“I hope your first book doesn’t go viral. In fact, I hope not the second or the third either.”

I read the Instagram message over and over again in case I misread it. I thought that if I read it one more time, the words might disappear or change magically, or I might finally understand what he meant to say.

But no.

This is what Elian told me, and it meant exactly what I read.

He hoped that my first books wouldn’t go viral.

I felt completely offended. He was the first person who didn’t wish me success since I released my book in January. And his opinion was one of the most important because he is a famous writer.

For someone who’s so used to being flattered, who seeks validation, and who has many platforms with more than 60,000 followers who are constantly telling her how well I do things, it felt like someone had punched me in the face on purpose and hadn’t apologized.

No matter how many people around you are happy about your success, you don’t want to see anyone wishing you failure.

So after calming down, I asked him why, and his answer made me wish to everyone who reads this: I hope your first book doesn’t go viral either.

When you go viral with one book, all your other works start to become popular too.

Elian is a well-known writer on Amazon KDP and a friend of mine. He was the first person who introduced me to this world, and someone I’ve admired since I started writing.

When he started writing a few years ago, there were few resources for going viral. TikTok wasn’t as popular, Facebook pages weren’t as well-established, and Amazon Ads weren’t as easy to manage.

So he did what any writer with nothing else to do would do: He kept writing.

This resulted in him having around ten books by the time he figured out how the marketing world worked. So all of his books started to be known at the same time.

People who liked one of his books went to find out who he was, and they realized he had more published works…