That Satisfying Moment

Kathryn Brown talks about that satisfying moment in the wake of her publication of Nightingale Woods.

So your book is out and people are buying it in paperback and downloading it onto their Kindles. Makes you feel pretty good and quite satisfied that your hard work is finally being recognised. The reviews are trickling in and you find yourself checking download stats and royalties much more often than you probably should. Personally, I’m not a stats person; I don’t want to get bogged down with numbers and graphs and how much I’ve made in a week. For many authors, including myself, the passion of writing goes far beyond the statistical data that quickly dictates your book’s success. It is the love of writing that means so much more; the pleasure an author gets out of penning their manuscript, turning it into a story as their characters come to life and they visualise places in their heads. To the author, these characters become real people and when they read someone’s feedback that indicates the reader felt the same, that is when a book has truly become a success.

My latest book Nightingale Woods, is currently enjoying a free promotion and in the last two days the number of downloads has exceeded 4,000. I’m ecstatic! To some authors that will be minimal, a drop in the ocean, nothing to get excited about. But to me, it means people have gone to the trouble of perhaps reading the blurb and deciding my book is the one they want on their Kindle. None of us are naive enough to know that many people just like a freebie so will download the book for that reason only, but it’s still there, on their eReader, waiting to be read.

Imagine if every person who read your book left a review on Amazon. Of course that will never happen and we have to accept it; usually, a small few will leave a review, each one hugely appreciated, except of course the ones that seem to launch a personal attack on the author. I’ve read several articles recently on how to write a good review and each one mentions not leaving too much information about the plot, thus spoiling it for potential readers. But however those reviews are written, whatever is said in them, will never deter an author from writing their next book. You can stop reading the reviews and forget about the stats, but an author’s passion for writing will never go away.

Find out more about Kathryn, Nightingale Woods & Discovery at Rosehill by visiting our Author, Books, Trailer & Review Pages