Weekly Update #52

Wow! Weekly update number 52! One whole year! Amazing. Somehow I never really believed I’d get here. One whole year of trying to survive as a self-published author.

Have I succeeded? Well, it depends. I succeeded in producing books and maintaing my daily quota of words. I succeeded in publishing my books on Amazon. And I succeeded in selling at least one book (that was my goal). The only way I haven’t succeeded is in selling enough books to actually survive. Based on the results of the Authors’ Guild survey, it sounds like most people don’t “succeed” in that way. That’s too bad, but it’s the way it is.

Overall I’d say that I met my goals for my first year of writing. For the second year, I am going to build on the success that I did have. Clearly my efforts to promote my works didn’t work, so I’ll have to try something else. Writing my daily blog was one way of doing this, and making the website was another. I plan on continuing both of them. I also am going to make a Facebook page for myself and join some author groups and get to know more people. I’m kind of reluctant to go onto Twitter/X since it’s kind of a joke now, but maybe I will.

Another thing I could try is to find an agent. Is it worth it, though? Well, based on the Authors’ Guild survey, not really. At least the gap between traditional publishing and self-publishing is rapidly closing, and publishers now expect author’s to do all of the marketing themselves. But they do offer access to editors and also bring cachet, so maybe it’s worth a try.

The only real question is how long can I survive without financial success? Lemme tell you somethin’, I went onto LinkedIn to look for a job in data analysis/statistics/data science, and every single job out there has 100+ people applying (100 is the maximum number that LinkedIn will show). It’s unbelievable how few jobs there are. Just yesterday, the CEO of OpenAI said that the goal of ChatGPT is “labor replacement”. Things ain’t lookin’ good. I suppose I can only have hope though, since the opposite is too depressing.

This week I reached 44k words (153 pages) in my new book. I really felt good about some of the passages I wrote. I think they account for some of my best writing. I can’t really say how far I am through the book yet and I’m purposefully not aiming for a particular word count so that I don’t try to cut anything short or constrict emotions that should breathe. I’m just letting the book lead me wherever it will, and all’s the better.

Thankfully the cold weather is finally lifting, so I can get outside again and feel the sun on my face! Get out and find some fresh air.

SB