I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but I have a friend that I’ve known for close to 40 years now and he’s an author. Sort of. By that I mean he publishes a lot of books on Amazon. Sort of. But if there’s a way to do it wrong, I think he’s found it. And now, I just can’t say silent about it any more.Now first, I want to stress that this isn’t a rant and he knows all of what I’m about to say, this isn’t coming out of the blue. I just thought it would help others to hear it too. Also, I’m not saying he’s a bad writer. He’s not. He absolutely has the skills and the talent to do it right. He just doesn’t have the patience. His goal is not to do it right, it’s to do it quick and make a fast buck and in so doing, he bypasses a lot of quality control that he really needs to have. So let’s get into it.
First off, years ago, he started out writing erotica. And by that, I mean full-blown porn. Why? Because it sells. In fact, his stated reason for doing it was because it didn’t matter if he was any good at it, people who buy porn on Amazon aren’t really concerned if it’s a good story, they just want to get their jollies. His words, not mine. They will just keep coming back day after day after day, wanting to get their rocks off. Anyone can do it whether you’re talented or not.
The problem was, he hated every second of it. Every time I got him on the phone, he complained long and loud about how much he detested writing fetish porn. He hated feeling that at any moment, Amazon was going to pull the plug and shut down erotica on their platform. All he did was write terrible stories, they weren’t books because nobody wants to read long form pornography, it was just titillation for the sake of titillation and he hated it all.
I told him to stop and write what he loved. He had the skills to do it, he just didn’t have the patience. It sold quick and that’s all that mattered so he persisted for years on end, hating every second he did it.
Finally, I got through to him and he toned that part down and moved on to his second “career”, writing romance. Why? Because lots of people wanted to read romance and he figured he could make a buck. Mostly, he did what Amazon calls “romantic erotica” or “steamy romance”. Lots of sex, very little plot, low bar to entry. I don’t think he’d ever read a romance novel before he started. He just looked up a list of tropes and went for it. It wasn’t quite as sleazy as writing full-on pornography and it wasn’t quite as risky but he still hated doing it. It was for a buck, he didn’t want to do any of it. I think that’s why he was never as successful as he’d hoped, because his readers could tell he was only going through the motions. That’s no way to write a book.
Again, I told him to stop. Find what he had a passion for. Don’t just do it to make money, actually earn it by writing quality material. He stayed in the romance arena for a while until he finally cracked and admitted he couldn’t take it anymore.
Currently, he’s writing fantasy. It’s where his love has always been. That part is good. It’s what he should have been doing all along. The problem is, his mindset hasn’t changed. It’s as short as possible, as little effort as he can manage, trying to get people to buy things he whipped up over a weekend because he’s got the mindset that you have to constantly produce something new. That is true, but not once a week!
I told him to look at the top sellers and see what the audience expectation is. Go look at the top fantasy titles on Amazon and see what they’re doing. He doesn’t want to. Instead of looking at the actual statistics, and the top-selling fantasy book right now is 832 pages long, he wants to kick out 30k long, 120 page stories that nobody really wants to read. That’s not how the fantasy genre works. He says people like Neil Gaiman write some short novels, but he’s not Neil Gaiman. He’s just not. Absolutely nothing in the Amazon top 10 fantasy books is below 450 pages. He’s not doing the due diligence that he needs to do.
That’s a problem whether anyone is willing to admit it or not. It’s just not the only problem. He found a cover artist who is really cheap because they live in Bangladesh. That’s not to say it’s bad, I have no idea because I haven’t seen it, but the criteria here was “cheap”, not “good”. They don’t use an editor of any kind. Everything gets run through Grammarly and that’s the extent of the SPAG editing. There is no beta reading whatsoever. Fast and cheap, cheap and fast, that’s the name of the game.
It’s no wonder he’s not getting anywhere.
Yet that’s the kind of mentality that I see all the time from authors. They don’t want to put any effort into their writing, they aren’t willing to invest in their success, they just want to make a buck and aren’t willing to do much else to earn it. If I was on Amazon, looking for a fantasy book to read, I wouldn’t be picking up the first short book, whipped out in a couple of days by a no-name author. If I was looking for a new experience, I’d be finding people who are putting their all into it. He isn’t. It’s obvious. He’s just looking to make a buck, not tell a compelling story.
The worst part is, he’s good enough to do it if he’d just try. This is not easy. There are no shortcuts. If you just want to make a buck, go work at McDonalds. If you want to be a writer, it takes a lot more effort than that. Nobody just woke up one day and said “I’m going to be a professional writer” and did it the next day. That’s not how any of this works. This is absolutely the wrong job for anyone who hopes to get rich quick, or at all. That’s not what writing is all about. Very few who try ever get really successful. It can be done but not by being lazy.
If that’s what you think will happen, I’m going to tell you right now that you’re wrong. Either do it for the right reasons or don’t do it at all. You’ll only be disappointed in the end. I can see that every day.
