Patience

Patience: The Modern Author’s Lost Virtue

The different qualities successful indie authors usually have: they’re great writers, entrepreneurial-minded, good at marketing, etc. But here’s one quality only a select few possess: patience.

The rise of self-publishing has brought with it the decline of this all-important virtue. There always seems to be a rush—to write, get the next book out, and sell it. We’re in the pre-ordering, pre-promoting, pre-emptive stage of publishing.

Even established writers are ruled by the clock. Why is this “race” so characteristic of self-publishing? Well, first, because indie authors are in charge of all the work—including how quickly pages go to print (concretely or digitally). A book’s release’s pace used to be determined by a publishing house; indies don’t face that controlling force.

The second big reason is financial. Self-publishing authors don’t get advances. They can only earn money when the book is out and selling. A sense of urgency is a foregone conclusion, until you realize that your first book won’t sell as well as you hoped (gaining market traction is no quick or easy task). So you feel an even greater sense of urgency to churn out book #2…and #3…and so on and so forth.

This can be perfectly fine and even prove advantageous but can easily ruin all your hard work: with urgency comes precipitation. What’s precipitation? Well, it can be whomever ordering several thousand print copies of her first non-fiction book before knowing how to market it, for example. Or in most less-extreme cases, releasing a first book that hasn’t been copy edited or proofread—or one full of formatting issues.

When you enter the self-publishing race and produce content at a fast pace, you can miss out on great opportunities. Marketing opportunities. Sitting on finished work. By “flooding” Amazon all at once with your work, you dramatically increase your exposure; your books get linked to each other, “every sale leading to recommendations for 4 or 5 more of your works”, and readers looking for content see your name everywhere.

Sure, this means your readers must wait longer for your next book. Still, suppose they’re already your readers. In that case, the only thing you’re creating is anticipation and suspense (just as you should have done in your narrative)!