Playing other games while playing the Waiting Game

I’ve read interviews where artists state they don’t pay attention to critics. Positive or negative, reviews cloud their judgment, and so they do their best to avoid them. I understand this logic. If everyone’s expressing love for your work, you could get sloppy. Your ego might inflate and you’ll lose your critical eye. And if everyone hates your work, you might doubt yourself. You’ll lose your confidence. Your style will weaken. You might try to appease those who cannot be appeased and jeopardize your creative identity. And everyone isn’t everyone. My favorite books and movies have their share of trashtalking critics, just as the stuff I’d regard as slop has its diehard fans.

Yet whether or not artists acknowledge reviews doesn’t alter the fact that those reviews legitimize their work.

I’m aware that’s a controversial statement. People who enjoy the what is art? What defines art? conversations may scoff at it. But when we look at art from a business perspective—look at the artist not solely as someone who creates, but someone who supports him/herself through the creating—reviews play a major part. Few people will invest their money and time in the unknown. Just like diners who browse Yelp comments before patronizing a restaurant, readers browse book reviews before making a purchase. Better to invest themselves in something that has been “proven” to hold merit rather than a work that may or may not be decent.

With the free promotion over, A Collection of Angels is completely off the radar. I haven’t sold a single copy. This is to be expected. Eventually I plan to pay to have it advertised on different websites, but only after it has garnered reviews.

A couple risks in this approach:

I’m assuming Collection will be well-reviewed. Given the first two ratings the novella received on Good Reads are three stars (how damning—to have one’s work neither hated nor loved, just judged mediocre), I could be setting myself up for major disappointment. There’s also no guarantee those who downloaded the book (~150 individuals) will even read it, let alone review it. I can cite myself as an example. I’ve read all sorts of books, and I haven’t once posted a review on Amazon or Good Reads. Maybe this is karma. 

In the meantime I’m concentrating on other projects.

For my longer works, I’m still querying agents in the hopes of gaining literary representation. I like the idea of having my foot in both camps: my too-short-to-have-been-represented-novellas published in the indie-world, and my full-length stories published in the traditional way.

Concerning my next self-publishing venture, cherubs & lavender needs a few more proof-reads. More  cleaning of clunky passages. Once done, I’ll send it off for copy-editing. When it’s in top-shape, I’ll be more organized in promoting its release. I threw Collection into the wild and hoped a few it’s-temporarily-free! days would be enough for it to gain momentum, but I realize now, in a world where over a thousand new titles are self-published every single day, it’s going to take a lot more than a free price-tag to get people to download my stuff.