I'm Still Writing, How About You?

You’ve heard it all, Amazon is bowing to the Big Six, Barnes and Noble and Amazon are destroying self-publishing and the traditional publishers are taking over the industry while charging $25,000 dollars to get your book out.

Enough!

Dudes, who cares. Has anything really changed? Can you still put your product through the grinder and be making money in twenty-four hours? YES.

Can you upload to Kindle today and see sales by tomorrow? YES.

So what are we doing? We’re spending all our time lamenting about how the industry is disappearing. We won’t be able to sell books. My sales have plummeted in October so it must be because Amazon is not counting my sales!

That’s a pile of crap.



Let’s just get back to the roots of what makes us great in the first place. We’re doers. We’re pioneers. That’s what makes the United States great, it’s always been about pioneering. You too, UK, you were pioneering before we were born!

Let’s stop our complaining and start doing. If you are going to make it in this business, you’ve got to keep writing.

Are you telling me that the self publishing/Indie Author revolution is over? In what, three years? Some of our brethren have gone from nothing to bestsellers in matter of weeks. The legacy publishers have snatched Indie Authors up with million dollar contracts. Legacy published authors have jumped to the indie side. All kinds of things have happened.

Did I say Enough, already?

Put the noise behind you. Pump out the quality, edited books. Buy books from those you know. Help other indie authors and they’ll help you.

Can I say one other thing? Maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m going to say it anyway. What are you really complaining about? Seeing a drop in sales from 20 to 12 copies a month? Get real, most of the people out there who are complaining make $400 or less selling books, A YEAR.

Conspiracy? Puhlease. Better watch out for that big bad indie author selling ten books a month … every other month.

And, what if the indie industry goes away? We’re right back where we were before. Finding agents, sending out queries and trying to publish books. Unless of course, you are in it just to rip people off in the eBook craze. If that’s the case, I want you gone anyway.

I was at a party last weekend and a guy I was talking to asked what I do. I said, “I’m an author.” He immediately went off on all the domain names that he owns and how he’s going to make millions off of them with the books he writes. WHAT?!

We can complain or we can do something. I choose to do something.

We know better. We can do better. We know the value of a good book. Indie authors are not going away … unless you don’t write.

A version of this post was written by Jim Devitt on Indies Unlimited in December of 2012