Just Getting Started
A Summary of My Year So Far
You’d think being an author was the hard part, until you realize that you’re a bit outside the normal traditional publishing norms.
My writing is queer-centric. My books are very sex positive. I believe in content warnings. I like illustrated covers when I can hire someone to make them. I’ve leaned more and more into the monster romance space, though I still write my stories with several genres in mind. (It’s why I’ve called myself a speculative fiction author instead of a romance author, though the romance is a heavy subgenre in a lot of my books.)
I spent the summer reading and editing three books. All three are out in the world now. It’s a milestone I wasn’t sure I’d ever accomplish and it was one that didn’t make as big a bang as I hoped.
Don’t get me wrong, people are reading my work. There are other platforms I started on where all three books were posted, and some are still available. I know I have a viable audience, but it takes time to find them.
I’m going to wax on a bit about my experiences this year. If you’d like to read on, please do! If you’d rather have my latest book recommendations and skip the trials and tribulations of a self-pub author, you can check out the latest here.
Transitioning from Writer to Author
Being an author is about the long term. Very few authors find immediate success. Most authors have been grinding for a long time until they could make a living at writing books. Then its the expenses of writing, publishing, and marketing.
On Writing
You can have all the crit groups in the world, but paying an editor that helps you understand your own writing, how you can improve it, and what can make it better is absolutely worth the expense. This summer, I had an excellent editor that specializes in developmental and copyediting work with me on my writing. I can’t tell you how much progress I see in my own writing. I was good at several things already - plot, pace, and characters. She helped point out crutch words, crutch sentence patterns, and pointed out when I hadn’t closed the loop on some of my plot threads.
On Publishing
This is still an ongoing journey. When I initially started writing, I was very much encouraged to query my work. After several queries were my work was often praised but still rejected, I decided that I was going to figure out how to self-pub.
Given all of the wild things happening with traditional publishing these days, I’m still convinced its the right one. Maybe someday I’ll traditionally publish, but I don’t see the point of putting myself through the grinder to end up putting a lot of people between me and my work.
Distribution is an interesting problem. Figuring out where to start and how to expand is always dependent on risk.
My tool chain is more complex than I would like it as well. I use GDocs, Scrivener, Atticus, and Canva to produce a professional looking book. I’ve also hired cover artists for larger projects. Like editing, it’s worth it to figure out how to make something look as professional and appealing as possible to your audience.
For example, a reader asked if I was planning on making audio books available. I would LOVE to make audio books available, but right now, they are out of my price range. They can cost 1-3k depending on the length of the book. If my books can’t “earn out” what I spent on them already, making an audio book seems financially irresponsible no matter how much I would love for my work to be more accessible.
On Marketing
Social Media is a grind, but necessary. I haven’t ventured into TikTok land, but I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I have fairly good engagement from all of them in one form or another.
Additional tools are required for this as well. Authors need a website and a newsletter. I’ve built a website using WordPress, and this very newsletter is now supported by Substack. Along with using promotional tools like Bookfunnel, the expenses of being an author are ever expanding.
My next goal is to spend the next few months promoting the books that are out, and letting people know about my author-brand. Mythical Desires Universe has a logo that is in and on every book cover. I have dreams about what that might be able to do at some point, but right now, it’s a way of tying all my books together and show they exist in the same universe.
Promoting your work can be just as time consuming and expensive as writing and editing. From business cards, to bookmarks, to sending folks promotional packets in the mail, it’s all a matter money and time.
Next Steps
Now that I’ve published everything I had planned to publish this year out in the world, I’m working on the next year’s publishing schedule. Editing the next book will start soon. I’m spending October promoting all three of my books and working on building my newsletter. I have a list of to-do’s that I want to accomplish before the end of the year, and it will all depend on how much of my personal time I can spend building my author career.
It’s by the grace of tech that I’m able to afford to be an author. It’s a very privileged position to be in. I’ve been a writer all my life, but until recently, I couldn’t afford to sink much more than my own personal time and computer storage to the effort.
With every new writing project, I can calculate nearly to the dollar how much it will cost to publish. This is important to understand. Going forward, I’ll have a budget for each project which will let me be more mindful of how much I’m spending overall.
In this first year, I have no idea if I’ll ever break even. What I spent on writing, publishing, and promoting three books might surprise you. It surprised me when I sat down to calculate it. I’d need to sell thousands of units of all of my books to break even. That’s how little margin authors make.
Am I discouraged by this? No. I would have spent the money somewhere, probably on traveling if it wasn’t for Covid. Those that have read my books were very happy with them. I’m happy I professionally published my work.
