Writing and Publishing: Marketing a Book Is So Time Consuming

I love to write.
I have been writing since 1994. 
I became a serious reader in 1993 and one year later I was writing fanfiction. Fanfiction later turned to original stories.
I’ve written novels and short stories (and more fanfiction) since then. My brother is the only one who has read every single word I’ve ever written. You could say he’s my number one fan. He’s also my number one critic. If he doesn’t like it he tells me, and he tells me why. He doesn’t care if he hurts my feelings and I’m grateful for that; though I confess sometimes he does hurt my feelings. Even so, I want him to keep reading and I want him to keep telling me what he likes and doesn’t like.


From every one else in my life, friends and family, I do get support. I do have friends who’ve read my stories. I have friends and family who have not only downloaded my book from amazon, but paid for it. I like feeling loved. I love my friends and family.


And then there is everyone else.


We live in a world of digital media and I am one who likes to be as anonymous as can be.


Clearly, that needs to change.


And it has. It has changed.
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It took just as much courage to create an author Facebook page as it did to actually publish something. It took just as much courage to expand my list of followers on Twitter. It is hard work. It is time consuming work that, unfortunately, takes away from my writing. It is a two edged sword, isn’t it?


Bottomline, this digital socializing is exhausting and nerve-wracking. Day after day I put time in writing blogs and twits and at the end of the day I look at my amazon author page to see that no one even downloads the book. Sure, it’s still 99 cents. True, I won’t be able to offer it for FREE until the end of July. And of course I’ve made mistakes.


The problem is at the end of the day I am exhausted from all the marketing that I don’t make time to write and, honestly, it has gotten to the point when I don’t feel like revising my work to be published and I need to publish the rest of my stories. That’s the plan.


So, I’m in this vicious cycle right now and I am trying to get out of it. Maybe it’s just a phase. I won’t give up, not yet. I will keep trying to get people to know me enough to trust me with the stories I want to tell. Eventually I will get better at writing, revising and editing my stories to continue with my author career. It will get better. It should get better.


In an ocean of millions of writers, I am trying to stay afloat.


cheers!