The 4 worst things about self-publishing

How do you convince someone that they want to buy something they’ve lived their lives perfectly happy without? How do you convince them to buy it when the item is question will take 5-7 hours for them to enjoy?

Yes, those are rhetorical questions, but if you do happen to have a clean answer please, please hit me up.

Baring an answer at present, I wanted to share some of the hurdles of self-publish for anyone curious about the broad strokes of the frustrations that comes with writing and self-publishing a book.

1.) Books don’t sell themselves

There was a time — way back in middle school while first writing the early drafts of Light Keeper Chronicle — when I thought that just having written and published a book would be enough for people to buy it. Maybe not buy thousands of copies, but I thought just having the book out there would mean that people are buying it at a steady clip.

As someone who will pick up books and other media that just sounds interesting on a whim (maybe too many books too often), I’ve continuously realized this is at least slightly atypical behavior more and more over the past decade.

As things stand, it’s phenomenally, easy for people to not buy a book. In fact, most people go most of their days without even thinking of buying a book. Even more, most people alive today will go their entire lives with out even considering buying my specific books. (Shocking I know.)

I tend to feel awkward telling people I write books. After all, sneaking that into a conversation (in my mind) makes it sound like I’m trying to flex. The fact of the matter is that I need to tell people I’ve written a book for them to know about the book.

Beyond that, I need to ask people to buy my book. (Even more a point of awkwardness in my mind.) So an easy top spot is trying to sell the book once it’s out.

2.) The hours and hours and hours and more hours that go into it

However, before a book can come out, it has to be written. Another thing I’ve recently reckoned with is exactly how much time I’ve put into writing.

I think, per day, I probably write less than you would expect. Especially now, as we approach the publication of The Wilderlands, I’m not writing new material every day or even necessarily every week.

Right now I’m coming off of several rounds of editing and tweaking and am trying to enjoy as much of a rest period as I possibly can before what will likely be two more read-throughs of the book before it’s in readers hands.

Consider this — I’ll probably have spent a minimum average of 10 hours each week for the first half of this year working on The Wilderlands to some capacity. Let’s call that 260 hours. Because of how complete the text has been, through most of the year, there’s probably — at most — 8,000 “unique” words that got added to the book.

I don’t have a hyper consistent writing schedule (that’s something I’m working on) and I don’t think I’ve average 10 hours of book writing a week across my adult life, but by now I’ve handily passed the 10,000-hour rule when it comes to writing. (I would honestly be shocked if I wasn’t at or approaching 20,000 hours.)

And that’s just the writing.

While going to events where I actually try to sell my books is something I need to get better at now that I’m putting out more books, the fact is, I’ve stood a six-hour behind a booth with a pile of books for sale and only sold one copy.

There’s the time I put into this website and social media — which is well below what it should be for me to have traction and visibility — as well as the time I should be putting into telling people who do have an audience about my books so I can appear on their platforms.

Point being, I feel comfortable saying that I’ve put thousands of hours into an endeavor that has been financially fruitless. Which brings me nicely to my third point.

3.) The green, the dough, the cash, the mullah, the scratch, the…

As I said at the top of this post — it is wildly difficult to convince a decent number of people to buy something they’ve never heard of. In order to even begin to start to do that, I need to have an item that could be considered worth the price tag.

If I’m going to have to tell people about my book and ask them to buy it, then I need to have an end product that I’m comfortable asking people to spend money on. That’s a big part of the reason why I republished Element Keepers and Light Keeper Chronicle years after the 2013 release. While I’m still have a lot that I love about that original Element Keepers publication from 10 years back, it wasn’t necessarily something I always felt great about pointing people in real life toward with the desire for them to buy it.

I spent about $2,000 on Light Keeper Chronicle and that probably skews toward the least amount of money someone could spend on self-publishing a physical book of that length with a cover they didn’t illustrate themselves.

I’m working on a blog post that breaks it all down, but I’ll have comfortably spent over $4,000 on The Wilderlands once all is said and done.

When you consider the number of hours that also go into these books and the fact that I don’t anticipate making my budget back on either of them in the immediate future, it is a lot of time and money to spend on a project.

As much as this is all stuff I enjoy doing and I do hope for a day, years down the line, where I do at least break even, $6,000+ is a tough pill to swallow.

4.) It’s all on you, even when you get other people in on it

I’m sure this last point is more variable for indie authors as there are authors who work with co-authors on their work.

Certainly, self-publishing a book is more collaborative than you might expect — but the fact is, I need to track down the people I want to work with, make sure they’re available, and make sure I’m paying them for their services (see above).

I wrote the book, yes, but I can’t edit the book myself. I could decide I’m going to try to (and I have done that before) but I know that for people to like what I produce, I’m going to need an editor.

I also know I’m going to need a compelling cover so that when people are browsing shelves or scrolling online, they’re enticed by it. So, I need to look for artists who might be able to produce the kind of image I’m looking for.

When self-publishing YOU need to be the one who decides what a project needs and when it’s ready.

Finishing on a positive

Listen, even if writing doesn’t currently (and might never) bring me financial fulfillment, it does bring me artistic joy.

Infuriating as the act of writing and publishing often is, I think it does let me justify this “fruitless” act of creation that I do compulsively. After all, I wouldn’t put myself through all this stress and trouble if it wasn’t something that ultimately fulfill a need at some level.

As I grow up, there are dozens of hobbies and interest that have withered or even died. I used to play piano and flute, I used to be on my high school soccer team, I used to draw all the time. I used to do a lot more live performance, I used to read a lot more and watch more movies and shows.

Now I’m an adult who’s at work 8-10 hours every day at a job that doesn’t pay stunningly well and often come home feeling too tired to do much more than do some light exercises and make a quick dinner.

Writing and self publishing is something I do for myself.

I may not actually make money from it, but when I sell a copy of my book, that largely represents me selling the product of my own labors to someone (which feels a heck of a lot better than selling my time to a company).

More than that though, it feels GREAT when people read an enjoy the things I’ve written. Obviously not every single reader I’ve had has been completely blown away by my books, but when people find legitimate joy in something you’ve made, there’s no feeling that beats that.

All of this is to reiterate: I love doing this. I would be doing this if it wasn’t something that I loved doing regardless of the headaches along the way.

Also, please buy my books.

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The Wilderlands is available now for pre-order on Kindle here, on Nook here, on Kobo here, and on Apple here. More formats, digital and physical, will be available for purchase and pre-order soon. The Wilderlands is scheduled to release on Oct. 29, 2024.