The Imposter
Back in March I recorded a podcast for Geoff Jones & Friends Make it Better. The premise of the show is Geoff and his guests take a particular topic, normally featuring one of life’s little annoyances, and work out how to try and make this better. Recent topics have ranged from missing socks, family photographs and bad drivers.
For this particular episode I picked the subject of self-promotion, talking to Geoff about the challenges authors face when it comes to trying to promote their own books. This discussion quickly moved on to the topic of imposter syndrome in general.
It’s probably going a bit far to say that book promotion is every author’s worst nightmare. However, bearing in mind an author’s favourite way of spending their time is hiding away, writing in peace and quiet, it’s an area a lot of us do struggle with.
By its nature, writing is a solitary occupation. The trouble is, when you reach the point of publishing your books, you come up against the brutal truth that no one has ever heard of you. I was completely unprepared for this side of things when I released my first book in 2020. After the initial buzz and the loyal purchase of copies by family and friends the book basically died.
I’d left it far too late to approach book bloggers, reviewers and the like, waiting until after publication, which was a massive mistake. Without word of mouth, my debut, Hall of Bones, simply vanished among the millions of titles on Amazon. After the initial splash, I sold one single solitary lone sad little book in the following three months. An urgent rethink was required. As I looked back on that period, I found myself wondering why I did things that way, and I think part of the answer is rooted in imposter syndrome.
The British don’t like to boast – it’s not in our nature and we’re naturally sceptical of people who do. I do think UK authors face a particular challenge on this, since we’re brought up to almost consider it borderline rudeness to shout out about our own achievements. As a result, many of us would rather burn our creation than seek praise for it. Of course we do understand that other people are talented. We know this because we’ve read their books, or enjoyed their films or TV programmes. The thing is, those people know what they’re doing. But this thing I’ve written? Goodness me, I wouldn’t bother with it if I were you.
This mindset is obviously rather unhelpful if the goal is to have someone read your books. Back in 2020 I’d left it up to fate to decide, not realising I’d stacked the odds firmly against succeeding. ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be’ was my attitude at the time. But the reality was it definitely wouldn’t be, not unless I did something about it.
It’s very on brand for me to post a blog like this in the very month I’m launching my latest book. Why is this so hard? As I said earlier, it’s a form of imposter syndrome, and I know every author suffers from this, myself included. Part of the problem is we’re so close to our own work we lose all perspective. I can assure you that once you’ve edited your own book about ten times, you really do hate it.
The weird thing is if you don’t have imposter syndrome, I think that’s actually more of a problem. If you believe you’re an undiscovered genius then good luck to you. If you’re right, then get ready to dominate the literary world and make sure you’ve employed a good accountant. I should warn you, though, that you’re much more likely to be delusional.
As a writer you need to be able to apply constructive criticism to improve your work. That can come internally, via your editor or through taking the step of having other people critique early drafts of your work. In that sense, imposter syndrome provides the brakes necessary to avoid hubris taking over and releasing something long before it’s ready. You just have to make sure those brakes don’t put a stop to the project altogether.
During the period when I only sold one single solitary lone sad little book in three months I realised I simply had to bite the bullet and try and get my novel noticed, so I put out various review requests. One person replied and told me, very apologetically, that they didn’t have time to read Hall of Bones. They wished me all the best with it and I crossed their name off my list.
A few weeks later I got a message from the same reviewer. A gap had opened up in their reading schedule and they’d picked up Hall of Bones on a whim. And, more importantly, they’d really enjoyed it. In fact, they were quite surprised it didn’t have more reviews (I think at the time, around six months on from publication, it had about three). I really needed to hear that, and it made me realise that sharing your work and getting those initial early reviews back is so important from a confidence point of view.
I accept not everyone will like what I write and that’s absolutely fine. Ultimately, I’m writing (i) for myself and the pleasure it gives me and (ii) for those who do enjoy my writing style and stories. All of this is about finding that wider audience and those people who would love your work, if they only knew about it. Why would you not want to make that connection and find those people? I wish I’d learned this lesson about three years ago!
I enjoyed talking to Geoff and I think there were moments during our conversation when we were making sense! You can hear the podcast recording which prompted this blog post here.
