Should you quit self-publishing? Quit if you cannot give it some time every day. Stay if you can keep improving a little each day, because that combination is what pays off. I nearly quit after one year, so below is why I almost did, what changed it, and how to decide for yourself.
Why do so many authors think about quitting after the first book?
Because expectations are higher than reality. When your first book goes on the market it is exciting, and many authors I coach expect to make a lot of money and be contacted by lots of readers. That is very hard to achieve with a first book. You can get lucky, but generally it doesn’t happen.
Then you ask where the sales are, and many people are so demotivated they wonder if they have failed. Maybe the instructions you found were so confusing that you never got the book on the market at all. Whatever the case, you are wondering if it is time to quit. This is what I want to help you decide.
What happened when I nearly quit?
After only one year of self-publishing I was making a sale here and there, and I thought it wasn’t working. Like many people I found the book would not sell itself. So I looked for something else online and paid $40 for a course on trading foreign exchange, focused on the Mexican peso.
The idea was to buy at a floor and sell at a ceiling. But after I watched the teacher draw a hundred lines on the chart, with a new ceiling or floor whenever the price went somewhere else, I realised he was just guessing. That demotivated me, and I quit that too.
What I did next was get proper training in self-publishing. Without good training and coaching it is very hard to win. You could keep going and keep losing until you crack the code alone, but learning from someone who has done it is much easier. My sales jumped because I had not been optimising my books or doing marketing correctly. I had just lacked information.
Since then, 230 books later, I am still making profits using those strategies. Forex is a lot more guessing, and I know some people do very well at it. Self-publishing is very consistent and the rules are not too complicated when they are explained simply, which is what this blog is for.
Should I quit self-publishing?
Quit if you don’t have time to invest every day. Hoping for the best, or starting a bit here and there, means the book never comes out. Five minutes a day is enough to start, and half an hour to an hour is better. As you start to see sales, your motivation grows. If you can’t find that time, quitting is the honest choice.
Do not quit if you can stay motivated. Most authors who earn a full-time income from books have a large catalog. There are authors who do well with one book, but for the most part it takes a number of books on the market. For context, the Alliance of Independent Authors’ survey of authors who spend over half their working time on writing and publishing found a median income of US$12,749 for 2022 (ALLi, 2023). That is a survey of committed authors, not every self-publisher, so use it as a guide and not a promise.
Each book you publish teaches you more, and you can go back and optimise earlier books and lift their sales too. If you want to know what a first-time book can earn, see How Much Can You Make Self Publishing On Kindle?
How do I keep going?
Use continuous improvement. Try something and see whether it worked. If it did, do more of it. If it did not, ask why. Ask other authors, or ask me. Small improvements can have huge impacts, and so it is about small steady improvements every day plus the habit of investing time. An author who adds accountability finds this easier: Why You Need Accountability For Self-Publishing.
Continuous improvement together with time every day is the winning combination. You may ignore this and quit, which is okay if you really don’t have the time. If you do, you can feel what real sales feel like.
Are you close to quitting? Before you do, book a free 25-minute discovery call with me. We will look at where you are stuck and what your next step should be.
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