistic freedom and are more tolerant of risk. Still personal qualities, still not talent indicators.
It’s possible to go from one to the other, of course. Some self-published authors get signed by publishers, and some traditionally published authors decide to withdraw their books and go their own way. This is rarer, but it happens, so you shouldn’t feel locked into either route.
What really matters isn’t how your book got out there. It’s whether you stuck with it, spent the time to polish your work, and kept going when things were hard. Grit over glory, grind over gatekeeping.
I hope this helped you decide which route most speaks to you. Regardless of your choice, I’m cheering you on.
My dear reviewers are correct. Perhaps not necessarily in the “nothing happens” front – things do happen, I suppose – but the other ones apply.
These books are slow. And this is boring to some readers.
I’m not offended. I did that on purpose.
As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote the sixth book in the series first, then realized I had more to tell. When starting these novels, I was already aware of the series’ progression to something darker, faster, and more intense.
Why, then, would I put out two snooze-fests first? There are several reasons that I’d like to share.
This isn’t intended to shame anyone into reading past these books. I write for myself, and while I’m always happy to invite others into my world, I don’t need external validation to continue writing. Rather, I’m curious about how certain story structures compel people and repel others. Let’s dig in.
If I were gunning for the best-seller lists, I certainly would not have put out a 33,000-word novella as the start of a ten-part series. This is obscenely short by tradpub standards; any literary agent would laugh at me if I brought 9 Years Yearning to them.
But let’s assume they were kind enough to keep reading out of pity. Then we’d get the claws.
“There are no stakes. There’s too much interiority. The story is mundane. The prose is too complicated. There’s no High Poetry yet.”
And the kill shot: “This is not marketable. Pass.”
Perhaps my debut book is not marketable. Is that a sin?
Nah. Because I have already internalized the most important thing any author can realize: no book has universal appeal. Even the most carefully crafted TikTok darling with a full complement of marketers will flop with some people.
Some books are polarizing on purpose because the authors were following their hearts. For example, here is a brutal one-star review of one of my favorite books, This Is How You Lose the Time War:
Weirdly, this sounds a lot like a review I got on 9 Years Yearning:
This Is How You Lose the Time War was also not designed for universal appeal, which is very evident when taking a gander at its profile. The book has a 3.84 rating with over 300,000 entries; it’s clearly polarizing.
People who love it (like me) would die for this book. People who don’t get it … are more than happy to rip its authors a new one.
And you know what? That’s wonderful. The authors took incredible risks that landed perfectly for some readers while sending others fleeing.
While I’m not narcissistic enough to put myself in the same league, I take the same approach to my work.
I write for a certain audience. I want my people.
So who are those individuals, exactly?
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I’m looking for frogs to boil.
Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com
“The fuck?” you’re whispering. “Cameron, you’re a vegetarian!”
Point still stands.
“So you’re calling your readers frogs and you expect us to stick around?”
Yep. Come here, my sweet amphibians. Get in the pot.
What I mean in plain English is this: I want persistent readers who love escalating pressure.
This is a ten-part series, as I say in the first blurb. Technically an eleven-part series with Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix, which I wrote on a whim because I thought it’d be fun. It will eventually be combined with Pride Before a Fall in the paperback versions.
Most commercial series wind down with three books, maybe six or seven at the very most. Ten?! Technically eleven?! That’s an author with pathological narrative stamina.
We tend to attract readers with our same mindsets, meaning my ideal audience is just as patient as me.
Someone who commits to a ten-part series can guess that the water temperature will ramp up slowly; they don’t expect to be thrown into the deep end right away. They will be patient through the first two books because they sense we’re going somewhere, even if they can’t see the event horizon yet.
And let’s be real. It takes a certain kind of insanity to write a series this long. An author afflicted with this type of obsession wasn’t destined for stardom. Oh well.
I own my weirdness, so I’m not offended when someone wanders in only to run out screaming – because I know why they do.
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The Eirenic Verses is hard to compare, even within the fantasy genre.
That’s not me bragging that I’m special and unique and soo cool. It’s actually detrimental to my readership, and I haven’t figured out how to fix it yet.
My books are often comped to danmei novels because those are also gay fantasy romances. In fact, I set my ads up to target those readers, as I know they like hot men rubbing up on each other with a little sorcery thrown in.
However, there are some significant differences between typical danmei books and mine, which become huge stumbling blocks for some readers.
The prose is more challenging.
English-speaking danmei readers can expect clear-cut, simple prose because most of these novels have been translated from Chinese. I am a native English speaker who trained on Victorian literature, so my prose requires closer reading. Readers may get frustrated, which is totally fair.
I weave in the worldbuilding.
Danmei novels are notorious for throwing everything at you immediately. “Here’s the situation – better memorize it!” But I sprinkle stuff along the way in little hints. This is why some readers complain that there is “zero worldbuilding” because it wasn’t provided as an infodump. They’re not trained to look for worldbuilding in that way.
My magic system isn’t flashy.
Most fantasy novels have magic swords and dragons and fireballs and stuff. High Poetry isn’t like that because it’s based on literary analysis and symbolism. Stuff happens, but there aren’t huge explosions.
The politics aren’t obvious.
Danmei novels tend to give you the political situation up front rather than implying it. My books require readers to guess and piece things together, which is annoying for those who want a cheat sheet.
The characterization is subtler.
Eirenic Verses characters aren’t loud, melodramatic, or aggressive. Their characterization often comes in the negative space of what they don’t say. To readers who like dramatic fights, screaming and crying, they feel boring. But, idk, I’m an adult who has been to therapy, and I prefer characters solving problems like normal people.
There’s not a lot of sex.
And finally, we come to the fact that my books have, like, three explicit sex scenes across the entire series. Danmei readers like their smut. I don’t have that.
I struggle a lot to find comps when advertising because … I don’t find a lot of books like mine. There are some more well-known ones, but even they don’t fit quite right.
And I can’t read every single book I comp because then I’d have like five a year to add (given that I read a lot of books outside of the fantasy genre). This, of course, can give readers the wrong impression about what they’ll find in my books.
Which I apologize for, and will continue to work on, but I don’t have many options here.
Still, bad reviews give me some help in that regard (as I’ll discuss later), so I’m getting there.
Now, what you’re really asking: why the slowness? Okay, here we go.
So I throw them at you right away to see if you’re down with what I’m doing.
In fact, 9 Years Yearning has some of the slowest prose in the entire series – on purpose. It’s a very short book but the prose is extremely dense, the chapters are very long (because one chapter per year), and Uileac is thinking to himself a lot. And yes, there’s not a lot going on, which frustrates readers who want a nonstop barrage of magical fireball attacks.
Through this shorter entry, I set reader expectations, sort of like a tutorial. I’m telling you what kind of game we’re in, which has some of the following traits.
