Three Publishing Lessons I Wish I'd Learned Sooner
And that I am still working to learn every day
My thirteenth release is a week from today.
Given that I debuted in 2012, that math puts me at having released a book a year.1 For indie authors, that pace will seem slow. For traditional authors, it will look familiar—possibly even speedy.2
So what’s changed between now and 2012? A lot.
Social media, for one.
General media, for two.
Reader fatigue and pre-order behavior, for three.
My own anxiety and emotions surrounding a release, for four.
And perhaps most important of all: my life circumstances. I have a kid now. Back in 2012—when I was only twenty-eight years old (!)—I wasn’t even thinking about my future family. I had the Frenchman, my cats, my dogs, and my career. What more could I possibly want?3
Now here I am, forty-one and wondering why assorted body parts hurt with no warning and no obvious culprit. (Did I run into something and I just don’t remember it? 🤔 But really, where did this bruise come from?)
I’ve discussed this before: the lessons I wish I could go back and give my earlier self. And I stand by those points.
Yet as a new release rises on the horizon, I’m struck by a few other things that I wish I’d known sooner—or if not known, been able to make peace with sooner.
1. I do not control the outcome.
No one likes this lesson. In fact, it’s the hardest to accept because no human ever wants to give up control.
I mean, I absolutely hate this lesson, yet every new book release is a slap-in-the-face reminder of it.
You do not and cannot control the outcome of your book’s release.
Any author or publisher or reader who tells you otherwise is wrong.
Not because anyone wants to mislead you! But because as humans, we really do not like the possibility that all our hard work might not pay off.
Or, as humans, we often take our own personal experiences and assume anyone can replicate.
However, just because I had success running a street team or making a viral video or running Amazon ads does not in any way guarantee that someone else will have the same success with the exact same actions.
At the end of the day, publishing is a speculative business subject to the whims of a capitalist market. The market decides what it wants. And in turn, publishers (indie and traditional) do their best to provide that product to the market.
Unfortunately, just because you give the market what you think it wants does not mean the market will ultimately show up and buy it. I mean, I cannot possibly count the number of incredible books that release and seem tailor-made for fans of XYZ or lovers of ABC, only for those books to never sell more than a handful of copies.
It doesn’t mean the produce is bad. Just that the market can’t be gamed or predicted.
Here are a few specific examples of what I mean:
I could not control if an agent wanted my book when I queried 15 years ago.
I cannot control now if a publisher wants to buy my book.
I cannot control if the publisher pushes or supports my book in-house.
I cannot control if retailers decide to sell my book.
I cannot control if the market purchases my book once released.
I cannot control if the market enjoys my books once read.
I cannot control if the readers who did enjoy go and leave a review.
That’s just a tiny fraction of the things outside of my control in the publishing world, of course. Because unfortunately, this business is not a simple equation. You can’t simply plug in the same variables for each book and get the same outcome.
Reading and publishing are massive, complex systems driven by a bajillion unmeasurable variables ranging from the current state of the world to a reader’s personal circumstances to where a random IG post lands on any given day thanks to an algorithm that is intentionally impossible to game.
And this is truly the hardest lesson to learn in publishing—but it’s also a transformative one if you can make peace with it. Because once you can accept that success is not 100% in your control, you can also absolve yourself of any shame that might come if all your efforts ultimately not pay off.
It’s not your fault; it’s the market; you did all you could do.
Of course, this lesson is easier said than accepting. I mean, hell, “letting go of the outcome” is something I have to actively work on with every new book release. I didn’t just learn that lesson after my debut series failed and wam-bam-thank-you-ma’am.
No, I have to remind myself of this lesson all the freaking time.
And in case it’s not obvious: just because I say “let go of the outcome” doesn’t mean I’m saying I also shouldn’t work hard or just toss up my hands in defeat.
Instead, it means I must…
2. Be selective about my resource allocation.
I can hear many of you shouting: If I can’t control anything, what’s the point, Sooz?!
