How do you stay motivated when your books don’t sell a single copy a day?

Here we are again, after a few months of small but steady sales, I have reached the hated 0-copy-sold-today point on my Amazon sale chart. For all the success stories out there, then you have mine. I work hard every day, and I only publish material that I’m proud to put my name on. Yet, I struggle every step of the way. It’s hard for me to gain readership, therefore I don’t have a great amount of reviews, consequently my downloads are low. Bookbub keeps rejecting me. Blah, blah, blah…

Is it my writing? My blurbs? My covers? All of the above that makes people upvote the negative reviews for my books? Is there something inherently wrong with me?

Maybe. Or maybe not. I have no control over a large part of the publishing process once my book is out. But, I do have control over my reaction to the negative side of being an author. The truth is that I am happy when I write. The more I write in a day, the happier I am. If I reach 5k, I’m deliriously happy.  I’ve never reached 6k in a day, but one day I will and it will be glorious.

This morning, I woke up to another 0-copy-sold kind of day, and as any reasonable person would do I started browsing reddit for the occasional feel-good post and the cute puppies pics. Lurking around, I found today’s Writing Prompt suggestion (amazing subreddit by the way) and my blues were swept away by one of the cleverest WPs ever: As you die, you travel down the bright tunnel and then everything turns to black. That’s when you hear it: “Greetings, Prisoner 11384. You have served your sentence. You are free to go.”

I got so excited thinking of what an amazing story that wp could become (and read the most voted post there because it’s great) that I forgot about everything else. And that’s how I go on writing every day even when it seems an endeavor of Don Quichottean proportions.

Reach out if you want to complain about your bad day. I usually don’t post rants, but I thought that maybe it’s okay once in a while to express our dissatisfaction with the world.

Remember: It could be worse, it could be raining. Or as my daughter told me to cheer me up, “At least you didn’t have a refund today.” It’s all good, folks!

* I painted the above picture after finishing my first Nanowrimo: The Priest, to date my most controversial title, and also the first I published (although it wasn’t the first I wrote.) That drawing always reminds me why I write, even on those days when reddit doesn’t do the trick.