I Surrender to the Non-Buying Masses

Enough. 

It's time to move on. 

I gave my novel its best shot. I poured everything I had into it. But nobody gives you a ribbon for "trying". 

My novel is the past. I'm like the high school cheerleader thirty years later, still re-enacting her routines for anyone foolish enough to stop by her house. "Oh, that's...great, Amanda. Would you look at the time! Gotta run!" 

The funny/not funny thing is, there's always a new marketing technique I haven't pursued, which is why I once (erroneously) pronounced Amazon ads to be the "only" avenue left that I hadn't tried. Later, I learned about boosted Facebook posts, so sure, I paid for one. Oops, wait. I'd never utilized Facebook groups, either. So, I dove into those.

Book tours are something I've considered, but wisely avoided. I think that's the only thing I managed to reject. 

When I decided to give Substack one more try, I landed a few subscribers. That lasted about a day. Now, nothing. Nobody's even "liked" my articles, the whole purpose of which was to lure people into buying my novel. I have no need to shout into the void---I've already been doing that. It's a pain in the ass to try to come up with new posts. I took to sifting through this blog to find something worth transferring to Substack, and I figured my self-deprecating humor might do the trick; but either no one's gotten the joke or I'm not nearly as funny as I thought I was. I still make myself laugh occasionally, though. 

One's gotta know when they're not wanted.

So, Running From Herself is done. I won't be checking my sales report anymore; I won't log onto Goodreads to see if it has any new reviews. 

What's the biggest demotivator for a writer? Lack of ideas? Sloth? Ignorance of the fundamentals? Nope. It's the same factor that causes people to leave a job---no acknowledgement.  

The one and only reason I thought about revising and essentially rehabbing my third novel was to create a paperback version for me, for my bookshelf. Then I got to daydreaming. Maybe the book could sell. Maybe if I did it right, people might want to read it. That's called blind optimism. I prefer "fatal" optimism. Shoot, I even came up with a new cover and a new title for it. The only thing I haven't come up with is a desire to do it. 

The old maxim is, "write for yourself". Know what? That gets boring. Do I really need to prove to myself that I can write? What does that do for me? I can also hang pictures straight, just by eyeballing them. I get just as much feedback from doing that as from writing. The only one who notices my accomplishment is me.

I was on Reddit today and saw a post from someone about Draft2Digital's new payment structure. The person reported that he/she couldn't find any place on D2D's site to delete their account. Then a bunch of others chimed in, saying they'd looked, too. Reading those comments was oddly soothing. So, I'm not the only author who hasn't sold at least 100 copies of my book? I seriously thought I was. As I wrote in my previous post, the $12.00 yearly fee isn't a big deal to me, but again, I thought I was the only one with a no-sales issue.

Since I've got other things I don't want to do besides revising that third novel, I have no idea when I'll get to it or if I ever will. I think those other things will probably take precedence. The lesser(s) of three or four evils.

I'm kind of hoping I do eventually get to it, because it'll at least give me something new to blog about. (I'm doing my best, people!)

I'll hang onto the thought that there are a bunch of novels floating out there in the digital universe that no one wants. They say, find your tribe. Maybe I finally have.