On August 14th, 2017 I launched my first five books. Green, uncertain, excited, and overconfident, I made myself the promise to give this writing thing two years. Time’s up!
The desire to throw in the towel is strong, and I came very close to quitting. Being an indie author takes more time, money, and skill than most people realize. The never-ending list of things I still need to learn remains ever out of reach and I am tired of the fight. Amazon has a death grip on indie authors, and I resent having to play their games. It is very difficult to remain motivated and productive without getting something in return – yes, I’m needy! I could go on and on, but you don’t want to hear it and it’s discouraging to lay it all out here.
While I am very tempted to chuck the whole dream, I’m not going to – yet. Honestly, I wish I could pull the plug for a couple years, write like crazy without the distraction of publishing and promoting, and come back with a vengeance! If I did that, I’m afraid of losing what little knowledge and skill I have, and starting over from scratch is not an appealing option.
The biggest reason to keep going is because I enjoy writing so much. I may be a failure on the business side of things, but I’m a good story-teller with tons of great ideas. I still have an awful lot to learn about the craft, but the readers I have are asking for more despite my shortcomings. How can I possibly disappoint them?
So, what’s next?
The money crunch means I will be doing more writing than publishing for the next year or so, but there’s no way around it. I intend to focus on shorter works rather than novels, and will probably set aside romances for more sci-fi and fantasy. In addition to improving my writing skills, I want to set up my backlist for print-on-demand and build my blog readership. I’m also considering a withdrawal from KDP Select and returning to D2D as a distributor. Once I have enough new material written, I need to work on building a newsletter email list and possibly open a Patreon account.
The short-term goal is to make enough from my books to keep writing and publishing. Long-term, I hope to generate a modest income to support me in my retirement years. If it all falls apart, you will be the first (and last) to know, but it won’t be because I haven’t tried. If it were possible, I would write myself a HEA and call it good! Too bad the real world doesn’t work that way.
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