Are You Truly Ready to Invest In Your Writing Career?
Let’s talk about how you can write to publish. Specifically, I want to talk about whether or not you’re willing to do what it takes to write to publish.
We get a lot of posts on our Facebook group, Write to Publish, that me and my team review regularly. We take a look at what the trends are–what people are asking or wondering about–and we see a lot of people asking about how to traditionally publish the most difficult genres. By difficult I mean poetry, memoir, and picture books.
People on the group have caught on, and they’ll ask me frequently: “How do I publish my poetry?” “…my memoir?” “…my picture book?” Many times these people accompany it with caveats. They might want to publish a hybrid, something that’s poetry and short story, or do their own illustrations for their picture book, and more.
First of all, a lot of these people don’t want to follow the genre rules.
Probably one of the most popular issues people come to me with is they want to publish a difficult-to-publish book without spending money on it.
The bottom line: if you want to sell books, you’re going to have to spend money.
Why? Writing is a creative process, and there’s a lot of joy that happens in creating these things that inspire us. But selling a book is business. It’s a different ballgame, it’s a different animal–whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it. That is simply the truth.
You may have heard the business phrase, “If you want to make money, you’ve got to spend money,” and that’s as true for a book as it is if you want to open a McDonald’s franchise.
If you want to make money, you’ve got to spend money.
The bottom line is: You’re going to need to invest if you want to sell a book.
Most people who are writing a book want to sell their book, because that means they’re reaching readers. Unless you want to give it away for free, in which case you’re going to spend a lot of money on books you’re giving away for free, there’s no way to circumvent spending money.
There is no magic pill or magic bullet.
If you want to get your books into readers’ hands, you need to invest. That’s the absolute bottom line, and the rules of the publishing industry are not going to bend for you.
You can certainly shoot for the moon and go for one of the top five publishing houses, or send it to one of those “Publish my book for me” companies that throws together something that looks like a book.
And yes, there are definitely exceptions.
There are “one-hit wonder” books that we see in the industry, like Stephen King’s son and Jerry Seinfeld’s wife. But the fact of the matter is unless you have inside connections to very successful people (such as parent celebrities, celebrity spouses, and more), that will likely not happen for you.
Overnight success is only overnight success if you know the right people.
If you’re like me, an everyday Joe who just wants to be successful and get your book into the hands of readers whose lives can be changed by the message you have to share, you need to decide. Do you want to self publish a book full of typos and beg people to buy it for $0.99 cents on Amazon? Or do you want to make a difference with your unique message you have to share with the world, and get it into the hands of readers who are longing to hear what you have to say?
If it’s the latter, and you’re serious about writing to publish, I’d love to talk to you about where you are, where you want to go, and how you can get there. Every day, I help writers to finish books and to publish well. I make a few slots available in my calendar every week specifically to talk with you.
So if you’re looking to finish, publish, and sell a novel let’s chat.
