All The Things I Didn't Know

I recently received an email inviting me to schedule a meeting with this guy and someone else on ways I could monetize my books. I laughed. Because my books are already for sale, so… monetized. But apparently this was more than just selling books—this would be giving lectures about… I don’t know. My books? The inspiration behind them? The process of writing them? It was never made clear in the email or the response to my reply to that email. All emphasis was on scheduling this Zoom meeting with the guy who’d sent it and the woman he kept mentioning. And I just couldn’t understand what was being pitched to me—people would pay actual money to hear me speak about my books? Me, who is not a New York Times bestselling author of anything? Me, who only hit number one on the Amazon chart when I gave my book away free? It made zero sense. It still makes no sense. Oh, and I stopped asking for clarification, so it was probably a scam to get my personal financial information in some new way. But it’s whatever.

It did remind me that I’ve written and published two books, which I forget sometimes. And “published” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. For my first book, I gathered together and retooled a bunch of short stories I’d written over a span of fifteen or so years, from the early 2000s to about 2015ish. I’d submitted some of them and been rejected, and a couple others I’d entered in contests and lost. One was written as an assignment for a fiction writing class I’d taken in 2007.

In early 2017, I’d had no plan to publish a book, but someone from middle school who I’d reconnected with via Facebook asked me to read the book she was planning to self-publish via the CreateSpace service. I figured What the hell? It was a historical fantasy and once I’d started it, it was clear the book was not ready for public consumption, so I reached out and politely offered to help her get the manuscript ready to publish. She accepted, and as I was working my way through her manuscript, I started thinking Hell, if she’s publishing this, I should publish those short stories I’ve been ignoring…

I chose the short stories because they were already written, for the most part. Some were outdated, but two or three rounds of edits would fix them. So, I did.

I also read everything I could find online about self-publishing with CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing. And everything I read made it sound like the entire process was as easy as breathing. Literally, you just sit down and write, then you create a cover (because, you know, graphic design is everyone’s forte), then you format the interior (again, because we all have that background in printing from the year we worked on the yearbook in high school), then you upload it to the service of your choice (there are others, but I went with CreateSpace because it promised easy crossover between itself and Amazon) and “Viola!”, as they say in France. A book!

Oh, but then the real fun begins, according to the multitudinous blog posts and YouTube videos. Now, you get to start marketing your book. Your audience is right there, AuthorBethanyNicole16 assures you, her eyes wide and sparkling under her pink bangs: your friends and family! They’ve been waiting your whole life for the moment you tell them your book is available to purchase on Amazon for 99 cents. But don’t stop there! Contact your local paper because they are desperate for news! And if you need a press release template? Well, here’s a link to one! It’s super easy and so much fun!

Now, I’m a cynic and a skeptic. No, really. I knew it wasn’t as easy as these people would have me believe, and the way I knew it was because I was fucking trying to do what they were telling me to do, what they’d done, and it was not easy. At all. I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy, but it wasn’t easy.

I created everything about the cover of my first book. I bought the map and the push pins and I stuck them in to correspond to places mentioned in the book, and I hung it on the wall so the morning sun came through at just the right angle and cast a shadow of the windowpane on the map, just like in the story that gave the book its title. I created a professional account on Canva and designed the front and back cover. I had a professional headshot taken. I was committed. I downloaded the cover template from CreateSpace and proceeded to have nervous breakdowns and anxiety attacks as I uploaded version after version of the cover, then the interior, then the cover again, then the interior. There was always an error, and while the CreateSpace AI was very clear what the error was, it was pretty vague what the solution was. Online searches were of little help, too.

And there was no one I could go to for help. No one I knew had ever done this, and though I’d joined Twitter (at the suggestion of all those self-titled bestselling independent authors who’d written the “If I Can Do It, So Can You!” articles on self-publishing), there was no one I could really ask for help, as I was new to that community and didn’t dare do anything to tarnish my meager reputation there.

And this was days, weeks of struggling with it and I finally just said “Fuck it. This is too much trouble.” I signed out of the editor, X’d out of Explorer, and took my dogs out for a potty break. I remember it was cold and it had snowed, but the sky was clear and I just stood in the dark and stared up at the stars and had no idea what to do. Or why I had even decided to try self-publishing a book in the first place. And I didn’t scream at God or beg for some sign the way they always did in the movies. I didn’t dig up a radish (or was it a carrot?) because I was close to starving, puke it back up, then stand against a watercolor sunset sky with my fist raised and swear that, as God was my witness, I would figure it out and get this fakakte book formatted, uploaded, and published.

