A tiny, unexpected author moment that stopped me mid-scroll and reminded me of how wild this journey could be.
There are parts of the author journey you can prepare for—edits, deadlines, the slow burn of querying, the tiny thrill of seeing a new review. And then there are the moments no one warns you about. The ones that feel a little like stepping outside your body and watching it with a new perspective.
This morning, I had one of those moments.
I was sipping my coffee, scrolling through the MSN Discover feed like I always do, half-awake and not expecting anything more dramatic than a weather update. And then I saw it—a familiar sunflower staring back at me from the fifth box on the screen.
My book. On a major news feed. Just… sitting there like it belonged.
For a full three seconds, my brain refused to process it. I actually said out loud, “Wait. What?” Because here’s the thing: I had turned off the discreet cover in my Amazon ads. I knew I wasn’t paying for that placement. So how on earth was my book showing up on MSN?
Cue the rabbit hole.
It turns out that third-party resellers sometimes list indie books on eBay and promote them through Microsoft’s ad network. They buy the book from Amazon when someone orders it; I still get my royalty, and they pocket the markup. It’s a strange little ecosystem I had never thought about—until I saw my own book being advertised by someone else.
And here’s the part that made me laugh, then blink, then sit very still:
They chose my discreet cover.
The one with the soft tones and minimalist design. The one I created to feel quiet and intimate and a little bit special. The one I hoped would look “premium” enough to sit on someone’s shelf someday.
Apparently, it worked.
Someone out there thought my book looked collectible enough to flip for a profit. They listed it. They promoted it. They paid for the ad. And it was right there on my morning news feed.
It was surreal. It was unexpected. And honestly? It was a tiny, sparkling moment of validation.
Indie publishing is full of invisible wins—the ones that don’t show up on charts or dashboards but still whisper, Keep going. People are noticing. Seeing my book out in the wild, promoted by someone who believed it could sell, was one of those wins.
This journey is unpredictable. And sometimes, it’s wonderful in ways you never see coming.
And because this whole experience made me reflect on the strange, winding path of indie publishing, here’s a truth I don’t talk about often: in my first year as an indie author, my series moved 1,188 units—then almost doubled the next year to 2,229, bringing my lifetime total to 3,417 units moved. Almost all of that came from free promotions and organic discovery, not ads or algorithms.
For a long time, I dismissed those numbers because they weren’t “paid sales.” But recently I learned that most indie authors sell 200–250 copies (free or not) in their entire first year. Suddenly, those quiet little numbers felt different. They felt like proof that readers were finding me, even when I didn’t know how to find them.
