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I’ve only had whiplash once in my life. When I was thirteen or so, I was taking the van home from church. I did this a lot even when my parents had also gone to church, because it was fun and one of my friends didn’t live that far from me and we rode the whole way together. The roads were slippery, and at an intersection, a school bus hit us from behind. I didn’t feel it for a couple of days, but when I did, I was miserable for weeks. Luckily, I have never been in a car accident where I have suffered like that again, but being online these days gives me a different kind of whiplash.

Everyone is talking about sales, KDP reporting, and what you can or can’t do to sell books.

On the one hand, there are people who say there’s nothing you can do. Good books are buried every day, and it doesn’t matter how well your book is written or how wonderful your cover is. The algorithms are against you, and it does feel like that. You publish a book and it joins the ranks of the thousand other books that are published that day. There is no organic discovery, it feels like Amazon no longer pushes your books (is the 30 cliff even a thing anymore?), and word of mouth is bestowed among a fortunate few.

But on the other hand, I am seeing a lot of, If your books aren’t selling have you…?

started a newsletter
posted on socials consistently?
asked beged for reviews?
optimized metadata?
picked the right tropes?
run ads?
rapid released?
made or bought the right cover?
written the perfect blurb?
built an ARC team?

And anyone who has been publishing for a while will say they’ve done all those things, and it can get annoying and frustrating hearing that same chorus over and over again.

Because we can dissect that list and find many reasons why they don’t work anymore. It’s harder than ever to entice, persuade, or cajole someone to sign up for your newsletter, and when they do, good luck getting them to regularly open it and engage with what’s inside. Social media is a time suck and you’re fighting a different kind of algorithm war. Reviews can be hit or miss, but my experience with BookSprout, PenPinery, and giving ARCs away on my FB author page and through my newsletter has been less than stellar. Optimizing metadata isn’t a secret anymore and everyone knows how important categories and keywords are. Running ads is a gamble, especially with Facebook making it increasingly harder with their AI and interest targeting changes. Not having the right cover is so 2016 and it’s easier than ever to make something yourself in Canva or buy a premade, and maybe people still struggle with blurbs, but they’re doing their best. We know how important it is to build an ARC team, but everyone is trying to build one, and while publishing is a marathon, you may die before you reach that finish line.

So, what’s left?

I know this post sounds like a lot of what I’ve been talking about for the past six months, maybe even the past year, but it’s only lately that I’ve been seeing the tug of war online . . . or maybe it’s always been there and I haven’t been sensitive to it until now.

Perhaps one thing that made me go, “Hey….” is Becca Syme’s recent Substack article. In it, she says to stop worrying about saturation and start writing better books. In a lot of areas, I agree with her. For the past fifteen years we’ve been swept up in the culture that faster is better and that more books will earn you more money. She mentions authors publishing their Minimum Viable Products, and that truly did used to be a thing–just get it done and out. I think authors still think faster is better, just for the sake of feeding the algorithm and building a backlist, or if not that, then they publish the second their book is done because they’re excited. I mean, I just saw someone post on Threads that they put the first two books of a new series on preorder, but now they have writer’s block and were panicking because they barely had anything written. I get being excited, I even understand needing a deadline to work toward to keep motivation up, but that sounded like unnecessary sabotage to me.

So, in some ways, Becca is absolutely right. Stop thinking you’re going to fade away into obscurity if you’re not publishing three times a year, focus on enjoying the process, and give your readers an experience that they won’t regret paying for.

But I also disagreed with her. Not because I think authors shouldn’t focus on craft–we should all be trying to level up every time we write a new book–but because the authors who write good books have the same problem that everyone else has: discoverability. In fact, some could argue that poorly-written books seem to do better, but that’s a discussion that leads to nowhere so we probably shouldn’t do that here.

The truth is both sides are right, and that’s what gives me whiplash. Yes, authors should focus on craft and giving a reader something they’ll love to read. Yes, we should package our books professionally, write the best blurbs we can, and understand the basics of marketing. But there comes a point where “Have you tried…?” stops being helpful and starts sounding rather accusatory and condescending, like if you had just posted one more reel or spent five more dollars on ads, you would have made it.

And you know the people who keep telling you to keep writing, those are the people who have made it, and they have the “Just Do It” mentality because it worked for them. That doesn’t make them wrong (maybe annoying, though), but people who have found success sometimes wear rose-colored glasses, and it’s difficult for them to take them off.

So we can look at publishing and focus on what we can control. We can level up our craft in a way that our time and expenses allow, we can put good covers on our books and write good blurbs. But I also think we need to be honest about what control actually looks like. Not everyone has the money for developmental edits, professional copywriting, or custom covers. Not everyone has an army of beta readers, honest author friends who will tell you the truth if your cover sucks, or an ARC team that will actually read and leave a coherent review. A lot of publishing advice assumes access to resources that a person working two jobs, parenting, and running a household may simply not have.

Over the past ten years I’ve learned a lot. I’ve leveled up my craft, and I know I have. I never could have written Wicked Games five years ago, and I have said in the past that I tabled A Heartache for Christmas because I didn’t have the skill to write the book I wanted to write. I’ve learned a lot about covers, not just making nice ones in Canva, but making ones that specifically fit the genre and vibe of the book. And yeah, I do it alone. But even though I do it alone, I don’t stagnate because I love doing what I do, and getting better is a part of having a passion.

In my last blog post, I said that this post would be about finding discoverability if you don’t like posting on socials and if ads don’t work for you. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to offer, since my books’ discoverability is pretty much nonexistent. I make pennies a day, even with nineteen books in my backlist. And because of that, I decided to stop writing to publish and write because I love it. I don’t know when I’ll publish again and that’s okay. I’ve done everything on that list and it’s time to move on.

I’m tired of thinking I could have done more, and I’m tired of being told I could have done more.

I don’t have whiplash anymore. I don’t go to church anymore, either, and the friend I used to sit with, she’s been in my past for a long time.

But five months out of the year the roads are still slippery, so I’ve learned to slow down and enjoy the view.