It’s been a week since I published my second book ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’ and the family has started asking questions like “how is the book doing?”, “How many copies did you sell?”. Awkward.
“Quite frankly, my poetry book did better in its first week,” is my standard response. And also the truth. My poetry book even made it to Amazon’s ‘bestsellers’ list within the first week. No such luck with the new one.
Not like I am not aware of how difficult it is to gain any visibility as an independent author. Especially for someone writing general fiction. In a world where people would rather watch a quick film than read a book, sometimes I dread that there will come a point in the future where the writers versus readers ratio will become lopsided. Like 500 million writers catering to 400 million readers.
I really can’t decide if it’s a boon or a bane, the fact that my writing break has coincided with a pandemic. For those who aren’t aware – I quit a rather nice job with a leading national TV news channel in August 2019. The idea was to do a little travelling and then focus on writing. I published ‘Death & Darker Realms’ in December. Finished a novella (which I still have to proof-read) by February and then the Covid-19 pandemic virtually shut down my nation by March end.
Days before the national lockdown was announced, I thought to myself “hey, maybe I could do a short story collection loosely based on the pandemic”. By May, I was done writing ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’.
While paperbacks are available in U.S, U.K and some other countries. For some reason, Amazon does not publish paperbacks in India. And I do have a publisher to print paperbacks in India, but they are based in Chennai, a major metropolis, where a lock-down is still on, so they cannot make deliveries right now.
A lot of those who live in India keep asking me for a paperback version. And while to some I simply say ‘nope, no paperback in India’. For those who are closer to me, I take the liberty to launch a bit of a rant, “there is a lock-down still on in some parts of the country, non-essentials are not being delivered. I can’t complain about the lockodown when my book is loosely based on the same damn thing, can I?”
Although I totally understand people wanting a paperback, because till early 2019, even I had a mental block against e-books. And now I am so comfortable with e-books now that I don’t even bother with my kindle and just read them on my phone (on the kindle app)!
Anyway, if you are still with me, please grab a copy of “Love, Loss, Lockdown” and help support an independent author. It’s a collection of 10 short stories. Following are some country specific links –
If I’ve missed your country, look for it on Amazon or on your kindle store.