Let’s admit to some fear.
I just released my third book, Pucker Up. This book was a challenge for me for so many reasons.
- It’s about a couple that meet again after ten years apart – I’ve never written something with so much history before.
- My main female character, Faith West, is a songwriter so I had to write song lyrics. For multiple songs. Writing song lyrics is hard.
- The main couple from RomCon, Madison Duncan and Trevor Clark, come to visit. I wanted them there but I didn’t want them to steal the show (I don’t think they did but the teenagers *may* have – oops).
- You know what’s harder than writing song lyrics? Writing a concert where people SING them. And not just one person, a whole girl group (think the Spice Girls) with choreography and banter. How do you keep a concert interesting when no one can hear the singing . . . ?
But the biggest challenge had nothing to do with the words on the page. I eventually managed all of those things and in an interesting way if I do say so myself. The biggest part was living up to the past.
A little over a year ago I released Royally Screwed. A lot of people read it and a lot of people reviewed it – and to this day I still have no idea how that happened. I have a few theories – my title kicked ass, my cover was cool, the royal romance genre is much more in demand than I realized – but when you’re an indie author without access to focus groups, research, or even just stats that Amazon doesn’t share, theories is all you ever have.
I was so worried that Pucker Up would be released and no one would buy it; so much so that some days I couldn’t write at all. Book sales should be a blessing not a curse, I’d think as I cursed them. As an author, especially an indie one, control is what I crave. I want to have the authority to make decisions and I want to have the evidence to make good ones. Yet I became so worried I didn’t make any at all.
Pucker Up was released on October 29th with very little fanfare because that’s what I’d done last time. And all of my fears about no one buying it came true.
You want to know why? Because I was so worried that no one would buy it, I barely tried to promote it. What if the writing wasn’t as good as the last one? What if it actually sucks (it doesn’t, I promise). What if . . . what if . . . what if I don’t actually know what I’m doing?!
. . . Ah, there it is. The truth. I have no freaking clue what I’m doing.
I’m fumbling alone like I know but I don’t have any of the answers.
Guess what? Not having the answers is okay. At least it is now, only three years and three books in; I’m allowed to not have all the answers. I’m pretty sure half the time I’m not even asking the right questions. I need to stop comparing my novice marketing skills to those over there in the advanced class; especially not to those professionals over in the publishing houses.
I am doing things wrong. Most of the time I’m not even sitting at the right table.
So I bought some books (okay, so I bought A LOT of books) that are sitting on my nightstand waiting to be read. And I’m reading blogs and forums with advice on how to do this. And I’m weighing the pros and cons of hiring someone to do this that’s better at it than me. And I’m writing so the next book can have a better start than this one did.
The only way I lose is if I quit.
And hey, people are still reading Royally Screwed and reviewing it a year later. That has to count for something.