There Are Fewer Soap Boxes Than Ever For Authors

About a year ago I wrote a post titled If A Tree Falls In A Forest (The Reason Authors Are Always Promoting Their Books) which was all about how authors' attempts at promotion can slip through the cracks, and about how so many folks will talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to authors trying to expand our audiences. And while all of that absolutely still stands, I wanted to talk about the fact that the changing landscape is making it more and more impossible for creators to reach an audience on our own.

There just aren't any soap boxes to stand on anymore.

Okay, so this was for AGGRESSIVE soap. My point still stands.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Nothing Works Anymore

I've been a professional author for something like 15 years now. If there's been a marketing gimmick that didn't require a huge budget, I've tried it. I've been on almost every social media platform, I've made half a dozen different kinds of content, and I've used all of the "smart" solutions to getting your work seen. And all of those things would have worked fine about 12 years ago. However, in the age of the Internet we find ourselves in, everything is broken, and nothing fucking works.

The short answer is because corporations broke everything. The longer answer is a little more complicated, but not by much.

Because most of this was deliberate.

The first major issue that we're dealing with is platform decay, which I talked about in my post The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators). The short version is that social media sites used to offer good functionality, and there was a lot of cross-discovery. Your friends would see what you post on FB, and if you made a popular post on Twitter it could generate millions of views with tens of thousands of fresh audience members. These days the websites have been deliberately hamstrung so that there's no discoverability, and so that people rarely see anything on their feeds at all. And if you try to share a link to something that goes off that platform? That's a good way to have your signal buried, because the sites want to keep people on them as long as possible, and they want to hide any off-ramps someone might come across. You won't even show up to your friends and followers, and they have to go looking for you.

For some of my own numbers, in the past I'd share to FB and on a slow day I'd still get 400-500 views on something, with 1,000 or more on a busy/popular posting day. Now I share to more groups, and I have more followers, but I'm lucky if I get 20 views total. That's not an organic failure; that's a hand choking off air. And those numbers are the same with most other smaller creators I know not just on FB, but on all social media platforms they use.

The second major issue is the spread of websites these days. Think of it like streaming services. Once upon a time you had Netflix, and that was it, so you paid a little money and you got to stream whatever you wanted. Then Hulu wanted a piece. Then Disney. And with every company that yanked their copyrights and put them behind a separate paywall, you ended up with more services that were more scattered, diluting the audience and effect. The same thing happened with social media. Because it used to be you had Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and maybe Reddit. Now you add in Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and apps like TikTok, and you have more platforms, but it's harder to be heard by a sizable audience on any one of them... especially if you work primarily in text.

And that's before we talk about the tsunami of AI slop, and how it's shut down websites like Digg because they refused to amplify that signal, but couldn't find a way to stop it from spreading. So that's even more legitimate options taken off the table.

All of that is bad enough... but on top of all those things, you also have so many platforms that are segregating advertisements and promotional posts. To be clear, not banning them. Segregating them.

Yeah, make your posts here. Folks will absolutely see them!

For added clarity, I am all about deciding in your group's rules that promotional posts are not allowed. Whether you're on Discord, Facebook, Reddit, or any other platform, if you don't want promotion happening in your group, that's your decision. But having a weekly thread where everyone links their promotional posts? Or having a subgroup where all the promotion happens away from the actual main page where people interact with stuff? Come on. We all know that no one is looking into those areas, or reviewing what came out that week. It's not happening. It's the equivalent of giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller while you're trying to play a video game so they feel like they're participating... and this has generally become the norm across most of the remaining social media landscape these days.

So if you post on social media it's very likely that your signal will be throttled if you share a link that leads off-site. If you try to get clever and share it in the comments, you'll have folks screaming at you for promoting in their groups. If you try to run a newsletter you'll have literally 1% of the people who subscribed to it click anything you shared (saw that when recently reviewing numbers). Convention numbers are down, and even the people who do attend aren't actually buying anything, or paying attention to authors and creators they don't already know.

What the fuck are we supposed to do? Well, the same thing I've been saying this whole time, because there is only one thing that seems to work anymore, and it's the one thing we, as creators, have zero control over.

Word Of Mouth Is All We Have

I've said it before, but I feel that I need to keep saying it because people don't seem to grasp how truly dire the situation is for creators. Because we literally cannot do anything to make the broken machinery all around us work. There is no magical keyword we can use to hoodwink the algorithm to make sure we get more views. There is no organic interaction we can perform that will magically cause our posts to be seen. There is no other social media site out there that's just waiting to give us views, reads, listens, and sales. Our hands have literally been tied, and unless we have hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to budget for ads on platforms, we can't really do much with the systems as they exist.

