Lessons in Debuting
10 things I know now that I didn't know then.
Hello, faithful readers! It has been a while. Somehow, I managed to pack a 10-day book tour, finishing a novel, and buying a house into thirty short November days! I am still reeling, to be honest, and I’d love nothing more than to hide under a blanket watching Britbox until the year 2026.
But 2025 really deserves some kind of round-up. And at this point, I feel like I have been through the up, down, and sideways of debuting as a fiction writer and wound up in a more realistic, less starry-eyed, but also more comfortable place with everything publishing.
Since I have a lot of aspiring writers, new debuts, and indie writers thinking of switching to trad who read this newsletter, I thought I’d list things I wish I had known, or sort of knew but wish I had thought more about, in case I can help someone else. Here are my top ten bits of advice:
1. You’re joining a whole new community. Welcome!
Debuting means making new friends, but also taking on new obligations. Your TBR pile goes from being a bunch of books you feel like reading to a conversation you’re involved in: now, it’s a stack of books to blurb, friends you want to boost and support, and genres you’re researching for your next book. I really enjoy this - it makes everything I read feel more alive. But I am a huge nerd who used to be an English professor, and I have always loved talking and thinking about books, so your mileage may vary.
2. Kindness is free; cruelty might be costly.
When I was a baby academic, my advisor told me she never wrote a review for a book she didn’t like. “These are your colleagues,” she explained to me. “You have to sit and have drinks with them!” Academia has a pretty cutthroat review culture (I’m looking at you, historians), which made my mentor something of an outlier. But I’m so relieved to have brought her advice with me into the fiction-writing world, because I know more than a few people who frantically scrubbed their Goodreads profiles after debuting, or deleted their snarky tweets, or felt a lot of regret for negative reviews they’d written when their own bad reviews started sailing in.
If you consider yourself a master reviewer and pride yourself on honesty, no one is going to stop you from sharing your opinions once you’re published! But traditional publishing is also a very small world. So it’s worth asking yourself whether you’ll feel comfortable sitting at an event table, signing books with, or asking for a blurb from the author whose genre you mocked on TikTok, or whose book you proudly declared to be a DNF on Goodreads.
3. Reviews really matter.
Despite my warning about posting that Goodreads write-up, reviews really do make a huge difference for authors—in quantity more than quality. We are all beholden to the great algorithm in the sky, and having more reviews literally leads to selling more books because you get more attention online through things like Google search results, Amazon suggestions, “best of” lists, and digital recommendations.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t much of a reviewer before this year. But I’m trying to catch up now and make amends! So spread the love wherever you can. Your favourite author’s career might depend on it. (And just in case you forgot to review The Traitor of Sherwood Forest, you can do it just about anywhere!)
4. Speaking of algorithms, social media is hell.
Are you tired of the authors you follow on socials constantly reminding you that their books exist? Well, we are tired of it too. But look: we have to be there, and we have to post, just in case the gods smile on us and show our post to someone who didn’t know about our books before.
My two most important tips for dealing with social media feel like complete contradictions: limit your social media time and also post consistently. Being on social media too much will just have you comparing yourself to everyone else and getting depressed. And being on there too little means the algorithm will forget you. I know! It’s a lose-lose!
So far, I really suck at both of those things, since I am naturally a person who exhausts herself with a flurry of social activity and then crawls back into her hobbit hole for weeks at a time. But I’m trying to learn a better balance. Check in with me next year and maybe I’ll finally have mastered this personal nightmare.
5. You can’t control everything.
There will be ugly pictures of you online, posted by well-meaning people. There will be YouTube videos and podcasts where you stumble over a word or two. You will have book signings that sell out and make you feel like a star, and others where no one wants to talk to you. You’re a public figure now, like it or not, and that means letting go of the reins. Lean into the wins and celebrate them, because you will have plenty of those. You are the one who gets to decide whether your high points or your low points define you.
