My Book is Out and I'm Bad at Marketing

There are a bunch of things I’m not good at, and I would say marketing myself is one of them. I like writing, I like creating, but asking people to give me their money? Not my strongest skill. This only really becomes an issue when I release a book, which isn’t fairly often. But, as it turns out, I have recently released a book! 

Cover of "Tales from the Farmlands" by Samantha Nicklaus

This has been, by far, the least amount of time and effort I’ve put into marketing anything I’ve created. I can make excuses (and I will) but the core of the issue is– I didn’t want to. It’s not because I don’t love this book, because I adore it. There are a lot of reasons I didn’t want to work on this book any more than absolutely necessary to get it done. 

A little bit of backstory. I decided in December of 2024 that I was going to write a poetry book in a week. I was going to get all of these ideas and concepts and feelings out and then be done with it. In typical me fashion, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t from lack of effort, it was from lack of time. One week was not enough time to get the poems out of me. 

2025 has been rough for everyone and I’ve had my own struggles. Aside from being a writer, I have a B.A in History, where I focused mostly on counter insurgency. I have been painfully aware of the direction the US has been taking since 2015-ish. This isn’t a “Ah, I knew it!” moment, because I honestly and truly wish I was an insane or paranoid person. Unfortunately, when I said that our democracy was being stripped away and we were becoming an overtly fascist state, I was apparently right. 

If you are wondering how this connects to a poetry book, I’ll get there, I promise. Trying to navigate my day to day life, on top of watching the political landscape slide to the far-right, was often too much for me to handle. I lost a lot of people in my life due to their undying support of Trump. People who I loved and trusted, who I thought had principles and allegiances outside of party lines*. If I’m being honest, I have not handled those losses well. 

A lot of “Tales from the Farmlands” is me attempting to express the hurt, frustration, and disappointment I’ve felt over the last year. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I am a poet, so bear with me for a second. While my other poetry books have felt like letting out a deep breath, Tales from the Farmlands felt like a gut punch. Where I was used to slowly letting out a structured breath, this book knocked the wind out of me. 

Writing it was one thing, but editing it was another. I joked with a friend that I had written a curse amulet of a book that made me sad every time I touched it. As far as marketing went, I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to find lines to use for Instagram posts, I didn’t want to make visuals for it, I didn’t want to open that can of worms again.  

I understand that this blog post, while not intended to count as “marketing”, is also not shedding a positive light on my book. And that’s mostly fine with me. I love this book. I think it’s good, poignant, and in a lot of ways, therapeutic. I hope that other people who have struggled this last year find some comfort and solace in it. But at the same time, I have never written or released any piece of work for other people. My writing has always been for me and this book is no different. This is the poetry book I wish I had in November of 2024. 

I don’t want to make the last calendar year sound like one big depression hole for me (though oftentimes it was). I made new friends, continued to build a community, laughed until I cried, and experienced so much joy. Babies have been born, marriages have happened, houses bought–the world has continued turning. Somehow, that made it all the more difficult to work on something I knew would hurt me so deeply.

At the end of the day, I am my own boss, and if I decided to never talk about this book, I’m not going to “get in trouble” with anyone. There is no punishment. My only goal in writing this is to explain. I would hate for anyone to get the impression that I don’t adore this book or I didn’t think it was good enough to market. It is. It’s so good that working on it for too long leaves me exhausted. 

Obviously poetry is open to interpretation, and you may not find Tales from the Farmlands as sad as I do. And that’s fine! If you are in a similar boat as me, finding yourself going low-contact or non-contact with loved ones, disenchanted with the political system, or just discouraged in general, I hope you do find a sense of comfort in this book. 

Anyway. If you have read this far, thank you. If you do want a copy of my book, I would be thrilled if you bought it from me directly, but the world is a shit-show, so buy it however you want/can. I have kept and will always keep my books at the most affordable prices I can. Currently, the Kindle version is the cheapest (and will likely continue to be!). 

Thank you for hearing me out and happy reading <3

* I can go into a whole three hour TED talk about American politics, systems of oppression, and the constant failings of the federal government. There is obviously more nuance to this conversation than I am stating here.