It’s now almost five months since I published my first book, Human Software. Now, finally, I feel I’ve gained enough emotional space from that work and the process around its launch to fully understand the experience and learn from it.
I wrote a first reaction blog post a month or so after the initial release. At that stage, things looked promising, and I was upbeat. Four months later, things look very different, and I’ve been through a rollercoaster of emotions and mental positions from elation to despondency. It’s time to take stock, learn from it and move on.
What exactly have I been doing during this process? And what is next? Read on for ideas about planning, releasing and expectations for a first (self) published work.
Getting Your Ideas Into The Hands Of People Quickly
While it’s tempting to think that the physical process of creating a book is enough, it’s really only the starting point for a writer. The next step is selling your book. You need an audience to sustain your writing, whether you get paid for it or not; you want people to read your work. One of the most frustrating parts of the publishing process for me has been trying to work out who my audience actually is, and honestly, when you’re taking a risk (like I did) with category and genre, you’re going to struggle to be able to pinpoint that audience on the first attempt.
That said, I did start out with a very clear vision to target software engineers and those in the IT industry who had enjoyed some of the (non-fiction) novels that provide stories or homilies for us as industry insiders to learn from. Books such as The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project, and The Goal. These books provide a narrative structure for showcasing industry techniques in organisation, technology, and management.
My initial idea was to publish early and often in sections on Leanpub, thereby garnering feedback as I went along. However, the deeper I went into the writing process, the less I knew why I was writing the book and for whom. So while the Leanpub approach may work when you have a very clear idea of the book you’re writing, for me, it was always going to be just another delivery mechanism rather than a useful iterative writing tool.
For Whom Do You Write?
Human Software was really a reaction to “industry novels”. A disappointed throwing up of hands that said, “I don’t believe that this makes any difference”. As such, it is at times an angry and frustrated book, showing burnout, ambition, greed, and corporate machinations through the characters such as Beth, Chrissie, Dominic, and Peter. Many of us may recognise these archetypes in our work. And from that perspective, perhaps it was too close to the bone, and I would have been better off making it a straight memoir.
Some of the reviews do point this out as well; they show it to be both “heartfelt” and close to the bone, perhaps so much so that why do people who’ve been affected by these situations need to read it? Interestingly, it’s been the non-techie readers who have perhaps got more out of it.
Every sale, every piece of feedback, every conversation feeds into one’s mental model of how the book is perceived. This can be really helpful in some ways, but also, with a small sample size of buyers and readers, it’s also tempting to feel like every piece of information needs to be acted upon. In other words, there is a lot of noise, and sometimes you’re left looking for a signal that may not exist. This is especially true if you’re currently working hard to market it and unlock that “sweet spot” of audience engagement.
Losing Marketing Focus
I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of being obsessed with sales data, with categorising and re-categorising the book on Amazon, and with rewriting the blurb a million times. I guess this was in reaction to sales falling off and panic setting in. Thinking: “If only I string the right marketing blurb together, I will connect with those elusive readers”.
Additionally, I took on the marketing load across all platforms. Despite not even having accounts on Facebook and Instagram, I figured I should give them a go. While I already had a decent, loyal following on LinkedIn and a burgeoning one on BlueSky, I felt that, to give the book the best chance, I needed to be everywhere at once.
In retrospect, it was the wrong time to experiment with other platforms, and I could have done better if I’d stuck to marketing a higher-quality message on the ones where I was established.
Additionally, trying to capture a different readership to the one I’d written the book for was completely a mistake in hindsight. Perhaps I’d listened to those voices that said to me “This could be a mass market smash if you pitch it right” – that was never my intention. I wanted to write about a subject close to my heart and do it meaningfully and genuinely towards the audience that I intended it.
The Illusion of Authorship
I guess the reason I went to all these platforms to market the book was that I felt like a fraud as a writer until I tried it. Until I had thrown myself into the full experience of calling myself an author on Instagram and approaching bookshops and events with a kind of professional veneer that comes only with time. Despite my age, I am a debut author, self-publishing my first work and learning as I go. Throwing myself into all of these “authoresque” situations would only contribute to my eventual burnout.
