It’s the first
Wednesday of the month, time for
Hi, my name is Nancy
and I am an addict…
I never wrote my novel with publishing in mind. It was simply a lark, something I wanted to
accomplish. Once I got into it, though,
I found I loved it. Keep in mind, I knew
nothing about writing fiction, but I did have a good education and was an avid
reader.
I was fortunate enough to have all the critical plot points,
so once I was finished and thought,
“Hey, I might have something here,” all I needed to do was research what it
takes to get published. Trouble was,
there was a lot on that list. But I did it.
I jumped through most of the hoops.
I found querying to be an especially brutal one,
demoralizing, really. But I made it
through, not the wholly traditional way—I bypassed the agent—yet I still
managed to snag a book deal. I thought,
after edits are done, I’ll have all the hard parts behind me. Yeah, not so much.
I always thought publishing would bring me this huge sense
of accomplishment, that I’d be nothing but happy, happy, happy. But then I became obsessed. Addicted.
It’s a daily struggle really.
They don’t tell you that once you’re published it’s all about selling. But I didn’t know how to do that. Marketing is not in my tool belt. I’ve
had to learn as I go, and I’ve learned I suck.
But still, I make progress, even though it is a struggle.
To gauge that war, I check my rankings on Amazon, constantly,
both US and UK . I hop on Goodreads to see how many people
have added my book to their TBR list, how many new ratings, new reviews. Same with Amazon. I’m always worrying about where the next
review will come from, will it suck, will it be amazing? Will it spike my sales?
So, as you can imagine, each day brings either a huge high
of happiness or a face-planting low of failure.
One day, I’m up, the next, I’m down.
Some days, it’s up and down and up and down all within a few hours. Oh cool, a great 5-star review on Amazon,
YAY! Let’s watch my book climb up
Amazon’s Top-Rated in Romantic Suspense list, or Mysteries and Suspense, where
it can really be seen. Happy dance
time! Then I watch as my ranking gets
higher and higher, which, of course, means no one has bought a copy that
day. When it goes above a certain
threshold, I practically have a coronary.
It’s driving me CRAZY!!!
I feel like an addict who craves the bottle or the
needle or the pipe. The information on Amazon
and Goodreads is my drug. I have to
know. I have to know! Now, now, now!
Well, I’ve reached my breaking point, I think. I can’t do it any more. I’ve had a lot of highs in the last
week. One of them was that my fans
expect another book. My readers message,
email, text, and Facebook me, telling me this, yet I sit on my ass and obsess
over numbers and rankings, and I’m getting nothing done. I’ve been told, it’s easier to sell if you
have multiple titles. Well, that’s what
I want to focus on, giving my readers another roller coaster to ride.
So I’m disconnecting, pulling back from the Internet. Not completely. But a lot.
I’ll still try to post to my blog on Mondays, but only if I have something
important to say. I won’t be around as
much, to chat and comment, but I’ll be lurking.
I don’t want what I’ve been experiencing to be what publishing is all
about for me. I want that feeling I had
way back in the beginning, when I sat at my desk, writing my book, living with
my characters, creating a brand new world.
My name is Nancy ,
and I am a writer. So watch me write.
