Part 3: My Journey From Unpublished Author to New York Times Bestseller

Here's Part 3, the final part of this series where I talk about how a woman called Pennie changed everything, and hitting the New York Times bestseller list.

So we’ve had Part 1, where I talked about my first book selling approximately 1,500 copies. I might have been called a “remarkable Australian talent” by one reviewer of that book (a fact I remind my kids of whenever they’re being annoying!) but remarkable talent doesn’t always sell books. Then we had Part 2, where I talked about throwing one manuscript in the bin and a crisis of confidence when I almost gave up.

Part 2: From Unpublished Author to New York Times Bestseller – How it Happened

Now we’re ready to dive into the story of one astonishing piece of luck and how it changed my writing life. But first, one quick piece of news – for my UK subscribers, The Three Lives of Alix St Pierre is finally being published in paperback tomorrow! I know you’ve had to wait a long time for this book so I hope the wait proves worthwhile. Happy reading – you can find out more about where to buy the book here.

And I also wanted to let you know that this is the last of the bonus posts for free subscribers. Next month, things revert to the regular plan of 3 posts per month, which includes the Bijoux List and the First Friday Thread for paid subscribers, and the Monthly Update, which is for all subscribers. If you want to know more about your subscription options, you can click here.

A Book Giveaway!

I’m such a huge Kate Morton fan that I ran out and bought her latest book, Homecoming, on the weekend. And then, lo and behold, in my letterbox on Tuesday arrived a copy of Homecoming, sent to me by the wonderful people at Allen & Unwin. I’m very lucky to receive books from publishers from time to time and now you’re also very lucky because what this means is that I have two copies of the book on my shelf now, so I’m giving one away here!

To be in the running, make sure you’re either a free or a paid subscriber to Bijoux (if you received this email, then you’re good!) and leave a comment on this post. I’ll draw one commenter at random on April 27 at midday AWST. That person will win one copy of Homecoming, by Kate Morton. Open internationally.

Onwards to today’s post!

The Email That Changed Everything

At the end of my last instalment, I’d just been published in the United States for the first time in 2018 with the book The Paris Seamstress. I had relatively low expectations for how this book would sell because I was a brand-new author to American readers.

Surprisingly, it started to sell better than I’d expected, but it still wasn’t hitting bestseller lists or anything like that. Then an email landed in my inbox from my American editor. She used a lot of exclamation marks. Publishers never use exclamation marks. So when they do, you know something good has happened. The email read: Oh my gosh, The Paris Seamstress is Pennie’s Pick for December.

I stared at this email for some time wondering if it would start to make sense. It didn’t. So I sent back a reply saying something like, that’s great. I had no idea who Pennie was. Nor what her “pick” was. And obviously my reply was much more low-key than my publisher expected. Her next email read, you do know who Pennie is, don’t you?

At which point I had to confess that no – I had no idea.

So my editor started to explain. Pennie was the book buyer at Costco. Every month, from out of the thousands of books available to her to choose from, she’d select one book to be her “Pick of the Month” for Costco stores across America. This meant there would be a feature interview and article in the Costco magazine, which gets mailed out to hundreds of thousands of customers. The book would be displayed prominently in all Costco stores and merchandised with the Pennie’s Pick logo, which Costco customers knew and trusted. And The Paris Seamstress was going to be Pennie’s Pick for December. What else happens in December? That’s right, Christmas!

My interview in the CostCo magazine, showing my book as Pennie’s Pick

A Very Paris Christmas

Every customer who walked into a Costco store in December looking for something to buy for Christmas saw my book up front and centre. It started to sell. A lot. And then a lot more. And then a lot, lot more. Every week I’d be watching my sales in the author portal and emailing my publisher saying, oh my goodness, did you see how much it sold this week?! And she would email back and say, I know! But look how much it sold this week!

Because of Pennie’s Pick, my book sold so well that in February 2019, Target decided to start selling the book for the first time. Remember that this was a book that had first been published in August the previous year, nearly 6 months prior. Stores almost never take on a book that’s six months old, but because The Paris Seamstress was still selling so well, Target decided to give it a try. That gave us yet another boost.

For the entire last quarter of 2018 and the first half of 2019, my book never seemed to stop selling. I was thrilled, excited, and on top of the world. I thought things couldn’t possibly get much better.

The New York Times Bestseller List

And then in September 2019, I published a book called The Paris Orphan (the book’s title in the rest of the world is The French Photographer). Because of the extraordinary success of The Paris Seamstress, many readers went straight out and bought The Paris Orphan. In fact, so many of them bought it that it hit the New York Times bestseller week list two weeks in a row. The New York Times bestseller list??!!!! I was speechless, astonished, delighted, and thought I was living inside a dream.

I remember vividly my editor emailing me her congratulations and saying, you can cross that one off your bucket list now. I had to reply to tell her that I’d never even had something like that on my bucket list because it seemed so absolutely unbelievable that me, an author from Australia who was just a very ordinary person, could ever crack the New York Times bestseller list. So did I write it on my list just for the satisfaction of crossing it off? You bet I did!

Me and my NYT bestseller list!

Long May My Journey Continue!

After that, I published three more books, all of which have hit bestseller lists in various countries around the world, including Norway, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Czech, the USA Today bestseller list and many more. And one of my books, The Paris Secret, has now been published in 21 different territories, which is also incredible – I could read it in Lithuanian, Portuguese, Albanian and many more languages if I was a polyglot! And I want to keep writing for as long as people keep reading my books.

You can probably see from this series that every writer needs to keep working hard — remember that I wrote 13 drafts of my very first book! Writers also need to have some kind of talent for language and stories, which can come from reading, studying creative writing or other creative pursuits. But they also need to have a hell of a lot of luck.

I was very, very lucky that Pennie picked my book in December 2018. Without that, I might not be in the position I’m in today. So I’ll be forever grateful to Pennie of Costco for really kickstarting my dream run as an international bestselling author.

Keep Going!

If you’re a writer out there wondering whether it’s worth it to keep going when your book is selling only a relatively low number of copies – yes it is. As I said in Parts One and Two, there were a couple of times along the way when I thought about giving up. The thing that kept me going was that I loved writing so much. If that’s how you feel, then if you just keep going a bit longer, the luck might find you just when you most need it, like it did for me.

And if you’re a reader, maybe one of those who bought The Paris Seamstress – thank you! Thank you for loving my stories and my characters as much as I do. There’s nothing better than receiving messages here and on social media from readers who tell me how much they loved one of my books. I became a writer because I loved reading and I wanted to be the one to make people feel the same way I did when I fell into a book. I’m very grateful and very happy that I occasionally manage to do just that.

Let me know what you think!

Whether you’re a reader or a writer, I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Any questions about my writing journey? Something else you’d like me to cover in one of these posts? If you’re a reader, which book of mine did you read first?

PS – Substack is rolling out a lot of new features including Chat and Notes. To be absolutely honest, I don’t quite know the difference between each but I’ve started using both and I’m sure that I’ll figure out what works for all of us over the coming weeks. They both seem to be focussed around creating a conversation space where I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates and you can jump into the discussion at any time.

For Chat ..

If you’d like to join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so if you turn on push notifications, then you won’t miss the conversation as it happens. Otherwise, you can just check into the app a couple of times a week and see what you’ve missed!

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

For Notes …

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to Bijoux, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!

Happy chatting and noting!