Paying your Dues

My bicep is sore. My ankles ache. I find it hard to straighten up when I stand. Why? Because I worked today. I, along with two other guys unloaded almost five tons of what was essentially wet dry wall and sheet rock. We did this under the scalding sun. My forehead essentially looks like bacon.

I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute, aren't you a writer? Why are you doing manual labor? Because I needed the money. There is this shadow belief among people who haven't tried it that being a writer is a meal ticket. You write that one amazing book and then you earn millions of dollars and live the high life for the rest of your life. Wrong! It doesn't work that way, not even close. Maybe someday, but for now my books don't bring in near enough to call it a living.

So tonight's post is short and simple. Writing is hard. Publishing successfully is hard. It is not a cake walk, or a golden ticket. Turn off your blinders and be realistic. Writing for profit is generally a bad idea. Profit is the thing that happens because you wrote. Write because you love writing not to score a golden ticket. If that is all you're after, just buy lottery tickets... lots of them. The odds are essentially the same.

The Hardest Thing an Author will Ever be Faced With

When stuff just doesn't sell.


You spent hours writing. You spent hours editing and designing. You spent hours mastering social media. And you spent hours on book promotions.  Days go by and nothing sells. You gave away a decent amount of books with your KDP Select book promotion. But no one seems interested in spending actual money on your work. Things look grim, a small bit of depression sets in, and before you know it you're binge watching something on Netflix. (Currently Farscape for me, wonderful show by the way). Every author who isn't already established will deal with this. You are not alone.


My advice when this happens is simple and goes as follows. Get up at the same time. Eat breakfast at the same time, or don't if you don't eat breakfast. Go for a run or a walk or sit and sip your coffee. Do whatever it is you do, and then sit down and write. You can't make people buy your book, you have limited control over that, but you have total control over your own actions. It would be easy to give it up. You could cuddle up on your couch in frumpy clothes with a pint of ice cream and turn on that Netflix. But the truth is... that won't help your book sell.


What will help your books sell is writing more books and making sure they are the absolute best quality you can manage. At the end of the day their are a countless number of self published books on the market. The vast majority of them aren't good. (I make no claim that mine are special, in fact they aren't, they're right there with the rest of them struggling to find an audience). Readers get burned by bad self published books. That makes them timid about giving another one a shot. But if you've got a good cover design, a good book description, and you wrote a good book you can become part of the solution. So there you have it. Books aren't selling, write more books. The more books you have out, the more exposure you get and if they're good books readers will find your other books. If you write a good book, it will find an audience. Good books don't write themselves, so quell that Netflix addiction and keep pressing forward.


I for one know I'll never stop writing, because it's a part of me, in a way it's my therapy. When I go long periods without writing my mind gets cluttered. Doubts and insecurities that I usually heap on my characters flood my thoughts. For a writer, it is a downward spiral and the best way to avoid it is to just not start going down. Keep climbing, everything you do for your books from writing them to publishing them is a step forward. You're only going backwards when you quit.


Keep up the good fight my friends.