A new direction

I had a plan. Write at least five romance novels over the next five years, build an audience, and hopefully work toward making my writing a viable career option so that I can at some point reduce from full time work. The plan was moving forward. I submitted the first book I ever wrote, eleven years after it languished in my bottom drawer, and got two publishers wanting to publish it. I picked a publisher and moved forward.

I made a commitment, more to myself than anyone else, to write one book a year so I completed my second book and sent it off. It was accepted and published. So far so good. I wrote my third book and sent it off, and this is when things got tricky, it was not accepted for publication. My sales were not strong enough for the publisher to want to pursue other titles.

While I had been looking at my meager royalty statements and feeling disheartened, I had a plan and I was sticking to it, but it was not to be. I don't know why sales of my books didn't go well.

1. Was it because I was using a pen name, and therefore had to begin again as a new entity without the platform I had established as a published young adult author?
2. Was it because I wasn't proactive enough with social media to remedy this fact?
3. Was it that my publisher wasn't doing enough to promote my titles?

But for some reason sales of my two romance novels didn't go well. Now I had to decide on a direction to move forward. There were a few possibilities:

1. Seek another publisher.
2. Self publish my third book.
3. Wait and do nothing.
4. Do something completely different.

I decided not to seek another publisher. Maybe I would have a better outcome, maybe not, what I know is that I want the space to decide on my future direction.

I could self publish, but I would have to pay for professional editing and chances are that my sales would not be much better than where I am.

Waiting is not an option. I want my book out there and to see what happens.

So I decided that if I'm not going to make money from my romance novel at this point in time, then I want to have readers. I read about Wattpad a while ago, and this seemed like a good option. It gets my book out there, maybe gives me the opportunity to get some feedback, and I might even develop a readership that would help me with future directions.

After my social experiment I can self publish my title and it might sell, or it might not. Either way I'm moving forward in some way and doing it on my own terms.

So I'll be posting a chapter a week for the next 24 weeks and blogging about it. This will give me the opportunity to develop a social media platform and hopefully have my book read and critiqued by readers.

You can find the first chapter of my new title here.

http://www.wattpad.com/myworks/37518719-vintage-dreams

You will have to join Wattpad, but you can easily do that through whatever social media platform you have.

So have a read, or don't. This could be a failed social experiment or not, but I'll just enjoy the ride and hope that you come along too.