I gotta say, modern traditional publishing boiling down to “hope someone takes it viral on TikTok” or “immediately fades into obscurity” makes it difficult to find the energy/motivation to work on a debut novel that’s as likely to tank your career as launch it into something sustainable.
At a reading a few weeks ago someone asked about my next book and I said, "My *next* book is going to be a self-published omnibus of a series the old publisher didn't finish," and the person said, "I'm surprised you'd go backwards like that." I replied, "I don't see it that way. I regained control."
FWIW in my experience it's not quite this dire; authors are still making careers through the midlist. Not a lot of money there, but it is *possible* to keep publishing books and building increasing sales. I've helped people do it.
This is truly an era where you have to just write for yourself first and foremost.
One of the BIG turn-offs for me on a book is how heavily it's marketed, and the sheer effort put into same. The TikTok sensation is a sure-fire way of making me not care at all. Especially if there's a paragraph of marketing blurb before you get NEAR "what the book is about."
One thing that helps is what I consider the Evangelion mindset: the book in my head is different from the one in yours. Nothing said about the words on the page can diminish my relationship to it, which is as singular as the reader’s. It will still be there for someone when they most need it.
Yeah.... This really hits me. I moved away from writing novels on Amazon and into visual novel territory because, between writing books that kinda fell into obscurity, I wrote a VN prototype that caught on. That alone caused me to pivot entirely from art form to another. It's that important
Write for yourself, not for fame ...As much admit sucks to say you can work and write a novel, success is always been a slim chance it wasn't TikTok's fault
I’ve been around the industry for a long time, and have a good WIP novel manuscript—and even so, the idea of taking that shot when the stakes are so binary and consequential is paralyzing. I can’t even imagine being a debut writer without these opportunities that most first time writers don’t have.
You will make far more money making content on Tiktok than writing a book. As far as I know people do not become full time writers anymore (doesn't pay enough) but some are successful content creators who write books