There is a bizarre hang-up that a lot of people in the profession have, and this is particularly true for those who romanticize the profession of writing. In short, while it's nice if people enjoy our work, don't get so focused on it that it's all you can think about. As long as you're moving copies, that's all that matters at the end of the day.
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| Seriously... grab a copy. What you do with it is your business! |
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Sales Are The Bottom Line
There's a single panel comic that makes the rounds every time there's angry parents trying to get a book banned, or every time a film gets boycotted because it has too few white men for certain vocal parts of the audience. In this comic there's an author sitting at a table, and a clearly irate person confronting them.
Angry Reader: I hate your book so much I bought a copy and burned it!
Author: Why stop there? Buy 10 copies and burn them, that will show me.
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| Go on, coward. Do it. |
While the obvious statement of the piece is that a lot of people don't actually know how boycotts are supposed to work, the point made from the business perspective is equally important. Because if a bunch of angry consumers bought all of the beer that comes in a rainbow can, the company doesn't see their angery; all the company sees is a big, fat uptick in sales. They don't care if you you drank that beer, poured it down the drain, or launched it out of a catapult and fired bird shot at it while playing God Bless The USA on a loudspeaker... they make the same profit regardless of what you did with your purchase.
This is a mindset that I highly recommend you adopt if you don't want to drive yourself to the point of madness as an author.
Do I want people to read my Hardboiled Cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats? I absolutely do! Do I want gamers out there to pick up copies of my recently-released tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, and the supplemental releases like Army Men: Threat Assessments? Yes, obviously! And I want that because I spent a lot of time, energy, and effort on these things (as well as on all the other novels, games, etc. that I'm not linking here) and I want people to genuinely enjoy them.
But let's say that people buy copies of the things I make, and then they don't get around to actually using them. Maybe they buy a copy of my novels at a convention, but they're pressed for time, and so my books sit on their to-read shelf. Maybe they buy a game I made, and even if they read it, they never find a group to actually play it with. Or maybe they just put it on their shelf of games they think were neat, but they just don't have time for.
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| We all have one bookshelf of shame. Don't lie. |
Is that disappointing in a personal sense? A little bit, sure. But at the end of the day, those people paid their money for the thing I made. What they do with it (or don't do with it) is their business. And while I would like reviews on my books (as that always get the algorithm paying attention to you), and I would love active participants in my work, I'll take people who show up, buy the new thing, and then put it in the, "I'll get around to it," pile over people who don't do that.
Because at the end of the day, what books get sequels and supplements are driven by sales figures. Whether or not I can pay my bills, get a celebratory pizza, or even afford to keep doing convention appearances, is driven by sales. And if there are a thousand people who all line up to buy a book when it drops, or to snatch up a supplement of mine, I will say thank you very much, cash the check, and get back to work on the next thing.
I'd like them to read it. It'd like them to enjoy it, and leave a review of it, and tell all their friends and family about it... but if all they do is put cash in my hand and get a copy for their shelves, I will gladly take that.
So whether you need a pulse-pounding thriller, an alley cat mystery, a tactical TTRPG, or you just want to use my books as a fancy paperweight or doorstop, that's up to you. Hell, I'll still sign it for you, if you want!
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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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