Don’t tell me how good I am!
It’s SO hard to write this article without sounding ungrateful, so I want to stress, right from the beginning, that I am extremely grateful for all the support and positive feedback from my readers. It keeps me going and encourages me to write more.
Almost every day I get messages from readers praising my writing, telling me how much they enjoyed reading my work and, usually, urging me to write the next book, reveal the next chapter or let them know how the story will go in future. It’s lovely, and great for my ego, but fundamentally they are telling the wrong person!
Most authors feel like they are shouting into the void. We announce new works and hardly anyone reads them. We ask for feedback and only a tiny (but hugely valuable!) percentage reply. We want to be read but there are SO many other authors expecting the same that we just get lost in the crowd. It’s hard for readers to pick out the works worth reading when the good stuff is buried amongst the stuff that still needs work.
If every compliment that arrived in my inbox was, instead, a recommendation sent to a friend, a review posted on Amazon or a positive comment posted on social media, I would be able to spend a lot less time promoting my work and more time actually writing.
If you want to see more Astronomicon books, if you want to see the next one launched sooner rather than later, then don’t tell me about it – Tell everyone else!