I am becoming loud & proud about my self-pub procrastination. I was ashamed of it for a long time. I was constantly making excuses, and assuring friends/readers that yes, I will have the books for sale soon.

No.

In reality, here it is: I hate the concept of turning into a marketing machine.

Once I set the ball in motion on Amazon, I will have to transform into some kind of savvy businessperson if I want my epic series to have any chance in hell at being noticed. The fate of most self-pubbed books is that they drown in the ocean of obscurity. There’s a new book published every minute on Amazon. The self-pub success stories pour a ton of ad spend and marketing efforts into their series. This article about the failure of the long tail  says it well.

Instead of diving into book marketing, I’m very comfy serializing online. Readers kind of show up without me having to deploy ads or pour effort into newsletter swaps or study the dark arts of email campaigns. Readers say wonderfully nice things to me. It fulfills the part of me that wants acknowledgement/recognition for the magnum opus I’ve created.

So I’m admitting that I am procrastinating. I am freely telling people that I’ll get around to publishing and marketing my Torth series eventually… but I am enjoying the serialization life for now.

Also, I am probably going to do one more Hail Mary pass with literary agents. Yeah. Masochistic, I know.

At least this time, my expectations will be so low they’re subterranean. I’m aware that my series has no accurate comps, it does not match hot trends, it does not have a gimmicky angle that can be summarized in a sentence, and oh yeah, it’s not a stand-alone with series potential. It’s a full-fledged epic. Book 1 is an eternal problem. I was never able to make it behave.

But a few adventurous readers did take a chance on it, and some kept reading. So Book 1 does work for some people. I just don’t think that most literary agents are adventurous readers. They’re looking for “the same but different.”

Ah well. Why not collect at least 150 rejections, amiright?

Meanwhile, I have the excuse of chemotherapy for being lazy and not turning into a self-promotion marketing machine quite yet. I’m halfway through treatment. Hair is falling out, blood pressure is low, and I get very fatigued every third week due to oxaliplatin infusions. The other two weeks I can function pretty much normally. Hopefully there will be no trace of cancer after this.

Oh yeah! My new stand-alone novel-in-progress is a BREEZE in comparison to the Torth series. I’m not zooming ahead with passion on it. But dang, it’s easy and enjoyable. I think it may be easier to market, as well.

I’m also having a lot of fun creating 3D low poly art assets for my husband’s indie game. It’s his magnum opus, in the same way the Torth series is mine. His abilities with programming are blowing my mind.