I don’t know that my knowledge of history is broad enough to understand all the ins-and-outs of it, but the reality of living in 2016 is that we live in a historic anomaly. To live in a time and place where you don’t have to look over your shoulder either for something coming to ruin your subsistence-farming existence or for someone coming to fight you, your city, your country, your continent, is tremendously unusual. Like, very short periods of time throughout history.
I’m thankful.
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What I Hate About Self Publishing, Part Quatre: Time
This is a 6 part series called What I Hate About Self Publishing. Part One: The Overview. Part Two: Scams. Part Three: The Education Challenge. This is Part Four: Time. Part Five: Quality Assurance. Part Six: Lack of Marketing. The conclusion.
Time
This post is sad to me because I’m going to identify the challenge, but from the outset I’m painfully aware that I don’t have a slick solution to the problem.
The problem is you have a limited amount of time in your day.
It’s a resource, like money, like water, and you have to make decisions to use it wisely.
Here’s what I mean:
The authors who are successfully indie publishing right now seem to be doing it in part on the back of prolific output. Like, multiple novel-length manuscripts a year, with shorter pieces in between. It’s super awesome, but not every author can keep up with that pace.
Some of you have families. Most of you have real jobs. Hopefully you have things outside of work that you need to give time to, too. We all know you can’t be a great writer if you’re not a great reader. Oh, yeah, if you’re going to indie publish, there’s all the work that goes along with being a publisher, too.
In order to indie publish, though, it requires a significant investment of that resource. You need to be monitoring things like sales, marketing, inventories, and cashflow for your business. You need to be creating new product. You need to be remembering to talk about old product. You need to be envisioning the next three titles you’re going to release. You need to be connecting to fans and other venues the prospective fans might be paying attention to.
So, what do you do with that? I think there are some things that help. I don’t think there are easy solutions, but there are these things:
- Do hard work. Good things happen when you do hard work. The best things in my life have come through periods of protracted, aggravating, hard work.
- Find a team. You cannot do it all on your own. So many writers would benefit from this advice. Work with other writers who talk to your audience. Work with people who know how to do stuff that you don’t know how to. Work with people. Many hands make light work.
- Focus. You do the best work when you free yourself up to focus on a few things instead of trying to do everything.
- Find the space to rest. It’s so important to not forget rest. Even the Almighty rested — you think you can do better than He did? Rest is an important pattern to include in your life. Practice it.
Somebody sure likes to take breaks:
I know, I know, I just took the week off for Thanksgiving, didn’t I? Well, it’s been a tremendously busy few months for me, so I’m taking a few more weeks off. I’ll see you in the new year!
Happy Thanksgiving
I’m taking a week off around here — see you next week!
Tuesday Quotivator: Effort
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
– Colin Powell