All we have is you. Our audience. People who want us to actually be seen, be heard, and to keep making more stuff. Because without your shoulders pushing the wheel right alongside us, we aren't going anywhere.

You are the wellspring from which we flow.

If there's a creator you care about, whether its me or someone else, make sure you do the following for them:

- Follow/Subscribe to Their Socials - Algorithms give preference to those with the most bodies behind them.

- Interact With Their Posts - Whether it's sharing, liking, and commenting on Facebook, upvoting on Reddit, or liking and commenting on YouTube, that interaction pushes creator's content up in the algorithm rankings

- Leave Ratings and Reviews - Positive reviews on books, on podcasts, etc. add up, and help creators get seen more

- Tell Your Friends and Family - We can talk until we're blue in the face, but no one is going to care. If you have friends or family you think would like what we make, tell them because we can't.

And after you've done all that, it helps to buy books, leave tips, become a Patreon patron, and all that... but even if you just lend your voice to helping make that wheel turn, that's still doing something that authors are unable to do for themselves these days. So until we figure out some other solution, I hate to say it, but you all really are our only hope!

As A Final Call To Action

In order to help focus the energy of your readers, you're supposed to give a call to action by giving them something specific to do. Well, if you've read this far, and you really want to help me get the word out about something, then head over to the YouTube channel The A.L.I.C.E. Files, subscribe, and give our episodes a watch! It's a sci fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland with a couple of odd little twists and turns that I think most people who enjoy my stories will get a kick out of!

Most importantly, we need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours before YouTube lets us actually keep ad revenue... so please, help us get there!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

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!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

A Single, Viral Success Can Make A Huge Difference For Creators

A majority of writing advice when it comes to the business side of things is to remind authors that their career is a marathon, not a sprint. Generally speaking you get a lot more out of just putting one foot in front of the other, writing one story, and one book, after another so that you can build up your archive over time. Because the bigger your archive gets, the more your readers can consume, and the more people will have to enjoy when they discover you exist.

With that said, though, it's important to understand the effect that a single, big success can have for a writer... especially if they're depending on modern digital infrastructure and algorithms to work in their favor.

Because sometimes that single bump has long-reaching impacts.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Engaging The Machinery That Moves More Books

Authors have to worry about a lot of different numbers. So, I want to take a moment to talk about the kinds of numbers authors have to contend with, and the effects they can have on your career. And while a lot of these numbers are very small (especially in terms of the Internet), these goals can be hard as hell to actually reach. So if you have authors out there whose work you enjoy, keep some of these things in mind. And if you're an author who is looking for a call to action for your audience, consider trying to rope them into some of these options to see if it will give your career a bit of a boost!

Book Reviews

Book reviews are one of the most basic numbers authors are generally concerned with. After all, reviews mean that people are reading your books, and it provides a running commentary that might get new readers interested. However, consider that when a book receives at least 50 reviews on Amazon, this causes the algorithm to start advertising it to other users who are looking for similar books. And the more reviews someone gets, the higher up their book will show in searches, with the possibility of it being on the front page.

And while these numbers are for Amazon, remember that whatever digital platform you prefer, the more reviews a book has, the better off it is for you as the author.

Now consider the impact that receiving a few hundred reviews on your book might get. Perhaps you sold a bunch of books at a convention, or you had a Kindle Unlimited giveaway and readers chose to rate and review as a way of paying you back. This essentially kicks off the website's algorithm, which both gives you a permanently higher rating than books that don't have as many reviews as yours does, but it also provides you a jump in attention. Because when the site sees that your book is doing well, the machine registers that it is currently popular, and it starts pushing it to other people browsing the site, doing a bunch of free advertising for you.

Free advertising which could lead to you finding more readers, and making even more sales, than you otherwise would have without that boost from a big review number.

Social Media

Social media platforms are the lifeblood of all sorts of creators because they let us reach our audience... in theory, at least. And the algorithms that govern social media work very similarly to the ones that run the online bookstores. After all, these websites want to promote things that are popular, because that keeps people on the website and scrolling through their feed.

So what happens when you start acquiring big numbers on social media platforms as an author? Whether it's for your book, one of your other projects, or just sharing some of your thoughts on the issue of the day?

