The one where I'm celebrating 10 years as a published author
Today (Friday 23rd May 2025) I'm celebrating ten years as a published author. Eek! In some ways those ten years have flown by, yet in others 2015 feels like a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then that I guess it really was.
My debut release was a novella called Raving About Rhys, published in eBook format only (although my publishers at the time did print me a limited run for sale to family and friends so I do have a paperback copy myself). That book is now a full-length novel published by Boldwood Books under the title Making Wishes at Bay View.
Raving About Rhys hadn't been planned. I'd been contracted to write a trilogy and the first book in that series, Searching for Steven,was due for release on 3rd June 2015 so that should really have been my anniversary date, but my publisher asked if I could write a short story featuring a minor character to introduce readers to the world of Whitsborough Bay. I'm not very good at writing 'short' and a 23k word novella was born and snuck in as my first book published. Searching for Steven is now New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms.
Hubby and I were talking about my publication day for Raving About Rhys last night, trying to remember where I'd been working at the time. We worked it back to my time as a Learning & Development Advisor for a frozen foods manufacturer with a local HQ to me - a more junior role I'd taken so I wouldn't have to commute every day and would hopefully not be expected to work silly extra hours like I had in my previous role, giving me time to write instead of doing day job work on evenings. As soon as I realised where I'd been working, something that had puzzled me earlier in the day slotted into place... I'd been finalising the wording for my newsletter and seeking out photos from my Searching for Steven launch party. The launch hadn't gone as expected because the paperback copies I'd ordered failed to arrive meaning I had a book launch without any books! I remember sobbing my heart out, mortified that some of my family would be travelling two hours to celebrate and I didn't even have a book to show them. My publisher was really lovely about it and sent me their proof copy so I had something to show my guests, offered to pay the postage for me to send books out after the event as well as paying for my balloons. They also sent me a gorgeous Jellycat teddy bear, knowing I'm a huge fan of bears. I'd taken a photo of him at the time along with a note from my publisher saying: We hope this will make you smile after the super hard week you had!
As I read that message yesterday, I picked up on the reference to a hard week. The lack of books had been extremely disappointing but I'd only found out they weren't going to materialise a day or two before my launch party so why was a week mentioned? It was only when hubby and I worked out where I'd been working at the time that I realised the relevance of the message. It hadn't just been about the lack of books. It was that I'd been very unexpectedly made redundant.
As part of my role, I supported the apprentices in the company's northern factories and I had a lovely colleague who supported them in the southern ones. We worked brilliantly together and had done great things for the apprenticeship programme. At the end of May 2015, we'd arranged for the apprentices to undertake a community project together using various soft skills (team work, organisation skills, influencing and so on) explored in a classroom environment first. Nothing like this had been done before and it was a big, high profile event. My colleague and I had worked on it for months and were really looking forward to running it together when, a couple of days before, my manager dropped the bombshell that there were other priorities in the business and I had to run the programme on my own. It actually wasn't possible for me to do that as the classroom element involved the apprentices working in two teams with us running a team each, so I had to redesign how that worked… over the weekend in my own time because of the exceptional short notice.
It was a draining week managing it on my own without my colleague and she was gutted too that she couldn't be there as we'd both poured our heart and soul into it. It was a great success, but there were a couple of incidents which were a challenge to manage and I was so glad I'd had the foresight to take a day's holiday at the start of the following week to recover.
My manager rang me about an hour into the morning on my first day back and invited me up to the main building for what I assumed was a catch-up on how the week had gone but, as soon as she told me her manager would be joining us, I knew this wasn't going to be a good meeting. It wasn't. They told me they were letting me go. I was so shocked that I burst into tears, which was embarrassing. The company had been restructuring and there'd been some redundancies but we'd been categorically told on several occasions that there would be none in HR. But that had changed and they'd decided to make two redundancies – one of the two L&D roles and a current vacancy. When I'd composed myself, I asked why I was the chosen one and was told it was down to factories. There were two in the north and three in the south so my colleague covered more factories and therefore kept her job. I asked how long they'd known and it had been at least a month, maybe two (memory has faded). That hurt. Because it meant that they'd let me continue designing this high-profile event, they'd removed my partner, they'd left me with no choice but to spend my weekend re-working it all and they'd known all along that, as soon as it was over, they were going to get rid of me. It felt very calculated.
I'm not great at sticking up for myself but I told them I wanted gardening leave rather than working my notice. A compromise was that they asked me to finish something I'd been working on and then I could go. It was a tedious task but I wrapped it up in a few days and left. Fortunately, I'd already put some feelers out for a new role, feeling despondent about the way my colleague was removed from the event at the eleventh hour as well as a few other decisions that had been made recently. One of those enquiries led to a job offer so I walked into a new role as soon as I left.
When I was writing my newsletter, I said I couldn't remember what I'd done on the publication day for Raving About Rhys but I do remember now. It was the Saturday I spent redesigning the apprentices' event. What a low point that was in my career and in my life in general, but it's funny how things change. As it happens, the next role didn't work out and I found myself jobless once more eight months later but the move after that into being a distance learning tutor was brilliant and something I enjoyed for several years, and the job after that was full-time author in June 2020, which is the best role I've ever had.
Which brings me back to my ten-year anniversary. My bestie and super fabulous author, Sharon Booth, sent me a wonderful card with a 'how it started' photo from the beginning of my publication journey and a 'how it's going' photo from this week and a yummy box of brownies. Mmmm. I might have had a few of those for breakfast. Ssh, don't tell anyone!
