I recently read a blog post that confirms my suspicions. The wave of interest for indie books has crested. We are now on the downside of interest, of sales, and hopefully the crap that has been foisted on the reading world. At least that would be a good outcome. Can an indie author make a living? The short answer is NO. It is a hobby, so enjoy it as such. Traditionally published books used the economic principal of supply and demand. Keep the number of books to a practical minimum and increase the demand. Well, sadly, today there is an overwhelming supply of books, many I would not even call literature. A deluge, really. Indie authors are trying desperately to be read, so we give away our work or sell for 99 cents, a pittance. This blogger said basically that the crap that is out there is given away or sold on the cheap. So beware of that. Well, I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. $2.99 is cheap enough for my work. Will this continue for the foreseeable future, the short answer is YES.
The blogger suggests to market your book before you write it. Write for specific audience. Be a business person as well as a creative person, if you want to make a living from writing. What is the message for me? Well, I love the process of writing. Enjoy the few sales from strangers, and feel a sense of accomplishment when a book is finished. All personal goals and no monetary gain. I’m not interested in tailoring my writing for sales. So I have reconciled that writing will be a hobby. I will control the urge to spend money on advertising that is bringing less and less a return on investment, and will just have fun fantasizing that my next book will be the one to go viral by some mysterious stroke of good luck.
Now, for a far worse future. We are too late to save the Earth from a catastrophic climate crisis. Our planet’s temperature will rise even if we do everything to turn the tide right now. But all the recent agreements about doing something to curb emissions won’t start for many years. By then the tipping point will have been reached and there will be famine, droughts, and floods around the world. It can not be stopped. But will only get worse. We can only hope to try and keep the temperature from rising to a level that will make this Earth uninhabitable by humans. Your children, your grandchildren, and you in old age will live in such a world. God help us. At that point the indie revolution will mean nothing, the fights between the GOP and the Dems will be meaningless, and hopefully ISIS, the Taliban, and Hamas will be eating sand, the only good outcome.
