Is It For You? Then You Won't Get Paid!

If you are writing what you think is best without finding an audience, then you will have a hard time getting paid. So if you don't:

1. do your research;

2. find an audience that wants what you're writing and;

3. write according to what your audience wants and is willing to pay for 

then just continue writing as a hobby. You'll save yourself so much stress.

You don't have the answer to making yourself the amount of money you want. If you could do it alone, you would've already done it. You wouldn't be struggling to do it. The key to making more money is getting more people to pay you. The common way of doing that is by becoming problem solvers who find issues among a certain crowd. Solve those problems so well that the audience becomes satisfied enough to pay for the solution to their problem.

If you write for yourself, then you'll stay a broke writer. It doesn't matter how much purple prose you put in your book. Nor does it matter if you write in the style of C.S. Lewis or any other author. You can't just copy another author's style and expect to sell your book or your writing.

Remove "You" Out Of The Equation

Look, you have to get out of your head. Your book isn't about you. It's about characters plots and settings coming together to resonate with a paying audience. That's if you want to make money. If you don't write what an audience expects to get, then don't expect to get paid much money - if you get paid anything.

Sometimes you get in the way too much. Too many selfish writers only think about themselves. They think about writing the story they like or having characters sound like they want them to sound. But they don't allow the characters to have a voice that resonates with an audience. They don't allow the story to flow naturally. The author is always interrupting, trying to make their darling characters look like flawless beings.

The author shouldn't have to go out of their way, playing god as they influence their characters and their fictional worlds. I suppose we should play gods in the sense that we created a fictional world and fictional characters. But it shouldn't feel like we're inserting ourselves into the story. Usually, writing like that makes it seem like the author is trying to save their ego and make themselves feel good instead of writing a good story.

To increase the chances of writing a great story focused only on the story and characters in it, it would be best to move yourself out of the way when writing a story you want to sell.

But There Are Many Ways To Success

I'm not going to lie to you. You could, in theory, find success just by writing the kind of story you want to write. It could be that what you want is the same thing a particular group of people want in their story. You can stumble and fumble your way to success. You can find your doors to success - and you should. Your way would probably work best for you.

I am giving the warning that you should move out of your story's way because a lot of potentially talented authors have nearly ended their careers before they even got going by neglecting their audience and thinking only of themselves. And when their books aren't reviewed with positive reviews, they'll get upset and say something to ruin their careers even more.

Look, I'll be the first to say it. The majority of people are wrong in a lot of cases about a lot of things. You should challenge what they say if they don't have anything of substance to hold their beliefs up other than it's just the way they feel. However, when it comes to their tastes in books, we probably shouldn't fight that too hard. If what they believed harmed others in society, that would be one thing. And though you may not like the way those people feel about your work, it's not the end of the world. You just have to go back to the drawing board and make a work a significant group of people will like and pay for.

Don't spend time engaging with people over useless fights when you could be spending that energy making a better book. At the end of the day, you make your choice as to how you want to write your story and deliver it. I'm just here to suggest that it wouldn't be surprising if your book flopped when you don't give your audience a great reading experience.