"It felt very poetic to take it back into my own hands and decide that it was worthy."

Debut author Sarah Marie Page on finding (and keeping!) your readers, choosing the DIY route, and her rich romantasy novel, ILLUSION OF STARS

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Sarah’s smart, sexy novel, out now!

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Me: Hi, Sarah! Big congrats on all your success with ILLUSION OF STARS! Can you share a little about the book?

Thank you so much! ILLUSION OF STARS is a fantasy romance about a girl who is sent to spy on her sexy enemy and steal his kingdom-shattering weapon. But she'd better watch out because her own feelings may destroy the mission. 🔥

This is the book I wrote after a mentor at my day job took me to lunch and told me I was a failure and that the interns were going to push me out of a job when they started. I wanted to write a book about a nobody who became a somebody because I felt like a nobody and and desperately wanted to be a somebody.

I love that origin story! How did you take those feelings and turn them into a romantasy plot?

I had two scenes in mind and worked backward from that. One of those scenes was the ending. The other was a scene in the middle where Isabel saves Erik's life. (Erik is the love interest.) I knew I wanted Isabel to be normal and I wanted her to save the day and solve all her problems because she's normal. She's not a great fighter, she doesn't have magic. There's one scene toward the end where Erik tries to train her to be a fighter and he ends up telling her to run if she's attacked because fighting is just not who she is. I did make her a healer so that scene in the middle would make sense. She usually uses her medical skills to solve her problems, sometimes in pretty funny ways.

Love that you infused the story with humor...and LOVE that her "normalcy" is a feature, not a bug! Can you tell me about your journey to publication? I know you're indie-published (which I love because most of the authors I chat with are trad-pubbed).

Yes, I indie published ILLUSION OF STARS, but I didn't start out that way. I originally wanted to go the traditional route. The first time I queried, I sent out 80 queries, had 16 requests, but querying was really hard on my mental health. I got to the point where I had to turn over access to the query email and QueryTracker to a friend because it was making me so depressed. I almost shelved the book.

But my one friend Kelsi would get fired up every time I talked about querying. She told me to stop trying to do things the "right" way and to just publish it myself. At first I resisted. I think I wanted the approval and clout that trad pub brings. In the end, ILLUSION OF STARS is a story about being good enough and so it felt very poetic to take it back into my own hands and decide that it was worthy. I like clout, but I like poetry better.

Anyway, ILLUSION OF STARS has been really well received. Some of the initial ARC readers fell in love with the story and pushed it into the hands of everyone they knew. I ended up getting over 2,000 requests for the ARC and over 500 preorders, which are big numbers for a debut indie author. Shortly after the story published, I sold the audiobook rights at auction (this is like a trad pub deal, but just for the audiobook rights) and I signed with my literary agent. We're now in the process of pitching it to traditional publishers. I don't know if anyone will pick it up (you never know with the traditional route), but at the end of the day I'm just happy the book is finding its readers.

Yay to this success story! Such a good reminder that there are a million paths to publication. When we connected, you said you've got tips to share on helping your book finds it readers. What are some of the key things you tried that really helped?