As an indie author, just like a small business owner, I wear a lot of hats. Problem is, I only have one head. I literally can’t wear several hats at once. I have to take the current one off to put another one on. Okay, okay, I guess many days it’s possible to write, and then put on the marketing hat and market and then change that hat for sales, but gosh it’s tiring. And many days it’s all I can to do to write and keep up with emails. Which means some things get left for the summer.
For better or worse.
This summer I decided to pick up the hat I haven’t put on in over a year, Amazon ads.
Cue the drone of the dead.
Oh, Amazon ads. What a trial you are.
What do we call doing something again and again expecting different results only to get the same results…?
The hard truth of this industry, and many industries, it is that getting your book in front of other people without running ads is quite difficult. Even getting it in front of others WITH ads is quite difficult. Trying to distract the millions of people away from the latest funny TikTok video is extremely difficult. So it trying to convince them to buy your book when they went to Amazon to look for the latest Dedra Say Mitchell book.
You know the saying, “Your first million dollars is the hardest to make?” I talked to my daughter about it the other day as she went over her economics project. The reason is, once you HAVE a million dollars you have double or triple or quadruple the resources than when you didn’t have a million dollars. That cash means you can pay off crushing debt and, more importantly, invest the rest in either your business or to let it grew more money.
Well, the book business is no different. Selling your first “million books” is the hardest to do (and we could even lower that number to probably your first 50, 000 since that is hard enough).
Why? For the same reason. Because once you’ve sold a number of books you just have more resources. Plain and simple. You have more fans. You have more readers (not always the same as fans) You have more eyes seeing your book. You have more people wanting to promote with you. You have money for advertising and hiring that perfect PA.
It just all becomes easier.
So when you see that grand name at the top of the list on Amazon or the NYT Best-Seller’s list, please remind yourself that they are the “millionaire” writers. Perhaps they don’t make seven figures, but they have moved beyond the place most of us find ourselves, ie doing everything more or less alone and on a limited budget. Those authors have the resources or the know-how that you and I don’t. A simple, painful truth.
I cant already hear the person in back telling me haughtily that “there isn’t anything wrong with them having more”, which is obviously true. Unlike many writers, I am not against capitalism or am I against success befalling the industrious, assiduous writer who put in the hours. By all means, they deserve it. And I applaud them.
What I’m trying to do it highlight (again) for the authors in the world still struggling, that the comparison game isn’t to your benefit. Because you just haven’t reached the next peak, the next level, whatever you want to call it. You will, if you keep working, but that’s the thing. You have to keep working.
You and I must be okay in the space we occupy of the literary world and keep yelling into our megaphones that squeak and sometimes lose power that we, too, have a great book everyone should read. And then switch hats and write again…