Nenia Campbell's Blog, page 7
July 1, 2023
Connect with me off Goodreads <3
So as I've mentioned before, I have hit the follower cap and I can only add new friends when people unfriend me. And even though it sounds super cringe, I actually have a waitlist. If you sent me a FR and never heard back from me, that's why. It's not that I don't like you or don't want to be your friend. I can just only add a couple people at a time now.
If you would like to connect with me off of Goodreads, I would totally love that. I genuinely enjoy talking with people about books. Every time I start on a social media platform, I try to use it from a place of authenticity and fun. I don't believe in toxic positivity, but I do believe in trying to leave the social media sites I use a better place than they were before I logged on. The anonymity of social media apps can make it way too easy to be judgmental or mean to people and I really try very hard not to do that.
Here is where you can find me elsewhere on the interwebs:
Reddit: neniacampbell
TikTok: neniacampbell
Instagram: alwaysbeebooked
I also have a Facebook fanpage (but this is solely for my published work so I wouldn't recommend following unless you're a reader): https://www.facebook.com/aficionenias/
Also, something to keep in mind: on all of my platforms, I sometimes self-promote. I promote more when I have a book coming out or I'm doing a sale. I don't have a street team or a PR team or anything like that. The only person who promotes me is me (bar the amazing people who review my books <3). I love reading and blogging about other people's books and most of my content is about that, and I do it gladly-- for FREE. But sometimes I've gotta hustle. Every time I'm promoting one of my books, I lose friends, which used to make me sad but now I understand that it just is the way it is. It's the price of befriending an author. You're gonna see book ads in your feed sometimes.
If you follow me, make sure you send me a message telling me who you are so I can add you back. Also, I would REALLY, REALLY prefer that people who are under eighteen not add me because my published books are for adults and I tend to read a lot of erotica. I'm also old enough to be your mom and I don't want to see you gushing about HAUNTING ADELINE and Zade Meadows on my feed any more than your mom does.*
*Don't make me tell your mom what you've been up to at our next wine girly night, bestie**
**JK, I'm not a narc but also seriously don't
If you would like to connect with me off of Goodreads, I would totally love that. I genuinely enjoy talking with people about books. Every time I start on a social media platform, I try to use it from a place of authenticity and fun. I don't believe in toxic positivity, but I do believe in trying to leave the social media sites I use a better place than they were before I logged on. The anonymity of social media apps can make it way too easy to be judgmental or mean to people and I really try very hard not to do that.
Here is where you can find me elsewhere on the interwebs:
Reddit: neniacampbell
TikTok: neniacampbell
Instagram: alwaysbeebooked
I also have a Facebook fanpage (but this is solely for my published work so I wouldn't recommend following unless you're a reader): https://www.facebook.com/aficionenias/
Also, something to keep in mind: on all of my platforms, I sometimes self-promote. I promote more when I have a book coming out or I'm doing a sale. I don't have a street team or a PR team or anything like that. The only person who promotes me is me (bar the amazing people who review my books <3). I love reading and blogging about other people's books and most of my content is about that, and I do it gladly-- for FREE. But sometimes I've gotta hustle. Every time I'm promoting one of my books, I lose friends, which used to make me sad but now I understand that it just is the way it is. It's the price of befriending an author. You're gonna see book ads in your feed sometimes.
If you follow me, make sure you send me a message telling me who you are so I can add you back. Also, I would REALLY, REALLY prefer that people who are under eighteen not add me because my published books are for adults and I tend to read a lot of erotica. I'm also old enough to be your mom and I don't want to see you gushing about HAUNTING ADELINE and Zade Meadows on my feed any more than your mom does.*
*Don't make me tell your mom what you've been up to at our next wine girly night, bestie**
**JK, I'm not a narc but also seriously don't
June 22, 2023
Thank you so much for giving RAISE THE BLOOD such an awesome release day!
Thank you all so much for buying copies of RAISE THE BLOOD on its release day. I worked so hard on this book and it makes me so happy to see so many people getting excited about it. This book was very personal to me because I wrote it based on memories of going to the Sierras as a kid. It's beautiful up there and I was always so fascinated by the mining and logging towns that stud the foothills. Obviously, being who I am, I had to make those memories creepy. Hehe.
