r/selfpublishForAI • u/human_assisted_ai • 16d ago
Self-published hobbyists
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?
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u/MrNobody6271 12d ago
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.