It’s been two months since I’ve started my indie author journey on Amazon. And by journey, I mean a bitter crawl through a blizzard in which I am naked, wounded, starving, and have a really bad case of strep throat. And the mountain I am trying to climb is twice as big as Everest for some reason. It’s ungodly.
For myself, and probably for you, being an indie author on Amazon is thankless and painful as you make the climb. How will all of this end? Will the work that you spent all of your free time on sit unread on those digital shelves until you die? Are you gifted enough in the art of self-promotion, cover art, blurbs, tags, and Twitter to land in the pantheon of erotica authors who make a living this way?
Let me provide the goopy balm to plop onto your wounds, and maybe even offer you a scratchy burlap cape.
Healing Item Number One: The Joy of Labor
Even without the immediacy of results, you benefit from the work you upload, edit, write, and cry over. If you never make a dime (or the .35 profit on each sale, as we both know), you still have gained the following things from your hard work:
-Pride in the fact that you stopped talking about writing erotica and just did it.
-A tiny pinch of confidence and growth with each story you write.
-A body of work that you can refer to in other writing endeavors.
You did it. You worked hard, and you have some stories online to prove it. I’m so proud of you that I feel like your plump rustic mother, running to you with open arms in our rural garden after you’ve returned home from a soul-searching journey in France. What am I talking about?
Healing Item Number Two: The Best Have Been Best For Years
As I mentioned in my blog post about erotica author jealousy, you can’t and shouldn’t worry about following in the exact footsteps of Amazon celebs who have been doing this for years and years and years. They’ve been around since the times when Amazon was a mom and pop shop in pioneer America, making each of their seven sons run delivery night and day across this great land.
Have you been around for hundreds of years? I didn’t think so.
Healing Item Number Three: I Believe In Magic
There is only one way to become incredibly successful with a huge body of writing, supported by thousands of cheering fans who love you and mail dildos to your house. And all you have to do is this one weird magic trick that makes dermatologists crazy: work hard every day.
I believe in this magic spell. I believe in it so much that it has already miraculously dropped 5 short stories into my Author Page and 426 followers onto my Twitter.
Do you feel better? How is all of that goopy balm on your wounds? Let’s keep climbing up the mountain together, friends.
xxx,
Mintie Price
Mintie Price 