Show me the numbers
Other brave authors have written about their battle with depression and I have written here about my own struggles with my publishing adventure not working out exactly the way I’d hoped, but today I’m going to do something which I probably should have done a while ago—I’m actually going to tell you my numbers.
Now, if I were really brave I’d post these on Facebook because it seems as if that’s where problems are originating.
My fellow Washington Romance author Kieran Kramer posted an incredibly important video today to our WRW discussion group—a video of a special program done by Katie Couric for Yahoo News Special about depression and anxiety in teens and young adults which has some absolutely horrific numbers: 1/3 of students in high school and college report feeling depressed at some point in the past twelve months; ½ (ONE HALF!!) report severe anxiety; and One in Ten (!!) report having considered suicide in the past twelve months. These are astounding numbers! These are terrifying to all parents! This is something everyone should be paying attention to.
But equally important are the number of creative people who suffer from depression—myself included (thank goodness, only occasionally, and not in a severe way). Self-published authors are susceptible in particular because we have unreasonable expectations.
Both the problems of teenagers and those of authors I link back to Facebook and social media. We all (me included) post all of the wonderful things that happen to us on social media. Because of that it’s all that we’re seeing—how fantastic we are all doing, how many books we’ve sold, all of the awards we are winning, what list we’ve made—and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t post these fantastic things on FB because we should, they deserved to be celebrated.
But what isn’t being posted is how few books we are selling on a daily basis, all of us who don’t place in a contest, those who don’t make any lists. This isn’t surprising, we don’t want to brag if we don’t achieve. But if the average author doesn’t see this, how are they to know that how they are doing is the norm?
Like authors, teens are experiencing the same thing—they see how wonderfully their peers are doing, what a great time they’re having, how well they’re doing in school—and they’re comparing themselves to what they see online and becoming depressed thinking themselves less than everyone else.
The truth is that not everyone is doing as well as they’re projecting. They don’t post about the hours they’re spending studying. The C they got on their last paper or exam. How lonely they feel away from their family and high school friends. This is understandable, but it’s not promoting a healthy, complete picture and, unfortunately, teens are suffering and dying because of this.
In my very small way to combat this trend, I’d like to share with you what I’ve been up to: I didn’t place in any of the three contents into which I submitted my work, and have pretty much decided to stop spending money on submitting to contests (there was recently a discussion on a loop I follow where other authors came to the conclusion that readers don’t really care about how many contests your work has won—I’m good that). I haven’t made it on to any lists and in fact, my sales numbers are really not exciting.
When I sell one book—One!—I celebrate. Every single sale is something to celebrate because I don’t sell many books. On a good day, I will sell four or five books out of the ten books that are my own (not an anthology published with other authors or my one short story which I published independently). That’s not four or five of each of the ten books, that four or five books total. That’s a good day. Most days one or two books will be sold. That’s it.
Of my free book, Storm on the Horizon, about 20 copies are downloaded every day. I wish those downloads translated into more sales, that’s why I offer the book for free, but I don’t see a large number of people turning around and buying the next book in the series. I don’t go into the why, I’m just telling you the reality of my numbers so that you have something to compare your numbers to.
If I thought about the why, I’d probably stop writing forever, but I love to write. I love what I write. I write because writing makes me happy. And I write stories that I want to read. I wish more people would write Regency-set paranormal romances because I want to read them. But they don’t. It’s an odd thing to write (which is my explanation as to why a lot of my books don’t sell, that and the fact that I don’t advertise very much and probably don’t have as good metadata as perhaps I could—but I do my meager best in both of those areas).
My sincere hope—the reason why I wrote this blog—is that what I’ve written here has you thinking both about what you might do for your children (if you have teens or younger kids)—to help them see that not everything is posted on social media (they know this intellectually, help them to feel it emotionally, maybe by reaching out to those friends who haven’t posted on social media recently maybe because they have no good news to post)—and for you to feel better about yourself and your numbers (if you’re published) whatever they may be. If you haven’t published—this is reality: you won’t sell a lot of books and that is not why authors publish their work. They do so for the same reasons I publish mine, because they have to. Because they want to share their work with the world—or at least that very small part of the world who might be interested in reading it.
And I want to thank you all for reading—you’re presence here (whether you respond or not) means the world to me. Thanks!
And please share that Katie Couric video with anyone and everyone you know who has or will have teenagers. This is a vitally important epidemic that is going on and it needs to be talked about (we talk about measles and flu epidemics, why don’t we talk about epidemics of depression and anxiety—it’s killing our children too).
