The hyperfocus struggle is real. I'm glad you've been able to realise what does and doesn't work for you though, I know that doesn't suddenly make it easy but I've certainly been helped by holding myself to more realistic standards
I always find the “more books than you could possibly read” angle funny because who’s trying to read ALL the books? While I understand the whole saturated market concept, most people are browsing in specific genre(s) looking for stuff that meshes with their personal interests. They were never gonna read like 98% of books anyways.
I suppose they’re harking back to when a, say, portal fantasy fan would read every portal fantasy released because there were so few. Whereas now they get to look through a long list and buy based on blurbs, secondary tags, reviews/recommendations, etc. There are ~options~. Which is exciting!
And I feel like it’s better to be an author in an environment where people are browsing and searching than when you know how many people are going to buy regardless of actually enjoying *your* book? That puts massive pressure on you to conform to the median and try to please a wide spread, whereas now you can do niche/specific stuff suiting *your* interests and then go find readers who match.
Apologies, kinda rambling here. I’d be interested to see what your campaign planning looks like, I’m putting together a fundraiser for editing costs in the summer so deeply curious how people are approaching this stuff. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts. I know exactly what you mean... No one aspires to read every book 🤣 so true.
I'm sure you're already researching Kickstarter but two resources I've very much dug into are Joanna Penn's approach and Russell Nohelty who publishes on here as The Author Stack.
Right? I wish the conversation was more “WOOHOO, no matter what kind of book you like, you’ll never lack for options! Let’s make sure everyone can find the stuff they like!” rather than griping about some arbitrary book limit. Because curation, registries, etc are absolutely more important now and haven’t always kept up.
Don’t think I’d seen Joanna Penn, I’ll check her out. Thanks for the rec.
The hyperfocus struggle is real. I'm glad you've been able to realise what does and doesn't work for you though, I know that doesn't suddenly make it easy but I've certainly been helped by holding myself to more realistic standards
It definitely doesn't make it easy, that's so true!
I always find the “more books than you could possibly read” angle funny because who’s trying to read ALL the books? While I understand the whole saturated market concept, most people are browsing in specific genre(s) looking for stuff that meshes with their personal interests. They were never gonna read like 98% of books anyways.
I suppose they’re harking back to when a, say, portal fantasy fan would read every portal fantasy released because there were so few. Whereas now they get to look through a long list and buy based on blurbs, secondary tags, reviews/recommendations, etc. There are ~options~. Which is exciting!
And I feel like it’s better to be an author in an environment where people are browsing and searching than when you know how many people are going to buy regardless of actually enjoying *your* book? That puts massive pressure on you to conform to the median and try to please a wide spread, whereas now you can do niche/specific stuff suiting *your* interests and then go find readers who match.
Apologies, kinda rambling here. I’d be interested to see what your campaign planning looks like, I’m putting together a fundraiser for editing costs in the summer so deeply curious how people are approaching this stuff. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts. I know exactly what you mean... No one aspires to read every book 🤣 so true.
I'm sure you're already researching Kickstarter but two resources I've very much dug into are Joanna Penn's approach and Russell Nohelty who publishes on here as The Author Stack.
Right? I wish the conversation was more “WOOHOO, no matter what kind of book you like, you’ll never lack for options! Let’s make sure everyone can find the stuff they like!” rather than griping about some arbitrary book limit. Because curation, registries, etc are absolutely more important now and haven’t always kept up.
Don’t think I’d seen Joanna Penn, I’ll check her out. Thanks for the rec.