But please remember: you still can work and you still should work. It’s that whole “I can’t win the lottery if I don’t play” thing.
The key is deciding where to place your time, effort, money, and emotion for the best return on investment.
I put in so much time, effort, money, and emotion for so many years. Did it pay off? Not particularly. My debut series is still my worst selling series of all, and I did everything I could back in 2011-2014 to move that needle.
I was so convinced that it was an equation I could hack. If I just put in the correct variables, I would eventually get the correct outcome. Except, why was I failing at this while my friends were having so much success and doing so much less?
At the time, I took it all personally. I decided it meant my book must suck and I, in turn, as a person must suck.
But that’s not true. It just isn’t. Instead, the market decided, and my books weren’t what the market wanted at that precise moment when the books released. No amount of push or promo was going to change that.
In 2016, I did get the outcome I desired with Truthwitch. After a great deal of time, effort, money, and emotion, I had a title shock everyone and hit the New York Times List. But what happened with that book isn’t replicable.
Trust me: I know it isn’t. I tried for The Luminaries. And I made a very honest and bleak video about those failures here.
After that, I realized that I needed to be far more selective about where I put my resources.
Then the years of hell hit—just endless tragedy and emergencies for my family from 2023-2025—and the fact is that since then, I have had no choice. I have had to limit how I allocate my resources because my daughter and my family consume an enormous amount of my time, effort, money, and emotions.
But what I’ve seen is that being selective hasn’t set me up for failure. It means I’ve simply turned a critical eye onto where I’m currently focusing my time, effort, money, and emotions.
Then I have cut out what isn’t helping.
2A. Remember your values
I want to note that not all allocation of resources should be focused on the outcome. This is just with regards to book release (and also book creation—which I believe is the most important piece of the puzzle here).
Beyond that, however, the most “important” places we often put time, money, effort, and emotion are areas where we might not see results for a long, long time. Like raising a child! Or raising money for an ongoing crisis. Or supporting a political party.
For example. I feel strongly about allocating resources to giving back to the writing community. And while I might not see “tangible results” beyond X amount raised for Y charity or an author thanking me for my resources at an event, I think the longterm goal is a deeply important one regardless.
2B. Audit your resources
Now with regards to all this other stuff that is non value related (but not less important, per se! It’s your career after all), I want you to audit your time, effort, money, and emotions.
You can do this by looking at a recent release and trying to recall + infer input vs. output. And if you can’t remember specifics from your last book + release, then that’s okay. Do your best!
Alternatively, you can also start tracking now for a release that’s in the (possibly distant, if it’s not yet sold) future.
And remember: sales might not be your output metric. Most of us traditional authors can’t get our sales information, so we won’t know the direct impact our efforts have on book sales. We can only look at metrics like Goodreads adds or Amazon sales ranks, social media tags or weekly Bookscan numbers.
But you should still be able to gauge roughly how well a book is doing—certainly enough for this audit.
Note: if you’re still in the aspiring phase and not at the release phase yet, then you can instead look at how all of these inputs impact the most important piece: the actual writing.
Now onto the questions for your audit:
Where did I spend my money? (e.g. ads, swag, travel, cover design, editorial services, etc)
How much money did I spend?
What was the measurable outcome, if any?
Again, this might not be sales. If I hired an editor, the result is (one hopes) a better book!
Or if I traveled to an event, I might have sold zero books, but I reached a huge number of new possible readers on a panel.
Where did I spend my time? (e.g. content creation, ad management, graphic design, podcast interviews)
How much time did I spend?
What was the measurable outcome, if any?
Where did I focus my effort?
i.e. Were some things significantly higher effort for me to accomplish than others?
Like, reels are such a challenge for me and I hate making them.
What was the return on investment for those efforts? Was it balanced between effort and results?
If I have low engagement or reach with my reels, then the ROI isn’t there.
