I’ve now been a published author for over a week. Into Shadow released as an ebook on May 31, and the paperback released on June 7! (I now have a “Books” page on my website—check it out for links to the book, the synopsis, and content warnings.) It’s been an exciting month, and I thought I would share a little bit about what publication has looked like for me. 

May: The Month Before Publication

In May, I was unlucky enough to catch a bad cold that kept me sick for over two weeks. At the same time, I was making final changes to book files, uploading files to various platforms, waiting for the platforms to approve the files, etc. When I decided last August to aim for a publication date at the end of May, I really thought I was leaving myself plenty of time to get everything done, but the main thing I learned from this May is that I should aim to have everything done the month before publication. It took KDP way longer to approve the files than I anticipated, and as a result, I decided to push the paperback publication date back a week (initially, I intended for everything to publish on May 31). In the end, I didn’t mind having two publication dates. If anything, it made things more exciting! However, I didn’t love feeling rushed on everything. I’m happy with the quality of the book I published, but I think it would have been much less stressful to have things done earlier.

I left finding ARC readers very late, maybe partially due to fear that no one would want to read Into Shadow. To my great surprise, I had so many people asking for ARCs that I had to turn people down! On one memorable day, I woke up to ninety-two TikTok notifications related to ARCs. I’m so glad I decided to send out ARCs, and I’m so grateful for every single review and reader. Even if maybe a third of the readers translated into reviews, I was lucky enough to find ARC readers who really connected with my book, which gave me a huge confidence boost leading up to publication!

My goal for this book was relatively small. I didn’t have a sales goal, really, because I knew that sales weren’t entirely within my control. My goal was just to find a few people who would really connect with Into Shadow and love it. After receiving reviews from ARC readers, I actually felt as if I had achieved that goal. I feel incredibly lucky to have already found readers who love Into Shadow, and I’m not exaggerating when I say I have spent many of the past ten days crying happy tears.

May 31 (Publication Day 1)

May 31 was a wonderful day. I went for a delicious sushi dinner with my sister and then came home for a small virtual launch party with very close friends and people who were heavily involved in the book’s creation. I was fortunate enough to have people there who were willing to listen to me read chapter one, give a speech, and talk about how excited I was. My sister bought me dragon-shaped earrings that I will probably wear until the end of time. Someone else got me an incredibly delicious cake, and others got me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers ever. After the virtual launch, my in-person guests and I had a dance party in the living room. 

I ended the day feeling extremely lucky to have such wonderfully supportive people in my life.

June 1 to 6

I fully intended to take a break last week, but I was feeling so excited about the story that I prepared the sequel for Into Shadow for my beta readers and sent it out. I’ve been stuck on the sequel for a while now because I’ve been torn about splitting it into two books, but I’ve tentatively decided to keep it as one longer book. I’m starting to get excited about the sequel already. I reread it in full this week, and I ended it with the feeling that there’s a lot of good stuff there. 

Writing this sequel was one of the hardest writing projects I’ve ever done. I wrote the bulk of the book while dealing with a number of query rejections for Into Shadow, and so writing this book was a huge struggle mentally. The fact that I can see a lot of positives about it now is actually very encouraging, but we’ll see if my beta readers agree with me!

June 7 (Publication Day 2) and Beyond

The paperback release day was a quiet day for me, but it was also very nice. Lots of people have received their copies of Into Shadow before I’ve received mine, but I’m expecting mine today! The book is finally out in the world, and I’m feeling very positive about it. Lots of people have been messaging me or posting about the book, and it’s left me feeling incredibly grateful. 

I’m a new author, and so I really hoped to build a good foundation with this book for a long career. While I’m hoping to build up more sales eventually, I’m really happy about (and proud of) every single sale so far. I’m planning to write until the end of time, and I knew I’d have to start somewhere. I find this to be an incredibly encouraging start, so thank you to everyone who has read Into Shadow and otherwise provided support!