…and suffer the consequences. That’s the lesson we’ve been learning lately.
We have several friends who write but we don’t have several writing friends who make a lot of money. Or quite manage to pay expenses. (This doesn’t apply to all of our friend-writers. A couple of ‘em are seeing sales of 500-1000 books a month and we’re pleased ‘cause, when they come to town, they’re buying.)
The pic above? Taken by Brother Bill, who visited the Roman Coliseum while we were busy making The Atheist's Daughter even more better. The lesson learned? NEVER EVER skip a trip to the Coliseum in an effort to get your book more better.
It’s a tough world out there if you’re one of the rare writers who doesn’t team up with James Patterson to help pen “his” next best-seller. This was driven home recently when a pair of writer comrades started talking sales.
To the best of our knowledge, our two writing friends don’t know each other. One's a woman, the other a man. One writes straight romance, one pens fantasy novels (with a romantic element). They each followed the How to Succeed as Writers Guidebook to the letter. Each of them honed their craft, approaching agents and traditional publishers before finding electronic publishers. They set up websites, found homes in the social networks, and developed a following (unlike, say, us. They wrote Guest Posts and contributed to anthologies. They wooed book bloggers and garnered some lovely reviews. They haunted the Kindle boards, writing forums, and are far from unknown on several fiction sites.
They continued writing novels, each in their respective genre. One of them tried on-line ads, the other won at least two awards for her fiction. If we told you their names – well, you probably wouldn’t recognize them. After all, you hang out here. But, bottom line, after more than three years of effort and struggle? Neither one of them is consistently earning enough in royalties to pay for a cuppa Starbucks on a weekly basis.
Recently, we've noticed their websites are getting updated a lot less frequently. Neither one is making as much of an appearance in the FB or twitter worlds. Neither of our friends is writing as much as they used to, either. They played the game, they did their best, and no one noticed.
It's a tough gig, this writing business....
We have several friends who write but we don’t have several writing friends who make a lot of money. Or quite manage to pay expenses. (This doesn’t apply to all of our friend-writers. A couple of ‘em are seeing sales of 500-1000 books a month and we’re pleased ‘cause, when they come to town, they’re buying.)
The pic above? Taken by Brother Bill, who visited the Roman Coliseum while we were busy making The Atheist's Daughter even more better. The lesson learned? NEVER EVER skip a trip to the Coliseum in an effort to get your book more better.
It’s a tough world out there if you’re one of the rare writers who doesn’t team up with James Patterson to help pen “his” next best-seller. This was driven home recently when a pair of writer comrades started talking sales.
To the best of our knowledge, our two writing friends don’t know each other. One's a woman, the other a man. One writes straight romance, one pens fantasy novels (with a romantic element). They each followed the How to Succeed as Writers Guidebook to the letter. Each of them honed their craft, approaching agents and traditional publishers before finding electronic publishers. They set up websites, found homes in the social networks, and developed a following (unlike, say, us. They wrote Guest Posts and contributed to anthologies. They wooed book bloggers and garnered some lovely reviews. They haunted the Kindle boards, writing forums, and are far from unknown on several fiction sites.
They continued writing novels, each in their respective genre. One of them tried on-line ads, the other won at least two awards for her fiction. If we told you their names – well, you probably wouldn’t recognize them. After all, you hang out here. But, bottom line, after more than three years of effort and struggle? Neither one of them is consistently earning enough in royalties to pay for a cuppa Starbucks on a weekly basis.
Recently, we've noticed their websites are getting updated a lot less frequently. Neither one is making as much of an appearance in the FB or twitter worlds. Neither of our friends is writing as much as they used to, either. They played the game, they did their best, and no one noticed.
It's a tough gig, this writing business....
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