When you make a post that gets popular on a social media platform (particularly a big platform like Facebook or Reddit, but this also applies to Blue Sky and similar upstarts), the algorithm starts up and begins boosting your signal. For Facebook or Twitter, it's more likely to show up in the For You feeds for users who may not know you, since the algorithm is showing it around to people that are statistically likely to have a reaction to those posts. And on Reddit your post may show up on the front page of the site, meaning that anyone who shows up might see exactly what it is you were posting about. This exposes you to more people, and makes it very likely you're going to pick up a lot of fresh subscribers and followers.

And what does that do for you? I'm glad you asked!

Social media platforms favor people who have a large number of followers. So if you had 1,000 followers one day, and then after a successful post you found yourself with 10,000 followers, you'll find that your posts are now getting more distance, and being seen far more widely than they were before. The reason for that is the algorithm supports you in ways it didn't before, because one of the major priorities for the algorithm, and how it treats you, is the size of your audience. This, at least in part, determines your reach.

If you do very well you can even get paid by the platform, but I gave details on that in Can You Get Paid By Social Media Platforms As A Writer? Probably Not.

YouTube

Not every author is on YouTube, but there are a lot of us over there who are trying to court an audience by making book commercials, audio adaptations of our work, or just talking about the behind-the-scenes of being an author. Speaking of, shout out to Alice The Author, whose channel is packed with great writing advice and information!

However, a single viral (or even nearly viral) success on this platform also shows how a big splash can lead to permanent changes!

For those who haven't read my older entries on this platform, YouTube requires creators to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content within a single 365 day span before the site shares ad revenue with you. That is both a tiny number in terms of the Internet, and an impossible number in terms of what most creators can accomplish. And this is something I have some experience with, because I was with Azukail Games for their journey.

Because while Azukail Games had subscribers aplenty, the channel just could not get the view hours. Videos kept going nowhere thanks to changes to the site's algorithm, and it kept losing ground because the channel was several years old... this meant with every passing day it was having hours taken off the total view count.

What put us over the top (netting us over 1,000 hours) was a single video, The Problem With Pentex. This video essay about a niche aspect of the RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse garnered a lot of interest (perhaps for the mention of the infamous copper merchant Ea Nasir), but more importantly the boost it provided to the channel's view hours (and to our subscriber count) permanently boosted the channel up to a new tier.

So while this one video didn't launch the channel into the stratosphere (it got 10,000 views, not a million), it put us on a whole other level that we have been climbing from ever since.

Your Numbers Make A Difference (Especially En Masse)

I've said this before, and I'm saying it again because more people need to know this. What determines the success of an author (or really a creator of any stripe) is how many people show up for them. It's your purchases of our books that determine whether or not we get royalty checks, it's your views and listens that determine whether we earn any ad revenue, and it's your likes, shares, and subscribes that determine whether social media websites are actively restraining our signals, or boosting them because the machine believes our posts will keep more people on the platform.

And while having an engaged and growing audience is great, those big jumps when something gets popular can be a serious hand-up.

Now, that doesn't mean that as an author you should bend all of your attention and will toward going viral, and that you should only make posts, write books, etc. that are geared toward said virality. Generally speaking, going viral isn't something you can really engineer (without a lot of money and effort, at least). However, a lot of folks don't realize that those kinds of successes have long-term effects, even if the initial event seems like nothing more than a flash in the pan at the time.

The Reason This Is All On My Mind Lately...

The reason this has all been on my mind of late is (shameless self-plug) that I've been hammering hard on a new ongoing audio drama channel over on YouTube called The A.L.I.C.E. Files. A dark sci-fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, the channel will feature an ongoing narrative about the events happening inside the mysterious Carroll Institute, as well as smaller, independent stories that act as stand-alones.

And those numbers I mentioned earlier, the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours? That's proving EXTRA hard to manage.

Which is why I wanted to ask everyone who read this far to please do me a favor. If you could subscribe to the channel, and listen to the stories we've posted so far (but especially the most recent installment, 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories where we meet Dormouse), I would greatly appreciate the effort.

Because while we're doing our best to get as much great stuff out there as we can, we basically need something to go 10,000+ views viral to boost us up to the level we need to be at. And every click, view, and comment on the video gets us that much closer!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

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!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Demanding What You're Worth is Hard When No One Can Afford You (Reality For Writers)

When I started writing professionally a decade and a half ago, the going semi-pro rate for writers was 3 cents per-word. The pro rate was 6 cents per word. Between then and now the professional rate has gone up (last time I looked it was somewhere around 8 cents per word), and the semi-pro rate had increased to at least 4 cents.

