Inside The World of an Author - Exploring Author Life

There is a lot that goes into being an author.  It's not just writing a book.  That is actually the easiest part!  Being an independent author involves so many things and the learning curve is expensive.  So what is the process?   Well, first you research before you even put pen to paper.  Research and development takes time.  It varies for the subject and ease of access to information.  Sometimes the R&D involves traveling and usually involves many hours in front of a computer.  Then your build and organize your book.  Then you write.  After your first draft, comes the edits, you edit your second draft, you edit your third draft, and by the fourth draft edits you are ready to stab your eyes out and you've got the whole thing memorized that you miss mistakes you've made.  You've read this book forwards and backwards so many times that you think you're losing your mind organizing sentence structure, synonyms, over use of a word.   
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After you think you have a polished manuscript you query publishers and agents which is very daunting.   Each one has their own list of submission items, so now you are writing query letters, synopsis, beefing up your outline, market analysis, proposals, two paragraph descriptions.  Then come the rejections or you just don't hear back at all.  Or you catch their interest with your query letter and/or synopsis, and you get completely filled with excitement but get rejected once the manuscript gets to them.  The rejection can be for various reasons.  Some will leave you scratching your head.  It's definitely a dog eat dog world in the publishing world.  

So after a few years of rejections you give up and go with hybrid or self publishing.  This is an investment in yourself.   Depending on how much you want to bank roll yourself as to what services you receive.  There is a sea of self publishing companies and a sea of services offered.   There are also scam operations, so you must choose wisely. 

You've chosen your publishing house and package and you submit your manuscript.  Now comes the official editing process.  The back and forth hashing out of words.  This process takes a few months.  The book cover is designed.  The author bio and description of the book is created.  This process is all very exciting.  

The book is complete.  It's the best version of itself and now it goes out into the world.  It goes onto Amazon and other online retailers and depending on the package you purchased as to the platforms and the countries it reaches.  

So you got your book on Amazon and Ingram Spark.  Now what?  New books are released every minute.  There are millions of books on Amazon to compete with.  Your book isn't going to sell itself.  It doesn't get posted to Amazon and become an instant success.  Not unless you are Stephen King, Craig Johnson, James Patterson or a celebrity, but even they have to have a solid marketing plan to let people know they've written a new book.  

Here is where the real fun begins.  Here's where you jump outside your comfort zone and here is where the real work begins.  How do you get people to find your book and then buy your book.  You've come this far and want to see your book take off.  So, you become a social media creator, designer, and manager.  Facebook, Instagram, X, Tik Tok, you have to learn them all.   You need a website.  You now become a website designer, but how will people find you on Google?  Now, you must become an SEO expert.  What is SEO?  Search Engine Optimization, and it's a beast all in it's own.  There are people who's full time job is SEO.  That's what they do for a living, but in the indy author life, it's just a fraction of what you have to do to get seen on the interweb.   Keep in mind indy authors do not have the backing a major traditional publishing house, so everything is paid for by the author.   There are a lot of people and companies who are willing to help but all for a price.  How deep are your pockets and how much are you willing to invest.  It can quickly become a money pit.  

With the money you are spending and the royalities you earn, you have to keep this all straight, so now you put on your accounting hat.  How are you filing taxes?  Are you filing as and individual or did you set up a company to run all the finances through?  If you set up an LLC now you have a whole new can of worms.  Filing for an EIN with the state, getting business filings with the state, becoming your own CEO.  So now your book is a business.  Even the most famous authors, their books and their brand is their business.   So now that you have a business you have a long list of things to do to stay compliant with the IRS.  

Indy Authors and even traditionally published authors often hold down a full time job, so now we have 2 full time jobs.  We are working from when we wake up to when we go to bed.  We're working on weekends, we're working on vacation.   

But when all is said and done there is very little I would change except for how I spent my marketing budget, but those are lessons learned and hopefully tax write offs.  At the end of the day I take pride that I stepped outside of my comfort zone and got a book published because no matter what route you take it's no easy task.  

If you made it to the end of this post, thank you for reading.   I'm off do some more SEO, financial tracking, and social media marketing.