{EDIT: Great news! I’m ready to start taking physical pre-orders for Cobwebs! Click here to snag your signed copy, shipping 9/22!}

I’m not even gonna titillate you with some pointless introduction. I’m here to rant again.

At least I’m going to rant about slightly different things than last time. What’s really weighing me down lately is getting caught up in things that really don’t matter at all. Unfortunately, since self-publishing my collection in March, I keep fretting over its sales and lack of marketing. Yes, my family and a surprising amount of my friends bought the book, but the reach didn’t extend much further than the lovely 11 strangers who bought a book from me at my Adventures Underground signing in April.

Here’s the part where you say “But Ava, how are you expecting a book to sell if you aren’t doing anything to market it?”

Exactly.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot the actual reason I even decided to self-publish: I wanted to show prospective agents that I’ve got follow-through. It’s something similar to volunteering so you can finally put something on your resume. I never intended to try to reach massive sales numbers or any sort of success with Losing Air. It was purely for the experience and the resume padding.

But on social media, I’ve found myself surrounding by authors who are choosing to pursue self-publishing, and that’s got me all fucked up. I see them marketing their books, whether it’s through Bookstagrammy-infographics or slightly humorous Threads posts that are thinly veiled advertisements. And I’ve tried my own hand at those exact things, seeing them doing it. My brain just went, “You’re a self-published author like them. Why aren’t you locking down on social media and trying to market your book like they are?” And so I started stressing, trying to emulate whatever it was they were doing that seemed to be generating views.

Of course, it didn’t work, because I’m not an outgoing person and hate saying anything that doesn’t feel genuine.

I know I have already come to this conclusion (see the last rant), but I hate that writers are expected to have a social media following. I hate that the only ways to get people to look at my profile (and thus my linktree where you can actually do what I care about: checking out my writing) are to be a Bookstagrammer or make Reels or get lucky enough for the Threads algorithm gods to show someone my posts one fucking time.

Hey, I warned you this was a rant.

But at the heart of this complaint lies the one thing I somehow keep managing to forget: I don’t want to be a Bookstagrammer. I don’t want to be a self-published author. That’s never been my goal. I don’t have the energy or skills to be my own marketing team. Since I first started writing novels, what I’ve wanted has always been the same: I want the traditional route. I want an agent to call me from a high rise in New York with a cigarette hanging out the corner of their mouth to ask me how the next book is coming along. I want to go on book tours. I want to go to conventions sponsored by my publisher. I want my publisher to post cover reveals on Instagram for my books. I want a Publisher’s Marketplace announcement with my name and novel on there.

I don’t care what criticisms there are against the publishing industry. I want my books on shelves. I want to moderate panels and be writer friends with other up-and-comers. I don’t want to keep opening fucking KDP and checking my sales dashboard (always zero) every day because I’m hoping one random person found my page and clicked on my stupid linktree and decided to throw a few bucks my way because they think I’m cool (something I actually do a lot to other people while scrolling Threads).

I have no actual skills except for my writing ability, and even that’s under question because, as you probably know, I’m (mostly) an autodidact. So I want an agent to handle my submissions to publishers and negotiate deals for me. I want a publisher to handle my marketing and book design. I want an advance, paid monthly, so maybe one day I could replace my office job income with writing full-time (incredibly unrealistic, I know, but we are talking dreams here).

So why the hell am I wasting so much mental energy being bummed out that I don’t have the marketing skills to sell a single copy of my book in four months?

I don’t know, man. It could be because I’m a rigid perfectionist and hate doing anything poorly.

What’s funny is, the actual writing is great right now. I’m over my frustration with querying and submissions; I know that it takes writers years to get anywhere with that. And I’m already pretty sure that what I am sending around is nowhere near my best work anymore, compared to my current projects. I mean, that makes sense, as we only get better at something the more we do it.

I’m really enjoying writing lately. I’m putting thousands of words into my novels. When I have a flash of a short story idea, I write it and it turns out not bad. But I still feel like a failure because my stupid self-published book isn’t selling because I’m not marketing it at all.

