One month after
Today marks exactly one month since A RELUCTANT SPY, my debut novel, was released.
On this day, one month ago, I was writing 'thank you!' over and over again into various social media accounts, drinking a lot of tea, having a very nice celebratory breakfast and trying not to get too anxious about my launch event at Blackwell's.
Launch day was also when I was first allowed to talk about the TV option for the book, which brought a whole bunch of new attention and followers to my website and social media accounts. I lost count of the number of well-wishes and congratulations I got from hundreds of people - friends, colleagues, family,, fellow writers, complete strangers. It was A LOT.
Brace for impact
A lot of fellow authors warned me about launch day ("it's quite often a big anti-climax") and the immediate period afterwards ("Do anything you can to distract yourself, work on something new"). I think because of that warning I braced myself quite hard for a big emotional crash that didn't come immediately, but boy, it did come.
Thankfully it didn't come because of reader reviews or indifference - I've been delighted by the steady drumbeat of new reviews, from bloggers, Instagrammers and reviewers. I've been on half a dozen Zoom calls with colleagues who have held up a copy of my book on camera and it never fails to get me right in the feels. Hardback books are expensive and I'm mostly a paperback guy myself (although having a lot of writing friends means I buy a lot more hardbacks than I used to!) so it really means a lot that so many people I've known throughout my life have been willing to see if this whole writing thing I've been banging on about for so many years, through so many day jobs, has actually come to anything. Hearing from readers (both people I know and people I've never met) has been a complete delight from start to finish.
Data data data
If you've read this blog for any length of time, or met me in real life, you'll know I'm a data-driven numbers guy. I love a spreadsheet. I like metrics. I like things I can count. Ironically I'm terrible at maths, but I discovered in my twenties that I had a bit of a talent for structuring and tabulating information in spreadsheets and databases. So when my emotional crash came, it came because of the absolute black hole of information that is modern trade publishing.
This is completely understandable - trade publishing is a credit-for-return business. When books are shipped to retailers, that's not a 'sale' - that only comes when the book is actually sold to a customer. And even then, customers sometimes return books. So the number of books 'sold' is very hard to pin down at any given moment in time. Some formats (ebook, audio in some cases) are a bit more instant, because they're digital products and data is refreshed at a much faster rate. The only way to know how a book has really done is to wait for the dust to settle and the royalties to be accounted, which can take 6-12 months.
There are data sources available. Neilsen Bookscan is the industry standard, though it doesn't count everything (estimates vary but the rule of thumb is that it counts anywhere from 50-70% of sales). And if you are the publisher of a book via Amazon, you can see sales numbers for Amazon directly.
However, I don't have access to any of these. All I have are very rough proxies - I can see the Amazon SalesRank for the various formats of my book. This isn't just a straight 'bestseller' ranking - it's a complicated algorithm that accounts for a whole range of factors, like number of sales, speed of recent sales, sales relative to other things in the same category and so on. So it goes up and down like a yo-yo constantly.
I can also see re-orders of my book on portals like Gardners. And I can see the trickle of reviews and star ratings on Goodreads, Amazon, Waterstones and other retailer sites.
After the first couple of weeks, I had my big crash, just at the start of October. After a couple of days straight of watching my SalesRank bob up and down and reading reviews (only the four and five star ones, I'm not a masochist) and refreshing anything that even looked like useful data, I looked at myself in the mirror, realised I was winding myself up to zero purpose, ordered a takeaway pizza and watched a really stupid science fiction movie.
Working on the next thing
The standard advice is to 'write the next thing'. And I have been doing that. But I think this can be a double-edged sword. If the reception of the first thing is generally positive (and it has been, much to my delight) then the planning and drafting of the second thing has a new edge to it. Because now you've set a standard that you want to hit again.
I think my minor morale collapse in early October happened precisely because I was working on a draft for a sequel to A RELUCTANT SPY, while operating in a vacuum of information about the sales of the first book and seeing some lovely comments from new readers. So now I have people who would really like to see another book from me, but I don't want to disappoint them. And I want the first book to sell well so that I'll have the best possible chance of writing the next one. But everything feels up in the air, unpredictable and I have nothing I can grasp onto that allows me to quantify anything. Absolute torture, for a guy like me.
The answer, of course, was to put the work in front of my critique partners and get feedback. As ever, my amazing crit group pulled me out of my slump and got me back into the writing. And, though I'm still sneaking the odd look at SalesRank and Gardners and review websites, a month later I'm doing it a bit less. And eventually, the next project will occupy most of my attention and then hopefully at some point I'll have more than one thing out in the world, so I can occasionally check two titles for abstract lagging indicators that tell me very little.
Still one of the best months of my life
Despite all of this, it's still been an incredible time. I've achieved something that hundreds of thousands of people dream of. I'm recording podcasts and doing Q&As and visiting bookshops and signing copies and hearing from readers every day. I'm living the dream. But my stupid caveman brain is worried there aren't enough berries for the winter and the mammoth herds have not been seen in the valley recently. So it has me scanning the horizon to try and work out what dangers lie ahead, rather than enjoying what's in front of me right now. I can overcome that, by being conscious of it. Because, one month on from my book launch, it's worth remembering how far I've come to get here.