I just stood there and looked at the stars, my mind blank.

Then I went back inside, futzed around with the interior and the cover dimensions of the book again, and when I figured I had it right, I submitted it. Then I went to bed. I figured I’d wake up in the morning to another message telling me there was a problem with the cover dimensions (getting the spine just right was really hard for me), and if that was the case, I’d just scrap the whole project.

But there was no such message. Instead, there was a message telling me it was live on the site. Like, for sale. As in, my book had been released. I laughed. I felt relieved, too, yes, but because I wouldn’t have to struggle with getting the dimensions of the cover right or the margins. It was out there. “Book birth,” I’d seen it called in the articles I’d read. I’d also heard traditionally published authors talk about it in interviews. Mine had been a particularly easy pregnancy with a very difficult, painful delivery that stretched over days and weeks. I guess my book was a breech baby.

I didn’t celebrate, though. Maybe I should have, but I just went to work and when I got there, I posted to Facebook “Oh, hey, I wrote a book,” with a link to Amazon.

Here’s the thing: for years—and I do mean years—people would hear me tell a story or I’d relate some lengthy thing on an online message board, and people would say “You need to write a book!” Because, you know, writing a book is the easiest thing in the world. I didn’t tell them, though, that I’d written many books since the age of ten, all never published, most never even queried, and that if it was as easy as just “Oh, I’ll write a book! Everyone says I should!” I would have already been a published author and they probably wouldn’t even know me.

Anyway, I finally took their advice. I wrote a book. And I told them I’d written a book. Then it got weird.

First of all, they were surprised. “You wrote a book? Oh my goodness! I didn’t even know you were a writer!” Or, because of the industry I’m in, they thought it was a cookbook and got really excited. Which is confusing because the majority of them have never taken any real interest in me as a chef.

My husband got mad that I never told him I was writing a book. I didn’t tell anyone, though, but he was still mad. My mom thought I was joking when she saw it on Facebook, even though she’s known I write ever since I started writing. I know this because she and her husband used to dig the pages I threw away out of the trash and read them. She doesn’t know I know this. I never said anything. I just stopped throwing pages away at home. I’d throw them away at school.

A few people bought copies of the book and actually read them. More bought copies with no plans of ever reading the book. That didn’t bother me. I got my royalty, so whatever they did with the book was their business after that point. If I checked Goodreads right now, it would list many of the same people who started reading the book in December 2017 as “Now Reading,” five years later. And I know why they bought a book they had no desire to read: support. But every now and then, when I think about it too much, I wish they’d read it and suggested it to people they know. Or that they’d read it and liked it so much, they bought it as gifts for other people they thought would like it. A couple people told me they bought it for other people—a gay brother or cousin or nephew. That was nice to hear. It felt good.

I didn’t give away many copies. Maybe I should have. Maybe that’s what big name authors do when they publish a book: everyone in the family gets a signed copy, then all their friends get one and so on, down to the lady that drives the bus on their morning commute. I gave three copies away—two to people I thought would appreciate and value both the book and the gift, one to someone I know who has (or had) a book review blog. I still, after five years, have heard nothing from any of them. Not even a “Hey, thanks for the book!” Maybe they never received them, though. Maybe they’re still waiting for it to arrive.

A couple of my friends read the book and left reviews on Amazon. That felt nice, too. And some of the writers I’d interacted with on Twitter read it and left reviews. It was validating, but the articles and blog posts I’d read were insistent that I contact libraries and independent bookstores and book festivals, because those places were basically desperate for anything they could get their hands on. My local newspaper needs my press release for my book. That indie book shop wants to support a fellow independent. That local book festival is just waiting for the opportunity to showcase a local author.

So, I sent the press releases and I submitted to the annual book festival at my JCC. I figured I’m local and I’m Jewish (and several of the stories in the collection dealt with Judaism) and I wrote a book, so the math added up. I contacted local indie bookstores. I felt good. I was stoked.

