Let’s test this baby out. I have been super impressed with the simple ease and organization of the BookBub Author Websites platform so far. I’ve not yet blogged here, so we’ll give it a spin, especially since my Substack has collected dust on her cobwebs. I love that platform and visit often to read my friends’ posts ... I just have too many tabs open in my head. I’m sure you can relate.
Also in the interim since I started writing THIS post, I have opened the Federation of BC Writers Zoom room to welcome my 5:30 p.m. writing sprint buddies* and answered three emails + responded to a tag on Instagram from my friend and colleague Dana Goldstein, who is currently reading Wish Upon a Rosie, despite having just arrived home after a harrowing travel experience, and I shooed one cat out from behind my computer no fewer than three times so she doesn’t electrocute herself by biting wires. (Ironically, that cat’s name is Rosie.)
I also have a board meeting tonight, so let’s see if I can hit publish before then without three days’ worth of revisions. A new game called PUT PRESSURE ON THE PERFECTIONIST!
OK, as promised:
THE FIRST TRUTH: Wish Upon a Rosie turns two weeks old tomorrow and has sold fewer than 200 copies (or around $700 USD total).
THE SECOND TRUTH: Those sales have happened solely due to the word-of-mouth efforts of my darling friends and found family, with a special shoutout to my BookTok/Bookstagram bestie, Alanna Grace Author, who is a GEM of a human being. (TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alannagraceauthor and on IG: https://www.instagram.com/alannagraceauthor/) FOLLOW FOR GREAT BOOKISH NEWS + join the Over 40 BookTok Book Club.
THANK YOU for buying my book, all my babes.
Now ... THE LIE: I am satisfied with this number of sales two weeks in.
Oopsie.
Am I GRATEFUL for the people who love me, who support my books no matter what I write, who KNOW how bloody hard the publishing industry is? Duh. Of course. This isn’t a discussion about ingratitude or disappointment.
It’s ME, a writer, telling YOU, another writer (or maybe the emotional support person of a writer) the reality of the sitch. <-- oh god i shortened a word like one of the youths i am so sorry please allow me to repent
I have uncomfortably adopted the label as “best-selling author” because in 2014, Must Love Otters was #1 in the whole Barnes & Noble store, thanks to some killer promotions the marketing manager at my then agency had landed for us. Also, the book was priced at $0.99 at the time, so OF COURSE it zipped right past the full-priced competition. (Also 2014 was still the Wild West in the Kindle days, baby, and I shot myself in the foot by not publishing a follow-up way faster than a year later. Ugh.)
I’ve had other books (trad and indie published) hit the top 100 in the whole Amazon store and more than a few hit #1 on their respective Amazon lists. SO technically, I can say “bestseller.” But Otters turns thirteen this year—she’s officially a teenager—and I haven’t had a repeat B&N #1 since that lucky 38 hours in March 2014.
Wish Upon a Rosie is my thirteenth book. Thirteen is my lucky number. Yaunna was born on the 13th. I got my driver’s license on a Friday the 13th. It’s too early to say if ROSIE will fulfill her destiny or if she will fade into the background like the other 6000+ books published on February 10, 2026.
No—seriously, I was at Iron Dog Books a couple weeks ago, and the bookstore owner, my friend Hilary, showed me the 13.3 million books she can choose from in their ordering system. Thirteen-point-three million.
Estimates from a year ago said 6000+ books a day are published to Amazon. (And I’m sure it’s more than that now, thanks to AI.)
Wow.
A handful of my editing clients who have been with me since the early days are making big money from their writing. (I’m so proud!!!) But this leads to some serious comparisonitis: WTF is wrong with me that I cannot write the books people want to read? Am I broken? Am I bad at this?
Am I the former hockey player who was meh on the ice but then found his stride clutching a clipboard and yelling at the players about where to shoot the puck?
Maybe.
So, yeah, thirteen books in, and I still question everything. Especially since every single day we get news about how the ads platforms are changing their systems and making shit harder for authors. (Because Zuck needs another superyacht, I guess?)
And yet I ain’t gonna stop playing this game. Twenty-plus years in this business, two agents, now unagented (but ready to mingle!), thirteen finished novels, a nonfiction project barreling toward you sometime this year, a thriving editorial business, lots of teaching and collaborating with fellow writers through the Fed of BC Writers and elsewhere, big dreams to launch my own teaching platform and eventually a publishing company.
Would I love to be making six or seven+ figures a year from the books I write? Of course. Would we ALL love this to be our reality? Absolutely.
BUT I AM WRITING BECAUSE I LOVE WORDS AND I LOVE WRITERS AND BOOKS. And if I don’t do it, I WILL GO BAT-SHIT CRAZY.
The same goes for you, my dude.
Do it because you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that YOU are in the TOP 3% OF HUMAN BEINGS who will actually finish their novel.
If somehow my darling ROSIE finds her audience and then people read and say Hey that was lovely what else has this crazy person written and then they go pick up a title or two from my (extensive) backlist, that would be awesome.
In the meantime, I’ll keep writing until the cataracts blind me**, the finger bones seize, or the world ends.
And probably even after that.
You should too. Even if this whole game really sucks sometimes.
I love you go write something.
xo
*Like to write in the QUIET company of others? JOIN US: Sunrise sprints @ 7 a.m., five days a week: https://www.bcwriters.ca/event-6541223 OR Sunset sprints on Mondays and Fridays @ 5:30 p.m. https://www.bcwriters.ca/event-6542644
**I’m meeting with the eyeball surgeon Thursday morning. Wish me luck. 😎