(edited to add a title) I can’t believe I forgot to do this very simple part of the post.

Today’s post is inspired by a video I happened to come across on YouTube.

This video really helped boost my enthusiasm for writing for the sake of writing itself. So my heartfelt thanks to Susannah Friesen for posting it. (I do not know this person. I came across this video by chance.)

My personal reading experience:

I clicked on this video because of the “every book literally looks the exact same” caption to the right. I’ve been bemoaning the fact that so many books are the same for the last couple of months. Roughly six months ago, I went back into my reading phase. At the time, the stuff seemed pretty original, but that was only because I hadn’t been reading fiction for a while. After I began to realize that things were very similar, I signed up for KU. There’s no point in wasting money when you aren’t sure if you’ll get past the first two chapters of a book because “it’s been done before”. I know I could buy and return, but I would rather read the book through the KU platform. At least, the authors will get paid for the pages I did read.

I do not read what’s popular. I have found that most of the popular books are pretty much the same. As Susannah mentioned in the video, the publishers want a certain kind of book, and yes, if an author wants to publish with them, they will follow through on that. Publishers are looking at their bottom line. It’s not about putting out a great story that people will remember for years to come; it’s about how much the book will make when it’s released. But the “sameness” is not restricted to authors who have publishers. It’s in the indie writing community, too.

The indie writing community (what most of these authors really want):

I hate to say it because growing up with a love for reading that evolved into a love for writing, the cold hard truth is that most indie writers want money. That’s probably not a surprise. I do believe writers should be paid. I’m not saying they should write for free, though if they choose to, that’s fine. My problem is when the money becomes more important than the stories. That sixth grade girl who picked up the first book that made her fall in love with reading is still inside of me. That sixth grade girl doesn’t want to see books brought down to the level of “it’s only worth writing if it’ll make me a lot of money”.

And as a writer, I have to keep myself in check as well. I’m just as guilty of leaning in this direction. I have also gotten caught up in this whole thing. The self-publishing gold rush was good in some ways. I love how it made easy for an indie writer to get a good looking cover with a good looking interior file to go with it. I love that it opened doors to indies to publish the books without the need of a publisher. That paved the way to writing stuff that most interested us. We didn’t have to chase after what’s popular. We could be unique. If we wanted to write something that didn’t fit into a box, we could. I’m telling you, even today, you won’t find a Christian publisher taking on a spicy romance with characters who have a Christian worldview. You also won’t find horror romance anywhere. It has to be dark romance, which is not exactly the kind of thing I am writing under my pen name. My pen name is also not exactly a paranormal or urban fantasy (though I’ll probably have to place it in those categories because there is no “horror romance” category on any retailer at the time I’m writing this). I do not fit into a box.

And after watching this video, I have come to appreciate this so much more about myself. My problem is that I got caught up with the money side of things, and that made me lose the perspective I had back in 2009 when I started publishing ebooks. It was never about the money. It was all about the fun to read my books on my Kindle when I took my kids to the park. That was it.

But I can’t be critical of indie authors. I understand their plight. Bills need to be paid. I get that. My sympathies are all for them. I think there is a toxic element that has slipped into the writing community, and that is based on the fact that it is hard to get noticed. Like, really hard. It was easy back when I started. Hence, the “gold rush” of the self-publishing days. We are no longer there. That ship has sailed.

So then what? We find ourselves resorting to doing what is popular. We start following what the bestselling authors are doing. We imitate them to signal that our books are like those authors’ books. Meaning if the readers enjoyed that big-time selling author, then the readers will enjoy our books, too. It’s the same mindset of a publisher, just on a smaller scale because we’re a one-man business. We go into groups and discuss strategies to better reach out to readers. I hate to say it, but I have talked to a few authors who have found that if they hire a ghostwriter on the cheap and only give the story one read through to “clean it up just enough to pass”, they make really good money because they can do this fast. (One author even said that KU readers aren’t picky because they aren’t buying the books. They’ll just read and return. So she stopped “wasting time” on editing. She made more money by getting books out faster.) Speed is the name of the game for some. That’s why so much happens in lightning speed. This is why I am finding that authors are starting to talk about using AI to do the bulk of the writing for them. Retailers, especially Amazon, rewards speed. Special boost is given to authors who can produce fast. If you can get that boost at a retailer, then more readers will stumble across your books, and the more readers you can get to stumble across your books, the more likely you are to sell those books.

There’s also this “pay to play” angle that is spoken about in the writing community. A few authors have also told me that if you want to get noticed, you have to spend money on ads. One even said that, depending on your genre, if you don’t have a thousand or more dollars to put into Amazon ads every month, then don’t even bother with placing those ads. I stay away from Amazon ads for this reason. But for authors who can pay good money into ads, they do say it works out great. So yeah, if you have enough money, you can gain visibility on the retailer platforms. To do so organically, however, is an uphill battle. Not impossible. Nothing is impossible. But you will have to struggle more.

So yeah, things are pretty much the same, or at least similar to everything else. I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve picked certain plot points and tropes that were popular in hopes that it would get me more money. That actually worked like a charm back in 2014-2015. This was at the peak of my telling other authors to write to market. The problem is that if you are writing to market (and you are not passionate about that market), it burns you out in the long run. Writing to market is not a sustainable way to write.

Anyway, I am very grateful to Susannah. I’ll be rewatching that video in the future as I bring myself back into alignment for why I fell in love with writing. I do think it all starts with falling in love with reading again. I have been slowly falling in love with reading as I discover more authors who are taking a more creative and unique approach to their stories. I steer clear of anything that comes off as “the same”. I think that for writers who have lost their way, like I have, falling back in love with reading books is a good place to start. It’s therapeutic. Thank God the indie world is big enough where there are authors who are writing outside the box. I think it takes time to find the way back to writing with that same freshness. But looking back, I didn’t start to write in the sixth grade. I started writing in high school. So it takes time.

I want to leave this post with a final thought on a way to reach readers:

As a reader, I really like BookDoggy and Bargain Booksy to find new authors. It’s hard to find these authors through a search in the retailer’s store. Even if you put in the keywords for what you’re looking for, you end up with mostly the same books popping up in the search. It’s been very disappointing. Even Amazon (a retailer who innovates very well) is filling up search pages with sponsored ads, and half the time, those ads have nothing to do with the search I’m doing. So I rely on BookDoggy and Bargain Booksy to find new authors. What I like most about these sites is that they cover a variety of genres in the same email. You never know if a thriller reader might want to explore something different and pick up a romance. That happened to me back in 2007. I would have written and published a lot of thrillers if I hadn’t stumbled upon a romance book back in 2007 that made me excited about romance. I was in the process of writing thrillers in my notebook before the self-publishing boom hit. When it hit, I was in my romance phase. I only share that story to show why you might reach someone unexpected.