Luck and a plan

I often think about how I wouldn’t have been writing and publishing this long if I hadn’t gotten lucky twice.

I call it luck because the situation could have easily been terrible. But instead, my first book was published under a fair contract and supported in all publishing aspects by Aurora M. Suarez, and then edited by Ines Bautista-Yao. It was a great experience. Many Filipino authors get a sucky contract and a not-great editor and they can’t do anything about it; it keeps people from continuing in this industry just from sheer frustration.

The second time I got lucky was when Fairy Tale Fail, my only self-published book at the time, soared in the Kindle charts after languishing practically unnoticed for months. I was ready to call Kindle publishing a failed experiment, and had sold my third book to my trad pub instead. And then the algorithm chose Fairy Tale Fail. It wasn’t the kind of money that bought the other indie authors their houses, but it was enough to convince me that I should just self-publish from then on.

A lot of people don’t get a second chance in the book industry, and I took mine seriously. I couldn’t base an entire career on hoping trad pub chooses me, and praying the algorithm notices me. I got two head starts both in Philippine trad pub and in international digital publishing–what do I do with it?

The long version of this story is this entire website, every single post. The short version is that I started thinking of books as projects, that had to earn back what I spent. Some books are slower to earn back/earn out. Some are faster and carry the others.

The chart above represents my books’ performance according to Amazon. I’ve circled a set of items (books) that have not made back on Amazon what was spent on them–but that’s just on Amazon. It’s not the only place where my books are sold, and some books do better outside of Amazon. But that’s always on me to keep track of opportunities for books when current ones are not delivering.

In 2025 it’s so important to explore all our options. I feel like I’m always saying “good luck out there” to fellow authors lately, but it does feel like such a hostile publishing world.

It’s good to have a plan.

The post Luck and a plan first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.