The Blackbirch Series One Year On: How It Started

As of November 27th, 2024, it will be one year since I released the fourth and final book and completed my debut series, Blackbirch.

That last book was called The Collector, and it joined The Beginning and The Dark Half, released in 2020, and The Ritual, released in 2022.

That made it four books published in four years, and a whole heap of my sanity. What followed was a lot of learning curves, expectations that were met, soared, crashed, and were both pleasantly—and unpleasantly—surprising.

While every writing journey and outcome is different, they’re made of the same essence, so I’m sharing my experiences of releasing a series in the hope they will help other writers with their own questions or expectations.

How It Started

I started writing this series in 2001 when the idea of a girl saving a boy’s life with magick popped into my head as I walked home from work. I tinkered with it on and off for years, before finally taking it seriously in 2015 after my job was made redundant.

Fun fact: at one point, I was working on ideas for eight books, with one called The Amulet. That book, or parts of it, eventually became The Dark Half, which features an amulet in the story and on the cover.

It’s been so long now that I can’t remember how I settled on the other titles, but they all have a dual meaning. For example: The Beginning is the name of a spell, but it’s also the beginning of the story for the main character, Josh Taylor.

The other duel meanings would be spoilers, so I won’t ruin them here, but I will say they weren’t intentional or something I noticed until the books had been published. That’s one of the reasons why I love writing. It’s so full of fun subconscious coincidences.

How it started: 22 years of drafts, ideas, and notes. How it ended: 4 published books.Paid Writing Assessments/Beta Reading

After completing the manuscript for The Beginning in 2015, I paid to have it assessed. At the time, it let me know that the plot, characters, and my writing style were working. I didn’t have the help of the writing community/friends back then so I needed that guidance.

Lesson learned: looking back, I wouldn’t do this again. I don’t believe it’s necessary unless you are really struggling with your MS and don’t have another writer to help you. It’s money that could have been spent elsewhere. However, it gave me some confidence in the MS, as it was the first round of feedback I’d gotten from a neutral party.

That year I also paid an editor for a line edit, which was also unnecessary. You don’t need to do this to query. As long as the MS is as clean as possible, send it out on submission.

Building An Author Brand

On the advice of the podcast, So You Want To Be A Writer, I created an Instagram account. This was to get my name out there before querying.

Since then, I’ve had social media accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Threads, plus my blog/website.

For my current take on social media, see this post. In relation to Blackbirch, social media and my blog are where I promote my books. I haven’t dabbled in paid advertising as I’ve heard such mixed things, so I can’t offer any advice there, but I’m sure Google can help you if that’s a road you want to take.

If it wasn’t for my social media accounts and blog, I know I would not have sold the books I have. They were where readers willing to take a risk on a new author found my books.

Lesson learned: build an author brand as soon as possible and don’t be afraid to talk about your books. Most of the time, it’ll feel like hitting your head against a brick wall. You’ll also find the algorithm suppresses any promo/book-related posts, and favors literally anything else you post. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post about your book, though. It’s frustrating, but I have found new readers by consistently posting about my books via weekly review snippets and teasers, even if only occasionally.

The Querying/Rejections

My original plan for Blackbirch was the same as everyone else—to sell it to a publisher!

The idea of indie publishing seemed too complicated and confusing to me, and I didn’t even have it as a backup plan.

In November 2015, I queried my first round of agents. The first rejection came in February 2016.

From 2015 to 2017, and then again in 2019, I submitted Blackbirch: The Beginning to:

11 Agents.4 Publishers.1 Manuscript Competition.4 Pitch Events.

That doesn’t seem like a lot nowadays, especially in the age of 100 agent rejection goals, but back then, that was how far I got with suitable agents/publishers before getting a contract with a small press.

When I was querying, some publishers insisted you wait to hear back before submitting to others. I once waited 15 months for a rejection, which is why there were no submissions in 2018.

In 2019, I received a full request and then an offer from a small press. When I notified the agents/publishers I still had queries with, one agent requested a full too, before giving me my last form rejection.

Fun fact: while querying, I sent out pages I later noticed had typos in them. One rejection gave the only querying feedback I ever got and that was a sentence about not being a fan of the opening scene. Everything else was a form rejection—even the full MS rejection.

The first rejection stung the most. The one I waited 15 months to hear from did too, but mostly because I lost so much querying time waiting to hear from them.

The most frustrating thing about querying was getting no actual feedback. It certainly made me think the book wasn’t good enough. Now that it’s published, the feedback is in the form of reviews and the majority love the plot and characters. Basically, what agents/publishers didn’t like, readers did, so your writing really is as subjective as all the form rejections say.

