I self-published my first book, Solar System Blues, over a decade ago. Back then, I was hopeful enough to believe that if I gave away free copies on Goodreads, that I’d get a bunch of good reviews.

I got two, one of which was from Self-Publishing Review.

Sales? I got a few.

In 2017 I decided to publish 3 novellas in one year: The Devil Left Him, The Party At the Last Tomorrow, and Void. I almost pulled this off: Void didn’t make it to market until January 2018. Of these, Void got the most eBook sales, The Devil Left Him got the most paperback sales, and The Party at the Last Tomorrow got the only review, despite doing poorer in sales than both of the others.

Does this make sense? According to the Successful Author Rules we’ve been told about for the last decade-plus, no.

Back when I started in 2012 (!), it was “publish five books and sales will skyrocket.” By the time I’d done that, in 2014-15 or so, it was “publish ten books and sales will skyrocket.” Then it was “blog and Facebook ads are the keys to success, and free books.” Then “social media and tweets are the way to do it, and a book every six months, and $.99 or free specials.”

The “one neat trick for success” kept changing and moving down the field. And I kept wondering what the latest thing that I wasn’t doing happened to be.

–TXRed, “You’ll Be Successful if you Just…“, -Mad Genius Club

As I’ve written before, all book gurus just want your money. They will give you Tips and Tricks in exchange for Money, which may or may not help.

The truth is, you never know when you put a book out if anyone is going to care about it. I am tired of the advice “Identify Your Audience”. Just how the merry &%@# am I supposed to do that? What does that mean? Is my Audience “Sci-Fi readers”? “Fans of I, Claudius”? “People who like books”?

And what do I do with this Audience once I’ve “identified” them? Lock them in my basement until they buy? Write blog posts about them? Beg them on YouTube?

Do I need to buy ads? How much do I need to spend on ads? I’ve done ads on Facebook, and gotten nothing. I’ve done ads on Amazon, and gotten… nothing. Did I not spend enough? Should I spend more? Is the answer always going to be “yes”?

Maybe I need to try Kickstarter or something like that. But there’s probably a pile of “rules” for doing that successfully (“Step 1: Write a Great Book!” Whoa, killer advice bro! So profound!). Maybe I need to just hire a marketing team to get better book sales. That probably makes the most sense. Traditional Book Publishers exist because they’re built to move product in bulk, and also because they give off the illusion of being able to market your book. They won’t, of course, unless they really want to, and they won’t even look at you unless you already have a proven audience. Everyone who treats the trad houses as “gatekeepers of literature” is a moron. They’re more like the Literature Mafia, dipping their beak and demanding respect.

I think, based on what I’ve actually seen, that putting out product consistently does help. The Three Novellas, all put out within six months of each other (July 2017-January 2018), each had a good burst of sales. Then again, I put out two projects this calendar year, One Line or Another, and Don’t Touch The Dead, and they haven’t done as well. But they’re kind of specific: a medieval fantasy mystery, and a poetry collection (no one buys poetry collections of undiscovered poets. Why haven’t I learned that yet?), whereas the Three Novellas were more general (Temptation of Christ, postapocalyptic cyberpunk, and a space monster story). That’s a theory that justifies the creation of more art, anyway. I’ve got a few more projects in various stages of completion. They’ll all get done.

So, I think I’m just gonna keep writing books.