Ridiculous Opinions #308
I am a weird writer.
I exist in the nether regions of the writing world. I am unpopular. I do not sell many books. In fact, I have one book that I’m sure has not sold a single copy. I mostly blame the readers of this particular newsletter, none of whom have purchased it. (I’ll give a free copy to anyone who can guess which one it is).
But then again, I am not unpopular either, which is a weird thing to say. I just push my books out there and see what happens. The other day, I was looking at the lifetime sales of ALL of my books that I have self-published and it turns out that I have sold almost five-thousand books in my lifetime. That’s pretty decent, actually, considering all of them, aside from my latest, Four Frontiers, have been entirely self-published. (Here’s a link to Four Frontiers, though it is only available in the Middle East at the moment…).
In the early-2000s, I tried to get an agent and get published in a traditional way. I sent out hundreds of query letter in the hope that someone would see the diamond in the rough with my work, but that never happened. The signal to noise factor was just too strong, as it seemed that everyone was trying to get published at that time, while the industry was simultaneously dying (and continues to die, mind you, as no one reads books anymore). I might as well have been lighting those letters on fire and tossing them in the air, which would have attracted more attention than what I was doing.
But the other factor that was involved in this whole thing was the simple notion that I wasn’t very good. That’s not me being humble and self-deprecating. That’s a fact. I was not a good writer. I had no formal education with writing and little desire to improve as a whole. I was just doing it because I loved it. That, coupled with the fact that I had no one to edit my work or provide me with any guidance on how to make it better (something an agent or publisher would have done), left me off in outer space when it came to writing. I was a nobody and I was not very good.
Two strikes. The third was that, when I started to become a decent writer on my own, I was living overseas. Making connections to publishing and/or publishers when living in Ghana, China, and Bangladesh can be quite difficult. Actually, virtually impossible.
But I kept writing all this time. And I continue to write to this day. There is a level of delusion that comes with this. I may very well NOT be a decent writer. My work might very well be crap and no one will tell me (not that anyone has read it). I might be someone who aspires to greatness as a writer, but will forever be an amateur. Certainly, there are some books that I’ve written that are not good, or ones that someone should have said to me, “Hey, maybe give that one an edit?” But no one ever did. So considering I had the skills to actually finish a book, as well as the skills to design the book so it looks pretty professional as a whole, I figured why not publish them myself. The glory of publishing through Amazon is the notion that it doesn’t cost me a thing.
Which has led me to this part of my life. I have written and published twenty-five books. That’s quite an accomplishment, if I do say so myself. And of those twenty-five, I have sold 4920. Not bad. It would have been nice to have sold several million, but I’m not sure that kind of thing happens in this day and age anymore. (And if you’re wondering how much money I’ve made off of those 4920 books, let’s just say that it’s decidedly less than $4920).
Why do I bring this up? Well, I write every day, and this morning I came up with an idea for a new book. I really like this idea that I came up with. I won’t tell you the idea, because, to quote the famous poet, Bono, “words can scare away a thought.” I plan to simply let this idea simmer for a little while. I’m going to put it on the back burner and let it cook until it’s ready. And when/if I finally do decide to write this story, I might actually try to get it traditionally published. It would make for a good thriller that you would pick up at an airport, which would be purchased by Hollywood to be turned into a Netflix special. And I would sell millions of copies of this particular story.
And then, I could stop working. I could retire and write more books. That sounds appealing.
But then again, this idea could go nowhere. I may not even write it at all. Or I might write it and just leave it sitting on the hard drive of my computer (which is where my memoir and my sci-fi novel are currently sitting). Or I might write it and publish it and it may not sell a single copy. Or it could sell ten copies. Or a hundred. Or a million. Who knows?
The thing with everything that I’m saying here is that this new idea represents possibilities. It represents the notion of what could happen. That’s what has powered me through my life. Possibilities. That’s what makes everything so fun, because those possibilities always lead to something. I have yet to be disappointed by the possibilities of something. And possibilities remain just that without action. So, I will act upon this and see what happens.
I have no idea where it will lead, but it’s fun to think about.
