In The Nick of Too Late
Is it Too Late to Be A Writer?
Do you know the best time to plant a tree? The answer is ten years ago. Sometimes we can feel like we’re coming late to the game. Especially as an indie writer when you log onto Amazon and see that you’re precious body of hard work is hovering around the 734,567 ranking. When almost 1,000,000 books are published each year, in the US alone, it can be rather discouraging. It almost feels like throwing a proverbial needle into a haystack and hoping that everyone around will gravitate to it; by sheer force of will. Surely your needle has to be the pointier, shinier, and all around more interesting needle than any of the others being added to the stack, doesn’t it?
So with this sort of level of competition—it seems anyone with a laptop and an Amazon account has written a book and thrown it on there to see how it will do—it can feel like you’ve missed the boat. Has the time for people submitting their self-published works online and actually eking out some modicum of success come and gone? To a certain degree it’s not inaccurate thinking. There are seemingly countless book choices for readers of all tastes with more being added every day. And since there is little being done online to ensure quality of self-published works there can be a lot of, how do we say, less than good, stories out there. But not all is lost.
So What’s A Writer To Do?
Just because competition is fierce doesn’t mean things are hopeless. It simply means you have to rise to the occasion, and make sure that your work is top notch. It means you have to get someone besides yourself to edit your work. You have to network. Offer the book away for free, and beg for reviews. And you need to connect on as many social media platforms as you can. Gone are the days where you can just upload your book and watch it rise the ranks, but if you are willing to put in the effort you will get your words out there.
Maybe I waited too long for this to be easy, but it doesn’t mean I’ve waited myself into impossibility. I still believe in the world I’ve molded, in the characters I’ve created, and in the story I’ve written. They deserve their time to shine. So I’ll keep plugging away, trying to share Hleo with as many people as I can, because I’d rather have started late than never started at all.
If you’re interested in giving Hleo a read check it out here.