Fall is a time when a lot of authors make their debut or launch a new series. August, September, October are big book months before the holidays. So, it’s a good time for all of us to talk about the downside of the release process: the post-publication blues. It’s something that doesn’t get talked about a lot, and in fact I didn’t even know it was a thing until about a week before the second Miss Adventure book came out last April. To put that in context, I’ve been a published indie author since 2019. As someone who experienced the post-publication blues before I even knew what to call them, I can assure you, they are very real.
This article is based on a “5 on Friday” reel that originally appeared on IG Live. Watch the video on Instagram
DISCLAIMER: I am not a therapist or medical professor and the advice in this article should not be considered a valid medical opinion. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please dial 988 to reach the national mental health crisis hotline.
What are the Post-Publication Blues?
When you about to release a new book, you’re going through a lot of stress and anxiety and excitement too, and working a lot on a very focused project with a very clear finish line. There are a lot of hormones running through you. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Endorphins. You might not even be aware of it all, because you’re so focused on just getting to your goal of publication day.
At last, the big day arrives. The book is finally out in the world. People are buying it. People are reading it. You start getting some reviews. You might have podcasts you’re going on, or interviews, or blog tours. The hormones are still running, and you’re riding high on the excitement and the chaos of being the shiny new thing.
Then reviews start to slow down. You’re not doing as many events or interviews. All that new book buzz starts to settle into a stasis level. This could happen over months or weeks, or even just a few days, depending on what sort of release you’re doing. But for your first book, you’re likely going to have that big lead up and a longer taper-off. As things begin to slow down, your hormones will also start to level off since you’re not in a manic state anymore, and that can lead to unpredictable and almost exclusively down emotions.
Welcome to the post-publication blues. It can happen pretty much at any point after the release cycle starts, and while it doesn’t happen to everyone, it happens more often than you think.
Five Things You Can Do to Help Ease Post-Publication Blues
When you feel the new release high start to dip, there are a few things you can do:
1) Stop and Acknowledge
These dropping hormone levels are essentially your body and brain acknowledging that things are changing. You’re pivoting into a new phase of the cycle, and while you might not even be aware that it’s happening, your body is. Which means the first thing to do when you start feeling the drop is to take notice. Don’t ignore it. Don’t try to push past it. Stop what you’re doing, and acknowledge that this is what’s happening.
2) Take Stock and Celebrate
You celebrated on the first day of your release, and that was also a major change point. This one may feel different, but there’s no reason you can’t and shouldn’t celebrate it too. You’re growing into something new, and even if you feel a little sad about that, it’s ultimately a good thing.
It’s also a good opportunity to take stock of everything that has happened so far. Because this is the blues, you may be tempted to fixate on all the stuff that went wrong, but there will be time for that later. Now is the time to focus on the successes you’ve had up to this point. For one thing, you published something. Celebrate that again (and forever. You should not be celebrating that). Second, your book has gotten into the hands of readers, and a lot of them have liked it. All of that should be celebrated, even if it’s not exactly where you want it to be.
If you haven’t done it yet, this is a good time to go back and read some of your positive reviews (ignore the negative ones for now, they will have a purpose later on). Even if you only have one positive review, go read that. It’s more than you had before the book came out, after all.
3) Take a Break
After the nonstop flurry of activity that is the release cycle, walking away from things is going to be hard, but it’s essential. Close your documents. Turn notifications on silent. Do NOT check your Amazon numbers. Go do something totally unrelated, at least for a little bit. If you are able to take a longer vacation, by all means do it. Take a week, take a weekend. Take as long as you need to let your body and brain settle.
I know firsthand how difficult it is not to just jump right into the next thing. As an indie author and a business owner, it’s tempting to push through and keep going. If you do that, it might be fine. Or it could backfire and lead to burnout, which can take much longer to recover from. Even if it’s just long enough to walk around the block, take a shower, eat a good meal and get a decent night’s sleep, it’s important to put a little bit of distance between the release phase and the next one.
4) Pivot and Refocus
Consider this Part B of the Take Stock phase. Now that you’ve taken a break, it’s time to evaluate what didn’t go as well as you’d hoped and identify things you want to improve. Maybe you don’t have as many reviews as you’d like. Maybe you didn’t make your earning goal for the release period. Evaluate everything that’s happened up to this point, make a list of what you’d like to improve on, and start brainstorming solutions. Just because you’re exiting your new release phase doesn’t mean you can’t still do things to extend your book’s reach and readership.
This is a good time to seek out honest feedback on the book itself. Remember in Take Stock where you looked at only the positive reviews? Well, this is now the time to analyze your three- and maybe two-star reviews to see if there’s any actionable critique. Continue to ignore one-star reviews–they are almost always DNFs or subjective complaining, neither of which is not useful to you at this time.
