Lucy Day: 12th Annual Self-Published E-book Awards Winner
Romance author Lucy Day shares why she switched to self-publishing, what her biggest challenge is, and how confidence has played a role in her success.
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While Lucy Day has a lot of interesting and surprising things to share about her almost 10 years of self-publishing, at the top of the list might be this: She started her writing career being traditionally published.
“I found with a traditional publisher—this was years ago—that it could take 18 months or more after a manuscript was accepted to actually see it finished, and that’s an eternity,” she says with a laugh. “I really love that with self-publishing, I create my own timetable, and I can generally publish faster than that. The first Lucy Day book was published in September of ’22, and now the fourth one [came] out [in February].”
But it’s not just how quickly she can get the works out to readers that draws her to self-publishing. She says, “It’s empowering to learn all the facets of self-publishing, all those nitty-gritty details, and that it’s possible to do all that—or a lot of it—yourself. And to do it well and publish the same caliber books that traditional presses are doing.”
Along this vein, she says that she “just never really understood that stigma of self-publishing not being as good as traditional. I think there are a ton of amazing books out there that are self-published. And I think we’re lucky that we live in a time where it’s relatively easy to self-publish.
“There are a lot of people out there with a lot of important things to say and amazing stories to tell, and they don’t have the same resources that a lot of other authors have. It’s really hard to find an agent and get in with a traditional house sometimes. Then it can take years to finally get a book in print. It’s a gift to be able to self-publish, and I think there’s a lot of amazing authors out there doing it.”
That pride in quality is what elevated her novel, One Sweet Holiday, to the top of the Writer’s Digest 12th Annual Self-Published E-book Awards. This grand-prize win netted Day a prize package of $5,000, a paid trip to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, and more.
While she finds self-publishing rewarding, it comes with challenges. Day says the biggest challenge for her is marketing. “It’s a challenge to gain visibility when you self-publish. … I feel like the landscape in marketing is the thing that is always changing. And I just want to be able to engage with my readers. I find that it’s sometimes hard to do that through social media just because, especially now, it seems like there’s so much noise. It’s really hard to cut through! [laughs] But I would say that that visibility and that engagement is the most challenging thing. … Marketing can take a whole lot of time and, frankly, I’d just rather spend that time writing.”
How does she overcome these challenges? She turns to her community of writers and self-published authors. “A friend of mine and I went into this self-publishing vein together, and she and I had strengths that complimented each other. So, we had learned a lot over the years about editing, formatting—I’m a graphic designer, so the cover design, I felt confident doing myself. … I am fortunate to have a couple of close friends who also work as editors … several of us will trade services essentially. I’m lucky to have a network of people who I can trade those services with. [But] if I didn’t have friends who could help me … that would be really hard to navigate around.”
It was her community that inspired the story of One Sweet Holiday. Although this is the third book of the Jasmine Falls Love Stories series, one of Day’s friends challenged her to write a holiday romance—something she’d never tackled before. She took up the challenge and decided to add in other romance genre elements she loves: someone new comes to a small town to give people a fresh perspective; opposites attract; a female entrepreneur who is finding her path. And she says, “My late mother loved Christmas, everything about it. The more I worked on that story, it just became kind of a love letter to her too.”
We also discussed how community can give writers confidence—and that confidence can be the make-or-break-it of a writer’s career.
“I have this friend and writing coach, Camille Pagán, who’s been a huge influence on me in terms of mindset. And this is something that we talk about together a lot because, you know, now I feel like I can either tell myself that writing’s hard and I can toil, or I can tell myself that writing is easy and it’s going to be fun. Those thoughts directly affect how I feel and how I write. So, it’s a little bit woo, but it’s about the science of mindset. … I choose to have fun when I’m writing. Now it often comes more with ease than it used to, but there are definitely moments where I get stuck, and sometimes, I just need to take a walk, get out of the house and clear my head, let ideas percolate and come back to them later. But ultimately, I just trust the process now. I know some parts are going to be harder to write than others, but I’m confident I’ll get the story where I want it to be in the end.
“It took me a long time to get to that place. I’m not saying it happened overnight. [laughs] But once that confidence started to grow, it’s like, ‘OK, I know how to tell a good story. I can trust myself to shape this the way it needs to be.’”
Part of that confidence is in knowing where your strengths do not lie. Being able to discern this can set a writer up for success. Day says, “I’m always happy to hire people who do the things that are outside of my wheelhouse because I have learned the hard way that it can be not the best use of my time to try to learn too many things or to do things that are really just not in my expertise. [laughs] Book tours, for example. I always hire somebody to handle tours for me because that’s not something that I’m very good at, frankly. And that’s just how I approach it. If I come upon a task I need done that I know I’m not going to do it well enough that I’m happy with it, I’d rather hire somebody who is really good at it and hire the most professional people I can to help.”
When asked what advice she has for other writers, her answer is simple but profound: “Trust your gut, and choose a path that aligns with your goals and your intentions. Don’t be afraid to take the leaps that will allow you to grow. Just show up for yourself every day and have your own back—to me, that has been a game changer.”
