Ally Carter had a post on her blog a couple of days back where she talked about The Crazies. She summed up The Crazies this way:
The Crazies are a hard thing to define, but most of us have had them—the what if this book sucks, what if this book tanks, what if my career is over, what if my career never really starts anxiety that comes with this business.
Having just released my first novel, Stealing The Marbles, I can certainly relate to those feelings. The temptation to know where your book stands, how many have sold, whether it’s flying high or sinking like a stone is a strong one.
I find a lot of this post-release time very frustrating. How do you get interviews? Reviews? Who do you ask to do a guest post on their blog? How do you get the word out to the Independent Bookstores? Where the hell do you find the time to work on your next book?
On the one hand, you’re proud of your book and want to shout its name from the rooftops. On the other, you certainly don’t want to annoy people on Facebook, Twitter, total strangers who have book review blogs, shoppers at the local grocery store, strangers you run into on the street, by keeping up a constant barrage of ‘I wrote a book, please buy it’.
I keep pushing the best I can, not really sure if the push is doing anything, but feeling like I should do something to promote the book. What I find really frustrating is, after figuring out a way to make a contact for a review or an interview or trying to get some information on how to go about doing this or that, I don’t get so much as a ‘fuck you’ in reply. How hard is it to hit reply and type ‘Thanks but no thanks’? You could even set it up as an auto reply if you’re that damn busy or uninterested.
The one thing I haven’t been doing is checking to see how well the book is selling. Not that I’m not interested, mind you. It’s just that I haven’t a clue what any of the numbers you can find out there mean. I heard this morning that Stealing The Marbles is number 15 on Mobipocket’s best seller list. That sounds pretty impressive but what exactly does it mean in terms of sales? I haven’t a clue.
A quick check of Amazon shows the Tree Book version of Stealing The Marbles has a ranking of 180,564 while the Kindle version has a ranking of 78,883. Does anyone reading this have a clue what that means? I sure as hell don’t.
I had a feeling from the start that this whole post-launch time was going to be a time of elation and frustration and my intuition has, thus far, been spot on.
So, I will leave you with this: Hey, I wrote a book, it’s a really good book, please buy it.
This sounds like I am speaking from my asshole, but what it all boils down to is simply: It _is_ selling.
Your concern is understandable, but there is a little acronym I like to use in this and at my day job: ODWYCDo (Pronounced OdeWICKDoh!) It stands for Only Doing What You Can Do.
You wrote a good book, you are promoting it the best you (and your publisher) know how, and that is about all you can do for this one. Keep doing it, and the rest of the universe will either fall into line or grind you, as your present karmic load dictates.
Just keep ODWYCDo.
And start thinking about that next book, if you haven’t already started it.