Authorial honesty.
I spoil the ending through the retrospective format. You can trust I’m not going to pull a switcheroo and randomly kill a character for no reason. There’s no “omg, it was all a dream!” or “actually the bad guy was the protagonist all along!” What you see is what you get.
Character-first plots.
Each book is based on one (or two) character’s experiences, seen entirely through their eyes. The plots don’t exist without the characters, so they remain front and center. They’re not passive observers.
Realistic fantasy.
My characters act like humans. They have the same annoying flaws and fears we do. Gravity works the same way. There’s magic, but no one can fly, instantly heal themselves, or shoot fireballs. Horses continue to exist after the protag jumps off them. People have to pee.
Things left unsaid.
Everything a character doesn’t say is just as important as what they do say. Nobody’s using therapy speak, and no one is a mindreader. Arguments make sense.
Plot based on pressure.
There aren’t sudden hairpin turns or random twists. Things ramp up as emotions escalate rather than being abruptly thrown out the window to start over again.
Quietly embedded details.
I am not going to stop and go “Okay, listen up, here’s what you need to know.” I don’t handhold readers or give a lecture.
Immersive worldbuilding.
You are seeing things through the character’s eyes, with their prejudices and blind spots. Sometimes they won’t explain things for you because they already know what these things are and have no reason to. Sometimes they don’t know what something is either.
Stake-dependent prose.
Now, the prose picks up as the stakes get higher because we need that energy. But if stakes are low, the prose slows down too. However fast the prose feels, that’s how high the pressure is. The two are interconnected.
Most importantly, I trust my readers. I let them figure things out on their own. I let them think and speculate and imagine. I don’t tell them everything because that’s no fun.
I trust readers to put the book down, too. As some do, with flavor.
Yes, some people will feel like their brain is leaking out of their ears. I don’t want them to suffer an aneurysm; they can DNF.
People who want something more like YA – low stakes, cutesy, fluffy, fast – are going to feel deceived and enraged. I’m sorry they felt tricked, but that’s not what we’re doing here.
Some people who want straightforward language will hate the odd metaphors, and they may assume I’m an idiot. Which is fine. Perhaps I am.
In short, they’re not my match. And that’s good. I’d rather someone bounce at the first book than get frustrated halfway through the series.
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The first books are slow so the next ones hit harder.
I mentioned in my post about tonal shifts in the Eirenic Verses that we don’t stay with the same tone the whole time. There were hints that the plot’s getting icky in the third book, Funeral of Hopes, because it focused on very personal and painful things.
Things start to really pick up with the fourth book, What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, when we finally see Sina from the inside. One can guess that the next book will be a collision course of the two countries, given that we had an unprecedented infiltration at the supposedly impregnable border. We also get a hint of more complex themes, namely interculturalism and politics.
But would you care so much what happens in the fifth book, Absent All Light, if you hadn’t been with Uileac, Orrinir, and Cerie for so long? If you hadn’t watched them grow up together, fall in love, face family challenges, and change as people?
No, I don’t think so. These would just be characters in a bad situation, not people you’ve watched come together only to potentially be blasted part. You’d be meeting them in media res, with no idea how hard they’ve worked to build a stable life.
It’s possible to read every book separately; there aren’t cliffhangers. However, the second half of the series doesn’t hurt so much if you weren’t deeply invested in these characters.
The ninth book is especially heartbreaking for Uileac, though I won’t spoil why. We see him lose almost everything he cares about and have to rebuild himself from the ground up. Some readers may even question if it would have been kinder to let him die.
Having been with him for eight books at that point, his narrative is agonizing. I’m already dreading it.
You couldn’t get that buy-in without the slow immersion in his story. We couldn’t revel in Cerie’s arc without seeing her as a scared little girl. None of the characters would come as far as they do without that backstory, which is why it was crucial that I wrote as much of it as I could.
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Every bad review brings me closer to my true audience.
I talked about this in my post about mean writers, so I won’t ramble too much. But each of those bad reviews is crucial data for the algorithm.
When someone doesn’t like my book and says so, then Goodreads and Amazon go, “Okay, a person with a similar reading history and preferences is not a good match for this series. Don’t recommend it to anyone like that.”
If someone does like my books, then readers with similar tastes may see a recommendation. Then I find more readers who like my things.
So yes, a bad review is a favor for me. Goodreads notes that my book is getting engagement (good or bad), and it also adjusts the algorithm to find new readers who want something like the Eirenic Verses.
Hate-reading is still reading. Amazon wants more people to read. Amazon pushes me more, with greater precision. And I get more sales.
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I’m okay with you not liking my slow books.
I’ve explained the reasoning behind my series choices, but that has no impact on whether you, personally, will like them.
Because you might not. And that’s fine.
I am not entitled to your positive feedback, your devotion, or your sales. You, the reader, owe me nothing except not pirating my books. Not even a review if you don’t want to leave one. If you didn’t like the book, you are well within your rights to say so; I encourage you to.
You should enjoy everything you read – and quit reading things you don’t.
Some readers want something quick and light. Others want something they can sink their teeth into. Some want simple prose, others want a lyrical flow. And some adore slow, methodical worldbuilding and character development while others would rather throw their tablet at the wall.
All those preferences are valid. There’s something out there for you that pushes all your buttons and makes you feel alive.
That thing may not be my books. They might be too slow, too boring, too strange, and too dense. So please, DNF without guilt. I’ll wait for the right reader to come along.
This article will ignore the common mistakes I’ve already explored elsewhere, like not having a professional cover or not using a beta reader. Rather, I’d like to dive deeper into smaller things that you may not have thought about and that are not frequently discussed in forums. Let’s go.
Unfortunately, this advice won’t help you if you have already published your title. This is more for those who haven’t published yet.
There are thousands upon thousands of titles in your genre. Many of them are very similar, often following in the footsteps of more established authors. Hence all the books called “A Noun of Noun and Noun” in fantasy land.
Your job, then, is to find something that is catchy and memorable but aligns with your genre and the overall tone of your book.
“Eirenic Verses” is a very unusual phrase that cannot be confused with anything else, so Google recognizes to provide only information on my series.
I even catch stray website visitors from people who just want to know what “eirenic” means. That is the whole reason I created my article on names in the Eirenic Verses: to capture those specific searches. I saw that a few people were hunting for that in my Google Site Kit keywords, so I formed the post around what people wanted to find.
And “eirenic” is a very old-timey word, so it fits well into the fantasy genre. It wouldn’t do well in any other niche.
A while ago, I came across someone who was coping hard about the fact that they had sold only 13 books – then revealed that each of their five books was only about 32,000 words (so about 125 pages) and was priced at $5.