The problem with these rates is that, while they're a lovely thing to know, it's sort of like being told that pristine Pokemon card you have is worth $40,000. It's nice that's what it's been valued at, but you aren't going to get that if you can't find someone willing to pay it. It's the same shit when you're a writer.

Yeah... I can pay $20 for this. I could maybe do $25?

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

They Can't Pay What They Don't Have

I've been a professional writer since I was 28 years old or so. That was the last time I worked a clock-in, clock-out job, and ever since then I've been making my living writing books, blogs, RPGs, and any other kind of job I can get my hands on. I've worked for a variety of clients of all shapes and sizes, scraping together everything I can to make sure my bills stay paid and there's food in my fridge.

And you know what? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've received a "professional" rate for my work. If you're curious, it was the Leagues of Votann story Pyramid Scheme for Warhammer 40K, the short story The Irregulars written for Paizo, one of the adventures in the Dreadful Tales collection for the RPG Victorian Gothic, and Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage for Beast: The Primordial.

So why is that? Why have I published so many pieces of work over the years, and carved out my niche as at least a semi-pro individual, and yet I've almost never been paid even the semi-pro rate from 15 years ago? The short answer is that it's because most people who hire me can't afford it. Period.

They can't give you what they don't have, after all.

This is where authors run into that rock and a hard place. Because on the one hand, professional writers should be able to ask for professional rates for the work they're doing. However, if all the companies and clients that would employ you are only offering below-professional-standard rates, and they simply cannot afford to pay you that much, then you don't have the ability to get what you're worth.

You might be a pristine, first-edition Charizard card, but if there's not a collector on the market willing to pay $40,000 for you, your option is either wait, or sell yourself for a lower rate... and most of us don't have the ability to wait.

So, if you ever wondered why it is that authors are working 12+ hours a day, but we're still using food banks and need multiple roommates, it's because most us aren't being paid what our work is actually worth... but we can't force customers and clients to pony up money they don't have. All we end up doing is pricing ourselves out of the market.

You All Have The Ability To Help

Everything I've been talking about so far is about writers who are working for clients and companies on a per-word basis. However, that isn't the only way most of us get paid these days. If you have an author whose work you enjoy, then you have the ability to help them make a living.

So whether this is for me, or for another author you want to see succeed, consider taking the following actions to help:

- Watch/Read All Their Free Content (in addition to my blogs, you can find my work on Vocal.media, as well as on the Azukail Games YouTube channel)

- Subscribe To Their Social Media (you can find me on Facebook, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and Pinterest)

- Buy Their Merch (tee shirts, buttons, stickers, and books... like my noir cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats)

- Tip Them (you can find me on Patreon, as well as on Ko-fi)

When you buy an author's merch, they get a portion of the proceeds. When you watch their YouTube videos, listen to their podcast, or read their free work on a site with ads, they still earn some money because of your interest. When you follow them on social media, and interact with their posts, that tells the algorithm to push them up higher, and to give them more attention.

Again, no single individual is going to completely bankroll an author whose work they like. But if 50, 100, or 1,000 people all choose to do something small for a particular author over time, then those snowflakes are going to become a snowdrift. And eventually that avalanche is going to bear down on them, and wipe away bills, debts, and the things holding them back from making even more of the stuff you want to see.

Because if you have a loyal following that's supporting your work, well, you suddenly have the ability to tell a company that isn't paying enough for a job no. You have that ability to just wait it out until someone who wants to hire you can pay your minimum rate. And if they can't afford it, you can tell them that you'll still be here when they have a bigger budget to work with (or when they're willing to allocate part of that budget to you).

You, the audience, are the ones who have the power to lift and support creators. And if you really want to make a creator's day, you should exercise that free will to the fullest extent you can!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

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!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Authors Are Running The Red Queen's Race (Going Full Speed Just To Stay in Place)

"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep to the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

- The Red Queen

While not everyone has read Through The Looking Glass, the second book about Alice's unusual adventures, it's the one that takes us to the realm of the red queen and the white queen and their chessboard kingdoms. However, this quote above is so indicative of the struggle that authors find themselves in (especially today) that I felt it was something worth discussing.

Because if you're going full tilt, and the world is just slipping by under your feet while you barely keep even, you aren't alone. In fact, that's basically all of us right now.

