Since this is called The Self Pub Hub, I’m assuming most readers are here because of the enticing path of doing their own thing. So I’m going to go a little deeper on the pessimistic track and expound on some of the harsh realities and hard truths of this decision.
The aim isn’t to discourage, but rather to set proper expectations. Next post will have all the happy-fun stuff, promise!
Hard truth #1: there will be no escaping hard work
This is effectively the message from the first post. No matter what path you take, sooner or later you’re going to have dig in, grit your teeth, and endure the grind. And not just once. For a while. A long while. Similar to how you’re not going to get buff by going to the gym for a month, you’re not going to realize your writing dreams without years of dedicated effort. Years, yo. Complete with ups, downs, disappointment, joys, sacrifice.
The key is to structure things so that you enjoy the overall process more (even a teeny bit) than you dislike it. More on that later.
Hard truth #2: you almost certainly won’t get rich doing this
I know I know, we all fantasize about Oprah stumbling across our underdog novel or whatever, or catching the right online wave at the right time… and while bursts of success can happen, it’s a very unproductive and dangerous thing to assume that it will happen to you.
You love writing, right? If you can make a living doing what you love, then you’ve realized a level of human achievement that is probably more rare than simply being flush with cash. Making a decent living, whatever figure that means to you, should be the end goal. If, along the way, you’re fortunate to monetize your platform or scale your fan base and sales in ways that add another zero to your income, then of course embrace it! But don’t make it your aim.
The media and your peers will naturally highlight and overexpose stories about alleged rags to riches writer stories (JK Rowling being the darling example, in my opinion)—this is built right in to human nature and part of your job is to resist the sparkle and focus on simply improving yourself and attaining goals and milestones that are realistic. Else, you’ll burn out and burn out fast.
At the time of drafting this post, I’ve estimated my Year To Date writing revenue from book sales to be about 15 cents per day (let’s not even talk about the comparative costs). And I am delighted about that figure because the last time I ran such numbers, it was $0.08/day. If I can double the number every 3 months it’ll take about 3 years before I’m pulling in a livable wage. Seems a reasonable thing to do versus hope that my next book goes hyperviral.
Hard truth #3: People judge books by covers
And a whole lot of other things too, besides the actual content of your story. If you think of your writing as beautiful art instead of what it really is, you’re probably going to have a tough go.
Like it or not, if you want to make a living selling fiction to strangers, you must understand that your books are products. If that seems “icky” to you, then you’re unfortunately going to have to work on disabusing yourself of the notion that capitalism, marketing, consumption, etc. are uncomfortable or somehow morally reprehensible concepts. There’s a lot of ways those things can go very very wrong, yes. But it was also all those things that created a world in which you can freely access this information and a whole bunch of other stuff that you love and hold dear.
Long story short, someone’s going to need to run your self-publishing outfit like a business… if you can’t fathom that, then self-publishing is probably not the route for you (assuming your goal is to get paid for your troubles).
Hard truth #4: It’ll take longer than you think to make a dent
As a self publisher, congrats: you’re a start up! And the thing with start ups is that they usually burn money and take several years to gain traction (even the ones funded with millions. Uber was a thing for five years or so before the wider public had any idea what it was).
If you’re like me, when you decided to tackle the writing thing for serious, you didn’t exactly have a giant pile of spare cash lying around. Nor endless stretches of time you could convert into sweat equity.
This is the “we started in a garage” phase of your potentially successful self run business. It’ll have to run cheap and be mostly duct taped together. It’ll be that way for a long damn time, and this reality goes hand in hand with Truth Number 2.
Dear god, what’s the upside you wonder? More in the next post, but as a teaser:
- Good stories will always be in demand, so long as there are humans
- You love writing
The first thing is a business bonus. The second thing is your very important not-so-secret weapon and without it you are in deep shit.
It is this love that will enable you to bear the weight of time, lack of riches and fame, and the next hard truth.
Hard Truth #5: you’ll have to make sacrifices
Since I am assuming you’re not flush with time nor money for running a side start up, I need to inform you that you’re gonna have to FIND either time or money.
Starting out, the one you’re going to need more of is Time. And you have a bunch of that, actually. 168 hours per week. The challenge is in allocation. I am of the opinion that the average person can probably find at least 20 hours per week that aren’t being spent on anything particularly productive. If you can find those hours and convert them into productive self publishing time, here’s what it could look like:
- 8 hours writing @ 500 words/hour = 4,000 words per week
- 4 hours editing
- 4 hours building platform, business stuff, bits of research, publishing
- 4 hours buffer for bad days or writers block or whatever
Keep that up for 40 of 52 weeks of the year, and you’ve made writing a part time job with summers off, written 160,000 words (2-3 novels), self edited them to the point where they could be published, maybe even published one or two, built the foundation of a platform, and had lots of room for time off. All in one little year, while maintaining whatever it is you do with the other 148 hours per week.
Not too bad for 20 hours per week. So, which of your crappy habits or social obligations can you ditch to squeeze out the time? I bet a lot. I bet more than 20 hours per week’s worth… but we don’t know each other so that may be presumptuous. 🙂
Bonus: if you spend these hours mostly doing things you love, you’ll find you magically can find even more time. And like any good investment, that shit compounds. Then one day you wake up and maybe, just maybe you’re a full time writer who can pay all their bills and then some.
It’s not an insane idea. It is, in fact, absolutely possible, so long as you take the above truths to heart. And while this post was admittedly gloomy on the whole, it is but the requisite discomfort of any new adventurer entering a new world and taking on a new challenge.
As something of a salve, next, let us tour the great halls of rewards set before us, many of which we can access as soon as we get started.
This post was last updated April 1, 2018