Well, no wonder. This person was expecting people to pay tradpub prices for a novella from a completely unknown, self-published author.
Pretty much every time I see someone complaining about no sales, they also have a ridiculous price for their books. One person I saw had only sold two books in a month – and their debut novel was priced at $7.99. It had a self-made cover and wasn’t hosted on a major platform, automatically limiting its reach.
Look, I get it. You spent a lot of time on this book and want it to be taken seriously. You also likely spent a lot of money on the book and want to get your investment back.
But here’s the deal. Your readers don’t care how much money you spent to get a book in their hands (or on their e-readers). They are not obligated to recoup your losses for you.
In fact, you likely won’t recoup your losses at all. Publishing nowadays is a labor of love. Unless you’re ruthlessly writing to market, you are not going to become a millionaire.
I have sold over 1,200 books now. This is ten times what 90% of self-published authors sell in their whole lifetime, done in about 19 months.
How? I’m not some magical guru and I don’t spend a million dollars every month on marketing. It’s because my books are professional grade and cheap.
My first book is only 126 pages, so people are going to balk at even one dollar more because they assume that the rest of the series is that same length. Untrue, but unfortunately, that’s my fault for giving them that assumption. I have to eat the cost.
Readers only have one obligation to you: not to pirate your books. That’s it. They are not required to leave you a review, to talk about your books with other people, to help you make back the money you spent on your books. They do not care about you, don’t know you, aren’t thinking about how much you must have spent on this book when they purchase it.
As soon as your book is on the market, it is a product, and you have to stop thinking of it as your book baby. If that means pricing so low that it makes you feel a little sick, then that’s what has to be done. Sales volume, not individual purchases, is what will help you make it.
Every sale pushes you higher in the Amazon rankings, which means that you have a higher chance of getting noticed by someone searching in your niche. If you reach the top 50 in your categories, then you have a significantly higher likelihood of being noticed by others. And more notice begets more reviews, more sales, and so on.
You have to price low, even if it hurts, because that is what will get you more sales. I’m really sorry. I know how it feels.
Now, when my books are more well-known, I will likely raise the prices because I will have demonstrated that my book is worth that price. I already know it is, but I have to prove it to the market first before I can demand that sum.
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You don’t care about Search Engine Optimization.
I have spent a significant amount of time on my SEO, including paying for reviews (not on Amazon or other sales platforms, mind) and writing my blog. As such, Google recognizes “the Eirenic Verses,” and the Gemini AI overview will spit out a quick synopsis of my series with links to my Amazon profile and website.
This AI overview does more for me than if I just explained everything to every reader. It’s quite accurate because it’s drawing on each page that I have produced for my series. Additionally, the result is a little different every time the AI generates an answer. Things change depending on what I have written recently and whether anyone has mentioned my series anywhere else. But most of that comes almost directly from the FAQ I wrote (more on that in a minute).
Yes, I know that everyone hates AI and thinks it sucks and so on. I agree. But I can’t really help what Google shows people except by shaping it to include what I want.
This is why having a website is so, so important. You get to determine what shows up in the AI overview and top listings. Again, if you have a very unique series name, you are far more likely to get to the top of the results.
Note the “Annalise Reads” link there. That was a review I paid for. Given that Annalise has been around for quite a while, she has very strong SEO, so she almost always comes up for my books. I will likely pay for more reviews from her in the future.
Buying reviews isn’t cheating as long as you don’t buy reviews on Amazon or other sales platforms, which is cheating. Whatever is hosted somewhere else can help your SEO and won’t get you penalized.
Will some people think it’s scummy? Maybe. But most readers have no idea that the majority of book reviews on a private website are purchased. Nor do they care. Nor does Google care all that much as long as it is not excessive.
Yeah, I hate it too. SEO consumes most of my waking hours because that’s my day job. But it also plays a key role in whether you get noticed.
Writing a blurb is surprisingly hard. You want to explain the genre, themes, and tropes without coming across as too salesy. Additionally, you have to describe the plot without giving too much away.
Blurbs are honestly one of the most difficult parts of marketing. I’m so serious.
But it is important to use keywords that will draw readers in. Not only do these help you appear higher in search results, but they also serve as a shorthand for what your readers want.
I can’t tell you the appropriate keywords for your book because I don’t know what it is. However, there are plenty of good ways to find them. I mention some of those in my best resources for writers page and in my SEO article.
A significant portion of my readership didn’t come from Amazon searches. They in fact came from social media: particularly Reddit, Facebook, Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter (back when I used it).
I have found that Reddit is an excellent way to engage with readers without specifically selling them on my books. Instead, I contribute thoughtful insights to different writing subreddits, ensuring that my flair mentions my series name somehow.
My books aren’t linked anywhere because self-promotion is typically against the rules of the given subreddit. I also don’t link my website, as that is also self-promo, but I may pull a quote from an article I wrote and mention it comes from my website.
It helps that my username is weird (Topazadine, from back in my fanfic days) and I have something other than the Reddit alien avatar.
Commenters then ask me where they can buy my books, and then I tell them to Google “The Eirenic Verses.” And then my SEO-optimized overview shows up with book links and all that wonderful stuff, as mentioned above.
Choose your favorite platform that has high engagement and stick with it. Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to target every social media site, though you can use tools like Hootsuite to automate posting. I used the WordPress Jetpack integration to seamlessly funnel my blog posts to my Facebook page, then supplement it with some additional content once or twice a week.
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You aren’t producing extra content around your work.
A lot of writers balk at making free stuff. They don’t want to set up a site, pay for it, organize it, and continually publish on it.
“Nooo!” they decry. “I want to be paid for every single thing I ever write! Give me the money right now!”
I do understand your frustrations. It’s a lot of work to create two blog posts a week and write a newsletter every Sunday. I often feel like I’m shouting into the void because I haven’t built up a large following yet.
Still, I would not be a known entity on Google and other platforms if I didn’t produce such a huge volume of additional, freely available work that shouts out my name and series title.
Google sometimes notes me as a “public figure,” which makes me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. No! I am a weird lesbian from Cleveland. Go away.
Enough about the mortifying ordeal of being known. If you can’t afford a WordPress domain (though it is quite affordable tbh) you can instead create a dedicated Tumblr or other blog for your stuff.
I have found that one of the most important posts you can make is a Frequently Asked Questions. Google loves that shit and uses it in the AI overview almost exclusively. This is true for other SEO too and is the reason why nearly every post I make for clients includes a short FAQ.
That is because people are usually asking questions about a given topic, not just searching for a keyword. For example, they may go, “What is the Eirenic Verses about?” and bam, answer is already there for Google to draw from.
When using Tumblr or another platform, make sure that your blog is set to be indexable on search platforms or it won’t show up.
