“Overnight success is almost always a myth. Half of this industry is luck, and half is the refusal to quit.” – Victoria Schwab, American Fantasy Author.

Book 1 done. Book 2 out. Did better on The Redemption, book one, than I would have imagined. The Switch, book two, is ahead of The Redemption in early sales. So what’s the problem?

It’s that nagging period where your book is in the hands of a few dozen readers, and you wonder if they like it. Is it any good? Now, not everyone needs to like the book. That would be an unreasonable goal. But you’re hoping the people that liked the last book will like this one.

There should be a name for this period. It’s certainly the wildly fluctuating “I know what I’m doing” vs “This is crap!” period. I’m a very small-time author trying to gain a few hundred readers. Can’t imagine what a big-time author feels during this period, though they have the advantage of test-readers, publicists, big publishing houses, etc. But it still must be tough.

So what to do? Get moving on The Connection, my third book. And start working on better marketing methods – I’m going to test an email subscriber list. Most advice says this is the best way to connect with readers. We’ll see. We all have so much email. But if I keep the list contents to an email a month, will that be enough to keep interest? Or will it be too much? Too little? Will it be interesting? Am I interesting? Argghhh…right back to where I was waiting on the book reviews!

As an aside, every time I read the prologue to The Connection, my next effort, I sit back and think, “That’s damn good! How could you not keep reading? I know what I’m doing.” 🙂