No man is an Island
After releasing my debut novel, an old poem rang a little truer for me:
So, I have yet another learned-lesson to share. It seems I can’t fully put a previous one into practice before another comes traipsing by, only to remark, “Have we met?”
For those of you self publishing and wishing to add their book to Goodreads, read this guide, then post a new thread in this ‘Topic’ folder per the instructions you will have seen in the first link. You now know how to do what I did not. So, that’s good news!
How to request a book to be added to goodreads
But let’s talk about the bad news now and let’s do so by referencing Waterworld. You know, that movie back in the mid-90’s where everyone is out floating around on the ocean looking for land. Well, the ocean for us is the market saturation that is the publishing industry.
So, I was watching this video recently from Bookborn on YouTube. Her video claimed that 4 million books were published each year. That’s hard to wrap my head around. But what I can fathom is the number of new book requests that existed alongside my own when I tried to have it reflected on Goodreads. I submitted my request on 7 October. The number of requests in the proceeding 6.5 days?
1,083.
Let that sink in for a moment. Books, potentially hundreds of pages in length, new and requesting to be seen. Some of these new requests are spaced minutes apart, some seconds. Are you starting to see the Waterworld reference yet? We’re all just driftwood, hoping to be seen by readers, and both AI and a lack of gate keeping can only make this worse. I admit, gate keeping is a problem, but there’s also a problem with the complete absence of it. And the absence is a problem that Amazon has created.
Whew! Okay, rant over.
The thing is, publishing really should be accessible for people with a dream of doing so. And now, anyone can publish anything they wish—anything at all. But there are considerable skill differences between publishing writers and it’s not parsed aside from genres. So, an author who writes, rewrites, hires an editor, revises, hires beta readers, revises again, then self publishes will have a much higher quality product than someone who basically publishes their dream journal. Yet, they’re floating in the same body of water.
It’s discouraging, but it’s not hopeless!
I recently joined Fun Fantasy Books’ Patreon, because I think she has the right idea about these things. We need to make communities that promote and seek the stories we want to elevate.
Is this a solution that solves all problems? No. But in order for this ocean to be parsed, it’s going to fall to the reading community. You see, it’s not just authors that are floating around out here. It’s readers too. And they want to find the books they’re searching for. If we all cobble our driftwood together, we’ll eventually have something to stand on.
So, if you’re a passionate storyteller—like me—and you’re searching for passionate readers, you 100% need to create or join a writing/reading community. The more readers, the better! That’s considering you don’t have a mainstream money machine backing you that’s capable of throwing wads of cash at marketing. That’s not me and I’m willing to bet it’s not you either.
So, this is my charge, my challenge, my declaration. I’m aiming to build a community, a platform and I suggest you do the same. It’s not enough to simply turn in high effort/quality work anymore. There is simply too much content alongside you and people don’t have time to sample everything. It’s time to make more noise and get off this island! We’re all on a journey. And since we’re journeying together, why not let it be a journey coming together?
Get to work, dear writers!
“You cannot procrastinate—in two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.” —Kemmons Wilson