Okay, last part. It sounds mean and I’m sorry. But I do have to say it because this is one of the most common ways I see authors shooting themselves in the foot.
The biggest one is “No one is buying my books and it makes me sooo sad” or “No one is buying my books but I am being sooo brave about it.”
If you post that you are not making any sales, then you are basically roasting yourself and making everyone think your books suck.
Your sales are not publicly available to anyone. You do not need to tell people that no one is buying your book. This is a common problem that many, many authors have, particularly self-published and debut authors.
A lack of sales does not necessarily mean that you’re not good, just that the market is saturated and no one is making a lot of sales. There are simply too many books for people to buy.
But, when people hear you’re not selling anything, their immediate thought is that you are not very good at writing. Then they don’t want to buy either, and you’re perpetuating the cycle.
There are plenty of other ways you can ruin your own career by complaining. These are a few.
Excessively fighting with people on social media. I have been guilty of this plenty of times. Way more times than I should be. If you find yourself arguing too much, then make a private account that does not mention your books at all.
Complaining about bad reviews. People will wonder why you have bad reviews, and they are then prejudiced against you.
Saying you were fleeced by a publishing scam. Now everyone thinks you’re stupid. It’s fine to spread awareness. Just … anonymize it a bit. Suggest this happened to someone you know.
Mentioning your age if you are under 30ish. Firstly, if you are a minor, do not share this with anyone. Please, please, please. You have no idea what skeezy people are out there, and now they know how to groom you. But people are also going to assume that someone in their 20s isn’t ready to publish either. Because, well, they’re probably not.
Pouring out your life story. “Oh well I stopped writing for a long time because I had three kids and two jobs and now I’m just publishing my first book in my 40s” blah blah blah. Not interesting. Will not sell your books. Is it relevant to what you’re asking? Probably not.
Calling yourself an amateur after publishing. Pleeeease don’t. Everyone will now assume you are an amateur forever. That remains on the internet and is always going to be associated with you.
Asking dumb questions. For the love of god, do not ask “How do I plot this?” or “How does publishing work?” or “Do I have a good story idea?” or “How do I write good characters?” ad nauseum. Everyone is so sick of these questions. Google it. My blog has plenty of resources, too.
Trying to slyly mention your Kofi, Patreon, etc. Not only can this get you barred from platforms, but it’s annoying. If people want to know, they will ask. You don’t need to bring it up.
Bemoaning the state of publishing. We all know it’s bad. You don’t need to tell us.
Attacking other authors. Okay, I fall into this too, but only when I am calling out bad behavior or unhelpful mindsets. But saying a certain author is a hack, or lazy, or that a certain genre is stupid and overdone, makes you look like a big whiner. No one wants to read a book by a big whiner.
And oh my sweet loving Jesus, do not review bomb other authors from a private account. You will get found out. Everyone will hate you. Everything is ruined forever.
I’m not saying you have to over-sanitize your social media, or lie, or any of that. It’s perfectly fine to have private accounts where you do get pissy. Have a separate account for your flame wars or something. Many people do this, and no one bats an eye unless you are being truly evil.
So, what should be associated with your series on social media?
Constructive comments that help other authors.
Success posts when you reach certain milestones.
Useful advice and in-depth articles that demonstrate your expertise.
Additional lore about your book series.
Book reviews and recommendations.
Side stories and other free “sneak peek” content.
Fun anecdotes about your personal life or writing journey, phrased in a positive way.
Posts that share your unique voice and perspective.
Interviews, such as those on Authoriview or other free sites.
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As self-published authors, we are responsible for all our own marketing, which includes producing significant amounts of content that will link our name and book series on Google or other platforms.
The downside is that this takes a lot of time, practice, and patience. The upside is that most of the time, we are in total control of how we are presented to others, save reviews or other things we didn’t produce.
Everything we put into our series, whether that’s in the book or online, will contribute to visibility and, hopefully, sales. You can do this; nothing is impossible. But remember that it’s a long, hard road, and you cannot expect immediate success.
Have a growth mindset and remain optimistic. This, more than anything, will help you win.
You’re probably tired of me saying this, but yes: self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. I’m in the early stages of my marathon still, but I’m looking forward and gathering research that I’d like to share with you. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
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Before you can become successful, you must mentally transform your passion project into a product.
In addition to being a marathon, self-publishing is also a business. You want to make money from your books, and therefore, you are running a business.
This means once the book is for sale, you don’t think about it like your baby anymore. It becomes something that you aggressively market, regardless of how that marketing lands, and stop obsessing over so that you can write more books.
I love my books and work really hard on them, but once they’re published, they are products. I am not sitting here pondering them anymore. I’m onto the next book in the series. I don’t reread them for hours or worry about reviews other than for visibility.
That is likely because I have strong intrinsic motivation, so once my favorite part (writing) is over, I’ve wrung out all the dopamine I can get from the book and I’m okay with it becoming a product.
Now, once we’ve done the baby-to-product magic trick, we can look at the rest of the equation.
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Leveraging the Flywheel Effect will benefit you more than waiting for your lucky break.
In business (including self-publishing, which is a business), there is a concept called the Flywheel Effect. Essentially, this means that every small push of the wheel compounds until the machine clicks into action and starts spinning like crazy.
You can’t really say the exact motion that caused that massive increase because you were spinning it for so long; they all worked together until their collective momentum tipped the scales.
The problem is that people who aren’t product-oriented will sit around waiting for their lucky break. They want someone to jump in and give that flywheel a god-killing spin. In many cases, they try to achieve this through bombing out with advertisements, spamming boards to advertise their book, and daydreaming a lot about what their book will look like as a movie.
And they don’t succeed, because they aren’t thinking of momentum. I understand why.
Spinning the indie flywheel is fucking boring. It’s tedious. It’s exhausting. Day after day, page after page. Of course someone would want to bypass that in one fell swoop; it would be easy. They’d sit back and let someone else do everything.
But it’s not realistic.
There are no free lunches in publishing. If you want the results, you’ve got to put in the work. You’re doing this all by yourself. No movie exec is trawling Amazon pages looking for a new idea. No publisher is lying in bed praying to connect with you.
Everything comes down to you. Your talent, your passion, your dedication, your resilience. And, yes, in the later stages, your money. We’ll get back to that in a bit.
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“Big break” thinking makes you more vulnerable to scams.
I’ve discussed self-publishing scams in detail before, so I will quickly review this part. Essentially, anyone offering you instant success, like tons of reviews or comprehensive self-publishing support, is likely scamming you. They are preying on your dreams of stardom to line their pockets.
Remembering that you have to do this all by yourself will keep your wallet shut and your integrity intact. You have to spin the flywheel – no one else can do it for you.
