Ten Years as a Publisher: What (If Anything) Have I Learned? (Part One)

 

The 23rd of April will mark the tenth anniversary of publishing my first book, A Summer in Amber back in 2015. It's a milestone, and one that deserves some reflection. This post is the first of several looking back on the last ten years.

The question in this post is; "What have I learned publishing my own books?" Of all the little things I've learned along the way, the one big thing is that writing fiction is not a career. It's not even a real job. It's a side-gig, at best, but more likely a pastime, a hobby, even if one calls oneself a professional author. Even if one is a traditionally published author. But for most, it is just a dream, a delusion.

I don't follow many authors blogs or videos, but the funny thing is that two of the ones I do follow also released their first books in 2015. One of those authors is Stephen Aryan, who used to have a YouTube channel devoted to dispelling the myths of traditional publishing. He sold a fantasy trilogy to Orbit, one of the major publishing houses which came out in 2015, and sold enough copies to earn him a second contract for a new trilogy for them. The second one didn't do as well, and they dropped him. He then sold a duology to the small press Angry Robots. The first book for them did well enough to get him a contract for a trilogy, however the second book of that duology didn't do well, nor have the first two books of his subsequent trilogy. The last book comes out soon, but is dead on arrival. No new contract. So now, after ten years he's without a book contract. Essentially out of the business, though he still has an agent, and is writing books in the hope of selling them to a traditional publisher. He may still get back into the business, but generally, publishers look at past performance, and his failure to become a best selling author after ten years will likely make it a tall order to overcome. He has, however, now self-published a novella with more to follow. Perhaps reading the writing on the wall. His career arch is very typical of authors in traditional publishing.

The second author whose videos I followed is Chris Fox, a self-published science fiction and fantasy author who also use to have a YouTube channel, and who also started releasing books in 2015. Being a prolific writer, he put out multiple books a year and did all the various things one has to do to sell books on Amazon. He was quite successful. He grossed $170,000 in 2016 and peaked in 2020 with over $272,000 in sales from his books and audiobooks, releasing nine books in that year; five of them in the last four months of the year, with ever diminishing returns. Sales went south from there, with 2021 sales back down to $190,000. He stopped reporting his sales after that. He had launched his dream project of a long ten volume fantasy series that year, but wrapped it up last year, in only seven volumes. He hasn't published a single book since July 2024. His many books are still up, and selling, though I have no idea how much they bring in. The point is that either he and/or his readers seem to have burned out. Ten years again.

I've heard it said that in traditional publishing nine out of ten writers are out of the business in ten years. These two authors are pure anecdotical, and yet...

And yet I think they represent the norm. Writers and their stories are the raw material of the publishing business. Writers and stories are far from a rare commodity, so it is not surprising that in traditional publishing they are paid poorly and quickly cast aside when their work does not prove to be a gold mine for the publishers. And in self-publishing, the competition is so fierce that to stay on the radar of readers they have to pump out far too many books, so that both readers and the writer burning out on. and often in less than ten years. The fact of the matter is that books, stories, and writers are subject to the whims of fashion, and almost every writer will fall out of fashion sooner or later.

So all in all, despite the glamor of a relative handful of long-time successful writers, writing is a temporary part-time gig, and more accurately, a hobby. If one is lucky it can be one like woodworking or quilt making, where one can make some money selling bird houses or quilts at craft fairs, though  writing  is likely not as lucrative. Too often writing is a hobby that costs money, oh, like golf or fishing.

So what I've learned from my ten years publishing my own work, is that I was right in accepting that my publishing venture was going to be a what is often referred to by "professional" self-publishing authors as a hobby, even though I've made money - a penny a book - where most of those professionals have lost money trying this and that, whatever was the hot secret of success of the moment, like another self-publishing author, Ron Vitale, who has lost something like $10,000 over his 13 years as a self-published author. He has now decided to consider writing a hobby and spend more of his free time doing other things.

Well, it's been ten years for me, and I'm still here, still writing and publishing books. And most importantly, still having fun doing so.