Hey indie author, do you suck at selling your book? Come on, be honest. You’re a writer so, ipso facto, selling is not your favorite pursuit. If you’re like me, you’d rather get on with writing instead of faffing about on social media, desperately trying to make (find?) your mark in the relentless race for the reader’s attention.

“We only do well the things we like doing.” — Colette

I’ve been thinking about why I dislike selling Becoming Janice. Apart from the obvious (that ipso facto thing again) I just find it hard. Truth to tell, I don’t like doing things that don’t come easy. That’s it in a nutshell. As childish as that.

Not everything is hard. The day job, English editing for Dutch academics, I find easy and long experience (+30 years) has taught me not to fuss about the discipline you need to meet deadlines. It helps that I like helping clients polish their writing. And I also like sitting at home alone in my office, dealing with clients by email and doing a job I do well (ask my clients).

It’s different with fiction. I’ve always treated writing stories as a pleasant pastime that I don’t expect to pay the mortgage. I’m a relative newbie in the wildly competitive world of women’s fiction, author of only two sapphic coming-of-age stories (so far), and I long for ye golden olden days when trad publishers were in sole charge of the difficult trade of selling books.

All an author had to do back then was turn up on time at some nice event, like a book signing in a bookshop, and be nice to all the nice readers who’d come along to buy their nice book. If only….

Which is why a recent post on Facebook by Nicola Griffith, the multiple award-winning queer writer (with a PhD), came across to me like a real kick in the proverbial. Talking about her recently launched book, Menewood Nicola wrote: “As any writer will tell you: the hardest part of being an author isn’t writing the book, it’s selling it to readers who are inundated with choice.”

Buy My Book

Too right, Nicola!  But then she adds, “However, it’s my job, and Menewood is now available for pre-order as a paperback in the UK, arriving on Hild’s feast day in mid-November. So: BUY MY BOOK!!”

Note the double exclamation mark. A typo? Nope, I reckon it’s intentional, but more to the point, that second screamer underlines the visceral shock I felt on reading it’s my job.

You mean, begging readers to buy my book is my job! Who me? Do adulting!? Selling doesn’t make me happy. I’m no good at it. Hm… come to think of it, I am happy when readers like my book. Which means they have to find it first, and then choose to buy it instead of some other equally well-written book. And back we come to selling, full circle.

It all boils down to economics (yes, I know you know). The publishing world has changed. End of. Unlike the lucky authors signed up by big traditional publishers, indie authors must do our own selling. That’s a fact of the writer’s life and like or not, it’s beyond our control. Ouch.

Hm… didn’t a famous Stoic, one Marcus Aurelius say something about the stress of dealing with things beyond our control? You betcha. In his Meditations, Aurelius wrote, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” In other words, how you think about a thing affects the way you feel about it. It only hurts if you let it.

Change My Attitude

Which brings me to Maya Angelou: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” Your attitude? My attitude, surely, (and I don’t mean the ballet pose). Put Maya’s words together with Marcus’s and yay! I have the power to change my attitude!

Nuff said. Time for me to stop whining. I’m gonna shadduppa my face and focus on learning as much as I can about selling my books because (bottom line), I have put so much time and creative energy into Revealing Philippa and Becoming Janice. I didn’t write them for me, but for you. I want to entertain you by giving you books I’d like to read myself. So there.

“No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.” — Colette

Authoring is a big investment in terms of time, creative energy and, especially for indie writers, hard-earned savings. It only makes sense to do what we can to recoup the outlay. So here’s the thing: I’m listening to Colette. I’m gonna get to work on the whole gamut of writing—from drafting the initial idea all the way through to ensuring the published book reaches its readers. After all, to echo Nicola Griffiths, I’m an author and selling books is my job, too.▼

Buy Her Books!!

I love Nicola Griffith’s books. Got them ALL except for her recent one, Menewood, and that’s already on order. My all-time favorites are Nicola’s Aud books.

• Without Aud, it’s hard to see how there could have been a Lisbeth Salander — Val McDermid

• The avenging angel inside us all. She’s fast, frightening, startlingly sexy. I promise you, she’ll haunt your days long after you’ve finished the book — Manda Scott

Cover design of the Aud Torvingen series by Thomas Colligan for MCD/Picador

Featured Images

Cover image is shared with thanks to the artist Angela Mary Vaz – blogging guru, Illustrator and online marketer at Stray Curls Creativity + Blogging

‘Author singing’ is shared with thanks to one of my favorite cartoonists, Maria Scrivan.