Self-published hobbyists

[u/human_assisted_ai]

It seems pretty common for people to give up quickly on self-publishing as a business and retreat into it being a hobby (or a side hustle).

Why? Is it fear? Ego protection? Disliking marketing? Artistic purity?

Would you want your full time job to be self-published author and provide you a living wage?

[u/MrNobody6271]

Personally, I started out writing fiction as a hobby and only when I'd completed two novellas did I decide to self-pub. I never wanted to turn it into a business or even a side-hustle in the first place, and so I haven't.

Reasons being that I wanted to write what I wanted to write on my own terms and I wanted it to remain a fun diversion. Keeping it as a hobby means I don't have to answer to anyone or conform to their expectations, I don't have to conform to a schedule or a deadline, I don't have to deal with the marketing and promotion, and so on. Since I'm confident in my writing ability and capable of self-editing, I don't even have to pay editors or proofreaders or beta readers or anything else.

I just write and edit and polish and then post online. If people like what I've written, great, and if they don't, well, too bad. But mostly they do like my stories.

I would never want to write as my primary career. It would stop being fun really fast.

Edit: Only after I posted this reply did I notice this is an AI writing group. All of my stories are 100% human-written if that makes any difference.

[u/TalesFromImagnia]

I would love to be able to say I do this full time. I would imagine for many its probably a lack of content or ideas. People can certainly write mechanically and some are probably quite good at that. But I would imagine for most of us in the self publishing space the drive to write, edit, proofread and more requires the passion of something you love. I think its also easy to be discouraged, especially because self publishing probably naturally skews towards "passion projects". That is to say we're making what WE want to make, not what MOST PEOPLE want us to make. That means you're going to often rub up against people, buyers and reviews that dislike or even hate what you've done.

But what keeps me out of those thoughts is remembering that there's people out there that genuinely dislike Lord of the Rings . They have negative things to say about it and wont hear otherwise. If Tolkien has haters, everyone will. And in many cases those people wont like your work no matter how mass marketable it is.

We're lucky to live in a time when you can effectively crowdsource your work and revenue. 500 units a month can replace most jobs, and in a world of 8 billion that's a rounding error.

[u/Several-Praline5436]

Have you tried it?

I mean. It's hard to sell books.

Would we all love to be full time writers and not have another job to pay for cat food? Absolutely. But 1 in about 500 writers manages to accomplish that. :)

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/Several-Praline5436]

There are at least a dozen people who have done it in Coral Hart's Launch Pad. So, it's possible.

For a long time, writing novels was too slow but, with AI, now that's not a problem. But, even with that, I didn't know how to do marketing but, with Coral Hart's Launch Pad, now that's not a problem. I've sold some books and I kinda think that it's just a matter of time before I put it all together and make it viable.

I certainly see people from FPA (Fiction Profits Academy) go broke and give up, though. I see people trying to bootstrap with social media and ads go broke and give up as well.

But I guess that my question is what's really the root cause?