Biggest Lessons Learned from Self-Publishing My New Book

Last year, Dan’s Halloween book sale pulled around 2,500 people to the page. This year it pulled 850. The click-through to authors’ books dropped too, and the sales didn’t follow. It’s a candid opening to an episode that’s less a victory lap and more an honest post-mortem, recorded the day after launching his first solo fiction in three years. This is a solo episode. Dan celebrates the release of *Cock*, his psychological rural horror novella about a killer cockerel (yes, the title is the joke, and the book is far darker than the pun suggests), and breaks down what he’s learned launching it. That includes why he sat on finished books for years, why he’s moving towards direct sales and in-person events, and what’s actually working for discoverability in a market where organic reach has all but dried up. He also shares the upcoming events he’s booked for 2027, an update on the *Hatching Season* charity anthology for Mind, and the early results of his Facebook ad tests on the Twisted Tales series. The through-line is a practical one: build a consistent reader experience, sell direct where you can, and stop expecting the platforms to do the discovery for you. 🎙️ What we get into: - The Halloween sale post-mortem: 2,500 page visitors last year versus 850 this year, and why cross-promotions are getting harder - Why he believes sharing failures is more useful to other authors than sharing wins - The paralysis that kept him from publishing a solo book for three years, and the mindset shifts that got him out of it - How he reframed his priorities around print books and events, rather than chart positions and review counts - The origin of *Cock*: a four-year-old joke that became a darker, more psychological story once he stopped forcing it into the Twisted Tales mould - Why selling ebooks direct (via PayHip, and testing a platform called Curious) means fewer sales but a much bigger margin and instant payouts - How the playful *Cock* marketing got around 25,000 views and interactions, yet converted to very few sales - The TikTok Live experiment: the requirements to unlock extra visibility and why it may be one of the last organic discovery routes - Why Facebook ads to the Twisted Tales series work: readers who buy *Jack* go on to buy the rest, so ad spend comes back - Why a consistent reader experience (branding, linked stories, a shared universe) matters more than any single book, and how he plans to build that from his backlist Links & Resources: - *Cock* by Daniel Willcocks: https://danielwillcocks.com/cock **Subscribe to The Writer’s Chair** If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair * * * Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.