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Never give up on your dreams

Posted on 3rd June, 2024

What I’ve realised about publishing books is that there are so many second, third, and fourth chances.

Today, my debut novel, The Not So Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard, is published in Dutch in the Netherlands and Belgium as Het geheime leven van Coco Pinchard. I couldn’t be more excited to see the book find new readers.

When I started writing, I had no clue how to write a book, let alone get it published, and along the way, there were so many doubts and tears and tantrums and moments of elation and tears, and more tantrums.

I couldn’t have done it without the belief and love of my husband, Ján, who supported me emotionally and financially all along the way. He was the one who told me, on a rainy afternoon at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, that perhaps I might enjoy being a writer more than an actor. It was the best piece of advice anyone has ever given me.

When I finished writing the book, I queried endless agents, and I was lucky to find one who loved Coco, and it came close to being published traditionally by one of the big publishers. And then it all went away, when the answer was, ‘Sorry, we love it, but we don’t think it can find a big enough readership.’ The literary agent dropped me, and I was devastated. The book lay in a drawer for two years, but I always believed readers would love Coco Pinchard. Then, I heard about self-publishing through Kindle Direct Publishing, so on a quiet morning, sitting on the sofa in our flat, we pressed upload, and people could buy The Not So Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard.

It took some time to find an audience. We were clueless about publishing, but slowly, it gained traction with readers and reviewers, and eight months later, Coco Pinchard went into the top 100 Kindle charts on Amazon UK. It sold over a thousand copies that weekend, making enough money to pay our rent and bills that month, and suddenly, there was the tantalising possibility that I could make money doing something I love. I decided to write more Coco Pinchard adventures. The next two years were so much fun, I wrote and we self-published a second, third, fourth, and fifth book, and with each publication, my audience grew.

I then decided to try my hand at crime novels, which were slightly more successful than my romantic comedies, but I still think I’m a comedy writer masquerading as a crime writer. I loved writing about Coco Pinchard’s adventures, and seeing them continue to find new readers gives me so much pleasure. The Coco Pinchard series has now sold over 600,000 copies in all formats, and translations have been published in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and now in the Netherlands and Belgium in Dutch.

Some of the English language and international editions of the Coco PInchard series, and in the centre, the original first manuscript for The Not So Secret Emails. . .

I’m so excited to hear what my Dutch-speaking readers think of Het geheime leven van Coco Pinchard. I’m also thrilled that my Dutch publisher will be publishing the next four books in the Coco Pinchard series in Dutch over the next few months and into next year.

And very soon, I’m going to write that sixth Coco Pinchard book. . . Until then, happy reading! Rob x