It Ain’t Easy

There’s a country song that goes “it ain’t easy, but it ain’t supposed to be”. How true is that? Life is a grind, even when we take pleasure in what we do. Day in, day out we strap up for battle and do it all over again the following day. This is certainly true for publishing. As an author, I thought the hardest part was coming up with characters, settings, and storylines. Now that I have evolved my career, taking as much control as I can, I wish that was all I had to do.

So much goes in to being a legitimate business. I see scores of people claiming to be ‘aspiring writers’ or something to the like. Aspiring? Hell, I’m an aspiring millionaire if that’s the case. The hard truth is words like aspiring only serve to tell professionals not to waste their time looking deeper into that person. Why sabotage yourself when there are an estimated 10 MILLION books on Amazon and over 1 MILLION authors? These novices should be trying to learn the business to make their books desirable, not playing games on social media.

Another nail in their coffin are these endless streams of pointless questions to raise false interactions. Do you see the big name authors wasting their time with such riveting questions as: Who here hates their writing? or What kind of dog do you have? UGGGGGHHHHHH!

The point I am trying to make is any serious author needs to understand that they are a business and need to treat everything they do as such. The more silly games you play the less agents or publishers will be inclined to treat with you. With so much competition out there you need to be providing reasons for people to spend their money and time reading your work. (And no, telling me it’s the best story your ever going to read is not the ticket).

Take the time to study your job. Research publishing options, marketing techniques, follow trends. One of the worst pieces of advice I see is already unsuccessful authors telling new authors to write what they want…it’s your book! True, to an extent, but there’s a reason bestsellers are what they are. The Big 5 traditional publishers have it down to a smooth machine- despite whatever biases they might have or hidden agendas we don’t know about. Writing what you want is fine, but you still need to follow the rules. How else do you expect to sell anything?

With a shelf life of only 90 days before your book is considered old, you don’t have time to goof around.