Publishing a book has several black boxes. We drop our “baby” into the box and we wait. We know it will be better when it pops out the other side. But we don’t know exactly when or how much additional work we will have.
When our work goes to a proofreader, editor, or publisher we usually don’t know how long it may take. This is because they are usually handling several projects at a time so our work goes into a chronological queue behind other manuscripts, and once they are working on ours we want them to do a thorough job. So does everybody ahead of us. So we don’t resent those black boxes.
But the most painful and unpredictable black box is the market. We can influence it by publicity, by making appearances, signing books, doing interviews, but it is hard to build a large readership. Every author hopes “this book will be my breakout book,” when enough demand builds that sales rapidly increase, and it catches the attention of the public.
With the advent of self-publishing, nearly 1 million new books are published in the US each year, but only about 200 of them will make a best seller list. So such “breakouts” are very rare.
So if you really enjoy a book written by a relatively unknown author, such as (this guy, right here), posting good reviews, spreading the word to friends and family, and sharing their posts on social media will help. Word of mouth is still one of the best methods of advertising, people trust the opinions of their friends and family more than those of strangers.