Time to think about what works and what doesn’t as an indie author…

As an indie author with zero marketing budget it’s vital that every now and then I take stock of what is working and what is not in terms of reaching readers.

The trouble is, a lot of time it is hard to know! I am still getting steady sales – enough to make all this worthwhile anyway – but I have no idea where they are coming from or how those readers are finding my books. If I knew, it would make marketing decisions that much easier.

Originally, I started here. My humble WordPress blog. It was the very first place I shared my writing. Way before The Boy With The Thorn In His Side was published, I wrote and shared chapters of it here. I shared those chapters to my personal Facebook page and to my newly created Facebook author page. At the time it felt like a very brave thing to do and I was genuinely surprised when I got interest. A handful of people started reading along and asking for more. This response undoubtedly gave me the confidence to get on with writing and then publishing my books.

All these years later, I am still here, and still trying to figure out where best to focus my energies on the internet. I left Twitter, or X, when it went dark and crazy, but I’ve stuck with Instagram and Facebook. I don’t feel good about being on those platforms either and for multiple reasons. Meta stealing author’s work to train it’s AI models is just one example. Just recently, Meta have changed the rules on sharing links to your author page. Where once you could share as many links to other sources (such as Substack, Medium, WordPress, Amazon…) as you liked, you are now only allowed to share three a month. And guess what? Mark Zuckerberg is not rich enough yet so you have to PAY him if you want to share any more than that. Thanks Zuckerberg. That’s extremely helpful to struggling indie authors who want to share links to their work! It’s not enough that you stole our work, then?

I don’t want to be on Meta platforms and originally my plan was to build a big enough audience on Medium and Substack to replace what I’ve built on Meta.

With Medium at first, this seemed to be working. In fact, at the start of my Medium journey, I posted here many times about how amazing it was for writers. I joined in 2023 and instantly found an audience there. With Medium, if you are part of the partner programme, you can earn money on what you write. If your piece got boosted you earned more money. At the start, I kept getting boosted and I was earning a couple of hundred pounds a month from Medium.

I was thrilled and it made a huge difference to our finances.

But sadly it wasn’t to last. One moment I was doing everything right there and making money, and the next AI had crept in, the boost programme was changed, and nothing I did worked anymore.

I also started losing interest and inspiration. This last year I’ve tried again and again to get back into enjoying Medium and it’s time to admit it’s just not happening. This week I cancelled my membership and can no longer make money from what I write there, not that I was anyway! My plan is to download or copy across everything I wrote there and republish pieces here and in a short story/poetry collection I am putting together. Then I will close my account and turn my back on Medium for good.

In terms of losing interest, the reasons are as stated above but it’s also about inspiration and energy, or lack of…

I stopped reading the Medium emails and stopped writing in response to prompts. I found myself starting pieces of writing again and again only to never get around to finishing them or submitting them. It was time to call it quits and focus my energies elsewhere. The thing is, I don’t know about you, but with the crazy shit happening in the world right now, I’m kind of exhausted just keeping up and planning for an uncertain future takes up a lot of head space for me.

I realised my creativity was taking a hit, but only when it came to Medium. My desire and ability to write and edit my own books has not decreased at all. I didn’t want to run the risk of losing interest in writing altogether, so that was another good reason to quit Medium. There is just no point being there if I am not writing or reading anything.

I only realised lately how much of my headspace is taken up now with gardening, prepping and preserving. I woke up in a cold sweat one night in October as I realised I had totally forgotten to plan for Christmas! Normally I start in January and spread it out over the year. I have finally achieved a year round vegetable plot, I’ve added to my ducks and chickens, and I am busy clearing the side and back of my garden to grow more food and trees on. If I’m not physically working in the garden then I’m inside preserving, or I’m thinking about food shortages and climate emergencies!

There’s just not a lot of headspace left, which is a shame. Whatever creativity I have managed to cling onto needs to be diverted to my books, stories and poems, along with my blog and Substack.

As always, with writing my biggest motivation is getting all the untold books and stories out of my head before I die!