What was my emotional state throughout this book’s creation and release?
DID ANY OF THESE THINGS BRING ME JOY TO DO?
If so, GREAT. I’ll do more of that.
I love writing newsletters, e.g. And I love chatting with readers on the DenNerds Discord.
Did any of these things make me truly miserable?
If so, I don’t want to do those unless I really have to for my career.
I hate reels, eg, so I pretty much only make them if my publisher asks me to.
How much writing am I getting done throughout this time?
Becca Syme has many insights into this, so I won’t step on her toes here. But one of the “archetypes” she talks about have to do with your author platform and where, based on that platform, you should be allocating your resources.
Unsurprisingly, time spent working on the manuscript is necessary and should be prioritized.
After all, you can only milk one product for so long, and for must of us, the best path forward for success = more books.
I love writing ever since I leaned into my fluid process, and I would rather spend the bulk of my time there.
And in the end, nothing helps you sell more books than releasing a new one. Each new release is a new chance to find readers and it a chance to boost your backlist.
Based on the results that have come out of my own audits, I have totally transformed where I put my time, money, effort, and emotions.
And I want you to also honestly evaluate each question, gauging if the return on investment is actually there. Because trust me: sometimes we lie to ourselves about it.
For me, as so many of you know, the ROI simply was not there for social media use. And the rewards I reaped by quitting have been so dramatic, I will never go back.
But you’ll notice, of course, I still post on Instagram. I still make content and put it out. I just don’t let the app live on my phone any longer. I install, post, delete every week (sometimes more than once a week) because Meta does not deserve my time, attention, or mental health.
However, there is some ROI to posting on IG for me, so that makes the install-post-delete rigamarole worth it each time.
The main point I’m trying to make here, of course, is that we all need to take a serious look at our time, effort, money, and emotions and decide if our current allocation is having the payoff we desire.
If it’s not, it’s okay to let it go.
It’s also okay to experiment and see what comes.
What I want is for us to quit losing money, burning ourselves out, and/or missing out on all the other amazing things we could be doing with our time and attention.
We can’t control the outcome! We can control some elements of it, however, by “buying lottery tickets” the have higher odds of success for our unique circumstances.
3. Prioritize the things that I will look back on with pride.
This has just been an ongoing aim for me ever since I went through my near-death delivery in 2020. And it should have been my aim all along.
We all know this, of course: live life to the fullest yadayadayada. But it’s so hard to actually apply. We all have jobs, we all have responsibilities, we all have expectations placed upon us and dependents who need our time, money, effort, and emotions. Almost all of us are doing the best we can to simply exist each day.
Trust me: that has been the last three years of my life. Just one crisis after another that has required constant vigilance and focus.
But with the time that I do have to myself, I want to use it for the things that I will be proud of. I, personally (you might be different, of course), want to put good, meaningful work into the world. And I know that good, meaningful work looks like for me.
It is not, in fact, making more reels or trying to beat an algorithm intent on keeping me addicted. Like, I’m not going to sit on my deathbed one day and think, Golly, I wish I’d spent more time making promo videos!
No, I’ll wish I’d written more words. I’ll wish I’d touched more lives. And that matters to me.
And I’m not saying it should matter to you! Not at all. You have to sort out what would make you look back with pride and joy, and then you will know that that is where you should focus your spare resources.
I don’t always succeed at focusing only on “what will leave a positive mark in the world.” And I do think some promo is necessary and elements of social media can very much touch lives and impact readers. It’s just a matter of allocating my limited resources wisely—and always remembering what it is that I want to leave behind.
Don’t kill the baby bird
I’ll wrap this all up with a story.
When I was a very dorky 15-year-old (who still hadn’t hit puberty), I was on the high school golf team. I was pretty bad at the sport, but there were some moments every now and then where me and the swing would fully align. It was glorious. Except…always—and I mean ALWAYS—I’d then get in my own head and the self-talk would wind up choking me on the next swing.
