Do Two Swallows a Summer Make?

‘One swallow does not a summer make.’ It may have been Aristotle who said it first or Aesop - no matter - because we all know what it means. It’s very similar to ‘a flash in the pan’ - one of those odd or even freak occurrences that doesn’t establish a reliable pattern for the future. So I have been pondering whether writing and publishing a second book may have turned me from a ‘flash in the pan’ into an established writer, or even (heaven forfend) ‘an author.’

Because I am very happy to tell you that on October 3rd, my second book in a series I am calling The Anamchara Chronicles, will be published to join my first attempt at writing fiction: Like A Bird Without A Song.

Let’s start this by talking about Imposter Syndrome. Before now, have I ever experienced this somewhat debilitating condition? Well, I’m a woman aren’t I? So the answer to that must be ‘of course I have.’ In fact I have a very clear memory of leading my first ever management training course at the London Business School for a group of accountants. It was summer 1986 and I was thirty-eight years old and quietly terrified. But my age was a massive advantage because the attendees all assumed I had been working as a training consultant for donkey’s years. So I pretended to be very experienced and no-one ever guessed that this was my first course and that I felt like a fraud… and gradually I owned the mantle I was wearing and it became a part of me.

I am now wondering if I will ever truly inhabit the mantle of a novelist. However, I have now written two full novels, and already have ideas for my third book whirring and spinning in my head, so I am at least beginning to let go of the notion that I can never be considered a ‘proper writer’ because, unlike me, ‘proper writers’ are:

1) Born to write and it’s all they have either done or wanted to do.

2) Studied literature at university (preferably Oxbridge or on the prestigious creative writing course at the UAE) and have done loads of courses in creative writing.

3) Discovered when young by a high profile literary agent and are then published by one of the reputable publishing houses.

4) Winners of, or have been shortlisted for a prestigious literature prize like the Booker or the Pulitzer, or even the Nobel Prize for Literature.

However, I am heartened by the back stories of various ‘proper writers,’ all of whom are immensely popular and successful and all of whom have sold millions of books:

J.K Rowling failed to gain a place at Oxford and did not study literature at Exeter University. Her first Harry Potter book was initially rejected by twelve publishers and she was told by one of them that she’d never make money from writing children’s books…

Colleen Hoover, an American self-published author, who trained and worked as a social worker and teacher before writing a book to give to her mother as a present for her birthday. Hoover has now sold over twenty million books…

And finally Richard Osman of Thursday Murdrer Club fame. Most of us recognise Osman from his long stint amusing us in his double act with Alexander Armstrong on Pointless. However, he became an unlikely TV presenter after a long career as a very successful television producer, having originally studied politics and sociology at Cambridge. He started writing his crime books at the age of fifty in 2020 and to date he has sold seventeen million books worldwide, with his latest book to be published in the autumn.

All of which I find immensely heartening NOT because I believe that I am destined to join their ranks, obviously I am not, but because there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to being a person who writes books that other people want to read and appear to enjoy. Which brings me to the success that I have had with Like A Bird Without A Song. This is all relative but is not irrelevant.

It is five months to date since I launched myself as a debut Indie novelist by self-publishing my book on Amazon. I therefore now have a fairly long period of sales figures and reader reviews for some fairly meaty comparative data with other similar launches.

As of today I have sold 1520 copies of Like A Bird Without A Song and have received 420 excellent reader reviews. Nowhere near the several millions of Rowling, Hoover and Osman but please bear in mind that for someone like me:

Under 100 copies sold in total is common.

100–500 copies is a respectable early achievement.

500–1,000 copies indicates the book is finding readers and gaining traction.

1,000 to 1500 copies puts the book well above what many debut self-published authors achieve.

And here is the more detailed analysis of the performance of Book One, quoting directly from the report I have received:

Firstly, 1,520 copies of a debut is geniuenly excellent, particularly without a backlist of other titles generating cross-sales.

Secondly, there's something even more impressive than 1,520: the 420 reviews - a ratio of 27%.

420 people is beginning to look like a substantial readership rather than an enthusiastic launch cohort. A 4.6 star average after the book has escaped into the wider world tells us: the book itself has worked.

That's important. Your initial 660 sales during the immediate launch could partly have been explained by your existing audience and launch enthusiasm. Four hundred-plus ratings averaging 4.6 can't so easily be dismissed as launch-day goodwill.

Thirdly, your print performance is also unusually interesting:

Of your 1,520 purchases:

71% ebook — 1,08029% print — 440

That's nearly three physical books for every seven ebooks.

That statistic reinforces something important about Like A Bird Without A Song. It appears to be behaving more like mainstream women's/romantic fiction than a classic Kindle Unlimited romance product.

That's potentially valuable because your likely readership isn't confined to voracious Kindle Unlimited romance readers. Written Word Media's survey data shows just how important KU is to many successful indie authors; significant proportions of higher-earning indies derive more than 75% of their income from KU.

Your substantial print component therefore is a definite strength rather than an anomaly.

All of which is making me super-excited about the publication of my second book which is called Once I Had A Secret Love on October 3rd. The new book has just gone live on Amazon at a special pre-order price for the e-book. Last time I received 420 pre-orders - something I am hoping to better this time.

Somewhat bizarrely, writing and finishing the second book has given me a massive confidence boost. Back to the ‘flash in the pan’ and ‘Imposter Syndrome’ issue mentioned above. Having written one book which has been received so positively by so many delightful readers, I honestly had no idea whether I had another book in me. However, I am heartened to tell you that I found this latest one even easier to write, despite it being a more layered and nuanced story about the Kenny family: Gerald, Aileen and their son Sean. All of whom feature in Book One, although Gerald and Aileen are very minor characters.

Perhaps I found writing Book Two easier because I started it thinking ‘I know how to do this’ thanks to having learned so much the first time around. I also told myself to ‘trust the process’ because I knew that the characters would quickly become very real to me and would start to suggest how their story should unfold.

The other advantage for this book was that I could start the story of the Kenny family in 1962 and make Aileen a similar age to me at that time. This meant that all the contemporaneous references could grow out of my own memories and lived experience. The main difference is that the story is set in Dublin and being a teenager in Ireland at that time was very different to being one in England. However, I went to a Catholic convent from 1959 to 1966, and was taught exclusively by Irish nuns, so, again, as a teenager I was very familiar with their attitudes and beliefs, (especially about boys and sex). Fortunately I went home every evening to a remarkably enlightened and open-minded mother - unlike poor old Aileen whose own mother had died when she was ten years old.

I am going to end this with a huge thank you to any of you who became one of my readers for Like A Bird. If anything has turned me from ‘a flash in a pan’ into a ‘proper writer’ it is all of you. So much kindness, so much support and so much encouragement for my literary endeavours.

And so far I have had a very similar response to Once I Had A Secret Love. When Mel, one of my two Irish readers finished reading the story last week, she emailed me to say:

'Hats off to you! You have done it again - the story is gripping, so good! I absolutely loved it.'

And I very much hope you will also love my story too!

If you would like to pre-order the e-book of Once I Had A Secret Love at the special price of £4.99 you can do so here.

Tricia x