A few thoughts on self-promotion and book publishing

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When I published PLOWED FIELDS, more than one person emphasized the importance of maintaining a blog and updating it regularly to stay connected with readers. It was good advice, but honestly, I just don’t have that much to say, so my blogging is few and far between.

With today’s official release of the PLOWED FIELDS audiobook trilogy, however, I thought it might be worth a few words to share some thoughts about self-promotion and book publishing.

My thoughts boil down to this: The worst part of writing a published book is promoting the book.

And yet, unless you’re Stephen King, John Grisham or a handful of other best-selling authors, you must promote your book hard and heavy if you have any hopes of selling a few copies.

Self-promotion doesn’t come easy to me, despite the Facebook posts, book-signings and speaking opportunities that suggest otherwise. It makes me feel a little slimy, like I’m doing something wrong or taking advantage of someone.

That said, my experience publishing PLOWED FIELDS ranks among the most rewarding and challenging of my life. Everything about the process exceeded my expectations.

The rewards rattle off easy in my mind, starting with the opportunities to engage with readers. I am forever grateful to everyone who ever came to a book signing or speaking engagement. Discussing the novel with book clubs pumped me up like nothing else, even the one whose members loathed my treatment of -ing words in quotes. (I used -en to spell -ing, which is how the pronunciation sounds to me in my neck of the woods.)

The good and the bad

Reviews for PLOWED FIELDS have been incredibly positive, and the book won a couple of awards. Even so, the occasional bad review hurts. It could be easy to let the few bad apples tarnish everything else, but I’ve always tried to take Rudyard Kipling’s advice to heart in his poem If: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same ….” Not always easy to do, but good advice.

Some people say promoting a book is harder than writing a book. Not sure I agree, but the promotion piece is essential to selling books. If you’re not willing to promote it, you’re not going to sell it.

Multiple authors emphasized this point to me before I published PLOWED FIELDS, and I took their advice to heart. I decided if I was going to put in the effort and expense to publish a book, I would do everything in my power to give the book the best opportunity to be successful.

The truth is: It’s hard to sell books. Especially novels like PLOWED FIELDS, which are a dime a dozen in the marketplace.

Publishing business is tough

Last year, two of the world’s largest publishers, Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster, tried to merge. The U.S. government won an antitrust suit to stop the merger, but the trial revealed stunning figures about book publishing in the United States.

Of 45,000-plus books published by the top 10 U.S. publishers over a 52-week period ending in August 2022, 66.1 percent sold less than 1,000 copies. Another 21.6 percent sold between 1,000 and 4,999 copies. Just 12.2 percent of those 45,000-plus books sold more than 5,000 copies, and only 0.4 percent—163 books—sold more than 100,000 copies.

Long story short: Don’t expect to write a book and assume people will rush to buy it. You’ll be sadly disappointed.

No disappointments

As for my experience with PLOWED FIELDS, I haven’t had a single disappointment.

The book reached No. 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list for literary sagas shortly after the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and cracked the top 50 for family sagas, Southern fiction and saga fiction. Honestly, that sounds better than it really is in terms of books sold, but it’s also one of the key benchmarks for publishing. It was a huge thrill and validation for all the effort that went into writing and publishing the book.

When I published PLOWED FIELDS in 2019, I set what felt like an ambitious goal of selling 1,000 copies. Happily, the book blew past the goal within six months of publication, and sales have been steady ever since. It’s still a thrill to collect monthly royalty checks, even the ones for $1.37!

No, I’m not getting rich from PLOWED FIELDS, but that was never the point of all this.

I never set out to be a novelist—I don’t even consider myself a novelist in the truest sense of the word. But I had a story to tell about joy, sorrow and hope, about the hard choices we make and a family that, although a product of my imagination, became near and dear to my heart. I also wanted to pay homage to a time and place that I find very special.

PLOWED FIELDS does all that and more, and I’m all the richer for it.

Jim