I’m constantly being bombarded with scams, particularly book club scams. These are a peculiar scam unique to self-publishing, when some random person emails you out of the blue promising to get you 20 or 50 reviews for a “small tip” to each reader. Which, of course, means like $500 bucks for 20 reviews. Insane numbers.
But because I know I have to do all the work myself, I go, “nope, not interested.” And thus I am not out thousands of wasted dollars.
See, the problem with this all-or-nothing mindset is that it demotivates you. When you’re focused on that huge, enormous goal, all the little wins – the excited reviews, the seven-day sales streak, the ten hits on your website – don’t seem to matter. You disregard them, then go, “Why does no one like my book?”
But those little wins are exactly what spins the flywheel.
One sale is an opportunity to convert others through word-of-mouth. Your readers aren’t passive participants; they talk about things they like with other readers who share their taste. That recommendation begets more sales, and more sales, and so on.
One website hit may lead to a newsletter subscription. If you have a good newsletter or blog posts (I think I do), then that reader may suggest others sign up too, or they may reference something you said and credit you.
One glance at your socials may result in a follow, and thus more opportunities to sell. If you have a fun, relaxed social media strategy, where you talk to your followers like people, then they start to look forward to seeing you pop up on their dashboard. They share what you post. They talk about you.
It’s hard work and can often feel like you’re shouting into the void. But remember: every action is another spin. Every sale, every post, every review. The more you spin, the closer you get to your flywheel moment. It all adds up, even when it seems like nothing is happening.
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To get the flywheel in motion, you must write multiple books.
“Big break” indie authors often get caught in a fatal trap. They spend years upon years writing one singular book, then publish it, assuming they’ll reach worldwide acclaim if they keep marketing. Then they get very few sales and are very sad and never try again.
One-off books by unknown authors do not often sell well, and there’s a few reasons for this.
The algorithm does not know how to categorize you. Each reader is a data point for Amazon and other platforms. If a reader likes your book and gives it five stars, then the algorithm analyzes their other reviews to determine what kind of reader will like your books. The more reviews and books you have available, the deeper understanding the algorithm can develop, and the more precise the targeting. This means your ad conversion rates will go up: you’re getting more readers for cheaper.
Your readthrough rates drop your advertising costs. In general, indie authors get about a 30-50% readthrough rate from the first book to the second. If the reader likes your second book, they are likely to stick with you through the rest of the series. This means that for every ten people who buy your first book, you’ll get three to five more sales of your second book. The more books you have available, the more likely that you’ll get additional sales by simply advertising your first one.
More available content improves your SEO. This is why having a website is so important. Every keyword you use trains Google and other search engines to associate certain words with your brand. The more content, the more keywords, the more hits, and the more potential sales. You simply can’t build enough content around one book to start ranking.
You build name recognition. If a reader only gets one chance to engage with you, they’re not going to remember your name. This means they may recommend you once, right after reading your book, and then forget about you. More books means you’ll be stickier in a reader’s mind, and they will bring you up more often.
You’ll develop brand loyalty. You need to give readers as many chances to engage with you as possible (which is why having a website is key). A reader who really likes you will subscribe to your website, follow you on other platforms, and share posts. When they’re alerted to a new product, they’ll hop on it – and hopefully, tell other people too. Then you start making faster sales on each new book, which boosts its rank and begets more sales.
So really, the best thing you can do to make sales on your first book is to make a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth book. Or eleven books. Or a billion books. I dunno, as many as you can, at the highest level of quality you can.
I have heard that the flywheel starts to really kick in around the 6-8 book mark, though I can’t confirm that personally. I’ve noticed a lot more activity now that I have five books available; hopefully, Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026) will build even more momentum.
But it could also be because now that I have multiple books available, I’ve started advertising more aggressively. I know I’ll get multiple sales per ad click, even if it’s only one additional sale per five sales.
As I have said before, I am significantly in the red due to expensive marketing endeavors. This is normal for any business within the first five years. It doesn’t mean I’m a failure. You’ve got to spend money before you can make money, but you have to do it strategically.
I focus on the platforms I like, and, most importantly – I price really low. Reducing the barrier to entry means more sales, even if it means I’m not recouping my losses as quickly as I’d like. I don’t have the name recognition to command tradpub pricing yet, and I understand that. Once I’m more established, I can price higher because readers can trust I know what I’m doing, and they’ll be more willing to pay that premium.
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If you want one-off books, connect them with themes and keywords.
Sometimes, your book doesn’t need a sequel. That’s fine. Don’t write one just because you think you have to; write one if you feel you have more of a story to tell.
But here’s a highly underutilized tactic, one that launched Terry Pratchett to international stardom: interconnected standalone novels.
The entire Discworld series is composed of self-contained stories, all set in the same world. I love Discworld partly because you can read the books in any order and still enjoy each one, even if you have no context.
This is a tactic I intend to embrace after the Eirenic Verses is complete; I already have some great ideas for stories set in the other countries of Eirenen. I don’t know what the series name will be, but it’ll be exciting.
If you complete your first self-contained novel, consider where else you could explore in your world, then group them together in a non-sequential series (Amazon lets you not display reading order). Ensure you use similar keywords for each book so that they build upon each other.
Now, let’s return to the actual writing. I’m ending here because, well, I want you to get back to work! You can’t spin the flywheel if you’re not making something to spin with.
Overall, the best advice I can give you for self-publishing is this: build a vision. Focus on that vision rather than the day-to-day disappointments. Get excited about your small victories while using the setbacks as data points.
Your vision could be a sprawling multi-part series, as mine is, or it could be creating interesting worlds. You could have short stories, character sketches, novellas, all with similar themes.
Maybe you develop a hyperspecific niche that draws attention due to its novelty. Chuck Tingle is famous for his “tinglers,” all of which have similar themes but focus on different characters. Say what you want about his writing, but he’s developed a vision and stuck to it regardless of ridicule.
Each writer has certain priorities, whether they realize it or not. Mine is technically precise, poetic prose and deep character development. Others focus on wordplay, satire, or philosophical themes.
Some people want to write popcorn thrillers, freaky smut, shocking horror, cozy romances, absurdist literature. All of these bring great contentment to the right writer – and exceptional enjoyment to the right readers.
Sticking to what brought you to writing in the first place will bring results. They may not be exactly what you wanted, and it might not recoup your losses, but it will produce even modest returns.
In self-publishing, we have immense freedom to choose our themes, find our audience, and create work we love, without looming interference from marketing teams and ruthless editors. Why would we squander that by ignoring what makes our heart sing?
Readers feel passion. They sense your enthusiasm and authenticity. In a market choked by AI, that energy is invaluable.
Keep your nose to the grindstone; or, rather, the flywheel. Know that the only way to succeed at anything – but especially self-publishing – is to keep going.
