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'.

I have no idea where the word win came from! Working towards your goals...

Apologie for coming across harsh, I do appreciate that you wrote a book (I barely wrote one sitcom episode that has gone off to die in my drawer, well on the computer). It’s just this title is not doing your book any favours.

@bodgersmash thank you! I really appreciate your comments, brightened up my morning 😊.

@DrinkFeckArseGirls no problem!

You might be right about the title, I honestly don't know and I don't think many first time authors do.

I would have loved to have released the book with a cover that wasn't man-chest and a title that was something gritty... "Twisted Games" with just a picture of a mundane object on a black background.. but I have no readership, no followers and no experience. So I emulated what I knew could be successful by following what other authors were doing. Not the outliers, not the groundbreakers etc. Just the authors who were consistently in the top charts where my target audience were looking. Madison Faye, Alexa Riley, Isabella Starling.

And I think I achieved what I set out to do.

Now wether I could have done myself MORE favours with something a little less ridiculous I will never know, because I can't re-release the same book.

But what I can do is write another one, try that next time and compare the results. Which is exactly what I plan to do. I figure this is a long game and as I described before my intention is to build a little book-house, one book-brick at a time. Try it one way, analyse the results and repeat until I find the magic formula. I'm a techy person in the real world and this method sits well with how my brain works.

Thank you for the feedback though (I learned I am actually okay with my books being slated 😂) and I hope you dust off your own work and bring it out the drawer- if that is your goal!

Congratulations that’s awesome!
Can I ask how much it costs to self publish?

@Greenyogagirl it can cost as much or as little as you want it to.

The actual publishing part is free. Amazon doesn't charge you anything, it takes a cut of your sales (30% for anything over £2.99 if I recall correctly).

The costs are yours to decide on, editing, cover, formatting (you can use Amazons own or invest in Vellum etc), beta-readers, and then the advertising and marketing budget. This will vary depending on how much of this you choose to outsource and how much you do yourself.

Thank you so much!
I’ve written about 5 chapters and I’m determined to finish (I have a tendency to write half a book then leave it!)

Well done, OP.

So briefly on grammar, regardless of American or British punctuation, if you have a dialogue tag after speech like he said, she whispered, whatever, you need a comma at the end of the dialogue, not a full stop.

So not "Give over." Mark said

But "Give over," Mark said.

To me that's a biggy and something a lot of readers will notice.

However everything else you say is good advice to anyone interested in niche writing. It works best of course if you read that niche which I assume the OP does. Tropes, cliches and lots of sex, followed with a happy ever after. The readers who love these books will read hundreds of these books, full stops or commas.

I thought about it once but I am absolutely rubbish at that kind of thing so instead I toil away at a fantasy book that may never see light :D. If you have an interest in romance/erotica whether m/f or m/m, there is a HUGE ;) market for it.

@HundredMileStare

You might want to consider changing the title. You're risking your KDP account publishing a 'Daddy' title in erotica.

Amazing effort in getting your work to this stage. You should be so proud :)