A Cautionary Author Tale

Marketing at the Expense of Craft

In several private conversations with authors as well as public media interviews over the last few weeks, the same topic kept popping up over and over.

How does one sell books?

We’re all hoping for the secret equation that results in a bestseller, something like:

newsletter followers  +  Substack  - TBR list = books sold

Years of work goes into a book and we want to see it sell, and well, if possible. Authors and the publishing industry spend a lot of time pondering this great equation, but the exact formula always looms out of reach.

We’ve talked a few times on here about what you can do to support sales (The Master Plan to Planning a Book Tour or Network as a New Author) because there are definitely things that can tip the scale. You can support your own success, 100%.

But at the end of the day, we believe it’s great writing and killer storytelling that makes books sell. There’s different ways to package it, ways to ensure your hook is solid, finesse the blurb until it sings, but it all comes back to powerful writing.

But sometimes authors forget that.

A Cautionary Tale

Audra Winter self-published her debut fantasy novel in June of 2025.

With 152K followers on TikTok, serious online buzz (one video had over 2.9M views), and an extensive range of illustrators bringing her world to life, she built a pre-order campaign that resulted in thousands of orders.

Now, about half a year later, her book has a 1.5 star average on Goodreads, the book has been pulled for reediting to try and manage the public fall out, and Reddit threads and Instagram reels alike analyze exactly what went wrong.

Marketing at the Expense of Craft

I’ve seen plenty of self-published books with no stars, no reviews, but I’m not sure I’ve seen a book with a 1.5 star average.

When avid fans got the book, many were disappointed and frustrated with the quality of the writing. They felt they put their support behind an indie author they had grown to trust, and that author took advantage of them by producing a shoddy story.

Though Audra stated widely that she used a variety of editors, including one who worked on The Hunger Games, readers claimed she must not have taken editorial feedback. The quality of the story was that low.

[Note: It is possible for a self-published author to book an editor of The Hunger Games through reedsy, but the type of editing matters as well as prestige. A copy edit would not have fixed structural issues in the manuscript.]

Audra Winter obviously has a keen eye for marketing. Her climb on social media and the pre-order campaign she was able to build was impressive work. But many feel she put the marketing first and the story second. You can read more about Audra’s story here.

How many times do we, as writers, wish for the thousand pre-orders or the big following on social media?

But what good is marketing success if your product falters?

What good is a flashy product over a well-crafted book?

And what is a book if not an exercise in bettering your art?

What is Writing Success?

There’s the heart of it. Writing is about writing. When people try to hack the system or push their work before it’s ready for an audience, things go wrong.

I don’t know Audra Winter, but I bet that was a really hard experience for her. She’s a young person that likely felt she had to do all the exterior things to become a success story that she forgot about the writing itself.

Let me tell you a quick story in contrast to Audra’s.

Yesterday, I had lunch with five other readers and writers. One woman mentioned how she hopes to submit more of her poetry, even if the result is a quiet publication or placement in an anthology without much readership.

A quiet launch isn’t her first preference, but she theorized that maybe it’s part of the process.

She talked about poems she doesn’t even know the writers’ names of but yet the poems have stuck with her for years, making her who she is. Influencing her work. Chapbooks with quiet launches and poems that have now fallen out of circulation stick with her whereas Audra Winter’s objectively successful (read: units sold) pre-order campaign is already fading away.

Book sales are an important part of the equation, but they can’t be the answer.