An Unofficial Guide to Soft Launching A Book and Getting Sales Without Ever Promoting It

A reflective lesson in supporting others

Your abundance is not measured by what you have, it is created by what you share. — Heidi Catherine Culbertson, Wisdom and Recipes

This quote resonated with me as I made this year a year of sharing and community support.

On Medium, I began supporting other writers and giving equal space to their work in my author bio / footer, so that in addition to discovering other pieces that I may write, readers can also choose to support a writer I personally love too.

On Twitter, I split my personal account from my artwork to create artsharewlucy, a place dedicated to daily art and small business shares. This has been such a fun endeavour in meeting artists. While I started with discovering and supporting other digital artists, this has expanded to multimedia in all senses: resin art, crochet, knitting, embroidery, you name it! Inspired by this, I even started my own crochet hobby, and it’s been such a rewarding hobby.

On Instagram, after lamenting about Instagram no longer supporting small creators, I recognized my unheard need. I wanted to continue discovering other small creators rather than solely focussing my energy on big creators that the algorithm fed me. So, on this platform, I channelled my inner supportive energy and began sharing personal tidbits but also new posts from different tags per day:

• Monday is #CommissionsOpen, to support digital artists who are looking for commissions to supplement their income but also to share their own amazing artwork. This one is perfect for anyone looking for a new profile picture for social media, or creative cover photos for their writing!
• Tuesday is #Poshmark, as I’m trying to upcycle and thrift more often than I’m shopping from fast-fashion outlets. This supports independent owners and crafters in selling items they no longer want anymore, to give these items a second life.
• Wednesday is #Etsy, because my Twitter opened my eyes up to all the ways that independent artists might be monetizing and trying to support themselves, especially through physical items. Etsy is one of the biggest platforms to sell physical gifts for artists who are looking to support themselves. Plus, I find that Etsy is a big enough platform that even if independent artists are selling on their platform, they may often use “Etsy” as a tag for exposure, and it’s helped me find a number of different independent artists this way too.
• Thursday is #Crochet, particularly because not everyone chooses to monetize their hobby and I’m here to support these artists as well! I find about half of my crochet project inspiration from Thursday shares alone (with the other half being from the Crochet subreddit!)
• Friday is timeline feature, which means that I’m featuring writers and artists I’ve come to know better through directly following them on my timeline. I want to shoutout Nada Chehade for her amazing Instagram selfie and self-promo game, brian g gilmore (bumpyjonas) for his unofficial “reading books from different angles” series, Amy Marley for being incredibly supportive of indie authors and Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles for her alternating quote tile vs. photo grid aesthetic.
• Saturday is #SmallBusinessSaturday, where I’m supporting small business of all kinds (beyond art- or craft- focussed ones). Here, I discover everything from independent realtors to bakers with delicious cupcakes. I draw the line at MLMs though.
• Sunday is #SunnySideUpEgg. This final (or first) day of the week is filled with an almost-pun and a piece of my favourite thing in the world — eggs. I fill my Sundays with sunny side-up eggs, both online and offline.

In September, I “soft-launched” a poetry book. Something in me felt inspired to put together a bunch of my tiny poems into something physical. I sat down and doodled a cute cover for myself. It felt like I was breaking every rule of publishing and promoting, but for me, I wanted this project to be completed. It was reminiscent to being five again and “making your own book” by gluing a bunch of pages together, and then cherishing that for another 20 years until your basement floods over.

By “soft-launch”, I meant that I did no official promoting whatsoever. From what I hear, this is supposed to be the death of an indie book. If you don’t promote a self-published book, it will just fade into obscurity and die.

At the same time, I was too embarrassed to promote. Me? A book? The most I did was slip a short promotional sentence into my signature, and schedule 10 posts in my newsletter. To give a sense, about 20 people follow my newsletter. When I send things out in my newsletter, it feels like I’m gathering a small group of pigeons with bread crumbs. Every time I press that “send” button, I think:

“You must be wondering why I gathered you here today.”

Every time.

Yet, sales picked up. I maintained sales every week. Physical and digital copies of my book were being held and touched and read by human eyeballs. I didn’t understand why or how or who was holding my book in their hands until social media posts started to pop up from all over.

All of my favourite writers were posting their copies of my book on social media and celebrating this. Someone actively pitched this book as part of a poetry reading club. When I felt too awkward to ever pipe up and share that I’d published a book, KSHernandez spoke up during a Saturday Twitter Spaces Writers for Change Chat to share that she’d been reading it. I blushed. I blushed red as a tomato, a fruit I don’t eat.

At the end of the day, a more seasoned writer might see the amount that I’ve earned from book sales and not understand why I’m happy, or blushing like a tomato.

Top Medium writers might see the measly amount I earn from this platform each month and really be curious about why I stick around over pennies.

A professional marketing person might see that I have 20 subscribers on my newsletter and wonder why I still show up every weekend to create aesthetic poetry prompts at all.

But as this quote points out, abundance isn’t what I have, or have received in monetary value. It’s knowing that out of the 123971237 poems I’ve written, there was one that tugged at the heartstrings of a reader that they often come back to it. They might share it with a friend to help describe why or how they are because it’s hard to otherwise express.

At the end of the day, I support others not because I expect others to reciprocate in a 1:1 manner (e.g., follow for follows, comments for comments), but rather to connect with them as a human being. I think that’s what our world lacks sometimes — that human connection. Especially resurfacing after a pandemic that required physical distancing, a lot of us are awkwardly emerging from our caves, feeling wobbly and uncertain.

That’s the power of writing, of letting someone else feel less alone. That’s also the power of using space like social media to support others, because often algorithms support loud, extremist or already popular voices.

So here’s my challenge for you today: support someone you think is underrated and deserves to be noticed by more readers and supports!

Thank you to Ravyne Hawke for this quote spark!

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and this is the little, wobbly, measly sentence that’s been 90% of how my book is being prompted: PS, I PUBLISHED A BOOK 📚. It’s honestly surprising how effective it’s been!

Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳

^ by Rebecca Stevens A.