Mistakes I've made in my publishing journey: Of Dreams and Nightmares edition

 

While publishing this series, I made far fewer glaring mistakes than I had in the past. I also didn't release the first book until I had five years of publishing under my belt. There is only one thing that I think I would really do differently with this one.

And that is I would have hyped it up more pre-release. I published Of Gold and Iron in September of 2020 in the midst of my almost year-long internet hiatus (cause 2020 was a rough year y'all), and I did next to nothing to spread the word about its release.

I had no newsletter, I had no social media presence, I only posted on my blog like once a month and no one was watching me, which means that no one saw it when I just quietly put this one out there.

Basically, these blog posts are all I said about my book leading up to the release.

Myths, Magic, and Madness: AN ANNOUNCEMENT (and guess what it STILL isn’t the one you think) (but you’ll like it) (nickichapelwayauthor.blogspot.com)

Myths, Magic, and Madness: Update on Of Gold and Iron (nickichapelwayauthor.blogspot.com)

Myths, Magic, and Madness: Of Gold and Iron Cover reveal (nickichapelwayauthor.blogspot.com)

Myths, Magic, and Madness: Of Gold and Iron release party (nickichapelwayauthor.blogspot.com)

And then I turned around and was like, why is this book not selling? It's literally so good, one of the works I'm the proudest of. With excellent plot twists, a compelling enemies to lover's romance, not to mention that it is a YA faerie book which was a super popular genre at the time. It has faeries, and soul binding magic, and bargains that could kill you, and an iron blade that only an assassin that has been chosen by the courts can wield.

Well, I'll tell you why it didn't sell. Because no one knew about it.

Now I will point out, that I did open up my Instagram just before I released Of Gold and Iron, and by just before I mean it was literally the month of the release (I think I started my Instagram on the 15th and published OGaI on the 22nd). So it didn't do much, but it did help a little.

And I honestly think that due to the lack of marketing and pushing my book out there that I did before it released, I've been playing catch-up with this series ever since. Which is such a huge pity, becuase this series has so much potential, and I think it would be a lot of people's favorite books. If only they knew it existed...

All right, so that's the end of this series. I'll probably choose something more uplifting to be my next series, but I hope that you learned a lot from my previous mistakes. I know that I have.