Whenever you ask authors for advice as an aspiring author, they always say the same thing first.
Don’t give up.
Doesn’t matter who it is, what genre, how long they’ve been an author, how “big” they’ve gotten. The #1 piece of advice is don’t give up.
I always just thought they were saying some party line. It was so unoriginal and duh, of course you’re not going to give up.
I just got it yesterday why they always say that.
Because when you’re first starting out and you’re making… well, lets just say a pretty paltry amount of sales, you hit that point where you wonder what the hell is the point. You’re not making enough money to justify the time you spent on the cover art and formatting the damn thing, let alone enough to justify your time writing it. Why are you even bothering? You could just keep writing, stop spending all this time with publishing and marketing stuff, and just post the stuff for free on your website and maybe try again later.
I’ve never been mistaken for a patient person, so when I said all this the lasts few days, people rolled their eyes at me and reminded me it’s been a few days and I have all of 1 short story out, and added something along the lines of, chill the &*$^ out.
I didn’t get it till yesterday what authors really mean when they say don’t give up. They mean it’s going to be a slow start, and you can’t expect to launch one thing and have it fly no matter how big your internet platform is. And that’s okay. You’re not trying to make money on your first or even your third publication out, especially if they’re short stories. You’re trying to get your name out there and have some back list for when something does get some buzz so people who like it see you have more than just one thing out and buy those too.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And the more stuff you put out there, the greater your chances of something “hitting” and causing a splash, thus bringing attention to your other works. And you don’t have to be the next Butcher or Hamilton to be successful as an author, especially when you’re indie, you need a fraction of their number of sales to make a decent side living, or even a decent main living.
So, now that I’ve entered the ranks of published authors, I’m joining the party line.
Don’t give up.
Happy writing 🙂
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