6. You can’t please everyone.
I don’t care if you wrote the most genius, groundbreaking debut novel on the planet, or the sweetest, most heartwarming cozy fantasy. Someone is going to hate your book, and they will do it online, generally loudly. Your best defence against this is to keep track of the nice things people say about your book—because lots of people will really, really love it. So make sure their voices count. Keep your good reviews, your kind emails, your friends’ excited DMs, in a scrapbook or a digital file or whatever it takes. Give yourself a refuge full of positive energy. (Mine are all in a folder called BRAG. I am not shy about it!)
7. You’ll learn who your friends are.
I could mean this in a very dark and foreboding way, but I don’t! Sure, there will be a few people in your life who, to quote a wise mentor, “just can’t be normal” about you getting published. But by and large, I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the friends and family who have been kind, supportive, and over-the-top enthusiastic! I’m talking about people who arranged book events in their towns and at their universities, wrote glowing reviews, brought my book to book clubs, recommended my book to everyone they know, and emailed me compliments that brought tears to my eyes. My heart is so full that I barely worry about the haters in #6 anymore!
8. You’re not going to be good at everything.
Some authors are excellent at making TikTok videos. Some dress up in stunning costumes, some can dance their plots, some make incredible book swag and graphics, and some can pitch their books with emojis so well, they could sell water to a drowning reader. I, as you may have noticed, am not great at those things. But I do adore public speaking. I love talking about my book to rooms full of people, and talking to people on podcasts, and having conversation events with other authors. All of these are valid forms of book promotion. Focus on what you’re good at and what makes you happy. You’re a writer, first and foremost (see #10), and there’s only so much time!
9. You will have plenty of opportunities to feel miserable.
There is a post-debut crash about two weeks in, because no debut experience can ever measure up to your dreams. There’s another slump a few months later, when the hype starts to slow down. People who are supposed to love you and perfect strangers will constantly ask you about your sales, as if you even know! (You won’t know and you won’t want to talk about it.) And social media is full of doomsaying about publishing, people whose books seem to be doing better than yours, and people who will eventually stop talking about you when you feel like you’re just getting started. Sure, we would all love to eschew external validation and do it for the art, darling, but we also know that external validation pays the bills. Prepare for these low points. Be good to yourself when they happen. I promise, they will pass.
10. The cure for your bad feelings is to write another book.
I loved so many things about debuting. I loved the events, the conversations with readers, the signings and the bookshop love and getting to meet new people via interviews and travel. But when I finally got the time to sit down and work on the next book, it felt like coming home. All the doubts, the imposter syndrome, the stress, melted away when it was just me and my word count. And bonus: I feel like I did it better this time, that I had a strong sense of the story, that the words came more easily—in short, I felt like I knew exactly what the hell I was doing.
You won’t feel like writing during your dark nights of the soul. You’ll feel like sulking, throwing a tantrum, and doing anything else instead. But once you really get going, once you get to that writer’s high, you can’t imagine wanting to do anything else.
News and Updates
So much has happened since the last newsletter that I can’t possible share it all! Here are a few highlights:
I had an amazing time in New England in November! I gave a talk at Northeastern University, signed at Trident Books, had an incredible event at RiffRaff Bookstore & Bar in Providence, and even had my aura photographed in Salem! (I am unexpectedly orange.)
The Traitor of Sherwood Forest has made some great year-end lists, from Library Journal’s Stellar Selections to this super cool gift guide from Geek Mom and Geek Dad!
I had two new interviews go live in November! You can catch me on Sheridan Sharp’s Am I Write podcast, and here’s my interview with Tarot DMs right here on Substack!
The Hungarian edition of The Traitor of Sherwood Forest will be out with Libri in April 2026, and they’re doing SPRAYED EDGES! Look how gorgeous this is!
The only thing better than Micaela Alcaino's cover art is more of Micaela Alcaino's cover art!
That’s it from me in 2025! It’s all British mysteries, peppermint ice cream, and cranberry mimosas from here on out. I hope you have an equally cozy holiday season, and if you need a great book to curl up with, I highly recommend catching up with the some of the 2025 debuts. Two of my recent favourites were Molly O’Sullivan’s The Book of Autumn and Alysha Rameera’s Her Soul for A Crown! 2025 truly was an amazing year for books! (And I’m not just saying that because I wrote one of them. Promise.)
—Amy
Congrats on the a great year, and thanks for the info. And we do love Britbox as well.