Lupe Farkas

The kindness chain

Dear Rebels, remember when I said kindness multiplies?

Well.

I was right.

And I am so ridiculously happy that I was right about this one.

I am happy I started all of these projects. Reading ARCs. Reviewing indie authors. Recording the podcast. Writing this Indie Author Experiment every single day. Showing you the sales, the failures, the Google obsession, the things that work, the things that absolutely refuse to work and, apparently, documenting my increasingly public relationship with Coke Zero.

Because somewhere in the middle of all this madness, something happened that I was not expecting.

Kind people. Funny people. Brave people. People carrying stories that have lived inside them for years. People rebuilding their lives. People writing through grief. People creating entire fictional worlds. People who have absolutely no idea whether anyone will care about the thing they created and send it anyway.

And Rebels, just thinking about them gives me energy.

Motivation.

Discipline.

It makes me want to keep going.

Inside the inbox

Today I answered 36 emails.

Answering an ARC submission takes me much longer than simply opening an email and typing:

I read the email.

Then I go looking for the author.

I read about them. I look at their work. I visit their website if they have one. I look at their books, their background, interviews, reviews, Goodreads, whatever helps me understand who has just appeared in my inbox and why they thought their book might belong on my reading desk.

Then I come back.

I read the email again.

And only after all of that do I let my heart speak.

Or type.

Same thing around here.

Today that took me roughly three hours.

And yes.

I cried.

More than once.

Some of those emails were incredibly touching.

For the authors

I know what it takes to hand your book to a stranger.

I know what it takes to write a book.

I know what it feels like to spend months or years listening to characters, memories, ideas and approximately seventeen million voices inside your own head.

I know the obsession.

I know the excitement.

And God, do I know the doubts.

Approximately seventeen million doubts wearing a coat and pretending to be a functioning adult.

Then somehow you finish the thing.

Which should probably qualify as temporary insanity on its own.

And then comes the truly deranged part.

You release it.

Tell me that does not take guts.

Traditionally published. Self-published. Bestseller. First book.

Somewhere underneath all the labels, I think writers function in roughly the same way.

We are feelings.

We are imagination.

We are hope.

We are voices.

We are doubts.

And then one day we press Send.

If you are thinking about sending me your baby…

Sorry.

Your book.

I want you to know something.

When I open an email from someone asking me to read something they created with their heart, their imagination, their memories or sometimes their pain, I consider that an honour.

Truly.

I will treat your work with respect.

And I will treat you with respect.

Because I know exactly what it feels like to stand on the other side of that email.

Sometimes, finally seen.

There are very few things better than that.

The other side of reviews

And today, somebody made me feel seen too.

Some of you who listen to the Imperfect Rebel podcast already know this story.

A while ago, someone created an AI trailer for my book that I had never requested and then asked me to pay around $200 for it.

I said no.

Because… obviously?

I never ordered it.

They became angry and threatened me with bad reviews.

Did I believe they would actually do it?

Of course not.

Then, a few days later, I woke up to a low rating and a horrible review.

And my first reaction?

I felt guilty.

Of course I did.

I thought somebody had spent their precious time reading my book and hated it, and I actually felt sorry for them.

I mentally apologised for wasting their time.

Very author behaviour.

Then I started looking at the numbers.

There had been no sale explaining it. No Kindle Unlimited reading. No ARC copy.

And because the threat had happened first, I began to understand what might have happened.

And yes.

I cried.

I am not going to pretend I did not.

Then today, the opposite happened.

Recently, Kindle Unlimited pages finally started moving.

I even sold two books.

Yes.

Two.

I know.

Please go buy my book.

I have now said that publicly and will be running away to hide behind something immediately.

😂

But today a reader emailed me because she had tried to leave a review on Amazon and could not.

She could simply have stopped there.

Instead, she asked me whether there was somewhere else she could leave her review.

I sent her my Goodreads page.

And Rebels…

She left one of the most beautiful reviews I could have imagined.

To the beautiful soul who did that: thank you.

You probably have absolutely no idea what you gave me today.

It was not simply a lovely review.

You made me trust myself a little more again.

You reminded me why we cannot allow one ugly thing to become louder than all the beautiful ones.

Thank you.

