The last two posts were of the tough love style, detailing why this pursuit of self publishing (or publishing traditionally) is going to be hard no matter what you do.
This post is about all the things you stand to gain for enduring that hardship. Is it worth it? I think if you know that you love writing, and it makes you happy, then it will be worth it even if you don’t make a dime doing it (but that’s unlikely, if you’ve put enough sweat in. Money likes to follow hard work around).
Let us start with money, and get it out the way first. Do this self-pub thing halfway right, and you can expect to make a full time living writing fiction or non-fiction or whatever floats your boat.
Reward 1: “Author” will be your official job title
How much is a full time living? That obviously differs from person to person. But based on my non-scientific, anecdotal observations, a mid-list, traditionally published author can pull down a $90K salary if they’re producing marketable fiction at a steady clip. Since self publishing’s scale is boundless, the ceiling for income is enticingly high.
If we use the $90K benchmark, that means you need to make a steady and reliable average of about $250/day. Say you net $2/book. That = 125/sales per day. That’s hard if you only have one book. Easier if you have 10. But imagine 100 titles out there… you barely need to sell more than one a day, and if you self-pub 100 titles and haven’t made some kind of name for yourself that helps boost your sales velocity, I will be very confused.
How much time to create 100 freakin’ books? Well, in the last post, working a lazy 20 hours a week for 8 months of the year worked out to an estimated 2-3 novels per year. You don’t necessarily need to be writing novel length material, and if you’re slanting towards full-time you’ll spend way more than 20 hours/week as time goes on. It’s totally reasonable to aim for 20 titles per year. I’ve heard stories of people doing more than twice that.
So, within ten years of focused effort (which, in terms of a career, isn’t a ridiculous slice of your life) you could easily build toward ~100 titles. As you get better, you’ll earn way more than $2/book. And you’ll sell more than 1 copy per title per day.
$90K/year or $250/day doesn’t sound that insane when you put it that way, huh? Perhaps I’ll make a spreadsheet that helps factor in time/money requirements… this is a note to remind me!
Let’s move onto the things that are way more important than cash (lovely as it is).
Reward 2: As a self pubber, you’ll be investing time and energy into something you love
This is actually the #1 reward, in my humble opinion.
I’ve been an extremely lucky mofo in life that I’ve rarely ever held a job that I didn’t at least like a little, and have spent most of my serious career time in jobs I legit enjoy. I cannot imagine, nor properly appreciate, being stuck in a job that I hate.
But on all accounts, it’s sounds fucking awful. I’ve never heard of someone regretting leaving a job they don’t like, no matter the short term consequences.
All that to say, if you can find the work you LOVE, it should have near the opposite effect of the soul sucking job. You’ll put disproportionately more energy into it. You’ll feel like it’s fun most of the time and that you’re not really “working.” You’ll be less drained, which will give you energy to focus on other healthy habits (e.g. social, diet, exercise, learning) which will in turn improve your writing.
Instead of the classic downward spiral, you’ll enter an upward one.
And money, luck, and opportunity are very attracted to upward spirals.
So if this point isn’t deadly clear by now… make sure you love writing. It should give you energy. It should induce the magical feeling of flow state every now and then. It should feel like home in many ways. I’m writing this at 1AM on my phone during a long subway ride home with 4% battery. Could’ve spent the time vegging out to music like I so often do on lengthy rides but this topic of the joy of writing fires me up!
I get a nice post out of it and it feels like my ride home took no time at all.
I spent 1 of 20 hours this week writing the words above.
I’m encouraged to write the follow up piece.
Upward spiral engaging…
Reward 3: you’ll be investing in building something that you 100% own
This is a mix between the two points of money and passion. As a self pubber, you own 100% of your business and intellectual property (this is not the case if you sell your work to a publisher—and sometimes that’s a good strategy even as someone who primarily self pubs, but that’s another story).
Point is: ownership is powerful. It translates into many fiscal benefits, but it’s the spiritual ones that you’ll really cash in on. Far and wide, you’ll encounter the story of the creative person forced into some corporate or imagination-bankrupt project that might pay well, but boy, do they hate it. To have some outside force strangle your artistic energy is a perverse and personally challenging ordeal, to say the least. Creating an environment where you, or at least a team that you love and trust, make the decisions of curtailing or amplifying your spirit is not something that you can slap a price tag on. All I know is that it’s worth a lot. A lot.
I need to reinforce the notion that escaping the yoke of the external “client” or “boss” doesn’t grant you limitless creative freedom. Things like market conditions and trends could sink your vampire-zombie-romance-coming-of-age story as quickly as any straight laced publisher could, but the crucial difference is that you will be mostly, if not entirely, in charge of those decisions. And if you suck at those decisions when starting out, all that means is you have a wonderful opportunity to upgrade and fine-tune them as the quest goes on.
In my opinion, these are near priceless rewards. If you believe, as many wise people do, that your time is your most precious resource in this life, then I’d want to be doing my best to spend it in the most rewarding, satisfying way possible. As creators, artists, and lovers of the written word, self-publishing in the dawning age of the Internet feels like a damn exciting and worthwhile time investment for our finite weeks, days and hours, no?
I think so.
Which leads me to the last of my introductory posts: how the hell do you set yourself up and get started?
This post was last updated April 1, 2018