You can also follow up with your ARC readers for anything that maybe they didn’t feel comfortable sharing in their reviews. Ask them what they would change if they could change anything. Or if you yourself have instincts about maybe something that you think you didn’t get quite right, ask them about it. It may not be easy to hear, but it can only help you.
5) The Race is Long…
In writing this article, I was reminded of a song that was very popular during the latter years of my high school career. It was purported to be a speech full of advice to a graduating high school class, and while it’s full of great lines, there’s one that sticks with me to this day:
“The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
In a business like ours, you might be super popular this week. I might be super popular next week. And then someone else takes over. There are books that set the charts on fire for a time, then flame out. It’s an endless ebb and flow of who’s up and who’s down, but the fact is none of that really matters. Only I can do what I do in this industry and only you can do what you can do. And in the end, there are a lot of people out there, a lot of eyes, and a lot of different interests.
You’re not competing with anyone. I’m not competing with you. You’re not competing with me. We’re competing with ourselves to be the best that we can be tomorrow, and next week, and so on over the months and years.
Five Things NOT To Do When You Encounter Post-Publication Blues
Now we come to the “do as I say, not as I do” section of this piece. At times both past and present, I’ve done almost all of these things to combat the post-publication blues, and they are most definitely “would not recommends.”
1) Seek External Validation
Unlike taking stock and celebrating the positive things, seeking external validation presents as a desperate hunger or need for positive reinforcement—which in essence is exactly what it is. Remember, these blues are a result of your hormone levels dropping. It’s only natural to want to seek out a way to maintain the high. The problem with that is, like getting a fix of any other drug, one is never going to be enough. When you start to drop again, you’re going to go for another, bigger hit. If one positive review worked the first time, the second time you’ll want two, and then five, and so on. It’s never going to be enough. You’re just going to keep seeking that external validation, and it’s never going to really do what you can do when you are truly validating yourself.
Again, this is not to say you shouldn’t enjoy your positive reviews and acclaim. You should. But if you start to feel like you need them, that is a sign that something else might be going on.
2) Beg, Harass, or Guilt People
If and when you start to see your daily sales start to slip from their new release peak, there’s a real risk of panic along the lines of “Oh, God, people have stopped reading my book. Nobody’s reading it. Everybody hates it.” The kneejerk reaction to this is to do whatever you can to get anyone at all to read your book. Anyone at all, and by any means necessary, whether that’s begging, pestering, spamming, or guilting people into picking up a copy.
This is a completely understandable urge. You’ve worked so hard on your book and you want people to see it. And in all fairness, this approach may work—for a minute. People may pick up your book to support you, or because they feel bad, or simply to get you to leave them alone. But that comes with the risk of tying your book (and you as it’s author) to feelings of being manipulated, and that may turn them off. Consider creating some engagement posts or fun ads/videos instead–but only after you’ve taken a break. Panicking at this level is a clear sign that you’re way too close to the process. Pause, step away from the keyboard, and come back when you’ve had a chance to breathe.
3) Comparison Shop
A variation on external validation, “comparison shopping” is when you check in on books that were released around the same time as yours (or have some other connection to yours) and compare how your book as done in relation to theirs. I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain why this is a toxic move for your psyche. Best case, you see you’re ahead in the ranks in that snippet of time. Worse case, you find out you’ve slipped further than you thought and you make things even worse. It’s such a bad idea, and yet I’m as guilty of doing it as anyone else. I shouldn’t be doing that, and neither should you. It so isn’t worth it.
4) Self-Blame and Shame
Again, in the grand tradition of “do as I say, not as I do,” I literally just did this in the previous section. What can I say? I’m not perfect, and this sort of thing is extremely complicated. Anything to do with mental health is tricky. And the real killer in all of this is guilt. When you feel guilty, you are punishing yourself for something you can’t change, and that isn’t going to help you. It’s only going to make you less likely to do productive things in the future.
Which means that, if you’ve done any of these don’ts—don’t feel bad.
5) Give Up
At the beginning of this section, I said I’ve done most of these don’t, and that’s because I have not done this last one, I have no intention of doing it anytime soon, and I hope you don’t either.
The game isn’t over, regardless of what phase you’re in or how long your book has been out. You can call the game whenever you want, if that’s what you need to do and what’s best for you. But as long as you are alive and you’re still trying, anything can happen.
That’s what I like most about this business: You don’t know necessarily what’s going to work and when. People may say they have a surefire plan to self-publishing fame and fortune, the same way people have been saying that about every industry, in the world, since the beginning of time. But what worked for them might not (and probably won’t) work for absolutely everyone. There’s no one size fits all when it comes to self-publishing success. You don’t have to do or be any one thing in order to reach your goals. You can choose to follow a path, or you can find your own. Personally, I find that diversity in approach thrilling, and I hope you do too.