The pressure to do this, though, is especially hard if your friends are fierce cheerleaders for you. Their enthusiasm works as something of a double-edged sword. They want you to succeed the first time, and sometimes they don’t realise that it’s not possible, or at least very unlikely, to have success with a small following publishing a niche novel on your first attempt.
I’m extremely grateful for all the support and encouragement that I received from my friends and family, but sometimes it’s easy to get swept up in the expectation of it all, and no matter how many times you tell yourself to calm down, you hope that the next day will bring that spike of success.
Doing it All Yourself
In that manner, never underestimate how much work is involved in promoting a book. Whether self-publishing or publishing a book the traditional way, you need to promote it in the time-honoured way: build an audience, tease that audience, and then have a big-bang launch to carry your title with momentum to the top of the charts.
I found that I’d fluffed the launch a bit. Rushing it through because I wanted to get it out of the way after two years of writing, editing, typesetting and designing. I’d felt the process quite tiring, and I think, at some point, I just said to myself, let’s get it out there. Let’s get it over the line.
I hadn’t had the best experience with editing, and in the end had to re-edit the whole thing by hand. I was pleased with the finished product, including the illustrations – again something I’d had to do myself after failing to find suitable people to work with.
Finally, then, I had hit publish, but there were so many other things to do. Gather quotes and recommendations, attend conferences, print T-shirts, create fliers and bookmarks, promote a launch event, travel, then pitch, book, and record podcasts. None of these things is essential, but they are all in the name of “giving yourself a chance”, and I feel that is another trap I fell into. Just because there are established industry norms around how books are produced and marketed, if you’re doing it all for yourself, then surely a connection with a reader is enough. Again, I felt myself pandering to a lowest common denominator rather than having faith in what I’d produced and how that would be received.
Marketing Burnout
Eventually, the hype dissipates, and the dust settles, and you’re left with more decisions to make. I realised that despite publishing the book on Amazon and via Ingram to bookshops and online retailers worldwide, I’d not really given the book a chance in the Netherlands and Belgium. To do that, I needed to get the book printed up myself and agree a contract with the Centraal Boekhuis in the Netherlands.
So then visits to local bookshops ensued, I printed up a little introduction for the book and myself and handed it out along with a copy. I continue to push and push. I’m still considering whether to do the same in Kent. In reality, though, my energy levels are only just returning to normal since the launch.
That said, I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and I sold a few copies there and had lovely conversations with people about what makes our profession so special and why humans are the best part of software engineering. These are exactly the kind of conversations I hoped my book would spark.
These interactions also make me think I got the book’s marketing wrong. It’s a hopeful book after all, maybe I should have made the cover and the blurb reflect that more? Could I experiment with that on Amazon? That could be something for the future.
What’s Next?
When I look back over the last few months, I realise that it doesn’t need to all happen in a rush. I can take my time over the next steps. Perhaps I can finally get back to writing without feeling like everything isn’t marketing copy.
While I set a target of selling 500 copies of the book as a measure of success, I’m still well short of that target. That said, I have received, and continue to receive, good reviews for it, so I’m hopeful I will achieve that at some point.
More than that, I feel ready, finally to start writing again in a way that is meaningful and productive and, as I’ve said, not just as part of my own marketing machine. For the next book I will plan better, I will stick to my guns about my audience and my angle and I will not over extend myself when it comes to social media or outreach.
The process has taught me a lot about what I need to do to protect myself from being my own worst marketing enemy. Perhaps the next time I’ll also get more help along the way.
Just like any other profession, writing has to be respected for its cycles. I’m excited and honoured to have the ability to sit here and write words that other people read. For me, there is no better feeling than someone telling me they have enjoyed something I have written and us having a conversation about what it means to be human.
Therefore, we continue even though we don’t know what the future may bring.
Thanks for reading this post. If you want to support my work please consider buying my book for yourself or someone you know. Thank you.