My Truths About Being Published

The Ups and The Downs

It’s 3 months now since my novel, Garden of Her Heart, came out on 20th June 2024. Which also means it’s 4 months since my mum died - and just the fact that you notice the gap between the two events in my life will tell you so much. But this isn’t a maudlin post - instead it’s one that paints some of the reality of being traditionally published.

Let’s start with the reality check …

My novel is published by a small, independent press, UCLan Publishing, based in Preston, Lancashire. And it’s probably also worth you knowing that my novel launched their women’s fiction list - until now, they have published children’s, middle grade, YA and fantasy. The fact that Garden of Her Heart launched the women’s list put me in a position that I doubt I would benefit from in any other publisher. I had a publicist working with me, and expectations of success possibly differ from what they might be if I was with one of the big 5. This isn’t the place to get into numbers, but suffice to say that I suspect sales expectations might be higher with a publisher who has an established women’s fiction list.

What has this meant for my book, then? Well, it got in front of people who might not otherwise have seen it, and was reviewed in national magazines and press, including Good Housekeeping, Woman and Home, My Weekly, Prima Magazine, Writing Magazine, and more. I’ve also been in the local press and on local radio, and have appeared on a couple of podcasts, with more to follow in coming weeks.

The lead up to publication had me writing articles and short stories, and working to get events in the diary. I had 3 launch events - one in my local independent bookstore (that sadly closed earlier this month after more than 100 years!) the week before launch, one in Liverpool Waterstones on launch day, and one in a local library (Huyton, where my dad is from) a week after launch. I have more book events coming up, including at Preston Waterstones on 1st October. I’m used to being in front of an audience, not least because I’ve done stand-up comedy, and believe me, that’s the toughest thing you’ll ever do in front of an audience. Everything else after that is a doddle. As a result, I can honestly say I’ve loved doing events.

But wait, there’s more …

I was fortunate enough to get on the billing for the London Festival of Writing, in relation to my coaching expertise, as I’ve been a coach for around 35 years. At that event I was able to have a table to do book signings, so another opportunity to get the novel out there.

And then around end of July, early August, things went quiet - but not just that, I went quiet. I was surprised by the way grief hit me - it was kind of like a realisation that I’m all that’s left of my birth family, my sister having died 12 years ago, my dad nearly 8 years ago, and my mum in May. If I’d not had my grief to deal with, I’m not sure if I’d have pushed my novel more during August, or if things would have been quiet anyway - I do think there is a lull period after publication, not least because in my case we ran into the busiest holiday period.

There were days when it felt like nothing was happening, and it never would again. I’m not with a huge publisher with a huge budget for a lead title, and I do think with being with a small independent publisher there’s an acceptance that there simply isn’t the same money in the system. You won’t see my novel on supermarket shelves or in WH Smiths Travel in airports; and I doubt I’ll ever be on the Richard and Judy picks. If you don’t know already, these are paid for by publishers, and they’re not cheap. Heck, that’s an understatement - they’re bloody expensive!

As a result, I’m now entering a period where I’m looking at what can be done to keep things going with sales. My publisher and agent are there with me too, so I’m not alone on this journey, but I do need to pull my own weight as well. And that means getting into bookshops for Meet the Author events, getting onto speaker lists for the WI and local libraries, running workshops (my MA is in learning, so the delivery will be easy, but getting the workshop opportunities, less so), and anything else I can manage.

All of this work, though, has me thinking - would I have time for this if I hadn’t retired at Easter? I do feel for those who work full-time in jobs that give them little to no time to get into the marketing of their novels.

If you’ve got this far - thank you for reading. I have one more thing to add. I’ve come to realise how important reviews are. The algorithms only share books that reach specific review milestones. One is 50 reviews of any kind, which gets Amazon noticing your book exists, but the real stuff happens once you have at least 32 written 5 star reviews. I’ve been told that when you achieve this milestone, Amazon starts offering your book to people in their lists of ‘you might also like …’ and ‘other people who bought this also bought …’. At the point of writing this post I’m on 31, so I need just one more 5 start written review! Can you believe it? So close … and yet so far.

Which means that if you’ve read Garden of Her Heart and you loved it, and you’ve not yet left a 5 star written review on Amazon, then it would be an enormous help to me if you could get me over that 32 x 5 star reviews milestone!

Oh, one more thing, I’m relieved to say that my publisher is really happy with sales to date. We’re around the quarter of sales target at a quarter of a year, which is good. Now I have to keep the momentum going!

I have to tell you, though, to take what others might say to you with a pinch of salt - I won’t mention names, but someone told me he believed, based on the work my publicist was doing, that I’d achieve over 25k sales of my novel by Christmas, and that really I ought to be considering it easily selling 50k in that first 6 months. I reckon you can guess where this is going … I’m nowhere near 50k … in fact I’m nowhere near 25k books sold. I’d love to get there, and it would be great if I could achieve that goal by the time I hit a year. But the guy who told me that this target was achievable had insufficient information to base such a target on. If I was a different kind of person I might be totally gutted by now - I might be feeling a failure, I might think my novel is no good. Thankfully, I have friends who know how to keep it real, and oh, how we laughed when the guy told me what his expectation was for my book.

And the biggest bonus of all? I have readers telling me how much they love Garden of Her Heart. I’m ok with a slower, word of mouth build with my novel - at the end of the day, I want people to love my novel, find something in the words that touches them in some way, and that’s what’s happening. If you’ve not read it yet, it’s for sale in independent bookshops, or you can purchase from Amazon by clicking the button below.

I’d love to hear what you think of this publication journey so far, or if you’re a writer, how your own publication journey is going - click the button below to leave a comment.