The Depressing Naivety Of A First Time Self-published Author

 Naive about writing

When I decided to write my book, I thought it would be easy. I know I have talked about it here in the past. When I started, I was naïve about the difficulty involved in writing a book. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKM1CCFL) The first two years of my retirement involved learning how to write understandably and how to develop a plot suitable for a full-length novel. Then learning about editing, proofreading, and all the technical work required to make the writing worth reading. The Only Kind of Writing Is Rewriting

Naive about the time required

During this process, I assumed that once I wrote the book, the rest would be easy. However, during my research, I discovered it could take a year or more to find a literary agent, and then another two years to complete the publishing process. Since I am over 70 years old, I decided self-publishing was the best route. There was a lot of information about marketing your book and using your author platform. But I have a tiny platform and marketing is difficult. Long Journey’s End – Moving from Writer to Author

Naive about book sales

I was naïve about how everything worked. I thought if my book was good, my friends and family would read it, other people would find it on Amazon, and I would sell books. The initial feedback I received from my editors, beta readers, and the reviews of the early readers encouraged me. To date, only 40 people have purchased the book and during the free-book promotion I ran on Amazon at the end of February, only 14 more people downloaded the e-book. Pretty underwhelming sales, though I didn’t expect to be an N. Y. Times best-selling author, but I hoped to recover the costs involved in producing the book. Buy Now – Authors Need Encouragement

Naive about marketing

Again, I was naïve. Since the end of last year, I have tried various approaches to marketing the book. I did a price promotion on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/) in December which resulted in zero sales. In January, I paid someone on Fiverr (https://www.fiverr.com/) to post my book on various book blog sites. I can only attribute one sale to the effort. I am currently using eBook Fairs (Online Book Fairs Hosted By Authors | eBookFairs) to expand my audience, but it is too early to tell if it has had any effect on sales. Then there was the free book promotion which ran for two days on Feb.28 & 29. The 14 books downloaded make it the most effective marketing effort to date, but giving away books for free doesn’t cover any costs.

 The lesson from all of this is that even if I have a well-written and interesting book, an attractive cover, and a reasonable blurb people will not buy the book if they don’t know it exists. It is naïve of me to think by some sort of osmosis people will find it and buy it. I must be patient and satisfied with the major accomplishment of completing and publishing my first novel.

Status of my new book

I have gotten about three-quarters of the way through the re-write of my new book, tentatively titled Portal to Almirosia. It is a portal fantasy where the protagonist is transported to a new world and must try to get back home. There is a lot of action and adventure and it deals with issues of fidelity, acceptance of new species, and slavery.

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