Achieving Our Dreams In 48 Moons
How We Feel Now That Our Book Is Published
At last, this sacred project we’ve worked so hard on for four years is out in the world. With nervous excitement, we handed our baby over to you. Forty-eight moon cycles gone by, and with each waxing and waning of the moon, we had *just* a little more to show. Bit by bit, the poems piled up in our manuscript. Little by little, they were shaped anew into what they are today: Tender Philosophia, our debut poetry book.
When we first started out, we thought that less than 10 people would buy our book. Jonna and I never imagined our ARC team would be this large, nor the excitement so plentiful. So far, we’ve seen more orders than we ever thought we’d see. It’s shocking! Anything beyond this point is just a wild and very happy surprise. I am so, so content already. Making money was never our main goal. Our main goal was just to publish our first book to show ourselves that we could do it. We are so grateful for all that has happened already.
During our self-publishing process, seeing our book show up on Goodreads finally made everything we were working towards feel real. Of course, we now get to see our book listed on major retailers all over the world, but Goodreads was the first place on the internet where Tender Philosophia could be viewed as a “real” book.
I am so grateful for the sheer amount of love and care with which our ARC readers wrote their reviews. It is their words that will—and have already—move peoples’ hearts to want to seek out ours. Please go read their reviews, as I’m sure they all took no small amount of effort to produce! Thank you to our ARC team for all that you’ve done! We couldn’t have done this without you!
A few people we sent physical ARCs to have yet to receive their copies, but that is entirely out of our control. May the post office gods bless us!
We sound like a broken record, saying ‘thank you’ so much, but how could we not? I remember visualizing and writing down how it would feel to finally hold Tender Philosophia in my hands during many scripting/manifesting sessions years ago. Now we’ve done all this and more!
Something else that’s unbelievable is the fact that we started off at #839 on the Ingram Spark Sales Rank, jumped to #202 on publication day, then #92 last week, and now we’re at #32. We’re in awe. It is all because of you: our dear readers. Sales ranking is not something I ever thought of during our entire self-publishing journey, just because making money was not our end goal. So this was a ginormous surprise. I never thought we’d make it to #32, I was more than happy to see us at #202. I really can’t quite believe it!
It’s funny being able to check such a big item off my list so early on when it feels like I’ve barely done anything with my life yet. To publish a book has always been my biggest dream—even long before I consciously realized it. Now that it’s done, I’ve been thinking about what I’d say if someone asks me what my biggest dream is. To say “publish more books” doesn’t feel right (even though it is of course what I want to do). I am not a consistent writer at all, so to know we have published a book feels like a miracle in and of itself.
This is truly just the beginning. We both still have so many stories inside of us that (I know for me) are clamoring to get out. There’s people who bought our book that are just starting to receive their copies, and so begins a new part of our journey!
<3 D
p.s. this meme is us but we did do an interview talking about our process for The Flair Archives magazine!
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