It doesn’t matter if your first book bombs; there’s no expiration date on literature. Spinning that wheel is far more productive than wringing your hands.
I do not have the biggest following ever yet, but I do have some devoted fans a little over a year and a half after releasing my first book. One of the best things anyone ever told me is that I am their favorite author; this reader came from my Touken Ranbu fanfic days but has now jumped over to my original fiction, which is great.
This is an attainable goal for any good writer. I’m not uniquely charismatic; in fact, I’ve been a friendless loser for a significant portion of my life. The reason I’ve attracted and retained these fans comes down to mindset moreso than talent or magnetism.
Here, I’ll break down some factors I’ve noted make you more likely to achieve a loyal readership. This isn’t comprehensive, as I’m not omniscient, but I do hope it will get you noticed.
No one likes to be talked down to unless they have a humiliation fetish. This makes your books feel condescending; plus, it makes others view you as less approachable, which is exactly what you don’t want as an author.
You do not need to spell out everything in nauseating detail, nor do you need to walk your readers through the entire backstory of the world. It’s okay to leave things a bit vague.
Additionally, try to avoid using too many big words. This isn’t about dumbing things down, but building common ground with your readers. Having to look up a word every single page is frustrating, and it’s going to turn people off. When you do use unique words, couch them in plenty of context clues. People will get what you mean.
I know I always harp on the fact that you need a website, but it truly is key. This becomes a public repository of your material, improves SEO, and ensures readers always know how to find you.
And stay consistent with your website, or it won’t rank well. Create a content schedule and stick with it. I recommend that you build up your content before launching and advertising your website so that readers aren’t confronted with a blank page, and they can expect regular posts. You can queue things months or years in advance on WordPress, so have at least a few months of content ready first.
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Infuse your social media posts with your voice.
When I was advertising 9 Years Yearning, I got slammed by a few people for using the typical trope formatting. This has been totally overdone, and readers hate it by now.
What has worked for me, though, is being deranged.
This picture, released before What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, got good engagement. Why? Because it’s weird. Why is it this cutesy bright pink when the cover is clearly dark and forboding? Why is the book going to ruin my life? The template is clearly a professional one from Canva but really doesn’t match the tone of the book. That’s interesting to readers. They want to know more.
Another one that people liked celebrated my high ratings for 9 Years Yearning. It has very strong Tumblr vibes and is quite silly; it doesn’t read like a marketing tool, but something personal and fond. If I’m so invested in these characters, others will want to get invested to and join the ranks of the fans.
Authenticity, not sterile corporate advertising, is a selfpub author’s secret weapon. It reminds readers that a real person wrote this: someone who really loves what they’re doing and wants to share it.
So get weird about your work. My advertising is a bit rough around the edges, obviously designed by me, and that’s great.
While readers don’t want to think about you when they’re reading, they do like knowing the person behind the story when they’re done with the book. When they like you as a person, they’ll be more willing to engage with your work and come back for more.
While not all readers are particularly curious about what goes into making a book, fellow writers are. Always remember that people care more about what you can provide them, not what they can provide you.
Plus, hearing more about what’s involved in writing a book helps demystify the process and reminds readers that what they’re enjoying didn’t drop whole-cloth from the heavens; it was created over many hours, all designed with love for them.
You will gain more respect if you are honest about what you’re doing rather than implying your books are divorced from hard work.
When a book wraps up every thread, readers can’t get invested. They put the book down and forget because there’s nothing to process once the story ends.
The most interesting books have hints of lore, of a world beyond the borders of the story. This is the reason why The Lord of the Rings is such an enduring piece of literature; Tolkien lets us know there’s a lot more to explore in Middle Earth that he simply didn’t have time to offer us.
We see flashes of unique cultures, hear whispered tales of ancient times, and wonder about how everything came to be. Whole conventions are dedicated to analyzing every word and pondering what was left out of the books.
Don’t hesitate to leave some things unspoken. This doesn’t make you a lazy writer but a smart one, who is engaging readers in conversation and inviting them to think harder about what you did provide.
In the Eirenic Verses, I tell readers about mysterious lands far beyond Sina and Breme. What Is Cannot Be Unwritten mentions other cultures, like the drug-addled followers of Haiv and the detestable Down Dalry with its carnivorous sheep. Readers are left to wonder what’s going on in these places and why they’re important.
In fact, several people have asked me what the hell is up with the Cow Republic. Is it called that because it’s overrun with hyperintelligent cow people? Do they have a cud-chomping moo god? Is it a beef-based economy? Do they ride bovines into battle? All of the above?!
I know what I think the answer is, but I’m not sharing. That’s left up to you.
Not only does this give readers something to chew on, but it also allows me to write other books set in Eirenen. I several ideas for stories that explore far-off lands like Caelum, the Lake Empire, and Truth or Consequences, so I have plenty of material to play with after the Eirenic Verses is complete.
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Offer casual snapshots of your personal life on social media.
My Instagram for the Eirenic Verses is also my personal one, and I don’t intend to change this. While some may think this is unusual, I find it perfectly normal.
Firstly, I’m just too lazy to run a professional Instagram and a personal one. My writing blog is plenty hard work as it is; I would constantly forget to switch accounts, meaning that my Instagram would get low engagement because there’s not enough going on.
The second reason goes back to what I said before. Readers don’t care about you when they’re reading because they’re immersed in your world. But after the book is done, they may want to follow you so they can be alerted to new books. This is the perfect time to build rapport by demonstrating you’re a normal person.
Not every reader will bother, of course. I personally don’t follow a lot of my favorite authors, and that’s fine; I just want to know when I can purchase their new material. If I like them, I’ll follow them on Amazon and be done with it.
But not every reader is me, and I respect that. Some do want to engage with authors outside of the books and get to know them. Not to the extent of an unhealthy parasocial relationship, but just to consider what inspires them and keep abreast of their offerings.
Sharing light and upbeat personal updates maintains this connection with readers. They get to see you as a three-dimensional person whose life extends beyond the pages: someone they might like to have as a friend.
However, it’s key that you keep these things light. I share pictures of rock climbing and horseback riding; I post dumb memes in my stories. It’s clear that I’m a pretty friendly and outgoing person outside of my books, which makes me seem more approachable. As such, readers will want to support me because I don’t seem like some unreachable demigod.
Like anyone else, readers have Pavlovian reactions that do best with consistent intervals. I’m not saying that readers salivate when they think of your books, but if you publish around the same time every year, they’ll begin to expect it, even if subconsciously.
I publish two books a year, always on the same two dates: June 23 and November 7th. These are personally significant dates to me, and they will not change for the rest of my writing career. I begin my marketing and review campaigns around the same time each year, even if the dates don’t perfectly align.