I never claimed to be smart.

Now here’s the thing with this next publication I’ve got on deck. My second self-published short story collection is honestly bound to do even worse than Losing Air, because it’s not a shocking novelty to my friends and family that I’ve written and published a book anymore. I actually only wanted to put Cobwebs out there because my cousin Walt (hi Walt!) puts out short scary stories for Halloween every year, and it’s really fun and they’re really good. I wanted to do it too, just for fun. So I’m really not expecting much out of it. Of course, I would really be honored and thankful if any of you were to buy it, but I’m really just trying to put it out there for the fun of it.

I do NOT want to get caught up in trying (failing) to market Cobwebs, because it really doesn’t matter to my overall goals anyway. And stressing about sales of a dumb collection that nobody asked for is NOT going to be good for my mental exhaustion when it comes time to write.

Another quick note. I’m getting so tired of posting book and movie reviews on here. Why do I keep doing it, then? Because literally nothing is happening with my writing lately, and I have to have something to post. But I’m getting so fatigued composing these articles covering entire series (You, The Conjuring) that I find myself completely exhausted when I read and watch things now. I’m not relaxing as I watch movies- I’m taking notes and trying to analyze them so I can articulate in a blog post why I did or didn’t like them.

So, this is your warning. My posts from now on are going to be a little different from what I’ve been putting on here for a while. I’m no longer going to exhaust myself writing media reviews just to have something to post. I’m not going to compose thoughtful, interesting, and research-backed articles like Saige (she’s the scholar, not me). From now on for a while (until Horror Month-I’ve already got some fun stuff lined up for then), my posts will be more like journal entries.

I’m going to talk about what I’ve been writing that week, any progress on submissions and queries, and generally how I’m feeling about my craft. I think it will be better for me in two ways: I can articulate my feelings about this impossible career, and I can save myself the exhaustion of only devouring media in order to review it later. You’ll notice from next week on that my Monthly Writing Goals Update section at the end of each post will be much more brief from now on, which only makes sense, as my articles will now be almost all about what I’ve been working on. But I’ll still put my word count at the bottom and a quick overview of any submission / query updates. I’ll probably also start throwing in a Current Projects progress bar like Brandy Sandy just as a nice way to track my road to completion.

Now, I can’t say with any level of confidence if anyone will want to read that stuff, but we’ll see. I know my parents will (hi).

There, that wasn’t so bad. And I feel just a little bit better already.

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Monthly Writing Goals Update

29,860 / 20,000 words

You know, I would say this is the most productive I’ve ever been with my writing “career”. I’ve been submitting and querying quite constantly for the last two months, and I’ve finally found a way to get consistent words put into my novel projects. I’ve got a new collection coming, plus an audiobook version of Losing Air.

I figured this would be a good time to give a full picture of my current state. Let’s call this a mini state-of-the-nation.

Firstly, here’s where I’m at with all my active novel projects:

Now, what I’ve actually been pouring most of my attention into the past two weeks or so have been Wishbone and Livestock. I know I said recently that I want to have Romantasy and Cursed Sword finished by the time Horror Month hits and I start my writing break, but I think I’m going to change that. When I think objectively, I can admit that my other projects are far better quality in terms of writing and narrative than either of my Malthea projects. And since my main goal right now is to either get published or get an agent (whatever happens first), I don’t think it’s worth pursuing those projects at present. This isn’t me giving up on them, but simply recognizing that my time would currently be better spent elsewhere.

To give another picture of where my career’s at right now, here are some stats:

Unanswered submissions to publishers: 13

Unanswered agent queries: 12

That right there is why I’ve been checking my email about every 20 minutes the last two months. It’s killing me to wait on all of them, but I know it’s part of the process.

So, with all this knowledge in mind, let’s transition into a new form for my posts. All about my writing and process, no more mentally exhausting book and movie reviews.

I think we’ll have some fun.

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