15 years after Ten Silver Coins
What I've learned about being an author since I wrote my first novel more than a decade ago
I released my first novel for young audiences 15 years ago. Lots has changed in my life and the world of indie publishing since 2009.
Here are a few thoughts as I mark the milestone (and release new covers and a foreword to Book 1).
Having kids, changes up the children’s author thing.
I started writing the series before I was married. Before I had kids. And before I was really known for anything as a writer.1
Yes, having kids changes your writing schedule, but that’s not the change I mean. (Writing, always, is a scheduling conflict and a choice to carve out time as you fight off poverty, angst, despair, other priorities—name your challenge).
I wrote Book One in the Ten Silver Coins series with my nephews in mind, with the hope that the story would excite them, capture their imaginations and even their hearts.
I wanted to write a book they’d love to read.
Now that I have kids who are entering reading age, writing for children takes on a whole new meaning, and it’s wonderful. It’s one of the reasons I recently dabbled in picture books.
It’s a joy to write for an audience you can’t help but love, whose lives are a window into worlds, who you long to delight.
The biggest fantasy (so far) was hoping for a best-seller
After reading the books you may very well question my credibility as a fantasy writer.
Let me submit to you, honoured judge, evidence that I do fantasy well: I still hold to the belief that this can be a bestseller!
Let’s be honest. We all want a best-seller (and I still do).
Which has led me to embrace the truth that…
Writing is a side hustle until it's not a side hustle
How did the book do?
I sold about 1,500 books out of the trunk of my car when Book One was first released. I’m proud of that hustle. And still collect a trickle of royalties.
While that’s very modest commercial success, for an indie writer it's not terrible. Keep in mind that J.K. Rowling, publishing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, a first-time author, had 500 books sold of her debut crime series before it was leaked to the press that she was said debut author.
I always find that story encouraging. And daunting.
As an independent writer and filmmaker this is perhaps the hardest truth: your creative career is a side hustle until it’s not a side hustle. No one is J.K. Rowling until they are J.K Rowling. Adjust life accordingly.
It’s easier than ever to bring a book to life
If you can win the fight to carve out time to write and aren’t just one of those writers who talks about their work rather than creating it, now is the time to create.
When I first released Book One, Amazon’s KDP was in its infancy. While exciting and democratizing, self-publishing had a stigma like homeschooling did before the pandemic.
And it was clunky.
As a Canadian writer, things came to us later up here and barriers on the platform made in challenging to hit international markets, pull off shipping—still so expensive up North—and, pricing books and marketing them 15 years ago had more hurdles than today.
In fact, it wasn’t until 2011 that I released to KDP on my own. I used vendors like Smashwords to test the ebook waters. And I used my Wordpress site and Paypal buttons (remember those?) with complicated shipping code to sell my book online.
But mostly, I just hustled and hawked the book in-person, which I don't do as much of today (read: he never leaves his computer desk or closes a browser).
All the tools are there, but it doesn’t mean you’ll know what to do with them
I released this book before TikTok, before Canva, before our artificial intelligence overlords could pen a draft, slip a sexy cover on the front and drop ship to readers, go viral, build a Wattpad audience and score a Hulu deal between high school classes.
I’m using some of the tools available to us writers, but not all.
I know my target audience for the series lives on TikTok, but I’m so torn. With psychologists urging parents, unequivocally, to not let kids on social media, what does a children’s author do to reach kids? (Honest question, no judgment. It’s a conundrum).
My go-to tools are
and Canva. I also jump between Keep, Scrivener and Final Draft for ideas and word processing. My writing and creative life has been changed forever because of these tools.I know I could use more tools (and use the ones I do use better). Especially social media. I forgive myself. I question myself. I accept this current version of my writing and marketing self… for now.
Self-publishing can cause trauma
My friends. I still haven’t recovered!
I printed about 3,000 books in Asia when I released in 2009. I scraped together and borrowed money to do it. I decided to do the print run while I was working on a project with a NGO in Malaysia (telling refugee stories). I took a risk.
Shipping costs ate a big chunk of my revenue, but it was still so much cheaper to work directly with a printer there, or so I thought.
But, through a series of rookie publishing events, I sent the wrong draft to the printer, and the 3,000 copies I had to hawk had a lot of typographical errors.
I still wake at night with PTSD from this and, as a recovering perfectionist, relive that feeling every time I come across an error in final copy.
But, I’m alive. I am not that first print edition, even though sometimes it feels like it's a metaphor for my entire indie writing persona.
You can’t afford not to have an editor, or a designer, or a marketing team, or a publicist, or, or, or...
But let’s be honest. As an independent creative, you also can’t always afford to have them either, especially all at once.
Writing is lonely, thrilling, mundane, beautiful
I’m writing because I’m breathing. That’s just how I’m wired.
But does anyone else feel the same mix of shame and pride, truth and disinformation when you tell people I’m a writer? The craft lives in a space somewhere between a superpower and a disease.
The hidden world of words is a mystery. You toil, you plant a seed, you find a treasure in a field and give everything you have to purchase the land so you can hide the treasure away.
You live to tell the story and yet wonder if you’ve merited the grace to share it.
It’s lonely, mundane and humbling with so often so little to show for.
What does it mean about me that a single, kind comment from a reader, or one solitary anecdote about how the words touched a heart or mattered makes me willing to do it all over again?
Among all the things that writing is, it is an offering.
A costly gift given.
I’m grateful that Ten Silver Coins has entertained audiences for over a decade. What’s most important to me is that it’s a book that parents and caretakers can entrust to their kids.
It’s an adventure—still unfinished—that explores deep, important themes. It’s a story that brings young readers to life with wonder and delight.
To mark 15 years, I’m releasing the series with new cover art and a new foreword.
I’m so grateful to all the readers who have enjoyed the story so far and gone on the adventure with Jill Strong. I hope it nudges you in your own adventure and to think about what to treasure most.
To mark 15 years, I’m creating a new section on Things I Wrote Down dedicated to TSC.
In the spirit of viewing writing as a gift to give, I want to invite people to read it without any barriers and will be releasing it, serially.
This is an experiment. My hope is to connect the series with new audiences and for it to bring encouragement, adventure and hope to even more kids and their families. So, if you know someone who’d be blessed by the story, please share.
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If, fairly, you’re asking, “Um, Andrew, are you known for anything as a writer?” my answer is a bit of Yes and a bit of No. My stage play She Has A Name is the surprise story of my career so far. It’s toured Canada and, as a film, has been streamed over 10 Million times. People may not know I wrote it, but I do, and that amazes me!
It’s Feb 29… your dad would be proud!.. and probably buy a dozen copies of the 15th anniversary edition! That first Malaysian print had heavy paper - it felt like a real book! I’ll have to dig it out for the occasion.. not sure where it ended up, though.. probably in library of our of our kids rooms. Our youngest is at the age where I could read it to him, just like Narnia.