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Title : Disappointment
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Disappointment

     No, this isn’t about the election or anything related to it.

     My regular Gentle Readers will already be aware that I have a new book out: Antiquities, a short romance novel set in my “Onteora Canon” fictional America and timeline. As is usual with my novels, it’s not selling. Now, I’m not deluded about the breadth of enthusiasm out there for my sort of stuff. But I have...had hopes for this one: a romance with a musical backdrop and core motif. To say the least, those hopes have not yet been fulfilled.

     A little earlier today I was over at Written Word Media, looking for a date on which to hold a giveaway of Antiquities, and noticed this:

     ...so I looked into it. The New In Books feature claims a Romance readership of over 600,000 readers. To have them pitch Antiquities to that subscriber list would cost me $499. Expensive!...but possibly worth it. So I did a little arithmetic.

     Antiquities is priced at $2.99, and I get approximately $2.00 for each Amazon sale. Therefore, 250 sales would cause the promotion to pay for itself – and 250 is only 0.04% of that subscriber list. Inasmuch as the book is inexpensive, and romance readers tend to read a lot of romances, I figured the odds would be with me. So I gritted my teeth, plunked down my $499 – via PayPal, of course – and sat back to await the day chosen for the promotion.

     It was not to be. I’ve just received the following email from NewInBooks:

Hi Francis,

Thank you for your recent NewInBooks Book Launch purchase for Antiquities to be promoted on 12/8.

Unfortunately, your book was not approved by our editorial team, and we are issuing you a full refund.

The primary determinant in these decisions is what we know about our readers and their habits, and the team felt that our current NewInBooks readers would not engage as actively with the book as we might hope for our authors. This is no way a judgment on the quality of your book.

Grant S
The Written Word Media Team

     Note this in particular: “your book was not approved by our editorial team.”

     The NewInBooks “editorial team” didn’t read Antiquities. They didn’t buy a copy, and I didn’t provide a copy to them gratis. They rejected it on the basis of a very brief description – less than 350 characters – much like the one at Amazon.

     I shan’t pretty it up for you. This is, if not the last straw, pretty damned close to it.

---

     A writer who has no readers, and has no way of attracting them, has no reason to continue. This is particularly the case for a writer of fiction. It’s a difficult, tiring, and frustration-filled undertaking. Why struggle on if no one is reading what I’m producing?

     Over the entirety of 2020, a year when eBooks and indie writers have logged phenomenal sales, I’ve sold a grand total of 143 books. That’s not even enough to cover what I’ve paid my cover artists. And I refuse to give my work away. I’ve done that several times, and I don’t even get a decent number of reviews out of it. Besides, the books are inexpensive already.

     Now that I’ve learned that I can’t even buy a paid promotion, I’m thinking of saying sayonara to the writing of fiction. The really painful part about that is the awareness that, should I do so, I won’t be missed.

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