As you might notice, I’ve been absent for almost a week. Yes, I spent time fixing my website and putting my novel back on retail sellers, but that wasn’t the main reason I haven’t blogged for 6 days. I was sorting out priorities.
I already figured out that writing is a business. Listening to podcasts, I’ve learned that one can live a decent life while being an indie author, but only if one does everything right. Many traditionally published authors struggle with their income and because they only get 15-25% of each book they publish. While they might sell more books than an average indie author, they earn less per book than an author who gets up to 70% royalties from Amazon. If you’re not in the top 1% it’s most likely that you need a day job.
Like any other business, writing is based on selling, either products or services. In most cases indie authors do both; they sell books and they sell courses or they have some kind of consulting services. I think this is the tricky part which I did not see.
Each book or course a writer produces is an asset which can be sold multiple times; which is amazing. But to make one’s business alive and profitable, one must build these assets. And I don’t have many of them, so I need to write more; either books or courses and I’ll do both but books are my main priority.
So far, I have one ebook which I give away for free and a paperback which is supposed to earn money for me when a reader decides to buy an actual physical book.
The more books I have the more likely is to sell them, with proper marketing, of course.
So, I’ve decided to put all my energy into fiction writing because that’s what I enjoy the most.
Marketing and blogging is something I learned to enjoy, and it needs to be consistent as well, but it mustn’t interfere with the actual writing.
There is not point in marketing if you’ve got nothing to sell.