Too Many Things To Count

Hey guys! Happy Tuesday, and welcome to Too Many Books to Count! Thanks for checking in on this sunny-but-supposed-to-be-cloudy day. At least, that's what it's doing where I am. I don’t know what the weather is in the rest of the world… it doesn’t generally occur to me to check things like that on a daily basis. 

Anyway, today I’m talking to you guys about something that you might have already noticed, especially if you’re on Amazon a lot and you buy a lot of kindle books. It’s also something you may not have thought much about, which is why I wanted to bring it to your attention.

Putting out too much product

Amazon practically forces authors to put out more than one book per year, which drastically reduces the quality of those books. Don’t try to deny it, if you’re an author who does this. You should know that those books are hurriedly written, not well edited, and could use some help. If you won’t admit that, then it’s probably time to take a good long look in the mirror.

See, with the way Amazon works, with the way Createspace and kindle work, authors basically have to be putting out masses of product every year, just to be seen. If you only have two or three books, then nobody cares about what you’ve written. At least, that’s what people will tell you—and that’s what Amazon will tell you, too.

Like I’ve been saying all month, Amazon is a company that works on sales. If you’re not selling product, then they don’t want to work with you. If you’re not making them money, then they don’t want to work with you.

The trouble with that, when it comes to writing, to novels, is that the two don’t work together very well.

Books take time to write. I can usually finish writing one in about six months, but I take a further two years to get it edited to the point that it’s ready to publish. That’s two and a half years before my books hit shelves. Two and a half years of prep before it gets in your hands. And a lot of big-name authors will take at least that amount of time as well.

Have you ever noticed that big-name authors maybe put out one book per year? If that?

That’s because they know readers would rather read something amazing than something mediocre, and that by putting out book after book after book, you’d be putting out increasingly mediocre work time and time again.

Why is it that people will always go back to authors like Stephen King and Orson Scott Card? It’s because they put out amazing works that we love, that we cannot get enough of.

When we read a mediocre book, there’s a slight chance that we’ll go back to that author again, yes, but it’s a near guarantee that we’ll get bored with it along the way. We will. Because that’s the way people are. We want to be amazed—we don’t want to be able to predict the ending. And when an author is putting out book after book after book, three to seven times a year, we get to where we know what you’re going to do in the end.

That’s not a good thing.

Amazon wants sales. That’s why they’re pushing authors to get more product out.

But the thing is, if you apply yourself to the marketing of one book a year (if that; many times one every other year is plenty), you’ll be able to accrue a higher amount of readers who love your work and can’t wait for the next one, rather than a high number of one-time readers, which is what you’re more likely to get by publishing multiple books a year.

Readers are smarter than you take them for.

If your work is mediocre, readers will notice it. Sure, you might get some decent reviews from people who don’t know any better, but those aren’t the readers you really want. Those are readers who don’t care, if I’m being honest.

We want true fans, readers who seek us out at every chance they get.

Those are really hard to come by, unless you’re publishing amazing work. And the only way you’ll be publishing amazing work is if you give yourself time to make it amazing.

It’s high time we stop letting Amazon control the way the publishing industry works. Too many authors are going with the flow, following the pattern Amazon sets for them. It’s time we break that chain and break the power of this company.

We don’t want to write mediocre. We want to write amazing.

That’s what readers want, too.

Why doesn’t Amazon see that?

Because they put money over product.

We can’t make the same mistake.

Thursday, I have an awesome guest post from the one and only Tammy Boehm, my fellow associate editor over at RAD Writing! Be sure to stop in and give it a read—you won’t be disappointed.

[love]

{Rani Divine}