Since starting Burnham Book Festival, I’ve spoken to dozens of writers, traditionally published or self-published, and almost universally the one aspect of being an author that is deemed the most difficult, is selling your book. It was one of the reasons we started the festival – to give people a space to talk about their writing and ultimately sell it.
Personally, I can’t admit - as some authors do - I’ve spent as many hours trying to sell my books as I have done writing them, mostly because I spent a good many years writing stories and poems without thinking about selling them. But certainly in the last decade or so, I have spent hundreds of hours either actively trying to sell my books, or else paralysed in thought about how best to go about it.
For me, it’s not just a question of figuring out how to get to people, how to put it out there or what algorithms to tap into, which is challenging enough. For me, it boils down to a question of self-worth. Being a writer means listening to critics, whether that be a knowledgeable friend, an Amazon review or a professional critic. However, as writing is a solitary act, the critic that will most often come into play is the writer himself.
I’ve spent years writing one book, partly because I’ve grown and learnt things on the way and realised how I could improve something, but partly because my mood has changed and the inner critic become louder – I’ve often told myself that the loudest critic is the truest (that may or may not be true, but it’s often unproductive). In those quieter times, I’ve released things, be it poem, play or book, sometimes because critics other than myself have said these things have merit and I’ve trusted them; or sometimes because an external pressure has forced my hand, deadlines; and sometimes, of course, because I’ve believed in what I’m writing.
When I wrote Out of the Sighs, I believed in it as much as I’ve believed in anything – I still feel it would make a great TV series. Is it perfect? Is it complete even? No, I don’t think it is. But then by the same token, it is complete... in the way that a story is complete, just perhaps not in the way this literary, and also frankly unstable, mind works. It has a beginning, it has a middle and an end, it resolves itself. It has feeling and humour, whether it is thought-provoking will come down to the reader. It’s a great big lively thing that my inner critic has struggled to get on top of, or to accept, and my life currently has too many other things to wrangle. Is it worth reading it? Can you handle a little darkness to get to the love? If so, then yes. Especially if it's free!
THIS IS NOT HOW TO SELL A BOOK. So, I’m not selling it. It’s FREE. For five days it’s free on Kindle, which is the only amount of time Amazon allows. Then it will be on sale for as little as Amazon allows me to sell it, which due to its size is not little enough. Then at some point, after a few months, Amazon will let me put it out there for free for another five days, so I will. In the meantime, DON’T BUY IT.
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