I published my first novel

[HundredMileStare]

I just wanted to post this here. Firstly because I am so proud of myself for finishing the damn thing and secondly to encourage others that if I can do it, you can do it too. I wrote it while working 40 hours per week and being a single mum to DC. I got up at 4.30am to put in 30mins and I sat in my car on my lunch break and typed into my phone. I became the characters completely and would think in their heads while I was driving to work. It took about a month to get the words down and another 2 weeks to get it edited and cover sorted.

It's a dark romance written to market and it went live at 11.30pm last Saturday. No marketing, no ARCs, no ads. Since then it's been like watching the Grand National, climbing higher and higher in the rankings until I broke the top #1000 books. There was wine that day, I can tell you.

Now I am 10k words into the sequel. This week has been a struggle getting words down because I've been utterly addicted to checking my sales and goodreads rating (4.17, I was terrified and still can't quite believe I wrote a decent book.)

I've made a pact with myself this week that I am only allowed to check at 1000 word intervals.

I just wanted to post and encourage others to keep writing. There is no high quite like it, and I am determined to do it all again and put another little brick in my 'book house'.

Congratulations!

What does the author get from Kindle Unlimited downloads?

You submit to an agent who will often suggest changes before sending it off to editors. But getting an agent is really difficult and is no guarantee of an editor.

My advice to your son would be to read as much as he can in the genre he's interested in and to write as much as he can. "Finish the book" is the best advice - once it's written he can look at whether it works and if not, what he has to do to make it work. There are a lot of books on creative writing available - he should ask at his local library.

If it's £2.99 they get 70% after Amazon takes a small cut and after VAT, I seem to remember.

Hollow will do, thanks.

@HollowTalk

Just wanted to say that editing your own book is completely different from having a professional editor look at it, though.

Oh of course! I don't expect to win any literary awards for the book or for it to be praised by critics etc. I wrote the book knowing that my readers are the sort who devour them quickly and move on to the next. It's not a thriller, or a story that's designed to get a point across in any meaningful way other than "wow this is hot" and probably a bit of angst as the "hero" is actually quite a villian- it's dark romance.

The author I swap with is pretty good at catching sillies and telling me of any holes etc which for my purposes is good enough. I write pretty clean which I think is helped the fact I'm not baroque AT ALL.

I would absolutely love to become successful enough to write a dystopian steamy horror romance and when that day comes I will more than likely hire both a developmental editor and a line editor because I will probably need it by that stage haha! But for erotic romance I do know lots of successful people who don't use traditional editors.

It's great you've got a writing friend who can read it through. Good luck with your sales - it's lovely to get such a big % of each sale!

Is it king of fools?

It was out on Saturday, not today, Bluntness.

Ok Disclaimer it was originally supposed to be called 'Twisted Games' and the change of title was partly a marketing trick because OM/YF is quite a hot niche at the moment so I played much more on that aspect during the final edit and added another couple of scenes.

Anyone attempting to try this at home-- seriously find your tropes and your niche and write what the readers want to read. Shout your niche in the cover, the title, the blurb etc so that if someone is looking for X niche, they'll find your book.

This was quite a hard thing for me to stomach because I think 'Twisted Games' is a better title but that would have been my ego calling it that and not my business brain.

For anyone interested in what I'm talking about my book is called Dark Daddy by Esme Devlin.

And if writing is your passion and you want to let creativity flow and win awards etc this advice obviously isn't intended for you.. my goal is to make a comfortable living writing what I enjoy 😊

Oh Jesus, "Dark Daddy"??????????????

Are you kidding?

@HollowTalk haha I wish I was! As I said, I would rather have called it something else but I added that theme to give it a specific niche. My plan is to establish the pen name and then indulge myself in writing the books I really want to write- some sort of dystopian horror/ thriller/ romance type stuff that may well win literature awards 😂.

Why all the question marks hollow?

Because the idea of writing daddy porn really disgusts me, Bluntness

@HollowTalk good thing we're not all the same 😊 anyway that wasn't the point of my post.. the point was if you want to write a book then write it. Just a bit of encouragement to anyone struggling with work/kids/life how rewarding it can be to get it done and sell some books!

