The Raw Truth

More than I've ever shared about the numbers behind my writing

Hello, and Happy New Year!

I love a fresh start so much that I give myself three “new years”: first, in August (nothing like a clean classroom and a pile of sparkling curricular ideas), next on January 1st (a thrilling list of plans and possibilities), and finally, on my birthday in March (same idea, more reflective).

This New Year, one of my intentions is to be transparent about my writing career. Writing professionally is always uncertain. It’s really hard to get published even if you’ve done it before. And, my fourth novel (the funniest and most cheerful, while also the first murder mystery) is the last in my contract.

Who knows what’s next?! Not me!

I thought I’d share a couple of things about writing in general, and also about my work in particular. These are all things related to my plans and goals for the new year, which I’ll discuss, too! Here we go:

The biggest and most important way to support a writer is to preorder their book.

I have fairly dismal preorder numbers (124) for Making Friends Can Be Murder, out June 10th. 124 isn’t NOTHING, but as I happen to know that several of my relatives have purchased double-digit quantities; it’s not great, either. I need at least twenty times 124 if I have any hope of “bestselling” status. (More on that below.)

Preorders are weird (why buy a book six months in advance when your local shop will probably have it in person on June 10th?), but they’re everything to a book’s success. Here’s what preordering does: it signals to booksellers that they should stock the title. It alerts my publisher that they should allocate marketing dollars. It garners media attention for the book, including the kind that will land it on a “most anticipated” list or as a fancy book club pick.

If you like my work and want to read more of it in the future, you should preorder Making Friends Can Be Murder from the retailer of your choice. Here are some plusses: It’s a nineteen-dollar paperback original! There’s not a single unlikeable character! There’s even a little romance! There’s a nun and an FBI agent! And seven women all with the same name!

I check my preorders every month, and I make a video about my progress. The first video is here, when I had 82. So, 124 is better than that. But it’s not great, as I mentioned.

Second Thing: My books haven’t sold a ton of copies.

I used to avoid looking at my sales data because it made me feel sad. But now, I’ve decided to be a professional adult about my real job. Here are the behind-the-scenes true facts: I’ve sold a total of 29,786 units (books in all formats) in my career. By far, my most successful title is Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, my debut which has sold 20,326 units. It had the biggest marketing push. My publisher sent me on a tour to meet booksellers six months before the book was released. The film rights were sold to the same production company that developed Desperate Housewives. Still, that book was not a bestseller on any list. To do that, you have to sell 5-10 thousand copies and develop word of mouth and long tail. A month after it published, the pandemic raged and we all locked down.

My least successful book is Home or Away even though I wrote the crap out of it. It’s sold a total of 2,503 units. I’m hopeful that after Making Friends launches, HOA will get a paperback release and a second chance. It’s still relevant. In fact, I’m visiting with a book club next weekend that has just chosen it.

It’s not always cool to talk about ambition and failure which is why it’s hard to find true facts about book publishing.

I’ve written a lot about ambition and failure in my novels, actually. Women who want to be great at things? People don’t always like that quality. Not many readers wanted to be best friends with Leigh Mackenzie from Home or Away. In my own life, it’s been said I’m overly driven and obsessive. Sometimes at schools, colleagues imagine I’m working on writing projects specifically to make them feel less-than.

“Why do you always have to have goals?” a librarian asked me one time, as if I’d make my New Year’s Resolution only as a personal affront to her.

And wanting to be great usually requires falling short at least a few times. In fact, most of my writing career has felt like a failure. That’s its own problem because, as I mentioned before, getting published is hard and you’re supposed to feel very, very grateful. If you’re disappointed or worried you haven’t sold enough copies to get a new contract, if you actually say that aloud, your friends will say, “A lot of people would be really happy to be where you are.”

But, now I’m old, and I think it might be okay to say I’d like to be a great writer and also sell a lot of copies of my books. I’d like Making Friends to be my biggest and most popular title yet. I believe in it, and it has a special place in my heart because it was nearly impossible to write.

I’d love to tell you all about it. If you have any questions, just ask.