July 2025

And there I begin, once again, to have the Mission Impossible theme playing in my head. Why, you might ask?

I am still searching for an idea to stand out from the crowd, in order to bring the exquisite Penelope and the mysterious Gabriel to wider notice. Though I have given two years of my life, pouring into it all my energy, a whole host of differing sentiments and whatever hope I have left in this world, nothing seems to suffice.

I felt terribly clever when I decided to analyse the French literary market for Gothic romance and urban fantasy. I needed to find future readers, in order to obtain their impressions. I turned to Babelio and to Simplement.pro. There I found readers who agreed to help me, and who furnished me with excellent feedback. I thank them again for their generosity.

To carry on with this effort to raise my profile, I then turned to Booknode, and I am still on the lookout for other sites where I might offer extracts of my book for reading. I put my book forward to various blogs and secured a handful of readings and features. The process had been set in motion, but it was not enough to lift me out of anonymity, the book market being what it is — saturated.

I have never been much of a communicator. I do not, on a personal level, understand the appeal of social media; I have never felt that particular pull. But all my peers in the world of self-publishing have been quite categorical: no presence on social media? Not the slightest chance of success. I therefore had scarcely any choice in the matter.

Instagram, here I come. Facebook too. And TikTok. Yes, even TikTok. Of the three, I confess it is the one that leaves me most bewildered: I cannot manage to build very much there. I concentrated my efforts on Instagram and discovered Bookstagram, a group that is not really a group at all, where reviewers offer — should the genre suit them — to read one's work and give their opinion of it.

I had to learn the hidden hierarchy at work within these accounts. The smaller communities are often run by enthusiasts who, should they take a liking to your genre, agree to read you and share their review, which is one way of gaining a foothold in the world of books. The larger communities are exceedingly difficult to reach. There exists a delicate system of weights and measures: one must be more heavyweight than featherweight to tip their scales in one's favour. More often than not, the humble writer that I am was not deemed sufficiently appealing to merit a reply.

Receiving favourable reviews sees one enter the inner circle at the pace of an octogenarian tortoise with arthritis. With patience, one eventually starts receiving replies from the medium-sized communities.

The larger communities remain out of reach... or out of one's price range. I discovered, too, that there exist reading enthusiasts who offer paid features on their profiles, rich as they are in followers.

We find ourselves, here, in the rather esoteric realm of influence.