It's Not Easy Being an Indie Publisher

"Tell me something I don't know."

In the larger scheme of things, broken promises regarding my novel aren't a huge deal, sales-wise. I'm fully aware that my book is on life support. What I do mind, however, is people not keeping their word.

I'm one of those dinosaurs who tells myself never to promise something unless I intend to follow through. Catholic guilt? Or simply integrity? Looking out at the world, I'm still dismayed when people lie. That's disturbingly true on social media, which is my primary source of "interaction" these days. (Hey, you'd interact via the internet, too, if the wind chill outside was 45 degrees below zero! Why the F do I live here?)

There's a book blogger who never gave me a reason to doubt her sincerity. When I finally took the dive into book marketing with one of my novellas, she was only one of two bloggers who agreed to review my book, and I was happy with the result. Yes, she asked me for a donation, but name me one book blogger who doesn't. They don't exist. I coughed up $25.00, which was what I could reasonably afford.

Once I published Running From Herself, and once I exhausted every marketing scheme that was "supposed to work", I began searching out bloggers again. I'd forgotten about this person entirely until I began updating my author site and saw the review she'd previously written. So, I contacted her again, and again I contributed $25.00. That resulted in a very nice (very nice!) review, which I appreciated. 

Her initial email response always includes a solicitation for articles for her magazines, (yes, they're real magazines) and I foolishly volunteered to write one. I say "foolishly" because I'm not an article writer. Authoring means I'm not held to a specific word count, and I'm not constantly counting words, looking for ones I can delete without impacting the overall meaning. But a promise is a promise, so I finally, after much agonizing, came up with something that didn't exceed her 300-word limit and still made sense. I sent it to her and she loved it. Of course, in order to get it published, another donation, this time $50.00, was required. **I'm quite familiar with scammers. This person isn't one.***

I did ask if my novel would be situated adjacent to my article, and she said, of course. Cool. Some publicity, at least. And so I waited...and waited. Once she published two subsequent editions of her magazine, I finally asked when I could look forward to my article being published. At first, she claimed to know nothing about any article I'd written, but I pushed back, and she suddenly realized she was searching under my real name (which I use for PayPal, obviously) instead of my pen name. Okay, that made sense. She assured me my article would be published in the January edition.

And so, here we are. Today is January 23, and nothing. Do I ask for my $50.00 back or like a dope, sit here and wait for something to happen? Full disclosure: Fifty dollars is a lot of money to me. Especially for nothing. I previously detailed all the money I spent on marketing this one stinkin' novel, but I knew there was no guarantee anything would work (nothing did). 

Or do I assume she got my "two names" mixed up again? I am very anti-nagging, either as a giver or a receiver of it. The topper is, she asked me to ARC review her religious book, which has to be approximately 300,000 words long. And I don't even like religious books. (Nothing against religion at all; I just don't like that genre.) I told her I'd accept an ARC copy, but I didn't promise to review it. And I sure don't feel like reviewing it now. (P.S. I also didn't ask for a "donation".)  

It's actually a relief to be out of the publishing game. I've come to realize I'm not cut out for it. It's one thing when a BookBub ad doesn't result in any sales. I knew it was a gamble when I purchased it. BookBub didn't promise anything. Nor did Facebook or Amazon or...

I guess this is just a vent. I could dispute the payment with PayPal, but I won't; not unless I contact this woman one last time and she pleads ignorance again. It's not that I want the fifty dollars back. I just want a service in return for it.