Every. Time.
Over the years, I got tight with the golf pro. He was a chain smoking old guy named Lowell who really wanted me to just get out of my own damned way and hit the ball.
Bless that man. He spent hours trying to help me on the driving range. And while my golf swing never got there, I did at least learn one valuable lesson that I still live by today.
Lowell always said to me that I needed to imagine the golf club as a baby bird. Squeeze it too tightly, you kill it. Don’t squeeze it enough, and the bird will fly away.
Unsurprisingly, I was killing that thing with my grip. I would squeeze so, so, so tightly, my anxieties transferring into a physical manifestation that hurt my swing (and my hands).
There needed to be a balance. A midpoint between effort and trust.
And this lesson from Lowell applies to so much more than simply a golf swing. If I squeeze too tightly at my manuscript, then I kill the inspiration and lose sight of the story. If I don’t squeeze at all, I won’t write or ever produce new words.
If I squeeze too tightly at my book’s release, then I’ll exhaust myself (and my resources) with no guarantee of success at the end. If I don’t squeeze at all, then the book will float into the ether, never to be read by anyone.
If I squeeze too tightly at my daughter, then she’ll resent me and get angry at how much I control her. If I don’t squeeze tightly enough, she’ll literally run into traffic because apparently five year olds have zero survival instincts.
If you squeeze too tightly, you’ll kill the baby bird.
If you don’t squeeze tightly enough, the bird will fly away.
Find that balance, my friends.
Find that midpoint between effort and trust.
To future releases and beyond
Because it would be remiss not to, I’ll do just a wee bit of squeezing before I depart and direct you to some pre-order links for my cozy horror romance crammed full of 90s jokes.
The Executioners Three took me many, many years to write—I started it in 2011!—but I think it’s now entering the world at the perfect time to spread some much-needed joy and laughter into our hearts.4
So please, if you are able to support me, consider sliding a pre-order my way:
Signed, personalized edition from Schuler Books
Comes with a TE3 bookmark!
Make sure to say TO WHOM you want the book personalized in the comments section at checkout.
And of course, you can order any other signed books you might want at the same time! I’ll sign them all at once.
Standard Tor Teen US hardcover edition
Includes TAKE HEED printed on the edges!
Also includes the beautiful, full color endpapers!
MEET ME!!
And also get one of the exclusive TE3 bookmarks.
And get as many of your books signed as your arms can carry.
With sprayed edges!!
Sprayed edges, end pages, custom cover, fancy hard casing…
THE WORKS!
Audiobook, narrated by Caitlin Davis
From Bolinda worldwide
And then I of course have another book coming out in November, and it’s a book I could not be more proud of.
I mean, this beast of a book is a true culmination of every craft trick I’ve ever learned in my many years of doing this whole Author Thing, and I think this series conclusion is a genuine triumph that fans of the Witchlands are going to adore. (And you can start reading it early here!)
Lastly, thank you for reading the Misfits & Daydreamers, dearest friends. I hope to see many of you on my tour, and I’ll be back in September once travel and release have calmed down.
💚 - Sooz
Except, of course, I have another book coming out in 2 months. So now my math falls apart!
Or at the very least, it will look VERY LUCKY, since so many authors struggle to continue selling to publishers, much less selling to readers.
I’m glad I had no idea what was ahead for me in the fertility, loss, and grief department. I’m not sure I could have weathered it, if I’d known just how prolonged and traumatic it would ultimately be.
Sure, there’s murder, but there are jokes too!
Preordered TE3 from Schuler! Always thankful for your newsletters, Sooz. I’m gearing up for debut year and dreading the promo part.
Your newsletters are always so timely for me 🥲 I could spend all my free time making graphics and reels and content, and while I do see tiny boosts when I go hard with it, it doesn’t make me happy. Writing makes me happy. I needed this exact newsletter this week, thank you 🫶🫶🫶