I just followed advice.. Know your audience, know what your audience wants, and then tell them in the clearest possible way that you have it. And sell lots of books, if that's your ultimate goal :-) I only added the title because lots of people asked/PM'd and I did say it's a very specific niche, probably not one that your average joe will be interested in! Which I think has been a good way to go as a new author starting out because smaller niches can equal hungry audiences.

The next one is called Dark Psycho.. so definitely not 'daddy porn' 😂 although still dark romance.

What does om/he mean? Older man younger female?

Yes, like a generational difference, hence the "daddy" theme.

Ah ok, I've not read it, I looked it up and assumed it was a take on the fifty shades thing, but get what you're saying.

Well, thank heavens there’s such a healthy market for something that markets itself as a ‘super steamy captive romance featuring an older HUGE man and a younger TINY female’.

Lol @*TheBulb?
Yeh, think I'll pass

I really hope my comments here aren't taken in offence.

There is a mistake in your very first sentence (i looked at the preview on Goodreads). There should be a comma after that dialogue before the closing speech mark, not a full stop because you then add a dialogue tag.

Regardless of what the story was was about, how interesting the characters were, I could never get past that as a reader. Right away, it tears me out of the book world and makes me see/hear/feel the author's presence which completely ruins any story.

i really think you should have gotten yourself a professional editor if you ever want to be taken seriously. This is something that put me off the self-publishing route; it's gotten a bad name for itself because so many vanity writers use it to publish work that is littered with mistakes. The few really good, talented pieces are struggling to be seen amongst them.

Congratulations on your sales. I would honestly consider, if possible, investing some of them in a professional edit and publish a second (corrected) edition of the story.

such a tired stereotype - older man and young woman 🙄 huge and tiny juxtaposition is vom inducing - tiny like a child? 🤮

Parenting site is such a great place to advertise your novel about a person in a sexual relationship being referred to as Daddy. Clearly the connotation is incest so erm, yes - well done

@SheWhoWrites no offence taken, thank you for the feedback! Grammarly did try to change that for me (I've used that rule all throughout the book). I looked around online and thought that for American English that was the correct thing to do, use the correct punctuation for that sentence/ fragment inside the quotation marks. I asked my friend and she said as long as whatever rules you use are consistent then it's fine. Of course, your advice is taken and as I move away from 'erotica' (where the standard is no editor!) and into general fiction all of my books will be professionally edited.

People can see from the look inside I do that (I've done it several times in the first chapter now you've pointed it out!) and of course with ebooks customers can return within a week if they think there are any quality issues. I've had almost 200 sales and only one refund which I think is okay for a debut novel... but obviously the bulk of my readers come from KU so I can't tell how many are returning without finishing.

My plan is to keep that pen name for erotica, where the standards aren't so high, keep releasing, keep making money and towards the end of the year switch to something more mainstream, while continuing to study grammar and the actual mechanics of writing. Things will be so much easier when I don't have to work full time and I am already timing a request for PT working to coincide with my first Amazon paycheque. I'll get an editor on board when I launch the new pen name. It's a journey after all 😊

@DrinkFeckArseGirls honestly I am not advertising.. I am not naive enough to think that the creative writing forum of mumsnet is a place I will find any potential readers 😂!

And absolutely no incest, it's just a kinky marketing ploy used after seeing what was selling well in the Amazon charts. As explained earlier the 'daddy' trope was worked in after I wrote the book to give it a niche.

Yes it's a tired stereotype, the whole big small old young thing. But at the time of writing one of the most popular books was "Thick" by Alexa Riley which takes those stereotypes to extremes and it was, and still is, selling like hotcakes.

Again I will reiterate.. I didn't write the book with the hopes of winning prizes for my writing or changing the world or becoming the next huge amazing author. I wrote it so I could go through the publishing process, the marketing process, so I could see if I was steely enough to read bad reviews and to see if I could realistically make enough money from this to pack in my full time job and write full time. In doing so I've answered all of my questions... and while MOST people won't like the subject matter, the advice I was trying to give will be the same wether it's daddy porn or the next featured richard and judy- know your market and write for your market! Get your bum in the chair and get words on the page.

That's all 😊

@HundredMileStare regardless of the content, I think you should be really proud of yourself for going through the process and working towards your win goals. And you've taken all comments with great dignity. I'll be reading your book to show support. Well done.