When I started writing my first book, I wasn't thinking about sales. Mostly because there was nothing yet to think about. There was no book — what was there to think about?

The realization that sales would be a whole separate quest came much later. Just knowing I was writing my own book gave me inspiration and a rush of excitement.

My first readers were family and friends. I got glowing reviews from all of them. I think everyone's motives were different, but they had one thing in common — they all knew me and could have been a little biased. So as not to hurt my feelings or start a fight. Maybe some of them genuinely liked the book, but I'm too hard on myself, and I wanted to be sure my book was actually good.

So I started looking for people willing to read my book on every online platform I could find, to get some independent opinions. On Threads, a woman who had emigrated to the US twenty years earlier saw my request. She was from my part of Russia too — we were both from the Chelyabinsk region — and, she said, she just wanted to support me. She bought my book, it turned out, twice — both the ebook and the audiobook. That touched me, and of course I badly wanted her to like it. A week later I got the most wonderful review from her! I read it over and over.

After that I got many more positive reviews, and all of them read like letters to the author — not about me as a person they knew, but about what had stayed with them from my book, where they'd felt something alongside me on the page, and where they'd been happy. What they took away from it, what was interesting, what the book made them think about.

This was no small thing anymore. This was responsibility. Write, and write better.

And most of the reviews ended with the same exclamation: 'Is that it? It's over already? What happened next?'

The highest compliment there is, if you ask me. So I wrote another one.

The first person to read it was a book blogger I'd sent my first book to, who had given it a positive review. What did she say after reading the second one?

'Nadi! I liked the second book even more than the first!'

So, back to the actual topic...

Pretty much right after finishing the first book, I naturally started thinking about monetizing it. Say what you will, it's work. I spent about a year writing each book. No, I don't write every day. I can't force it out of myself if it isn't coming. Maybe that's not the right approach, but everyone has their own methods. Writing this way is comfortable for me. Of course, during that time you still need money to live on. A writer doesn't survive on the Holy Spirit alone. And getting paid for your work is only logical.

But on closer inspection it turned out that promoting your own books is the writer's own job. That's just the reality. Making quick money didn't happen :))) You have to figure it out, learn, try again and again.

And that's the point where a writer has to ask themselves: 'Will I keep writing if I can't manage to sell my books?'

My answer was: 'Yes.'

So I write, even on days when not a single book sells. I promote, I look for readers and book bloggers, and I try dozens of approaches.

And so, after a while, I understood the main thing: sales numbers are something I don't fully control. I don't decide which algorithm shows my book to the right person, I don't decide whether some random passerby buys it from an ad or scrolls on. That's the territory of marketing, luck, and coincidence — my fellow countrywoman from Threads is a good example. What I do fully control is the text itself. What it turns out to be. Honest or not. Alive or not. The kind that makes people ask 'what happened next?' — or the kind people just finish out of politeness.

So, if you focus only on sales, it's easy to lose that very sense of excitement everything started with. Excitement turns into anxiety: what if it doesn't sell, what if this was all for nothing, what if I'm not a writer at all, just a person with a text file. You can't write well with that anxiety hanging over you — I've tested it.

So I've split these two things apart in my head. One part of me is the one that sits down and writes almost every day, because she can't not write. She doesn't care how many copies sell today. What matters to her is that the next chapter turns out no worse than she imagined it.

The other part is the one who looks for bloggers, sends books out for reviews, figures out promotion, learns and keeps trying. That's work too, and it's mine too, but it's a different kind of work. It's not about inspiration, it's about persistence.

And when these two parts don't get in each other's way, when they just move along side by side, everything gets easier. I don't wait for sales to confirm that I have the right to write. That right wasn't given to me by numbers — it was given by those very reviews: from my fellow countrywoman in the US, from the book blogger, from the people close to me who may have been biased at first, but later wrote to me not out of fear of hurting my feelings, but because they genuinely wanted to know what happened next.

So I keep writing, even without knowing how many copies will sell. Because I'll find out the number of books sold later. But whether the book turned out right — that I feel right away, while I'm still working on it. And as long as that feeling doesn't fail me, I'll keep writing.