Truly.

From the bottom of my heart.

Apparently homemade is doing fine

And then you started complimenting my website.

Yes.

That homemade website.

The one an “expert” once described as flat and homemade.

Today I received messages saying it was organised.

Easy to navigate.

Informative.

Personal.

People told me they had read the Indie Author Experiment.

They mentioned The Chosen.

They noticed little things I had put on this website wondering whether anybody would ever notice them.

One author told me he had actually returned to the website to read more.

Rebels, I was answering messages with tears in my eyes.

This website that I built myself, broke myself, repaired myself, redesigned approximately seventeen times and occasionally swore at…

You are actually reading it.

That means more to me than I can explain.

A small change

I also owe some of you an apology.

There were emails sitting in my inbox for several days.

I had decided I would answer submissions twice a week.

I thought that would be enough.

😂

So we are changing that.

From now on, I am going to try to answer emails every evening, somewhere between my Italian dinner fighting to settle peacefully in my stomach and me remembering that normal human beings eventually go to bed.

I do not want authors sitting there wondering whether their message disappeared into a black hole.

Thirty-six doors

Today I did not just receive books. I got invited into lives.

The stories that arrived today could hardly have been more different.

And one author did not simply send me an ARC.

He invited me somewhere.

I had to accept a private invitation, wait while my seat was prepared, receive a Table number, enter it and finally arrive at my own place inside the reading experience.

It was spectacular.

I felt like I had entered the fictional town before I had even opened the EPUB.

I am so in love with all of this.

And it is happening because you are here.

So every single person reading this should consider themselves kissed on the forehead.

Because I genuinely think a forehead kiss might be the sweetest kiss one human being can give another.

Yesterday → Today

What changed in 24 hours?

Instagram discovery

Almost half the views are coming from people who do not follow me.

Over the last 30 days, Instagram views are now almost perfectly split:

That is discovery.

Real discovery.

And the funniest part?

Reels contributed only a tiny part of the total.

Instagram has spent years yelling:

Apparently I replied:

No ❤️

Website growth

A lower day inside a much stronger week is not decline.

Yesterday had more daily website traffic than today.

Yesterday: 114 views and 38 visitors.

Today: 88 views and 33 visitors.

If I looked only at one day, I could panic.

So let us look at the week instead.

That is much more interesting to me than one spectacular spike.

The homemade website so far

Two hundred and sixty-five thousand words.

Apparently I do not have a blog.

I have a small country.

Imperfect Rebel podcast

The podcast is moving too.

Ramen, Existential Crises & 85 Minutes… continues to grow.

Loving Someone Through Addiction… is growing.

And the podcast as a whole is slowly finding its people.

Which means I should probably remind you that you can also listen to me instead of reading several thousand words of whatever this is.

Yes.

You too can experience my annoying voice directly inside your ears.

You are welcome.

Facebook

Facebook is alive. Nobody tell Facebook I said that.

The current dashboard is showing a substantial increase in views and engagement compared with its previous comparison period.

Facebook is alive.

Nobody tell Facebook I said that.

It might get excited.

Not every metric belongs to an algorithm

Today’s human numbers.

Amazon reality check

And now, the number that absolutely refused to participate.

There she is.

My beloved Amazon Sahara.

Still providing dunes.

😂

The difference is that today I am not staring only at the zero.

Because while sales did absolutely nothing today, discovery did.

Instagram grew.

LinkedIn grew.

The website week grew.

The podcast grew.

People emailed.

People reviewed.

People came back.

That does not pay the electricity bill yet.

But it tells me something is being built.

And that matters.

Today’s featured review

The Secret Bookshop in Ireland by Susanne O’Leary

Extremely subtle author promotion

And yes, my own book still exists. 😂

Before October Ends: A Life for a Life is my psychological diary novel built around a ninety-day countdown.

Elisabetta Rossi leaves Milan with a private promise and ninety days in which to live differently. Then people begin giving her reasons to question the ending she thought she had already chosen.

It is about love, grief, control, memory, identity, belonging, complicated happiness and what happens when time suddenly has a very definite ending.

It is available as an eBook and through Kindle Unlimited.

Please read my book.

There.

I said it.

I will be hiding now.