SONRISAS INVISIBLES: Chronicle of a Creative Process.

The Reality of Self-Publishing

Writing a novel is only the beginning of a long, often lonely, and deeply demanding journey. Publishing independently means taking on a multifaceted role that goes far beyond words: you have to manage the design, the layout, the promotion, and every single technical detail. All of that just to end up earning a minimal amount in royalties. Those of us who dedicate ourselves to this heart and soul do so out of sheer vocation, fully aware that making a living from literature is an arduous path, but comforted by the knowledge that true wealth lies in reaching readers' hearts.

Today I want to share with you what goes on behind the scenes of how my novel Sonrisas Invisibles was born and evolved—a project marked by the lockdown, life changes, and the relentless search for its visual identity.

From the 2020 Lockdown to a Co-Publishing Deal That Didn't Work

Sonrisas Invisibles (Invisible Smiles) was born during the 2020 lockdown. The loss of my job and the mandatory confinement triggered an urgent need in me to capture on paper what we were living through. Written with the heat and urgency of the moment, it reflected an era of collective uncertainty. Three years later, I decided it was time to bring it to light. I submitted it to several contests, contacted publishers, spoke with booksellers about the best sales channel, and even paid nearly 500 euros to a renowned literary advisor for a reading report that could just as easily have been written by one of my students. She rated my novel a 7/10 commercially. When I asked her what the next step was, she vanished.

This experience led me to publish it via a co-publishing arrangement. In exchange for an upfront fee, the publisher simply placed it digitally across various sales channels worldwide. There were no marketing efforts on their part. As a result, only a few copies were sold, thanks entirely to my own offline promotional efforts. Shortly after, personal circumstances forced me to temporarily put my literary pursuits on hold and embark on a new chapter by moving to Germany.

Rewriting My Works and the Labyrinth of the Final Cover

With the perspective that comes with distance and maturity, in 2026 I decided to resume publishing my two novels. They went through a thorough revision and editing process. The first one, I am BIG, gained depth and 120 pages by giving a voice to characters who previously only hovered in the background and suddenly demanded more attention. Sonrisas Invisibles underwent a few modifications as well; mainly regarding orthotypography—using the correct dialogue dashes, quotation marks, italics, etc.—details that, the first time around, inexperienced and rushed, I failed to notice.

Yet updating the work also required changing its skin to adapt to current trends. This is where a true design odyssey began. Working one day until four in the morning, I thought I had cracked it. Hours earlier, I had already previewed part of that design on the web and in the final shot of the book trailer I prepared for the novel. However, my intuition wasn't wrong: something wasn't right. Even though the general idea was appealing, the design was misleading regarding the book's actual content. My composition, rendered in the magenta tone that defines me—my corporate color, the color of my glasses, whose story I already shared in another blog post—looked like an illegible smudge that blurred the composition. When I tried to fix it by switching to a sans-serif font, the cover lost all its strength and intensity.

I had to scrap it and start over. For hours, I experimented with artificial intelligence—bless it for those of us who don't know how to draw!—testing various visual concepts: the figure of a defeated doctor, horizontally split cityscapes, a car in a desert on top and a nighttime ambulance at the bottom... Finally, I hit upon the key: the final cover depicts a man and a woman turning their backs on each other in a desert landscape, separated by a huge crack in the ground that fractures the scenery; an image that represents the rupture and the inner journey of the protagonists.

A Novel with a OST?

Well, yes. This novel contains music. One day, before sitting down to write, I felt creative and, without thinking about the consequences, thought, "I'm going to include a soundtrack in this story, just like in the movies." The idea fit the plot perfectly. It didn't feel forced at all. Quite the contrary, the pieces of music offered readers a brand-new experience, intensifying the emotion of certain moments and making them immerse themselves even deeper into the plot. But what worked wonderfully on a conceptual level turned into an unexpected technical problem that surfaced with the re-release. One of my beta readers told me: "The music thing is great. But I read in short bursts—during a work break, while waiting for an appointment somewhere, or on public transit. If I have to stop and search for every single song, I simply don't have the time". This blunt statement forced me to find a practical solution to make it easy for my readers: a QR code linked to a playlist containing the songs in order of appearance. This way, the reader only has to access the link content and play the next track.

The E-book Version: Problems Multiply

Another headache! This novel has a peculiar feature. There are two narrators. The first tells the story in the third person. The second breaks the fourth wall to interact directly with the readers. To distinguish them, I used two different fonts in the manuscript. But when converting the text to the e-book version... surprise! All the texts looked identical, with no distinction between narrators. So I had to put my brain to work until I came up with a clean solution. The one I found was so impactful that I decided to apply it to the paperback version as well: an icon, a tiny silhouette of a man placed before every text belonging to this "extra" narrator. Without a doubt, problems come into our lives to make us better.

Vocation Versus the Algorithm: The True Engine of Independent Literature

This journey is just a glimpse of what goes on behind an independent launch. Readers usually see only the final result, remaining unaware of the sleepless nights, discarded drafts, and the comprehensive management of a cultural product.

Writing, editing, designing, formatting, and promoting are part of heavy machinery that can be utterly exhausting. If anyone embarks on this adventure, it is purely out of vocation. The true reward is not royalties, but truly connecting with readers and having your story pierce their hearts. However, the path to reach them is becoming increasingly difficult.

I wonder what would become of the great classics of Universal Literature if they had to face today's market and publish their works under all these extra requirements. Would they have survived the algorithm? Would Cervantes, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dostoievsky, and so many others have passed the filter of the booktokers?

I look forward to reading your comments.

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