I haven’t updated my blog in a while, since this summer has been pretty crazy, but I figure it’s about time. This is going to be a lengthier post because of that.

By the way, if you happen to be in or near Wichita, KS this weekend, I’ll be at the ICT Comic Con and Sci Fi Convention! Come say hi and check out my books.

Forays into Markets

As of this writing, I’ve been to five markets and sold 72 of my books! That has been a MASSIVE breath of fresh air and wind in my sails. I’ve talked to so many people who not only loved the premise of my book and thought it was cool, but were interested enough to spend actual dollars on my books!

In contrast, I made the embarrassing realization that over the entire course of my author career, I’ve made a whopping $115 from my ebooks. I’ve run ads all over the place, participated in promos, given away over a thousand ebooks, and I’m skeptical that any of those copies were read. They certainly didn’t turn into reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, or followers on social media, or even people messaging me about the book.

I spent most of the summer either going to various markets or vacationing with my kids. Then, as the summer has wrapped up, I’ve been gearing up for several comic cons and book festivals this fall.

I also dove into Instagram this past month, trying to promote my books, and for my efforts, garnered a massive $0 and 0 Kindle Unlimited page reads. (All of my books are available on Kindle Unlimited for now, by the way.)

I think it’s safe to say that I struggle with anything online.

Bookstagram Revelation

I am less depressed about these realizations than I probably would have been, though, because in my time trying to build up a presence on Instagram, I learned that many of the influencers on there are pay-to-play. They don’t tell their followers that they’ve been paid to promote a book, but a lot of them charge for book reviews and promotions. A LOT of money, too, on the order of thousands of dollars.

It’s just another ad platform, just one I didn’t know about.

Learning that was both liberating and crushing. I’m up against giant authors with giant budgets, and there’s not much I can do about that. But it’s not my fault. I thought success was about hard work and a bit of luck; but the truth is, no amount of hard work and showing up can compete with someone who has a ton of money and a platform that’s been around for a decade or more.

That was a bit of a relief because I thought I was doing something wrong or that people just don’t like my book. But the truth is that most people never even learned my book existed, and if they did, it got drowned out by the noise of social media.

Moving Past Social Media

I’m burnt out. I’m trying to figure out where to go from here. I have never enjoyed social media, and now I realize that the game is rigged, I don’t want to pour any more of my time and energy into it.

I’ll keep my social media accounts up and running more or less so people can stay up to date on where I’m going and what I’m doing, but chasing the algorithm is just something I have zero interest in. If you want to stay up to date on what I’m doing, my newsletter is actually the best place to do that. You can sign-up here.

Some conventions won’t accept an application without a certain number of social media followers. I’ll just take a pass on those.

What Now, Author?

Throughout this summer, I’ve been asking myself, “What makes me happy?” I don’t need to be an author. My husband makes pretty decent money in the Army. And with the publishing scene so difficult to navigate, writing won’t ever make me much money. I keep coming back to what another indie sci-fi author, Jonathan Yanez, said: Don’t write for the money. If you don’t do well, you’ll get frustrated and stop writing. If you do well, you’ll have enough money and stop writing.

The money would be nice, of course. But what I really, truly wanted out of my writing was connection, for my stories to matter to somebody out there in the wide, cold world.

I didn’t realize that distribution was a real bottleneck for touching peoples’ lives, and that distribution takes money and influence.

I know that very few, if any, people will ever read this because it’s not SEO optimized or affiliated with a large important brand or whatever. It’s not focused on a product or littered with high-volume keywords. It’s too long for our flea-sized attention spans. I am shouting into the void because a computer algorithm geared for making money will determine that my words are useless to their corporate overlords.

But when I go to in-person markets, I talk to real people. They have hopes and dreams and they don’t care if something isn’t airbrushed to perfection. In fact, many of them actively seek out handcrafted, imperfect items and books and art specifically because it was made with love by another human being, not a robot in China.

They are seeking connection too.

So that’s where I’ll be, with my imperfectly crafted stories, my homemade stickers and bookmarks, looking for people to connect with.