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I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again: if you want to be an author, you need to write because it’s your passion, not because you want to become a millionaire, social media influencer or best-selling author (although all of those things are #goals, of course).
In this blog I’m going to share five things I struggled with when I was starting out on my journey in the author world to shed some light and hopefully help those of you who are either aspiring authors or taking the first step on your own author journey.
PRO TIP: You may go through some dark days or hard times, but just know: THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!
A few of my pain points as a novice author were:
§ Coming out of my shell and finding my voice as an author
§ Separating my author life from my personal life
§ Handling negative reviews
§ Self-promotion without feeling like I was boasting
§ Building my audience/ fan base
PRO TIP: As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Learn your pain points and make it a goal to tackle one at a time.
How I overcame them:
Coming out of my shell and finding my voice as an author:
I joined various Facebook groups for readers and authors in my niche/genre. Introducing myself and being able to share my wins, ask questions and promote my work was a really big help. There is a whole community of authors and readers alike online just waiting to be interacted with.
I will also say, when it came to finding my voice, BRANDING was key. Branding helped me differentiate myself from the pack. Again, BRANDING, BRANDING, BRANDING is KEY—P.S. I have a workbook in my online store for branding. Click here to check it out!
Separating my author life from my personal life:
Creating separate social media accounts for my author persona, rather than having everything fall under one account. That way, I could focus on befriending other authors and engaging with my readers without inundating the social feeds of my personal connections.
Handling negative reviews:
I’ll admit, this was a tough one for me. Over time, I had to relearn something I already knew, which was that everything simply isn’t for everybody. As an author, you won’t be able to please every reader who reads your work, period. The key is to find the positive in the negative. If a reader is telling you they didn’t like your work because the storyline had holes in it, the editing was poor, or the characters didn’t have depth, then those are things you need to soak up and use it as fuel for your next release to ensure you’re not making the same mistakes over and over again.
Self-promotion without feeling like I was boasting (or simply being annoying):
If people are befriending you on social media, that means that nine times out of ten, they WANT to hear what you have to say and WANT to hear what you have going on. If you’ve finished your book, post about it! If it’s the release day of your book, post about it! If you’re going to be at a book event selling your work, post about it! Don’t be afraid to share your good news with your readers. ALSO, there are a bunch of free promotional groups on Facebook that will allow you to promote you work shamelessly, so don’t be afraid!
Building my audience/ fanbase:
The best advice I can give here is that stepping out from behind these keys and engaging with readers at book events or expos (locally or nationally) helped a lot! Not only do you get more comfortable talking to people, you’ll get more comfortable speaking about your work. Plus, be sure to collect email addresses at these events (or, if you don’t have the bandwidth to attend events, simply make a Facebook post (on your page or in a group) asking for readers’ emails). That way, you have built in fans ready to hear from you when you have a new book release coming out!
I sincerely hope this helps! If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out to me directly!
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