A writer’s winter’s tale

Good lord don’t you just hate the endless plethora of tedious self indulgent, self-gratifying, self-aggrandizing end of year summaries that plague our lives during the Holiday season? I certainly do, but I hope you are in the minority coz here comes mine!

I started my marathon of a journey as a writer and author on the 1st of January 2021, so we are fast approaching my first anniversary. We are two self-published books into that long haul trip. One more book is essentially complete and is in its final edits.

I have made a lot of mistakes and learnt an enormous amount about the business. Here are some stats from this last 12 months:

So, you know what? Not amazeballs, I didn’t set the world alight if I’m honest. A solid B—, could do better, see me at the end of class.

For you few foolhardy souls who have read the books, you have generally really liked the writing and a lovely few have even taken the time to email me and let me know that, which is massively motivating. I started the journey wondering if anybody would bother to read them, and when strangers started to do so, I sat waiting for the 1 star reviews and criticisms to roll in. That definitely did not happen, quite the opposite. So I guess I proved I can actually write a bit, and possibly even craft a tale sufficiently well to engage with my readers. You know what, for year one, I’ll take that!

I started with something like 6 twitter followers and currently have 1,708 followers. To be honest I am not sure what to do with them, and 95% are fellow writers, they certainly are not buying my books! Maybe next year I will be struck with inspiration and find a way to leverage Twitter more meaningfully.

I played around with Instagram and TikTok but lets be brutally honest with each other, I’m a 56 year old bald white guy, I have no idea what I’m doing and its all just too embarrassing. Not for me.

I posted a total of 24 blog posts (this will be the 25th). I do enjoy writing the blog and it gets good traction and always drives traffic to the website. You can read them all, and sign up to follow the blog, here:

I finally got started on Goodreads and have a few reviews and a handful of followers. Give me a follow here:

I launched the website which has been a great success, not in sales you understand, but I think it’s pretty and represents well the brand I am trying to build.

The website received 1,390 views from 891 individual visitors originating from 26 different countries, that obviously included the USA, Canada and the UK but also from such unexpected outliers as China, Romania, Malaysia, Tanzania and Vietnam. My biggest referrer was Facebook which tells me (too late, because I just ran the report) that I should pay attention to my FB page. Sorry FB followers! I will do better next year i promise.

Follow me here:

I did start a newsletter and managed to get an email list started with 102 subscribers. but the percentage of “opens” was very low and I got disheartened and lost interest in this midway through the year. Genuine apologies to you, my sad and lonely friend, if you were my one subscriber waiting for the next release, I commit to a different and more innovative approach in 2022.

As far as narrow vs wide, I liked to keep this, as one might define, on a “loosey goosey” strategy, as in I just couldn’t decide what to do. As we move into 2022 I have decided to keep “Mistakes” on Amazon exclusively but move “Haunting” wide so that is now available on the following bookstores.

I am also going to have “Haunting” available, at a discount, on a niche boutique site that supports Indie Authors, called Godless. This is partly because the owners give a better margin than Amazon but they also support a cool charity called Children of the Night who provide intervention in the lives of children who are sexually exploited and vulnerable to or involved in prostitution and pornography.

Lessons learned:

Series sell better than standalones. That’s why I am writing a Sci-Fi trilogy. It’s not really the book, it’s more to do with the ability to flex one or more books in marketing to drive sales of subsequent books. With a standalone, it…well…it stands alone.

Write to your audience – hint #1 – you need to figure out who that is. Hint #2 unless you are writing about your friends and family, it is not your friends and family.

Amazon ads drove better sales than Facebook ads for me, but many authors state the opposite.

Reviews drive sales and ratings. BUT. It’s really, really hard to get reviews. Please consider that when you read any book by any Indie writer. Stephen King and Dean R Koontz really don’t need them, Indie authors live or die by them.

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If you are new to the blog – welcome. If you have followed along its been a great year because of you. Your feedback, reviews and the occasional personal email telling me to keep going has been truly inspirational. In 2022 I plan on completing the trilogy and will try and seek representation within the first 6 months. If that isn’t successful I will self-publish towards the end of the year. I am also considering adding a series of books to Haunting.

As always, ping me on the website, on Goodreads or email me at author@andycwareing.com

Have a great Xmas and see you all in 2022!