It’s hard not to be disappointed sometimes when I check the stats on my book. I’ve only sold a handful of copies, and not yet gotten a single reviews. Knowing that I’m typing into the void here doesn’t really help much.
And it’s funny, because I do have an audience. There are over a hundred members of the subreddit where I post the ongoing story, Jerry and the Goddesses, and the daily pageviews there number in the hundreds, occasionally going over a thousand. There are thousands of views on the older posts, and I can expect a couple hundred views of each new part within hours of posting it. For example, the part I posted later in the day yesterday has almost 600 views so far. Half an hour ago, I posted a new part, and I have 72 views so far.
Looking at the ad campaigns I started with Amazon to try to get my book out there is more of the same. I’ve got 1972 impressions, meaning that an ad for my book has been shown to people that many times. But only 5 people have clicked on the ad, and according to Amazon at least, none of them went on to purchase the book.
But it doesn’t really get me down, because this is pretty much exactly what I expected. I don’t see myself selling hundreds or thousands of copies of a book on launch for another five or ten years, at least. Possibly never. I know that click-through rates on advertising are very low; 0.1% is what I expected. What I’ve gotten is 5 clicks for less than 2000 impressions, which is higher than 0.25%. That’s actually pretty good. Two and a half times what I’ve been led to expect by reading about advertising click-through rates!
Of course, the reason this is what I expected is because I’ve been obsessively listening to authors talk about writing; both the art and the business for years now. Long before I fired up the manuscript that would become Operational Realities, I was working with headphones on for hours, five days a week, listening to Jim Butcher, Patrick Rothfuss, Rick Partlow and others talk about writing. I’ve scoured the blogs of John Scalzi and Martha Wells and the others above.
There are a number of things all or almost all of them have said, which none of them has contradicted. And one of those things is an oft-repeated and heavily emphasized warning not to expect overnight success. Especially when I’m writing in a genre known for being niche; military science-fiction.
Heh, they didn’t even have a military sci-fi category for me to choose to put my book into on Amazon.
I guess the success of shows like Stargate: SG-1 and the various spin-offs of it, or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica didn’t translate into a major boost in numbers of more literary fans.
And there’s another thing I know. Not necessarily from listening to more experienced authors, but just something I’ve learned in my forty-plus years of life. All I need is one success.
I can write a thousand flops, a thousand genre-fiction pulp trash novels with formulaic plots and shallow characters and no mass appeal whatsoever, and it won’t ruin me. If I write just one hit book, just one book that even nudges against the NYT bestseller list (especially if it does so organically, without me gaming the system the way some have done, or tried to do) without breaking into it, then I’ve succeeded.
And I’m not talking about a moral victory, either. Sales of my most successful book will drive sales of all the other books. Which, oddly enough, is a good incentive to keep churning out flops. Because the more flops I have available, the more people will buy them in response to my one success, hoping to get more of what made that one great. And, assuming they’re all flops because they’re shit book, then it’s even more to my advantage to churn them all out, so that curious readers of my once success will go through the others before the bad reviews rack up.
That… That kinda feels like cheating, even though it’s not. I mean, one thing I would never, ever do is deliberately churn out a shit book for the money. Sorry-not-sorry; I’ve got a day job. Yeah, I don’t know why I would apologize for that, either. Just run with it.
Writing might one day become my career, but right now, it’s my hobby, which means I don’t have to do any part of it that I don’t love. And if it becomes my career one day… Well, I won’t need to churn out shit to pay the bills, because that will mean my passionate work is already doing the job.
So I’m gonna keep going. The sequel to my first book is near the end of it’s writing cycle. The manuscript for Operational Difficulties has stepped into the final climax already, and all that remains is to finish the climax and write the denouement. And I already know how that denouement will go, it’s really only the climatic fight that I have to work on.
Unfortunately, however, it’s taken a back seat as Jerry and the Goddesses had come to dominate my creative output. This shouldn’t be a surprise: Jerry & Co actually get me engagement and feedback. Plus, I’m rather chuffed with the direction the story has taken.
When Jerry & Co is done being written, I’ll be compiling it into a manuscript, making a cover, adding some new material, giving it a thorough editing (lord knows it needs it) and then publishing it, too. I may take a break in between finishing the story and beginning work on the book to finish Operational Difficulties and get that published.
And I need to do more artwork. I’ve been working on my Blender skills a lot. I’ve got a drawing pad and nice pencils and pens, so I need to start using those, because drawing on a graphics tablet is not really all that much better than using a mouse. I have an 11″ display tablet, but that has stopped working thanks to some cheap, chinese drivers. And the company has been entirely less than helpful in sorting out the issue. About the only thing they did was prove definitively that it wasn’t a hardware problem, but a problem with their drivers.
Because, you see, I can’t afford to pay for cover art. And I kinda don’t want to, because I’ve been an artist my whole life. Long before I had dreams of writing novels, I had dreams of writing and drawing comic books. So I feel like I should be able to make some cover art that really fits my books well. And I’m bound and determined to do so.
So I’m off. Not to practice my artwork or do some writing, but to actually get some work done, because I’m on the clock. But I’ll be drawing and writing tonight, for sure.