It’s been almost a year since “The Dragonfly Gambit” was published by Neon Hemlock Press (hi dave!!). I was new to publishing at the time, like, super new. I approached the publication process like the grey buffering bar on a YouTube video, staying just a sliver ahead and brimming with anxiety. Some things worked out and some didn’t. So, here are some things I learned by trial and error so you don’t have to lose sleep when it comes to publishing your own novella or novel with a small press.

Expect Nothing and Ask For Everything

Emails stress me out. I’m terrified of saying something wrong. I don’t like them. But booooooooy did I get good at writing emails in the past year. The thing with selling books is that people need to know that your book exists, and you, as the author, can only yell so loud. If you have a robust social media platform, that’s great, but if you don’t, and you also don’t have a massive sales department behind you, you’re going to have to do some of this work yourself.

I spent the past year emailing people I had no business emailing (because I am a small fry). I DMed influencers. I asked dave (sorry dave) to mail ARC after ARC and ARC to different social media persons. I expected most of these connections to be duds. They were! Some of them, however, worked out, and for those I am grateful. Your publisher will also help you by using their own personal and professional connections to get the word about your book out! Ask them well in advance what those connections look like and what opportunities may be there.

Be relentless, professional, and kind, and understanding, but relentless in your promotion. If you never ask someone to be featured on their podcast, they can’t say yes. They can say no when you do ask, but to even get that far, they need to know you exist.

Start Early

For blurbs, for early reviews, for trade reviews, for anything and everything, send stuff out as early as possible. A novella is under 40k words. Sometimes, a month is enough of a turnaround, but for 99.9999% of the people you’ll contact, this isn’t feasible. If you can send stuff out 4-6 months in advance, do it.

Everyone is exhausted, and everyone is spread very thin (especially in publishing). Give folks as much time as they need to read and review your work. Many places will be okay with an e-pub and some will want a physical copy of your book. I’d suggest making a list and seeing which reviewers (solo or trade) will accept e-pubs. Get on those immediately. Make your publisher aware of where you’d like them to send a copy of your book to. Communicate this ad nauseam.

Reviews

Early reviews, trade reviews, NetGalley reviews (if you can, get on Netgalley) help generate buzz for your book. You can use some of those reviews for promotional materials as well on social media.

“Look! Locus really liked my book!”

HOWEVER, after your book comes out and the Goodreads reviews start coming in, I’d suggest not reading them and not paying them any mind. Reviews are not for us, the authors. Reviews are for readers. This is because reviews are largely useless to authors. What will I do with a negative review about my novella that points out all the plot holes in it after the book has come out? I can’t go back to it and edit it. If someone points out how they wished the novella was instead a 100k novel, I can’t go and extend the book. Still, even while we understand this, the negative reviews can still hurt. So, don’t seek them out. Don’t go looking at Goodreads. Better yet, download an extension for Chrome that will not show you anything below a four-star review on Goodreads (if you absolutely MUST read the reviews) or have a trusted person report the good reviews to you every couple of weeks.

The bottom line is people will love and feel meh about your work and never for the reasons you anticipate. For example, someone really didn’t like that zip ties still exist in the Dragonfly world.

Events

One thing I learned in this past year is that I absolutely LOVE doing in-person events. I love seeing people pick up my book and ask me to sign it. I love hearing them laugh at my jokes (i’m really funny, trust me). I love getting to chat with other authors about their works and nerd out on writing, history, science, and the SFF genre as a whole. I also love bringing gluten-free snacks everywhere I go. Doing in-person events allowed me to connect with folks in indie bookstores, at cons, and at literary festivals.

Events also help with sales.

Yes, yes, they do. I know you’ve heard that book launches and in-person events don’t move the needle and maybe they don’t for Big Five publishers, BUT we are working with smaller numbers here. A dozen books here, another dozen books there, it all adds up in the long run.

In-person events also get you connected with booksellers. In my opinion, booksellers are you best way to move books if you’re publishing with a small press. Actually, they’re a great way to move books regardless of who you publish with. The folks at Bakka Phoenix have been championing Dragonfly since my book launch there in May 2024. They are lovely and passionate and I cannot say enough good things about them.

Lists and the Dreaded Bubble

Yay! Time for graphics.

Follow the red dots for a moment:

The first red dot is when an Instagram influencer with over 20k followers made a post about my book.

The second red dot is from when Dragonfly made Reactor’s “Reviewers’ Choice: The Best Books of 2024” list.

The third red dot is when Dragonfly made BookRiot’s “The 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2024” list.

The gold star is when it was announced that Dragonfly was a Nebula finalist.

I don’t particularly like using Goodreads for anything, but it can be seen as a proxy for book interest. The spikes in the graph make a lot of sense. Most people who follow Nebula announcements are people who are SFWA members and those people would have already read or at least heard of the novella. Reactor and BookRiot have a wide readership as does the Instagram influencer.

Lists are not something you can control, but I think this illustrates the importance of trying to break out of the SFF (or whichever genre you’re a part of) bubble for larger readership.

But even if you don’t get on to lists, it doesn’t mean your book isn’t successful. For small presses, it’s especially difficult to garner attention even when they’re publishing the most genre-bending and cutting-edge fiction. This is why we expect nothing and still yell about our books into the world.

Conclusion

If I could give one overarching piece of advice, it’s going to be “embrace the madness”. There are going to be dozens of opportunities that fall through and many more that spring up without any effort. Sometimes things will move incredibly fast and other times it will feel like everything has come to a standstill and everyone’s forgotten about your book (they haven’t). All you can do is keep a level head (when you can) and vent to your closest friends.

(seriously, debut year makes everyone super intense. it’s normal)

I did have fun though. I truly did.

Writing News

DRAGONFLY IS A NEBULA FINALIST WHAT?!?!?!

Okay, and now that that’s out of the way….

In big news, for the next year or so, I will be moving away from my usual writing on weird facts, tidbits, and whatever else I have random knowledge in to document the process of getting my first novel published with Erewhon Books.

“The Iron Garden Sutra” is set to enter the world in February 2026 and so I feel it could be fun (and maybe useful for some folks) if I documented the whole process from drafting the thing, to querying, to acquisitions, and so forth!

In other news, my short story “Mavka” got a mention in “Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: February 2025”

“Rent-A-Joe” got a mention in “Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: January 2025”

AND both “The Dragonfly Gambit” and my short story “One Becomes Two” (three cheers for divorce in Greenland story) made the Locus 2024 Recommended Reading List (Locus voting is open until April 15th, you can vote here)

And for my Canadian friends, the Aurora nominations are open until April 5th!

phew! and on that note, I have no more short stories left… I should scurry on and write some!

Thanks for making it this far!

Cheers!