Even though I haven’t been following this exact schedule for very long, I have noticed that it helps a lot. When I published Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix out of nowhere in April last year, no one knew to look for it because they weren’t primed to. As such, it’s gotten fewer sales, even though it’s cheaper.
The first few weeks after publishing are the most essential times for the algorithm. If your book doesn’t get engagement right away, it’s likely to languish unless you put some serious firepower (and money) into your advertising.
Because selfpub authors are closer to readers, we also have more chances to engage with them. Each time we do so, we should be showing appreciation that they chose our books over someone else’s.
Readers owe you nothing. They don’t owe you a purchase or review. They’re not here to help you recoup your financial losses, and they have no obligation to provide feedback or keep reading.
You, on the other hand, owe them everything. If they’re spending their hard-earned money on you work, you need to give them an excellent product that matches their expectations.
Providing a good experience includes lower prices to improve sales. This does suck, and I get it. You feel like you’re devaluing yourself. But remember that as a selfpub author, readers are not guaranteed quality. Pricing low reduces barriers to purchase and demonstrates that you respect their budget.
Additionally, a simple thank-you means a lot to readers. If you market yourself in person, give readers something for free, even if it’s just a pretty bookmark.
I show my gratitude by writing a bunch of free articles for everyone to enjoy. I’m offering people something they can benefit from, which makes them more willing to give me something in return: their sales.
Approaching your marketing and engagement with the assumption that readers will give you nothing back ensures you’re not getting entitled, which really turns people off.
Success begets more success. When you show you’ve achieved something, people assume you must be good at what you’re doing; otherwise, why are others paying attention?
If you break milestones, like selling 250 books, make sure to tell people. Contextualize it for them; most casual readers don’t realize how few units that selfpub authors sell, so they need to understand why this is a big achievement.
Now, I want to be clear that you should never lie about your success. While your sales numbers aren’t public, people will get suspicious if you’re not high in rankings but bragging about selling millions of books.
Be honest about how you’re doing, even if it’s not as good as what someone might expect. This infuses your posts with humility and assures them that you’re honest. No one likes a liar.
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Growing a following is damn hard work, and it doesn’t spring up overnight. You need to stay consistent, visible, and authentic if you want people to notice.
Don’t get discouraged if it’s been months or even years with little engagement. This is normal. Publishing is one of the most saturated fields on the planet, so you will have to fight for attention. But you can do it, as long as you’re persistent. You’ll find the work is well worth the reward.
The one thing I cherish most in life is authenticity. People can say a lot of things about me, but one thing they can never accuse me of is being insincere.
However, authenticity is not just about being yourself. It’s also about being honest with yourself and with others. And sometimes, it means admitting you have ugly feelings that make you look like a spoiled brat.
This is a very personal post. Still, I imagine that it will resonate with many self-published writers, so here goes.
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I am very unlikely to ever make a profit from my books.
Now, I suppose my title was a bit misleading for this part. I don’t think my books are mediocre; in fact, I think they are great. I wouldn’t have published them if I thought they sucked.
But the numbers are stacked against me. I shared in my post about staying motivated as a self-published author how dire the numbers are for us. The average self-published book sells less than 250 copies in its lifetime. 90% of self-published ebooks never sell more than 100 copies.
9 Years Yearning smashed those statistics in its first year, though the rest of the series hasn’t yet achieved that status. But I’m still in the red for my books because I’ve spent so much on them and they are priced so low.
My books are priced low because I want more people to read them, regardless of their financial means. And because I know, statistics wise, I am probably never going to claw back my losses.
On average, a self-published author makes $1,000 a year from their work. However, remember that averages are dragged up by the high earners on one end, which make it appear as if every author is making at least $1,000.
The reality is that the vast, vast majority of self-published authors are making nothing from their books, which is obscured by those making millions from their work. After all, if most of us were making good money, wouldn’t the averages be much higher when factoring in the extreme aberrations?
So, I can acknowledge the statistics. I am very unlikely to retire on a private island from my work, or even get in the black. Part of that is the market and part of it is because my work isn’t that “it,” no matter its quality.
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My books are too weird for mass commercial success.
I don’t mean weird in a kooky Terry Pratchett way, or absurdist in a James Joyce way. My books don’t have a lot of made-up words, they don’t have a sarcastic narrative voice, and they align pretty well with what people expect from a plot.
But nevertheless, they are weird.
There is a massive tonal shift that occurs through the series. 9 Years Yearning, the first book, is a short, coming-of-age love story that really does not have any high stakes at all. It’s fluffy. It’s soft.
I’m proud of it, but I could not sustain those stakes over 9 more books. Simply put, that’s boring to me. And that’s why the first book squeaks in at under 34,000 words. I couldn’t torture myself with much more.
So things get darker and grander starting with the fourth book, What Is Cannot Be Unwritten. By then, we’ve thrown away the cute stuff and are deep in the trenches.
This is not a very common way to orient a book series. Most of the time, the tone you get at the beginning of the series is what you get through the rest of it. Whatever the level of intensity is, it stays there.
People who liked 9 Years Yearning may not necessarily like the grimdark feeling of the next books. Indeed, a few people dropped off as soon as things got uncomfy in Funeral of Hopes. And those who like more grimdark things may pick up the first book, go, “oh, way too fluffy,” and give up before getting their reward.
I wrote this way for my own personal satisfaction and because that’s the kind of tonal shifts I did in my fanfic days. I had built up a small fandom of my own and people read all my stories no matter the premise. So I got used to veering around like that, not really considering that other people aren’t as open-minded as me.
There’s a lot more that make my book series plain weird without being absurdist or quirky. They’re pretty much designed to limit their own audience because of the tone, the magic system, the themes, the … everything.
I am pleased with my books, but I do wish I could somehow force people to be more of literary omnivores as I am. Alas, I can’t, because not everyone in the world is me. So that’s just what it is.
Frankly, I’m weird in pretty much every other way in my life, too. I don’t mean “rawr, quirky;” I’m just weird.
Not in the fun way. In the “what the fuck is wrong with you” way. Hell, I have permanent tics from antipsychotics that I was on years ago. My nervous system was permanently damaged; sometimes I glitch in real life for no reason.
Even worse, I have a weird intonation that people have described as “gay supervillain.” All of these and more make me sort of creepy.
So I’m not sure why I expect that it wouldn’t bleed into my writing, nor that the type of subtle rejection I receive in daily life wouldn’t transfer to my writing career.
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People do not congratulate writers on their successes, which makes it seem less special.
Graduating college, getting married, buying a house, or having a baby are all wonderful, important things. They can bring a lot of fulfillment, contentment, and self-actualization, even though they may be challenging at times.
But the Quandrangle of Adult Milestones is (please don’t kill me) … unremarkable.
