Are you just another invisible author suffering from sub-optimal sales and visibility? Let’s look at the system that’s throttling authors. Introduction to a series of data heavy posts on self-publishing.
For Invisible Authors: An Introduction
If you are reading this then it is likely that you are a fiction writer or aspiring fiction writer. Good for you. I am sure you already know that it is hard work with no guarantees. But for most of us the real problem is not the writing or even the publishing process. The problem is getting your work seen and read.
If you are a typical author you’ve probably been sweating and labouring over your story for many weeks. Maybe years. Then you have been through the grief and trauma of learning how to build it into an attractive and engaging work. Finally your listing has gone live on (say) Amazon.
But so far, after all your hard labour, besides sales to family and friends, you have got zilch. Or pennies at best. Right?
You feel like an invisible author. Do you think you are alone?
Well, you are not.
Most Authors are Invisible Authors
In fact 97% of e-books didn’t sell today either. I bet almost all of the authors of those e-books feel as angry and frustrated by this lack of return as you probably do. Often authors feel overwhelmed by what appears to the sheer impossibility of breaking out of this Grave of Zeros. They feel like failures.
So is their lack of sales success because their writing is simply just not up to it?
Although that is inevitably true in a small subset of cases, the vast majority of people who slave and agonise for weeks (maybe years!) over the crafting their story are hardly likely to all be bad writers are they? It makes no sense.
So why are they selling zero or next to zero e-books?
Few Invisible Authors are Bad Writers.
The overwhelming reason is not poor writing skills.
The reason is that almost all authors are unknowingly the victim of a computer marketing algorithm.
It’s a blunt, brutal and unthinking algorithm that takes no prisoners. Few people know anything about it. But knowing and understanding it along with the associated data presented in the next few posts is the vital key to understanding how to break-out or at least ameliorate the curse of zero or few sales. I’ll try and keep any technical jargon to the barest minimum and will explain any uncommon terms. This is not data to intimidate. It is data to understand.
Because if we don’t understand what we are dealing with, we cannot address it’s consequences.
So in the next few posts we will look into this Grave of Zero’s and see what’s going on. Only then we can get a good handle on this problem. Then later on in this series, I will look at ways to combat and overcome these e-book killing problems.
But be warned: This is likely to be, at least initially, a very depressing, even horrifying ride for almost all authors (it was for me). So buckle up. Pour yourself a stiff one and lets look at the data. Then we can see what can be done.
The next post in this series is here – The Grave of Zeros
Love & Kisses
Chalkie