The joy of publishing, with the hidden world of advertising, costs of all descriptions in all forms – never ending. Keeping up with social media. Never ending time spent updating posts, joining new groups. Replying to the valued readers who follow you. Fellow authors and adding your own two cents worth to their posts, with maybe congratulations and well done. Pushing the marketing for a new release or just pushing marketing, full stop. Meeting new people, new fans of romance. Trying to keep your daily typed word count moving forward and not sitting in an electronic pile on your desktop.
As I type this, I am in the process of creating an author page on Amazon. Yep Amazon. One page I have not had the time to spare to prepare or create. So here goes – adding words. Links. Photos. Oh, please, not the photos. And anything else which is required.
Becoming a published author is not just creating characters, plots, stories and everything else in between. Unless you become famous and extremely wealthy successful, us poor little indie authors, find we have to do nearly everything ourselves, at least we have more control with our own books.
And people wonder why there is such a big time frame between published books. This gap of time is taken up with the book launch, selling books and travelling, creating book covers. Edits. Rewrites – is what we’re writing making sense? Does the scene work? Should I add sex to a scene or is there too much sex. Or maybe I just need to add something more?
Do I have an ISBN spare for the next book or do I need to purchase more of them? Deciding on book covers, designing the format of each book, if it might be in print format or digital. Don’t get me started on the difference between formats. Then there are the emails, letters, social media posts, trying to reply and show we care to everyone who has taken the time and effort to send letters, place posts and add their own thoughts to our social media ramblings.
Our responses should be witty and smart, maybe even educational. But, in reality, our answers might be something straight off the top of our heads. An answer, which has nothing to do with writing or our book. And then there is the everyday life of an author and their own family, with kids or sick family members or a death in the family. Or as also in my case, having to wait for surgery and then the recovery process, only to injure myself, right back into pain once more. Relying on other people to cook, clean and even food shop – those normal everyday tasks we all take for granted.
So please, you fellow readers of romance out there, if you start to become annoyed because your favourite author of the week is taking far too long to publish and release their next book – remember. The other thousand and two activities – said author is busy completing, with their own stress levels slowly increasing because they are trying with their little hearts to complete that next manuscript, the next book in the series. So our beloved readers can continue to enjoy the love of reading and being submerged into another world of fantasy.
Another world, which has nothing to do with their own everyday lives.
Enjoy your favourite book and let your friends know, what you think. What you liked or hated about the book. In the long run, try your hand in leaving a typed review – placing it where you purchased the book, so other readers can make up their minds if they should bother reading this book or the next.
M. L. Tompsett - Author 