The overwhelming majority of adults go to college, get married, buy a house, and have babies. These are the Life Script that is expected of everyone (at least in America), and people look down on you if you don’t do those things.
On the other hand, writing a book is an extremely challenging endeavor. A statistic I found stated that 80% of adults want to write a book, but 97% of people who try will not finish the draft. That is a massive failure rate, making those who stick with it much more precious.
So why do standard achievements get so much more attention than publishing a book?
The reason is that common experiences create common ground. When someone sees a newlywed or expecting parent, they feel as if that person has “joined the club.” Humans are social animals, so they like when they share something in common with someone else.
Other people cannot relate to rare, unusual achievements. They don’t have a shared basis for what that really means, what sacrifices went into the process, and how it feels to achieve that. And, as such, they ignore it because it doesn’t fit into their paradigm.
There’s also the fact that congratulating someone on writing a book also creates a sort of commitment for the congratulator. Now they feel compelled to actually read the damn thing, which may not be at all in their wheelhouse. (And may be bad, if it is self-published.)
Saying “aww your baby is cute” or “congratulations on getting married!” doesn’t require anything of the person giving the praise. And people don’t like to do things they don’t have to because they’ve got their own stuff going on.
Also … jealousy. That’s a thing too. Former acquaintances would snipe, “Wow, must be nice to have all that free time and money. Some of us are actual adults.” Then they’d turn around and hate-watch all my posts.
So I cut them out of my life. Go waste your precious free time bugging someone else.
Anyway, I can understand why people don’t celebrate with me – but it doesn’t make it not hurt. I do get a bit resentful about spending months on something, only for friends to lavish praise on other acquaintances for more standard achievements.
I know I’m not entitled to congratulations; no one is. Knowing something doesn’t change a person’s feelings. It’s okay to admit something upsets you, even when “logically” it shouldn’t.
Two things can exist simultaneously and be equally true. Refusing to acknowledge that is black-and-white thinking, which we should avoid as mature adults.
Again, the lack of attention is something that, frankly, I need to get the fuck over and accept. Ultimately I write for myself; otherwise, the Eirenic Verses wouldn’t be as odd as it is.
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Striving to achieve immortality through literature is just as pointless as striving to achieve it through reproduction.
It is impossible for everyone to be outstanding, remarkable, memorable, and immortal. Then no one would be remembered anyway because there are too many people to remember.
This goes for everyone, whether you decide to extend your bloodline or not. Though people insist that having children is a form of immortality, almost everyone is forgotten within three generations. You share over 99% of your DNA with everyone else on the planet; your genes aren’t special.
No one remembers us, not even our descendants. That’s doubly so for me, given that I won’t have any descendants except for my books.
And though writers like to imagine that we will be like William Shakespeare, debated for generations and beloved by English Lit students the world over … we’re probably not going to be. This is especially true in a world where anyone, talented or not, can force everyone to read their thoughts.
I understand that people have a strong fear of mortality. It’s one of the most powerful drives we have. Thus, we want to imagine that we will be remembered for centuries; that we will be discussed fondly over dinner tables, everyone cherishing our legends.
But maybe that’s keeping us from appreciating what we have right now. Obsessing over what will be when we’re not being anything anymore is filling us with unnecessary, uncontrollable anxiety.
My parents didn’t really have any expectations for me except not becoming a mass murderer. I can’t remember them pushing me to achieve anything; everyone was too busy trying to survive.
Even my writing talent, obvious since I was very young, wasn’t twisted into some grand prophecy. I became an overachiever because I wanted someone to notice me.
Surprise, surprise – they didn’t anyway.
When I declared my undergrad major as biology, only one singular person cautioned me against it: a fellow student in my high school, who pointed out that I’d probably be happier doing English Lit.
She was right, and I changed my major after only one semester. No one batted an eye. I don’t remember if I even told anyone or what their response was.
So no one demanded I become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or whatever. And frankly? I now see that was a great thing.
I’ve met so many people who stagger around, burdened with their parents’ desires and hopes. They, and thousands like them, were shoved into careers they didn’t really want, and these fields became supersaturated until no one could get a job.
There are millions of dissatisfied doctors out there, many of whom promptly got the hell out of the profession after Covid. Lawyers are so commonplace that they’re drowning in their student loans because jobs are scarce. Computer scientists are being obliterated by AI.
I never had that dogma shoved down my throat. No one ever wanted anything from me, so I felt free to do whatever I wanted as long as I wasn’t hiding bodies in my basement. I wasn’t even encouraged to have children or get married, neither of which I want.
In reality, low expectations bring joy. Free of pressure to perform, I have gotten to know myself on such a deep level that I don’t feel the need to prove anything.
It’s okay if my books bomb, because I enjoyed writing them, and that is the true satisfaction. It’s okay if I never get on a best seller list because, well, no one thought I would.
And, yes, it’s okay if no one ever says “congrats” to me. I didn’t expect them to. It’d be nice if they did, and I don’t like the lack of acknowledgment, but it’s a minor annoyance. I get over my resentment as soon as I have a tasty blank draft on my screen again.
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Mediocrity doesn’t mean much. All that really matters is doing my best and showing my love.
Like everyone else, I do get nervous about what’s ahead. Am I going to be homeless in my old age, with no one to care for me? What if I get dementia and die alone?
Will it even matter with the state of the world? Will society even exist by the time I get old?
Furthermore, what if I don’t get old? A meteorite could smash me flat tomorrow. I could die in a flood, or a wildfire, or a mass shooting, or of some rare disease.
Eight years ago, I got a reality check about these anxieties: I was drugged and raped by a stranger after giving him a ride home, which formed the basis for my chapbook The Lucretia Cycle.
There was a very real possibility that he would kill me. My one saving grace was calling my mother and telling her exactly where I was.
I didn’t realize that salvation until much later. In the moment, I was sure I would die.
Lying there, looking up at the stars on a cold November night, I realized I was okay with the life I had lived.
Everyone I love knows that I love them; I tell them often, verbally and through my actions. I’ve done my best to give back, such as by working with refugees and tutoring students. I’ve produced things I am proud of, that give others joy. Each week, I spend hours writing articles to help other writers achieve their dreams: all free, no purchase required.
I take the time to snuggle my dogs, share funny memes with my brother, listen to my friends when they’re upset. My loved ones mean the world to me, and I ensure they know this.
So I will die at peace. I could take my last breath surrounded by total strangers, merely hoping they would give me the kindness of holding my hand.
Now, if I were in that same situation as I was eight years ago, the only thing I’d be upset about was not finishing my book series.
That, more than anything else, matters to me. I don’t care about fame, fortune, immortality. Mediocrity is not a curse.
I only care about being a good person. That’s a splendid way to live.