Thank you so much to Sharon for remembering and marking the occasion. Her card inspired me to pull together some 'then and now' visuals which summarise my publication journey across the first ten years…
From one novella and a full-length novel…
…to twenty-six novels…
…and 28 foreign translations published or contracted…
Not all of the foreign translations are published yet, but those hedgehogs have certainly been popular. The visual shows:
Italian – Starry Skies Over the Chocolate Pot Cafe
Swedish – the whole Hedgehog Hollow series
Dutch – the first two Hedgehog Hollow books, Christmas at the Cat Cafe, the first two Escape to the Lakes books (book 3 has also been contracted)
Danish – the first three Hedgehog Hollow books (five of the six have been contracted)
Serbian – Finding Love at Hedgehog Hollow and Snowflakes Over The Starfish Cafe
Hungarian – the first two Hedgehog Hollow books
French – Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop and Finding Love at Hedgehog Hollow
Norwegian – not shown as none of them have been released yet but translations have been agreed for the first two Hedgehog Hollow books, Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop and Christmas at Carly's Cupcakes
From very few reviews (it's a bit of a fuzzy screenshot but that shows 14)…
…to thousands of reviews (screenshot shows 6,115 as of today) on the book which Raving About Rhys became…
From pretty much no sales, noting that this includes a screenshot from four+ years into my publishing journey when I had eight titles out but my monthly sales across all eight titles were only 25 eBooks. Argh!…
…to Boldwood Books and my incredible readers changing my life with my books surpassing one million sales, three titles achieving 100,000 sales in the English language, and three books being finalists in the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Awards…
From a book kindly stocked in my local library…
…to thirteen titles going into The Works with a fourteenth due in next month, and books spotted in Waterstones, garden centres, supermarkets, discount bookshops, pre-loved bookshops, libraries and more. So many photos, I only had space to include a selection of them…
From doing this on my own (albeit with the support of my amazing hubby, daughter, and my parents) and wondering if writing a book was the craziest dream I'd ever had (and if that short red hairstyle was also the craziest hairstyle I'd ever had!)…
…to finding my home and my tribe with Boldwood Books, The Write Romantics, The Beverley Novelists and my bestie Sharon (and Paddington Bear, of course!)…
The image above shows me with my main contacts at Boldwood – my original editor Nia with whom I worked on 24 books, my new editor Emily, our founder/CEO Amanda, and my marketing contact Claire. I couldn't have done any of this without them and I'm so grateful to Amanda and Nia for taking a chance on me in the first place, to Nia and Emily for their valuable insights which help turn a good story into a (hopefully) great one and to Claire for the incredible marketing ideas and support.
I've shamelessly stolen a photo from Boldwood with the full team on as all these amazing women (and one man) have such an important part to play in getting my books out into the world. It takes an entire village to create and market a book...
The past decade has been filled with highs and lows but nearly all those lows were thankfully in the first five years when I was pretty much invisible, selling very few books and making hardly any money. I had a dream to write full-time but early indications were that that would never happen.
My career as an author started to turnaround when I joined Boldwood. I signed my contract in March 2019 with my first book out in that September – The Secret to Happiness. It didn't set the world alight initially but things changed in May 2020. The four books in my re-edited, re-titled Welcome to Whitsborough Bay series had been released in quick succession across January to March, the final one coming out just as the country plunged into lockdown. People were turning to books for escapism and comfort and my books fit the bill for that. In the May, Amazon selected book 2 - New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms – for Prime Reading. I watched in amazement as it entered the Kindle UK Top 100 and worked its way up the chart to #14. To this day, this remains my highest UK chart position although this has since been matched by A Breath of Fresh Air (book 2 in my Escape to the Lakes series).
Being an author is the hardest job I've ever had in the most challenging industry I've ever worked in, but it's also the most incredible and rewarding one. The market is saturated and so many extremely talented authors are struggling to find their readership and make any money out of the months and years of work that goes into writing books and it breaks my heart that not everyone has the recognition or success they deserve. I know how that feels because I spent five years questioning why I was pouring blood, sweat and tears into books nobody seemed to want to read. That exceptionally difficult start makes me even more grateful for where I am today.
As for goals for the next ten years, a UK Kindle Top 10 would be a dream. Okay, a #1 would be the ultimate goal but I genuinely don't think there's any chance of that and that's not me being negative; it's realistic about the market and the type of books which reach number one not usually being part of a series. But, gosh, it would be lovely! Oh, and Netflix or Sky Originals or Channel 4, Channel 5 … I'm not too fussy … coming calling because I think my worlds would translate beautifully onto the screen.
But most of all, I hope to keep doing what I'm doing, creating characters, worlds and stories that my readers love. I have ideas for dozens more books so, as long as there's an eager audience for them, I'll keep writing them. I cannot thank my wonderful readers enough for the kind messages, the following on the socials, the reviews, the recommendations and the support for my books. If it wasn't for you, I have no idea what I'd do as I'm not employable anymore. My HR knowledge is completely out of date and I couldn't imagine returning to an office environment after spending so many years on my own with just the voices in my head – my characters' voices, that is, not anything to worry about!
So here's to the first ten years and the next with enormous gratitude and the biggest hugs in the world to you for being on the journey with me.
Big celebratory hugs
Jessica xx
