Reclaiming My Joy
Since I began publishing, I’ve tried to be pretty Zen in my approach to being an author. I’ve tried not to put too much pressure on myself, to just let the chips fall where they may. Recently, I’ve taken the final step in that journey, which is completely letting go of my ego.
That means admitting to myself that I will always be a bottom-tier author.
Not everyone can be a bestseller. Or even a mid-tier author. Someone has to be on the bottom. There’s no shame in that. It’s okay if I have little or no sales. It’s okay if I’m never in bookstores or libraries. It’s okay if I never win any awards.
When I started doing this, it wasn’t for money. I’m gainfully employed. I started doing this because I like storytelling. I wanted to share my stories.
Lately, though, it hasn’t been very fun.
Publishing, whether traditional or indie, is a business. It turns art into a commodity, and pushes people through a pipeline filled with marketing and sales goals and dashboards and a whole bunch of other things that really suck the joy out of everything.
When everything is turned into a metric, it’s easy to feel like a failure. It’s easy to see how many books other people sell and think, “I guess my writing sucks.” It’s easy to look at how much other authors make and want that. After all, every author dreams of being able to support themselves with their work.
But that isn’t why I’m doing this.
I don’t want to “create content” so I can market. I don’t want to beg people for reviews. I don’t want to figure out how to game the algorithms. I don’t want to set sales goals.
None of that has anything to do with storytelling.
That’s all about making money. It makes writing feel like some corporate bullshit. I’m tired of working in a system that tries to quantify joy. That isn’t how any of this is supposed to work.
So, I’m going to offer my work for free.
Because, again, the whole point of this was to share my stories. There’s no reason not to give them away if that’s the only thing that matters. To that end, I will offer free epubs and PDFs on this website starting in December. People can still purchase paperbacks or donate to my Buy Me a Coffee if they want to support me. But the expectation going forward is that there will be no more sales.
In the past, when I’ve toyed with this idea, someone invariably says something like, “Well I guess you don’t value your work!” Bullshit. Price isn’t an indicator of quality; price is a point of access. I refuse to believe that the only measure of value is payment rendered. Free things have value. And there are some things you can’t put a price on. Like the enjoyment I get from writing.
This is ultimately about freedom—the freedom to just write, without having to worry about the baggage that comes with publishing. It’s about opting out of a system that measures everything in dollars. A system that invites comparison and devalues originality. A system that wants everyone to follow specific rules and put everything in the same neat, little boxes.
If only one person reads something I wrote, I call that a success. Someday, if bigger opportunities come knocking, great. But I can’t spend my time and energy running through a maze, chasing things that never materialize for most people. I need to do what makes me happy, which is writing and sharing my stories.