On two (and a half) years of self-publishing
I released the second book in my dystopian series The Survivor Covenant on the summer solstice. I’m not pagan-witchy, but I wanted an auspicious and significant date, and the solstice was the nearest to hand.
By indie standards, this is very, very slow, and readers will have long forgotten about me. But I’m not chasing the algorithm or ‘whale readers’ who burn through 20-book series like lithium battery fires.
So, what was my experience with Book 1?
I didn’t expect huge sales, or many at all, for The Inheritors, and without giving numbers, the sales were indeed extremely modest. So far, publishing is an expensive hobby, comparable to running a car, which I don’t.
I confess, deep down, like every other writer, I was secretly hoping that the sheer excellence of my book would propel discovery. As a rational person who quarantines her vast capacity for fantasy from life decisions, I repressed this secret hope, but it was there, buried under layers of common sense, realism, some token modesty and those tightly contained expectations.
Perhaps some random BookTokker would pick up a copy and rave about it, firing me into the book stratosphere, but that’s like expecting to win the lottery. BookTok occasionally rediscovers ‘forgotten classics’, such as I Have Never Known Men, and I can only hope that I am ‘rediscovered’ one day or, indeed, discovered the first time around.
I’ve had enough validation over decades of writing to be confident that my writing is not objectively bad (and I do believe there is such a thing). Several decades ago, my work was even considered commercially viable. I’m not competing with writers of niche genre fiction who hit their story ‘beats’, fulfil all the tropes and provide the required payoff. I’m in this for art, not money, but by golly I’d like some serious wedge, at least to cover my costs (and, what the hell, to buy a house in a junkie-free neighbourhood and spend months of the year travelling, if I’m honest).
Marketing is a long game, and discoverability has become a lot harder since the early days of epubs, when indie authors moved quickly, far more quickly than trad pub, to fill people’s new Kindles and e-readers. I follow the basic rules: I have a website, a (very small) email list, and a blog, even though blogging is now considered passé. The standard wisdom is to have an ‘author platform’ and ‘own your own real estate’. (Algorithm changes and the monetisation and enshittification of social media have sunk many indie business plans.) I can be found easily on the internet, and my contact form elicits regular AI-generated emails praising my neglected master works and offering to run my marketing for me, for an unstated price.
At this early stage, my promotional focus is on reviews. Embarrassingly, I only discovered review sites after the publication of The Inheritors. I posted a copy, no longer technically an advance review copy, on BookSirens, which produced a small number of excellent reviews. I’ve only had one stinker, not sourced through BookSirens, on Amazon.com. I discovered that reviews on other Amazon sites (UK, Canada, Australia) only appear on those sites, while US-originated reviews appear everywhere. That’s the inherent unfairness of not being American on Amazon. This is also why I’m wide.
(Also, Amazon seems to cancel author accounts arbitrarily, which is livelihood-critical for full-time authors who depend on it for the bulk of their sales. There is a burgeoning advice industry on how to get your account reinstated.)
Explaining the business of ARCs, I showed a friend (and reader) the Booksirens website. The reviewer landing page produced a carousel of brooding topless beefcake, extravagant fonts, demure Regency women and silhouettes of running figures against apocalyptic backgrounds. I had a moment of cringing self-doubt: I write dystopian fiction and this is the company I keep. I felt the serious literary establishment smirking over my shoulder in its stylish, shapeless COS outfit, holding a glass of Prosecco. (The tweed jacket and Scotch generation of the literary establishment died out a long time ago; it’s mostly women these days.)
But overall, since giving up on trad pub and going indie, I’m no longer depressed and dispirited about my writing. The failure of my career to take off, after an early start back in 1988, had weighed on me for years. I wrote about it here.
Getting an agent, winning a competition, being published once, twice or even thrice—none of these guarantee an enduring literary career. Publishers offload writers all the time like once-worn Primark junk fashion. Agents ghost signed writers when they can’t get a sale (in a grim parallel, being on submission is very similar to dating on the apps). We are disposable. The ‘brilliant’ debut author profiled in a broadsheet or on book podcast may disappear within a decade. Browsing in second-hand bookshops, I regularly see novels that headlined the books pages ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Where are their authors now? For that matter, where are the books pages?
I recently attended a literary event in London, held by the organisation that, several years ago, awarded first prize to my literary Russian spy novel in a competition and then deemed it not commercially viable. The event was held in stylish warehouse venue near Old Street. I’d printed some new author cards featuring the new cover of The Inheritors, ready to sprinkle around. I wasn’t sufficiently gung-ho or brass-necked to plan on making ‘industry’ contacts; I just wanted to meet other writers, possibly some who’d had similar experiences to mine.
The organisation’s director, who’d explained Freytag’s pyramid and the three- and five-act structures over a long Zoom call in the year of my win, shook my hand without seeming to recognise me. There was no further opportunity to talk. My empowering pivot to self-publishing was left unannounced. I no longer seek validation from the trad publishing world, but I was looking forward to telling someone.
Back in 2021, I took part in a survey by Debbie Taylor, the editor of Mslexia, on the awkward question, ‘What happens when writers submit their writing to agents, publishers and competitions—and what can be done to make the process less harrowing?’. The answer to the first is, mostly nothing; to the second, why should agents and publishers care, since they have all the power? One of my answers, describing writers as ‘supplicants’ who are treated ‘with contempt’, was quoted in Taylor’s summary article, ‘Without Fear or Favour’, Mslexia (Issue 92, Dec/Jan/Feb 2021/22.) A few weeks ago, I found my words recycled in the latest issue of The Author magazine (albeit misattributing the original article to The Author). My old bitterness is filtering down the years, while I’ve moved on. Indie publishing has given me agency, hope and fresh purpose. I’m so much happier than when I was on endless submission to agents, which these days is like knocking on a door that’s only painted on the wall. I say this as someone who’s had three agents.
At the London literary event, I only spoke to one other writer, a young woman who’d won an award for unpublished UK black and Asian women writers and was still unpublished, despite two agents. The latest wanted her to rewrite her YA novel with a thriller element, and she was resisting. I gave her my card, one of only two that I handed out that evening, and told her there was another way.
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