But the newspapers never responded. Even the online, digital-only publications ignored me. Well, there was still the JCC book festival. Until I got the obvious form reply. And when the book festival went live, the majority of the books weren’t by or about Jews. For instance, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton were on the schedule. And those local bookstores? Well, none of them wanted to see the book before they made their decision. I know someone who works for an independent bookstore and she gets advance copies of books from publishers months before their release. I knew mine was already released, but I offered to leave a copy for them to check out and see if they wanted to stock it. They weren’t interested in doing that. One wanted me to pay them to stock it, then they’d take a percentage of the sale. So, basically, I would pay them twice to stock one copy of my book on a shelf tucked away in a dark corner. I told the woman—who never actually looked me in the eye when she spoke to me—that I would take some time to think about their offer. I left and never got back in touch. The second bookstore, like the first, would gladly accept a single copy of the book, only I wouldn’t have to pay. I asked if it would be shelved with local authors and the lady told me it would be shelved with the other consignment books by indie authors. I decided what the hell and signed the agreement, then snapped a shot of the book in the store.

(This is not where the book was displayed in the store. The lady was gracious enough to let me snap this pic, then the book was relegated to a tiny shelf that faced the back of the store.)

As far as I know, it never sold. She probably trashed it after a year or so, but she certainly never contacted me to come remove it to make room on her shelf for someone else’s book. Maybe it’s still there, covered in a layer of dust an inch or two thick.

Another thing the articles and bloggers told me I needed to do if I wanted to succeed as an author was to create an online presence on social media platforms, because it was hands-down the best way to get the word out to readers who were looking for a book exactly like the one I had written. Their words. I was already on Twitter and had announced the release of the book there to little response and even less fanfare. But I made a Facebook page for the book and one for my professional self. And an Instagram. I also had my website, and I got verified on Google so when someone searched for me, I’d be the main result returned and people would be able to find me and my books.

Well, the only people interested in my professional page on Facebook are the same people who know me in real life, so that proved to be a bust. Because those are the same people who have zero interest in either buying or reading the book. On the book’s Facebook page, I amassed a large following of people from Spanish-speaking countries who… I don’t really know—thought the book was an actual map of the world? That it was an atlas? It was never clear, because those people never engaged. So I unpublished that page and concentrated on Twitter, where people at least seemed interested.

But it became clear quickly that the support I received on Twitter, for the most part, was empty and transactional. I actually had a lady buy my book, then message me the link to her own book, so we could do a review exchange. Writers supporting writers, right? And as far as I know, she still hasn’t read the book.

Not all the interest in my book on Twitter was like that, though. Some people read it and gave genuine feedback, and they seem to have liked the book. It felt good to hear from someone who expected nothing in return that they’d read and enjoyed the book. But, seriously, I wish I’d known more going into it.

I wish I’d known that bookstores were so hostile toward self-published authors. Like, literally nothing I’d read prepared me for that. And I wish that I’d read at least one article or blog post that prepared me to be completely ignored by newspapers and book review websites. I wish one of those bloggers had cautioned newly self-published authors not to bother approaching book festivals, that they weren’t all very welcoming to authors whose books didn’t make the NYT bestsellers list. Or maybe they did and I was just so eager to get my book out into the world that I just ignored the warnings.

I didn’t attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. Or Breadloaf. My degree isn’t in creative writing from NYU. I thought I could find (or make?) a back door into the business and get the same sort of recognition and respect that the people who attended those places I mentioned had. I see now that there’s no back way into respectability as a writer and I feel like an idiot. I’ve also wasted the last five years. I could have just retooled those stories and submitted them to lit mags and been rejected the same way I was rejected by those bookstores and newspapers, and that book festival. Yeah, it’s rejection, but it would be rejection on the way to something else. As it stands now, I’ve just been rejected because I chose to self-publish a book of short stories (and, two years later, a novel).

Lesson learned. I guess. Because sometimes, I think “Oh, I could have that [insert great idea] out in a year!” Then I remember and talk myself back. I’m entering year three of working on a manuscript I plan to query agents with. I alternate between feeling really good about it and feeling like I’ve wasted three years and it will never see the light of day.

And I don’t discuss it with anyone, either. I’m convinced no one really gives a shit. I still wish, at times, that I had someone to talk writing with—the art and the craft of it. That was why I joined Twitter. I thought I’d find a community of serious writers who respected what writing is and who agonized over their manuscripts and who wanted to talk shop. Instead I found a community of different cliques, separated by genre, whose aim, it seemed, was to saturate the marketplace with as much writing as possible in the least amount of time, which would turn the stuffy, staid industry of publishing on its ear. “It’s a revolution!” they often cry. But they still can’t get their books in the right places and they still bemoan their lack of reviews.

After five years, I wish I could say it gets better. It doesn’t get better. It hasn’t for me. And, to paraphrase the goddess Joan Rivers, I wish I could say I got better, but these days I’m not so sure.