When I published No, I Won't Buy You a Drink!, I thought the difficult part was over. I'd spent several years writing the memoir and assumed that once it was finished, letting people know it existed would be easier. Looking back now, I realise writing the book and publishing the book were two completely different journeys.
One thing surprised almost everyone. I never announced that the book was "coming soon". There was no countdown, no campaign and no attempt to build anticipation months before it existed. That's simply never been my personality. I've always believed something is either done or not done. Once the book was finished, I published it. Only then did I begin telling people that I had even written a book. It felt like the most natural way to approach something I'd spent so long creating.
What followed introduced me to a world I knew very little about. Within days my inbox filled with congratulations, invitations and offers to help promote the book. At first I assumed many of them came from people who were genuinely interested in reading it. Before long, however, I realised that most were offering something else entirely. Reviews, publicity and praise were all available - for a price. I politely declined every one. If someone enjoys my memoir, I'm grateful when they tell other people. If they don't enjoy it, that's perfectly acceptable too. What I didn't want was praise attached to an invoice. That didn't feel like the sort of conversation I'd spent years writing about.
Another surprise came from readers themselves. Quite a number contacted me to say they had finished the book but couldn't leave a review because they didn't meet Amazon's purchasing requirements. Until then I'd never really considered how many genuine readers quietly disappear from the online conversation, not because they don't have an opinion, but because the platform decides who gets to express it. It reminded me that what we see online is often only part of the picture and that infrequent book buyers and readers may have no voice at all.
Social media presented another lesson. Like many new authors, I quickly discovered there was no shortage of advice. Post more often. Follow trends. Build engagement. Feed the algorithm. For a while I tried to follow that advice because I assumed the people giving it probably knew what they were talking about. Gradually, though, I noticed something that made me uncomfortable. I found myself clicking "like" on things I didn't really like, leaving comments I didn't genuinely want to make and becoming part of conversations that I probably wouldn't have joined if there hadn't been the possibility of attracting another reader. None of it felt dishonest on its own, but together it slowly pulled me away from the reason I'd written a book in the first place.
Eventually I realised I didn't want my voice to become just another contribution to conversations I wasn't genuinely interested in having. So I stepped back. Instead of trying to be everywhere, I decided to spend more time writing. I built this website and began publishing articles that explore the ideas behind my memoir in greater depth. They aren't designed to replace the book. They're simply another way of continuing the conversation with people who enjoy thinking about travel, authenticity, observation and the ordinary moments that quietly shape our lives. It may not be the quickest way to build an audience, but it feels much closer to the kind of writer I want to become.
Perhaps the biggest lesson of those first few months was that I had been asking the wrong question. I kept wondering how to reach more readers when I should have been asking how to reach the right readers. No, I Won't Buy You a Drink! was never written for everyone, and I don't think any book really is. It was written for people who have taken chances, who are curious about other people, who enjoy thoughtful conversation and who still believe that some of life's best discoveries happen when we step away from certainty. They are the same sort of people I met while travelling, and they're the people I still hope to meet through my writing.
Looking back, publishing has reminded me of something travel taught me many years ago. The loudest voices rarely tell the whole story, and the most rewarding discoveries are often the ones we make before everyone else notices them. I travelled that way. I wrote that way. And perhaps the right readers discover books in much the same way - not because everyone else is talking about them, but because, somewhere along the way, they simply feel like they were written for them.
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