For Authors Not on a “Bestseller” List

It was this time a year ago that I released my new novel And the Memory Returns. Like many authors, I didn’t go the traditional publishing route. I hired two editors, and a copy editor and chose Word-2-Kindle to format my novel and design my cover. It turned out to be a lot of work, but, despite disappointing sales, I have no regrets.

Like many authors who have published on their own, I’ll never be famous or make a fortune off my books or be on a bestseller list. According to data, fewer than 10 percent of traditionally published hardback books make the bestseller list, and the majority of those for only a few days or, at best, a couple weeks. Most self-published authors sell 250 books or less. Traditionally published books sell around 3,000 copies on average with only 250 of those sales in the first year, according to publishing data.

I wanted to get my books out there. And so I wrote And the Memory Returns, as well as my novel, A Portrait of Love and Honor, and my memoirs, Again in a Heartbeat and Morning at Wellington Square under my own publishing imprint. I wrote them to reach an audience interested in learning something they could apply to their own lives, as well as seeking an entertaining read. In my novels, my heroine, Ava Stuart, was a writer, a woman in love, a woman facing aging in a crazy world and hoping the lessons from her past could see her through the future.

Sometimes, it isn’t the novel turned movie on Netflix that makes the greatest impact, but the work of authors, some of whom will never be famous or receive great critical acclaim who can make a difference in the life of one person. It might be a small impact, but it matters. A story connects with them.

The lessons of a woman seeking to understand herself and those around her are always worth a read, especially in a world as alienating and lacking in community as ours. Even one affirmation of “Yes, I know this too. You’ve described a part of my life,” is high praise and means you have created something of meaning. And books spin off into teaching, speaking engagements, bookstore signings, and meeting other authors.

I treasure my reviews of And the Memory Returns because those reviewers gave me the highest praise any author could hope. Validation that this touched their lives. Wrote Marian Beaman, herself, an author who didn’t take the traditional publishing route and wrote two memoirs, Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl and My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir. “Near the novel’s end, Ava confronts questions that have been brewing throughout the narrative—Why did my husband have to die? Why did my best friend get Alzheimer’s? We get the impression our heroine won’t get the answers she would choose. Yet, with eyes and heart wide open, she sees herself surrounded with all the resources she needs to find an authentic soul-life, a rewarding path toward healing and wholeness.”

And this from reviewer, Laura L. Engel, an author who also took a non-traditional publishing route for her memoir, You’ll Forget This Ever Happened. “This story grasps the reality of what it is like for a woman who has suffered trauma and devastating loss yet continues to strive to go forward and create a new life. Ava’s honest feelings and worries, her travels to forget, and her simple joys in her new life will touch your heart and you will cheer her along as she not only accomplishes that feat and flourishes, but she also learns to live her best life.”

***

Change and awakenings happen in the nooks and crannies of life, not at the top of a mountain, but in the trenches of day-to-day living in conversation with our neighbors or in a solitary moment of moonlight on a summer’s night. As author and screenwriter Richard Price put it, “You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.”

Our stories, our books may touch one or many lives. Storytelling is the foundation of all that makes us human. For those of us who write, we, too, find the reward in many ways from exploring our own lives and then offering up our observations and lessons learned to our readers as we present a story fraught with human emotion and conflict. So, this is for all the authors out there who have had the heart and soul, and courage to write AND publish a book, whether self-publish, hybrid publish, or independently publish without an agent or a marketing firm. Don’t let anyone dismiss you if you’re not on the New York Times bestseller list. By the way, much has been written about that including the “elite” club of only New York publishing house books that have a leg up on making that list.

You’re not an unknown author. You’re an author. You did it.

“The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself… alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.” ~ William Faulkner