Windows of opportunity closing for authors

This post is for new, wanna be authors who haven't published yet.

While I was having my coffee this morning, I responded to a thread in an author group about a new structure of audio deal where the narrator and the author both get a share of royalties, but the author also pays the narrator X$ prior to the book launching.

Anyway, this is a portion of what I'd written.  If you are thinking about publishing your first book, I suggest you do it soon.

Lots of people have found out how to make money with publishing, and it's just getting easier to do with time.  There are more tools, more deal structures, and fewer barriers.

My post is below:

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I'm going to take this time to tell all the wannabe authors who haven't released anything yet to get off your asses and put something out. Windows of opportunity are closing.

Let me explain.

I personally dislike deals and publishing options getting easier across the board. The sorts of deals we are talking about in this thread, which basically make it cheaper and more likely for a newb to get an audio book is part of what worries me.

Why? (you might ask)

Because the more audio books there are, the less individual audio books that are not already part of a lucrative series are likely to make.

Consider ebooks. 7-10 years ago, before my time, all you had to do was make some shitty e-book with crappy cover art with a decent story and you could clean up. Some authors built massive empires based on being first. Then KU happened, and authors made fuck tons of money on KU (for a while).  All of that has changed.

Hell, a large reason I've been able to go full time is because I was one of the first authors to GameLit. This is a reality. I've stared into the abyss. I'm not special.  

I'm not bagging on myself, I believe in myself and my stories, but a heck of a lot fewer people would have tried my books to begin with (especially with the lame cover art on my first book before it was fixed) if I'd launched at the same time as 1000 other new authors.

There are still a few stand out successes for new authors, but unless someone is already established, it's getting harder and harder to make any kind of income, much less a career out of writing.

We can kind of see the same phenomenon on Youtube with ASMR videos. The first handful of creators made a ton and they still make a great living. But everyone and their sister realized that all you need to make those videos is an iPhone and a mic from Amazon, so there are a gagillion ASMR creators on Youtube now with like... 100 views per video. Breaking into that market that used to be easy to find success in is super, super difficult now.

Audio books have been very lucrative for a lot of people. It's why we could justify paying the PFH fees for great narrators, and even bear the fucked up 60% off the top that Audible takes (or more if you're not exclusive).

But the reality is that readers have finite time, and audio books take much longer to consume than print books for most people. If the consumer is using credits that they get per month, there is a fixed number of audio books they can "buy," too.

Audible seems to want to roll out an equivalent of Kindle Unlimited for audio books...which just like KU, would flood the market and de-value everyone's individual work.

And just like Youtube, the handful of people who have already found success will hang onto their fans, might even grow, but if you're just starting, the pickings will be meager.

Especially after the terrible year that most authors had during 2020, people are going to be working hard to come back, if not this year then next year.

So I repeat:

If you are a new, wannabe author, get your ass in gear, finish your story, and publish it. Even if you don't do awesome on your first book, start building your brand. The gates are closing.

Lots of people in the author communities on social media, like Twitter (most of whom don't sell anything) will fucking dogpile anyone for saying that authors are all each other's competition, but I think they're focused on attitudes, not logistics. Logistically, the majority of readers have finite resources, like time.

And we all need readers to pick up our books within the first month of release, not the first year.

The more authors are producing, the less likely we are to get that algorithm moving.

So once you publish your books, it's poisonous to the soul to see other authors as enemies. They're just storytellers like you/us. But we're also all only as good as our next book.

And even if you have an audience and put out fun books, 2020's can still happen.

...better work, bitch. (talking to myself, too)