The Disillusioned Author
Oh, the world of the disillusioned author! It is large. It is colorful! It is neverending! It’s so false! It’s the greatest magic show they have created for themselves.
I’ve probably worked with, talked with, and socialized with hundreds of authors. They have voiced their feelings about the future as a successful author with fans pouring out of every hole and money rolling in. The vast majority need a reality check!
Success is Not Easy
You will not find success simply by putting words on a screen and publishing them. It’s not that simple as anyone can do that of nearly any age. Writing a book and getting published is so much more than that. It is not easy nor fast. And if you think it is, you are very disillusioned.
Some authors don’t find success until they have several books published. That means a lot of writing and editing as well as promoting. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of tears and sweat. It takes a lot of rejection and quite a few bad reviews.
Who are the great successes of our time? Every single one of them that you will name did not find success easy. They experienced rejection after rejection. They thought of giving up. They were not successful for several years.
Marketing is Done By the Author
Hate to tell you this, but the author has to do most of the marketing. Even if you signed with a big publisher, you’d have to do a lot of the marketing. They can’t do it all for every author. No publisher has that much time or money for such ventures. They have thousands of authors and cannot sink in a hundred thousand dollars of marketing for each one.
Want to be a success? Get off your butt and market. You have to be the one to bring the success about. You have to show the publisher and the readers how much faith you have in your own works.
Don’t sit back and wait on success to appear on your doorstep. Market your book.
Writing a Book is Not Just Writing
I’ve heard some authors say that all they had to do was write a story. That’s all. I mean, they believe there is no reading it over again, no editing, and no proofreading. They write it and are done. I was editing a book and was astounded at the author telling me that all I had to do was proofread it and correct any spelling errors. She wrote the story the week before and that’s all that had to be done.
Writing a book involves developing a plot, characters, and the right words. It involves editing and editing again. It involves so much more than writing. Only a disillusioned author thinks writing is that simple of just putting words on paper.
