This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to Side Hustle School, what's up? My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. Our caller today, one of our listeners, has been working on her first novel, and she doesn't want it to be confined to a drawer forever. Got a couple of those myself. Now she wants to sell it, but she's also feeling discouraged because so many books are commercially unsuccessful.
Okay, she wants to be commercially successful. Crazy idea, what should she consider? Now this is a question near and dear to my heart. I love the world of books as an author. I would say, I'd be the first to say it's not necessarily the most profitable medium.
Like in fact, in some ways you could probably say that most other mediums have a more profit potential, but that doesn't mean that every book is destined to be stuck in that drawer or published, but not discovered by anyone, which is another faith that sadly all too many books meet. As I said, our caller wants to do something different. So in this episode, we'll look briefly at the landscape of publishing, focused around the question, how is it possible for an author to succeed in this day and age? That's coming up shortly. Stay tuned.
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Hi Chris, this is Summer from Phoenix. How is it possible for an author to succeed in this day and age? There are too many books and no one cares. I've been working on my first novel for a long time and I want to be able to sell it as a series. But for that to happen, I know the first one has to sell well.
Then there will be a built-in market for the next ones. Still, I feel discouraged. I don't have a ton of Facebook fans and I slept through marketing class if there ever was such a class. When it comes to world building and developing characters, I'm good at that. But with so many books coming out all the time, I worry that no one will find mine and I'll have done all of this writing for nothing.
How is it possible for an author to succeed given all the constraints and competition that now exists? Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Hey Summer, thank you for listening. Thank you for being out there and you're not alone. We have a lot of authors and aspiring authors in our community.
I also want to say that I asked the same question many years ago, much the same question at least, going back I guess 12 years or something when I first talked to my literary agent who's still a very good friend, still my agent now. And I was learning about the world of publishing and I was like, David, how is it possible to succeed? Because there's so many books coming out. Also, are people even still reading books? And he was like, well, Chris, people are still reading books.
So if you want to write a book, then you should write a book. And I was like, great, that's exactly what I want to do. And here I am years later, still writing books. I very much believe in that industry, that medium, that format, et cetera. So also the other good news is it's not like saying, how can you be successful as a professional basketball player, for example, because the pool of talent there is quite small.
There's only this room for very few people to succeed. Whereas there are a lot more authors, like there are a lot of authors, but there are a lot more successful authors. There are a lot more people who are able to publish books, both traditionally and on their own and reach an audience of engaged readers. Not everyone is successful with that, of course, but the point is there can be a lot of them. So the competition is a lot less, or at least it's not quite like being a professional athlete or lots of other things.
Furthermore, there are also a lot of pathways to publishing these days. So yes, in some ways that's overwhelming, but it also offers opportunity. Just depends on how you wanna look at it. So a couple of examples, couple of specifics here. Audio as a category is huge these days.
And guess what, you're listening to podcasts, you're into audio. A lot of people are into audio. If you publish a book through a traditional publisher, they are almost absolutely going to insist on having the audio rights and making an audio version because they understand how big this market is. If you are self-publishing a book, then you have a choice. And my recommendation, my strong recommendation is to definitely make an audio version.
So my dad writes novels. He took up novel writing after he retired from being a NASA engineer. And he recently published an audio version of his book, "Mad Librarian." He's received a lot of good feedback about it. And he says that he almost didn't do the audio version 'cause he was like, "Well, I don't know. I don't listen to audio books.
Does anybody really do that?" And I was like, "Dad, you should try it." And he's glad he did. So audio version for sure. Book clubs, online communities like Goodreads and Bookbub, the Instabooks community or Instareeds community on Instagram, all of these outlets and more can offer amplification if readers connect with your books. Now, as for selling it as a series, to go back to Summer's original question, selling it as a series in the traditional publishing model, these days, most new authors will be better served by selling that first book independently as opposed to trying to sell a whole series. And then going back to sell the next one once you have some proof of concept.
In other words, readers like it. So I think she knows that already. So don't try to sell a whole series, but it might help you to think about how the first one could become a series while you're working on it. That of course will make it much easier later on. So anyway, I wouldn't give up hope for sure.
I would keep working at it if it's what you really want to do. I never try to talk people into writing books because it's a long road and it's a lot of work and there might be other mediums that are more profitable, at least at first, maybe not just at first, but maybe always. But if you believe in it, don't be discouraged. Like I think it's worth it. I'm gonna keep doing it.
All right, good luck Summer. Good luck everybody else out there trying to accomplish something creative. And listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're gonna keep featuring them throughout the year. Well, I guess the year is coming to an end, but at least we'll be moving into that fourth quarter soon.
But still, we'll be featuring them throughout the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thank you so much for listening. You're amazing. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sidemen's School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