Lesson learned: querying is soul-crushing whether you’ve sent out 20 or 200. Have something else to work on while on submission. I was writing the first draft of book 4 while querying book 1 and enjoying it so much it got me through each rejection. It made it easier to keep writing rather than use the rejections as a catalyst to quit.

Agents and publishers might have rejected the series, but readers liked it enough to send books 1-3 to the top spots on various Amazon Hot New Releases charts and give book 4 a top 5 ranking.The Small Press

When I signed with the small press in January 2019, they gave me a January 2020 publishing date and I didn’t hear from them again until 6 weeks before that date.

The fact they’d forgotten about my book for almost a year should have been a red flag, but I knew other authors who’d been published by them, and the owners of the small press were always nice in our interactions.

After my MS was sent to their editor, they asked me if I’d heard from their cover designer and to send them any designs sent my way. I didn’t even know who their cover designer was, let alone had heard from them.

I was then asked to send the designer my ideas for the cover and was told the editor found my MS so clean they didn’t need to edit much. The proofs I was then sent had my name misspelled and minor edits I could have made myself.

Now, in case you’re thinking it, this small press wasn’t a scam. They never asked for money, but I did start to wonder what they were doing for me that I couldn’t do for myself.

When they then announced they were making business changes and offered every author on their roster the option of signing a new contract or the option of getting their rights—I opted for my rights.

As I’d spent almost a year promising my book to readers and was disillusioned by the small press and querying process, I decided to do the one thing I thought I’d never do, the one thing I’d been afraid to do, and that was to become an indie publisher.

Indie Publishing

It was a complete crash course, mainly because I wanted to stay with the original release date of my book. I had waited years for this day and had been promoting the date on my blog and didn’t want to disappoint anyone. In the end, The Beginning was published one month after it was supposed to be released by the small press.

Indie publishing is hard work. You’re doing everything yourself, including covering costs for editing, book covers, formatting, promotion, and producing the books.

It’s also up to you to make all the decisions, and/or get your work into the hands of the people that can help you. It’s tiring and endless. It’s also rewarding and perfect for those (like me) who are control freaks and like to do things themselves.

Having said that, I’ve also had generous and wonderful help from fellow writers who have beta read and edited early manuscripts. My husband used to be a graphic designer, and he did the covers based on my vague notes of trees, circles, and colorful magick. He’s also been witness to my rants about the frustrating processes of formatting and filling in the back-end fields for publishing and purchasing ISBNs.

Lesson learned: it’s always scary learning new things, and I honestly thought indie publishing was going to be impossible, but it gets easier each time you do it. It also wasn’t as scary as I originally thought it would be. If you’re on the fence, research if it’ll work for you and dare to make the leap if it does.

Book Release Times

I don’t know if there’s ever a perfect time to release a book. I do know I released my first book just before the start of the pandemic and the second during a time when the state I lived in had 262 non-consecutive days of lockdown.

Then, everyone was at home reading, and that situation likely contributed to my first sales being bigger than I expected.

The final two books were released in 2022 and 2023 when the pandemic and lockdowns were tapering off, but the current cost-of-living crisis was starting.

Whether this is one of the contributing factors to why my books have sold less with each release, I have no clue. All I know is that I’m not the only author with barely any sales this year or last.

Lessons learned: all I can advise is if your book is ready, release it. There is never a perfect time and it’ll do what it’ll do. As for my specific thoughts on publishing, check out: Author Lessons: Indie Publishing, Burnout, Author Extras, Control, and Writing Project Grief.

Fun fact: as shown in the previous image, I’ve been fortunate enough to see each of my books hit the top 5 Hot New Releases on Amazon.com.au. The Beginning is in library systems in Australia and in the US (although for reasons unknown, the other three books “can’t be sourced from library suppliers”). For a few years, books 1-3 were also available to buy at a local Dymocks Bookstore.

Those are milestones I never thought I’d achieve on my own. I’m forever grateful I got to tick them off my Writing Bucket List, and I’m so thankful to readers who requested my book at their local library, and bought a book from Dymocks. You’re the best!

Writer bucket list items: my books on a shelf in a bookstore, library, signed copies, and opening up a box of my books fresh from the printer.

I’ll end part one of the post here. Part two will be published tomorrow and covers how the Blackbirch series is going now in terms of sales (including the number of copies sold to date), more fun facts, and lessons about reviews, promotion, and letting expectations go, so I hope you’ll check back.

If you have any questions about anything in this post, be sure to let me know in the comments.

— K.M. Allan

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