Well, that was underwhelming

Eight books into my half-assed writing career, I got tired of begging my friends and family to write me reviews. So for my ninth and tenth books, I tried different strategies.

When I published Mary Monster, I focused on giveaways. The week the book came out, I distributed 1,200 copies. Fifty of those were to readers who promised to post a review in exchange for an advance copy. The other 1,150 were through a promotion I supported with paid advertising. The result? Zilch. I saw zero sales after my giveaways ended. And the reviews online are mostly from my friends and family. To date, Mary Monster has sold maybe 80 copies.

So for Camille, I focused on advertising a special $0.99 launch price. I invested $300 in different platforms, one of which "guaranteed" at least 50 sales. The result? Again, basically nothing. Camille has sold about 20 copies, at least six of which were purchased by personal friends. Only one review has been posted on Amazon.

I sort of expected Mary Monster to flop. It's too stylized for a self-pubbed genre thriller. But too supernatural to be considered serious literature.

But I really thought Camille might take off. The cover design is killer. The keywords and book description are solid. It's a popular genre. It's very dark, in a way some readers might miss until the book's final chapters, but I don't think it flopped because the hero was an antihero.

Anyway, I have four different books marinating, but I'm ignoring them for a bit. I shared some of my songs back in 2017, and I'm going to focus energy on writing more music and publishing an EP. Once that's done, maybe I'll write another novel the world can ignore.

I am publishing my unpublishable novel

Tomorrow is the drop date for Mary Monster. You can pre-order it right now, if you're so inclined.

I blogged before that my novel might be an unmarketable mashup of noir mystery, gothic lit, rock fetishism and supernatural suspense. Sure enough, I spent six months trying to find an agent. I got a few bites. A couple even sent me personal letters complimenting my voice. But in the end, no one was willing to rep it.

I'm not willing to let Mary Monster die on my hard drive. So I'm self-publishing it.

In a way, I think that's how it should've been all along. This is a personal book. A passion project. A book I wrote for me.

I've written an unpublishable mashup of a novel

Between January 3, 2013 and February 8, 2017, I put out eight novellas. That's a clip of a new book every six months. What's been the hold-up since?

The good news is I'm on my third draft of a novel. The bad news? I'm fairly sure it's unpublishable.

Mary Monster isn't going to be easy to sell. It's a mashup of urban surrealism and gothic horror. Dance Dance Dance meets Penny Dreadful. My first-person protagonist narrates the story in an awkward combination of 1976 Manchester and 2002 Manhattan slang. He drops dozens of indie music references, some explained and some that'll only make sense to the sort of person who obsesses over The Smiths. Meanwhile, the titular Mary speaks in wholly imagined accents, double entendres and literary allusions.

I tried to embrace all this artifice. In fact, I ran at it. In places I rewrote things to feel purposefully self-conscious, so readers have to slow down and make choices about what to Google and what to let go.

How do I explain this work in a query letter? And even if I could, who'd want it? Fantasy publishers will find my style obtrusive. While literary agents are going to be turned off by all the zombies.

But I can't self-publish, either. The type of people who download self-published fiction are looking for error-free genre fun. That means the first wave of consumer reviews would be terrible. Some jerk would claim my book was filled with typos. Another would drop the where-was-the-editor bomb. And snap, Amazon's algorithm would bury Mary Monster before it got a chance to find a niche.

To publish this book, I either need to find a publisher who believes in it. Or an audience ready to champion it. And I'm not sure either exists.

Kirkus and IndieReader review The Baby Monitor: A Novella of Family Horrors

I haven't written a lot about The Baby Monitor: A Novella of Family Horrors since the podcast version launched back in January. The book dropped February 28 in print and on Kindle. I ran a new release sale on FKBT. Mentioned it a couple times on Goodreads. And offered it free to my email list.

It's been reviewed on a couple of the indie publishing sites. IndieReader was unequivocal in its praise. "Short, but perfectly formed, The Baby Monitor is a very smart, very human, and very skillfully constructed horror novel... The conclusion is a stroke of genius."

Kirkus Reviews was a little conflicted about my style, but also enjoyed the end. "Ingwalson’s narrative is effective and suspenseful, and while the conclusion at first appears to be a standard, urban legend-style twist, the ending is more complex and satisfying than that... While some readers may feel that the short length leads to a lack of details about the characters and their surroundings, others should enjoy the tight pacing and claustrophobic dynamic."

I find it intriguing, even frustrating, that the number one comment I get is that my novellas are short. Never mind that novellas are short by definition. I read a lot. And I'm often frustrated by how little happens in many novels. And by how many words it takes some authors to convey simple ideas.

The Baby Monitor: A Novella of Family Horrors is a novella by design. It would crack if it was spread over too many pages. On the other hand, I do wonder where my novel is. I'm toying with a couple of ideas for the type of story where the plot deserves 80,000 words.

Someday, I guess. Someday.

What are you thinking: A self-publishing conversation with Colorado Collective

Thanks to Colorado Collective for inviting me over to talk about self-publishing. Here's some highlights from the discussion, with supporting links:

“Almost 3,000 books are published on Amazon per day. Not per year. Per day. The odds of you selling more than 100 copies are low.” Some sad, sad facts found here.

“A lot of people making money self-publishing don’t proofread or make any serious attempt to write their own books. They steal outlines, outsource the writing, and publish as frequently as possible.” Read about it on The Hustle.

“The best way to get people to buy your book is to make sure the cover design blends in with other books in the genre.” Read about it on my blog.

“I publish print via CreateSpace mostly for vanity. More than 95% of my sales come on Kindle or Kindle Unlimited. If you are 100% dedicated, you can also publish on Barnes and Noble, but if you do Amazon will yank promotional opportunities like giveaways and countdown deals.” Createspace is here. And KDP is here.

“I have run pay-per-click ads on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google and Goodreads. All of them clicked, but few converted. The best paid placements are on promotional book lists.” Bookbub, Booksends. FKB&T.

“If you don’t have money, you can try hanging out on social networks, discussing your genre with fans. This helps ensure the people who buy your book also buy others in the same genre, which will help Amazon’s algorithm create lookalike modeling.” Reddit. And my profile on Goodreads.

“Awards are great for vanity and validation, but have yet to make me any money.” Read about it on my blog.

“The best way to make money is to write several novels in a series, publish them in close succession, and then give the first one away. Make sure your book descriptions make ample use of genre-specific keywords.” An example of how I do this on Amazon.

“Giveaways are good for awareness, but the way Goodreads advises you run them is bullshit.” Read the stats on my blog.