Murder by numbers
Heard from my publisher: since the paperback came out in November I've sold 61 copies in the US and three in the UK. Minus the three I bought myself, that's 61 gigantic paper bricks with my name on them out in the world being read by people.
I'm sure all the Actual Writers reading this are shaking their heads pityingly at the number but fuck it, I'm going to be happy about it. It's 61 more paperbacks than I had under my belt last year, and there are fanfics of my world and fans and supportive readers and there are bookshops here in Melbourne which have refused to stock it because the price is too high for a YA novel*, but there's also a bookshop which put it in the window.
I don't know. The hungry, ambitious part of me -- the part that dressed up Slytherin for Harry Potter, the part that sticks her foot in doors and leaves it there despite the slams when doing journalism work -- wishes that it was higher, because I want to do things that make my family proud of me, I want to be able to prove that I'm not worthless and a failure. I want to be good enough.
But I guess 61 is better than 0, and not everyone is a Rowling or a Meyer with a home run on first swing. Stephen King says that a successful writer is any writer who can pay their electricity bill. But DC comic books get cancelled and considered total bombs if they don't sell about 20,000 copies every single month. So probably I should feel more like a failure than I want to. I want to be proud.
I don't know. I don't know. I have a lot of feelings. I'm pleased and bitterly self-loathing all at once, which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to writing for me. So I guess that means I did exactly as I expected.
* I agree the cost is hefty, which is why I'll continue to link to the totally illegal and naughty free download as an alternative. I want people to read my words more than I want to follow the rules.
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