June 15th, 2021
There’s this magic number we think about often as self-published writers: 50.
That’s the number of reviews to takes on Amazon to get their attention.
It is both a small number and (as someone who’s largest set of reviews is 7 for a book that’s almost 8 years old) an impossibly great one.
So I want to answer a question I get all the time: “Why do you write and publish books?” But I want to answer it specifically for Time is a Solid State, which is essentially my internet feed in book form.
There are lists and lists of writers who weren’t discovered or appreciated until they kicked that cruel bucket. Emily Dickenson had her first book of poetry published just in time — for the fourth anniversary of her death. Henry David Theroux self-published his now-classic works and sold few (which sounds uncomfortably close to my story), but Henry also didn’t have the internet in the 1800’s. Writers like Herman Melville and poet John Keats were both published in their lifetimes, but also considered themselves to be complete failures due to the initial critical responses to their work. (I mean, people hated it.) And H.P. Lovecraft didn’t have his stories published in book form until a few years after his passing (though that may have been tongue-in-cheek instant karma on behalf of his rampant racism).
Their deaths didn’t change the words they wrote. No, they were speaking for so many hearts the moment they put their pens to paper and fingers to keys. It was just that the words weren’t out there, in so many cases, and the eyes that needed to see them took too long.
And that’s why I published my internet ramblings. Over the years, I’ve received so many heartfelt comments and messages over these essays that I sincerely put my all into, day after day. And I figured that if they connected with people the way that I craved, in ways that I don’t see others writing, then maybe there’s a bigger audience out there for that.
And instead of death, all I need is 50 Amazon reviews.
But gosh: what a great number.
(You can review Time is a Solid State on Amazon TODAY. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
The Den 