And if you fell on your face, you're also not alone.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Why We're Stuck In This Rat Race

Capitalism. All right, thanks for reading everyone!

...

Okay, so it's more complicated than that. But not nearly as complicated as you think.

So, we live in the modern age of publishing. Right now anyone can put out a book on dozens of platforms, using machines a lot of us have access to, and we can tell people about those books utilizing free social media networks. The tools we utilize on a daily basis, from smartphones to Goodreads, are things that would leave previous generations of authors staring in awe at how far things have come.

However, it's important to remember that possible is not the same as probable. Because it's possible that the scratch-off ticket you just bought is going to pay out $100,000 a year for life... but it's not super likely.

The coin from the Take A Penny tray is probably all you'll get, honestly.

Let's rewind the clock about 10-12 years ago. Around this time there was no generative AI flooding the market. You could make however many posts on social media sites you wanted, and you had a good chance of getting hundreds, if not thousands of eyes on those posts. Going viral seemed random, but there were tools you could use to check for the best keywords, and you had a relatively good chance of actually getting traction on the things you made. The algorithms that governed the Internet generally made sense, and while there were ads all over the place, they were usually clearly marked, and a whole lot less obtrusive.

Now, let's fast-forward to today.

Today we have an ongoing war against AI slop as people hammer the "Write Book" button and then shoot their "novels" out into the void to take up space and attention. Established social media platforms have limited your ability to post, often shadow banning posts that would take viewers off the site and to a storefront, blog, etc. somewhere else. We have algorithms that change every season, and trends that last about an hour or so. And, most importantly, your talent as a writer doesn't actually make a difference because people have to know about you and your work in the first place before you can enchant them with your words.

So no, if it feels like you have to work 2-3 times as hard just to get the same amount (or even less) attention and sales than you did even a few years ago, you aren't imagining it. Every tool you had, whether it's active and engaging online communities, or the ability to reach your audience via a video platform like YouTube, or even the ability to get your book seen and reviewed on sites dedicated to that kind of content, has been dulled, rusted, or twisted to try to turn a profit. And since authors are one of the more historically broke professions (overall), it's not like most of us have money to throw at these problems.

To counter that, we grind harder, write more, craft better posts... but we're trying to run up an active avalanche. And even if you succeed, you're still making fewer sales, reaching fewer people, and going absolutely all-out in your attempt to avoid being thrown down into the ravine below.

And how do you actually succeed? The kind of success that lets you make progress instead of just standing in place when that's all going at a dead sprint seems to do for you?

Well, unfortunately, there are only really three ways to do this. And while the first two are amazing if you can get them, they're probably out of most people's reach.

Your 3 Solutions For Success

No beating around the bush, the first two ways you can get huge success as an author are:

- Be rich

- Be lucky

That's it. Because if you're rich you can, at least, pay for advertising, booth space, and you have hours in your day to dedicate to your online presence because you don't have to spend that money on food and rent. It's also possible that you move in the circles of other rich people, so you have the ability to just get invited onto popular shows and networks, you get reviewed in well-read publications, etc., because you have a network of friends, family, and colleagues who can help you out, which will lead to you becoming better known and better read.

The second one is winning the lottery. Maybe you wrote a book that just so happened to start a new trend. Maybe you put the right keyword in a post or video, and you went viral for no discernible reason. Maybe you made a silly TikTok that got boosted and commented to hell and back, and as a result there are now millions of people who are aware that your novel exists. It's nice if you can manage this option, but it's utterly unpredictable, and if it does happen you really need to be ready to capitalize on it.

So what's the third option? Well, this is one we can all do, to some degree, and it's the best strategy I have since it's the only thing that consistently works:

- Build a community

Holy shit! There's a new book out!

It sounds simple, but it is deceptively difficult. Finding people who like your work, who support you, and who you can work with takes time, energy, and it often means that you need to reach out to others and help where you can. Do you volunteer as a guest on their YouTube channel? Do you help promote their blogs and books to what audience you have? Do you go to cons, bump fists, and volunteer to be on panels to meet fellow creators and fans alike?

There's no one right way to build your community, and it's really a patchwork of efforts that will work in a lot of different ways. But, honestly, that is what you need to do in order to really build a following of loyal readers.

Because as I've said so many times before, writing a book is hard. Selling that book is a lot harder, and you're going to need help if you don't already have fat stacks of cold cash chilling in your accounts.

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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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