Three years down

Since I started this writing journey three years ago (I published my first book, the Island of Stone, on March 31, 2020), this March has been my best-selling month ever. It was triple my usual monthly sales and twice my prior record. This was after three months of increasingly better sales. I was on cloud nine. As I watched the numbers go up, I let myself believe that after three years of hard work, this was finally it. I was on my way!

I should have known better. No sooner had I thought this than BOOM, everything flatlined for about two weeks. What caused the spike? Unfortunately, I have no idea. If I did, I could try to recreate it or keep it going. What caused the plummet? Again, no clue. I didn’t change my everyday routines or release anything new. Maybe people were just bored in March and decided to pick up my books (thank you to anyone who took a chance with my work. I hope you enjoyed it!). When they finished them, the weather got better, and they found better things to do. Who knows?

I can tolerate a few days of no sales. I’ve been doing this for a while and know it moves in spurts, but after two weeks, I started to think that something had gone terribly wrong, or worse, I had passed the point of no return, and my books would disappear into the ether. I know. It’s silly. I tell myself to disconnect and focus on the writing. But it is hard. I’ve written about this roller-coaster before. This game is all ups and downs and twists and turns. After this recent high and sudden low, I felt deflated, tired, and had no drive to write. I limped along, going through the motions and putting down the bare minimum. I started getting distracted by other things and stopped writing altogether for about a week. I chewed away at my list of house projects, which made my wife happy, but when a writer stops writing, it creates this feeling of panic, like you are supposed to be doing something but aren’t. It sucks.

That all changed when I saw a little post on Amazon KDP’s community page. I don’t recall why I was there. Perhaps it was to see if some sort of outage or error was causing this flatline. It is not usually a very productive place to be. It is generally full of people complaining and then a list of responses telling the poster to stop complaining in ruder and ruder ways. But this one post stuck out like a shimmering nugget of wisdom. The person in question had just made their first sale. Ok, that’s great, but not earth-shattering by any means. That is until they mentioned it was their first sale after publishing their book ten years ago. They were ecstatic and asked the community when they would receive their royalties. Ten years… no sales. Suddenly, I felt silly and ashamed.

Life is excellent at teaching us lessons, often precisely when we need to learn them. The number one is that it can almost always be worse. If someone could still be happy after putting their soul out there with no buyers for ten years, what do I have to feel melancholy about? After realizing this, it was like someone flipped a switch, and I started selling again. It was like the universe was telling me not to get too cocky, as everything in life is temporary, but also showing me that things could most certainly be worse. It was bizarre, but just the lesson I needed to learn. Soon after, I started writing again with new vigor.

It is not about the sales, Scott. It is about the passion for the written word. Always remember that. If you just follow this passion and learn from life’s lessons, good things will come.

Cheers!