Self-Publishing Shoptalk: Costs, Payout, and Keeping Expectations Low
mlclark.substack.com
Good morning lovely readers and fellow writers. We’re just a few days out from the launch of Children of Doro, and this feels as good a time as any to talk frankly about the business of self-publishing. May 4 was a strange day for me: quiet, yet also marking the end of an era. There was no grand launch party, no cutesy “book birthday” cakes or cupcakes; I didn’t have a copy of the book on hand that I could use to stage videos online, because sending proof copies to Colombia is a no-go. (I still have to order myself a copy of my own book at full cost now, and will, when the budget allows.)
Congratulations on your sales this week! It is good to see that your efforts in marketing are working, though the amount of unpaid labour necessary is still mindblowing. People imagine creatives sitting around creating, but the reality is painful to see - how much more time and energy could an artist spend on creating instead of on administrative work? (This is a complaint I share, except mine is about not having enough time to mark because there are too many emails to read and write - far worse to imagine the works of art not being created in lieu of emails.)
I hope that you take care of yourself. We took that baggage in the line "a lot of us are over-educated under-performers living between class strata, aching for better social integration yet not quite having the knack for it" in two different ways, each seeking to overcome those obstacles through different means. Is it better to sacrifice stability in order to create, or better to sacrifice the creative life for stability? I don't know. In a better world, we might have both and find more joy in it all. (Sorry, low mood as well.) We just have to keep going and trying to make a better world in whatever ways we can. Many hugs.
I'm so glad for your honesty and openness, we need to be real with our expectations to really ground us in the WHY. Why we're doing what we do and taking the risks.
Sometimes I read these massive indie success stories and it actually frustrates me because they leave out stuff like they write in massively popular genres or pump out a book every 6 weeks so statistically they're bound to make money. And the existential stuff? Oh my. Can I ever relate.
PS, I've started CoD (about 5% in so still early in the book) and it reminds me a lot of Stanislaw Lem so far. I just finished reading The Invincible so that could be why, but yeah, I'm enjoying it.
"It was “writer’s melancholy”: a feeling of being very, very stupid for persisting in a field that clearly has no space for me."
Well, that hit a little too hard.
I will say this: sometimes I think what am I doing spending all this time and energy on writing when no one wants to publish what I write and I could be doing anything else instead. And I say maybe I'll try to stop writing. And then the next day I find myself writing again. Maybe I'm in too deep, but at this point I guess I'm just not writing for the publications and plaudits I may never get anymore. I'm just writing because I'm a person who writes. And in one way that's depressing, obviously, since as a young person I imagined all the fame and fortune that would inevitably be mine once the world discovered my obvious gifted-child-syndrome genius. But in another way it's liberating. I don't have to think "what can I write now that will sell, what will be the choice for my career, what kind of book is going to speak to the sff discourse right now and not seem a decade out of date," or whatever. Or even "why do I write so slow, I should have finished x y and z by now I'm such a failure, Michael Moorcock would've written ten books in a month already" or whatever. I can just write absolutely and finally what I want to write at the speed I'm going to write it. And I am.
Congratulations on your sales this week! It is good to see that your efforts in marketing are working, though the amount of unpaid labour necessary is still mindblowing. People imagine creatives sitting around creating, but the reality is painful to see - how much more time and energy could an artist spend on creating instead of on administrative work? (This is a complaint I share, except mine is about not having enough time to mark because there are too many emails to read and write - far worse to imagine the works of art not being created in lieu of emails.)
I hope that you take care of yourself. We took that baggage in the line "a lot of us are over-educated under-performers living between class strata, aching for better social integration yet not quite having the knack for it" in two different ways, each seeking to overcome those obstacles through different means. Is it better to sacrifice stability in order to create, or better to sacrifice the creative life for stability? I don't know. In a better world, we might have both and find more joy in it all. (Sorry, low mood as well.) We just have to keep going and trying to make a better world in whatever ways we can. Many hugs.
Sobering, but ever so helpful. Thank you!
I love your work. It makes the world (my world, at least, but I'd argue the world writ large) a richer, more compassionate place.
I'm so glad for your honesty and openness, we need to be real with our expectations to really ground us in the WHY. Why we're doing what we do and taking the risks.
Sometimes I read these massive indie success stories and it actually frustrates me because they leave out stuff like they write in massively popular genres or pump out a book every 6 weeks so statistically they're bound to make money. And the existential stuff? Oh my. Can I ever relate.
PS, I've started CoD (about 5% in so still early in the book) and it reminds me a lot of Stanislaw Lem so far. I just finished reading The Invincible so that could be why, but yeah, I'm enjoying it.
"It was “writer’s melancholy”: a feeling of being very, very stupid for persisting in a field that clearly has no space for me."
Well, that hit a little too hard.
I will say this: sometimes I think what am I doing spending all this time and energy on writing when no one wants to publish what I write and I could be doing anything else instead. And I say maybe I'll try to stop writing. And then the next day I find myself writing again. Maybe I'm in too deep, but at this point I guess I'm just not writing for the publications and plaudits I may never get anymore. I'm just writing because I'm a person who writes. And in one way that's depressing, obviously, since as a young person I imagined all the fame and fortune that would inevitably be mine once the world discovered my obvious gifted-child-syndrome genius. But in another way it's liberating. I don't have to think "what can I write now that will sell, what will be the choice for my career, what kind of book is going to speak to the sff discourse right now and not seem a decade out of date," or whatever. Or even "why do I write so slow, I should have finished x y and z by now I'm such a failure, Michael Moorcock would've written ten books in a month already" or whatever. I can just write absolutely and finally what I want to write at the speed I'm going to write it. And I am.