Maybe YOU Are The Person Who Needs To Change

 There's that old expression that says if it's not broken don't fix it. However there's also another thought that says if something's not working for you then maybe you need to do something to change it. Too often I find that authors are stuck in a rut when it comes to their writing. Whether it's their stories not selling or they're getting a ton of rejections, things are just not going the way that they want them to go. So what do they do?

Too often they do absolutely nothing.

I don't know how many times I have talked to authors at conferences where they will complain about how trying everything they can to an editor to pay attention to them or increase sales but then when I ask them what they're doing or if they're changing what they're doing their answers are often “Well you know that it just takes time.” There is this belief that if they just keep doing what they are doing, it will eventually work in their favor. Maybe. Maybe not!

Now, don't get me wrong. I say this over and over again here on the blog that writing is a matter of taking time to get things right and to learn the craft. This is a business that cannot be rushed. And yes there are going to be a lot of rejections ahead of you; however, if you keep getting the same answer over and over and over again maybe someone is telling you something and you need to start to listen.

I remember sitting at a conference talking to an author and we were discussing her sales. She noted that the stories she likes to write are stories that are currently not on the market right now. Of course, these were the stories of her heart she loved to write these stories. She also stated that wasn't going to change this because she'd been told repeatedly you should write what you love. I agreed with her. But then I asked her “What is your ultimate goal are you just wanting to write just for the joy or are you wanting it and money out of this as a career?” She said she wanted to make money out of selling her books. So here is her dilemma: she needs to decide what she needs to do.

She has two options now she could either continue writing the stories of her heart and not make money or she could make changes in her writing while at the same time, sticking true to her own voice and making some small changes and make that will sell. We talked about it for 15 or 20 some odd minutes, and she would continually come back and same thing. She really believed it was a matter of how she was marketing the books and all she had to do was to “find the audience” even though she would come back to state that the current market wasn’t buying her books and the audience was not there. What was even frustrating is that she has a bachelor's degree in marketing so she should know what she should be doing here.

You have to begin by saying to yourself what is it that you want and what are you doing to get it? If you want to make a career out of writing your books and the current genre you are writing in is not selling it is not a matter of just trying to find an audience that doesn't exist. It comes down to having decide how you can shape or shift your genre or even your writing to fit what the market is looking for.

I know that a lot of you are starting to scream at me and say “Scott, I don't we slave this market.  This is my writing and someone shouldn't be telling me what I should write and what I shouldn't write!” Here's something I'm not telling you to what I am saying you can still write any story you want may have to make some changes if your goal is to make money as a career.