Also, the heroine has the food sensitivity that I do. I haven't seen a lot of food sensitivity rep in romance apart from Celiac's (which is an autoimmune disease) and peanut/shellfish allergies and it's something that I live with every day. My hope is that someone will read this and feel seen or maybe even realize that they have this sensitivity too. Identifying mine led to one of the largest changes in my quality of life.
Anyway, if you haven't read it yet but would like to, you can get it here! It's on Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8TQDCDD
Again, thank you so much for buying this book. You're why I do what I do. As much as I love telling stories for myself, it's way more fun not doing so in a vacuum.
I am so, so lucky to have the audience that I do and I want you to know that I treasure you every day.
Thank you. ♥
Also, the heroine has the food sensitivity that I do. I haven't seen a lot of food sensitivity rep in romance apart from Celiac's (which is an autoimmune disease) and peanut/shellfish allergies and it's something that I live with every day. My hope is that someone will read this and feel seen or maybe even realize that they have this sensitivity too. Identifying mine led to one of the largest changes in my quality of life.
Anyway, if you haven't read it yet but would like to, you can get it here! It's on Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8TQDCDD
Again, thank you so much for buying this book. You're why I do what I do. As much as I love telling stories for myself, it's way more fun not doing so in a vacuum.
I am so, so lucky to have the audience that I do and I want you to know that I treasure you every day.
Thank you. ♥
June 21, 2023
RAISE THE BLOOD is LIVE!
You can finally buy my new book, RAISE THE BLOOD!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8TQDCDD
It's a dark gothic gothic romance and contains triggers for dub-con and attempted assault. Also, the family the heroine's sister marries into are all hunters, so if that puts you off, exercise caution.
I am so excited that it's finally done and look forward to seeing what you think of it!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8TQDCDD
It's a dark gothic gothic romance and contains triggers for dub-con and attempted assault. Also, the family the heroine's sister marries into are all hunters, so if that puts you off, exercise caution.
I am so excited that it's finally done and look forward to seeing what you think of it!
June 20, 2023
Stop packaging women's trauma memoirs as "funny"
This is going to be a short rant but I seriously don't understand why books like I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED, CRYING IN H MART, and GLASS CASTLE are advertised with blurbs like "humorous" or "funny."
And if you think I'm joking, I am not. Often it's in, like, official blurbs for the books.
Who the f*ck is laughing at these books? Because I didn't find them very funny. I found them good, but not funny. I didn't really get the impression that they were written to be funny.
You know who writes about trauma in a way that's intended to be funny? Samantha Irby and David Sedaris.
These authors? Really not so much.
I feel like women's trauma memoirs are often packaged in a way where their pain is supposed to be humorous. I'm not sure if the authors cosigned on that. If that was their intent, okay. Fair enough. But if it wasn't and this was a marketing choice, I think that says a lot about how we view women's suffering, and how we consume the works that come out of that suffering.
And if you think I'm joking, I am not. Often it's in, like, official blurbs for the books.
Who the f*ck is laughing at these books? Because I didn't find them very funny. I found them good, but not funny. I didn't really get the impression that they were written to be funny.
You know who writes about trauma in a way that's intended to be funny? Samantha Irby and David Sedaris.
These authors? Really not so much.
I feel like women's trauma memoirs are often packaged in a way where their pain is supposed to be humorous. I'm not sure if the authors cosigned on that. If that was their intent, okay. Fair enough. But if it wasn't and this was a marketing choice, I think that says a lot about how we view women's suffering, and how we consume the works that come out of that suffering.
June 16, 2023
My follow count scares me
So I got tired of using this author blog just to self-promote and I thought I'd use it to write little short form essays about some book or book-adjacent topics that are important to me. Last time, I wrote an essay that was a defense for dark romance books and dark romance readers, and how policing what girls and women read is so not feminist actually. Today, I'll be writing about followers and numbers and how that affects how I think about myself and my reviews. If people are interested, I have more essays planned on oversharing and how we consume women's trauma memoirs.
I actually signed up for this website in the aughts, before it was purchased by Amazon. I was just out of my teens and had no followers. None of my friends used this website. At first I didn't even write any reviews, I just stalked what other people wrote and quietly shelved and rated my books for my own records. Eventually I started writing reviews of my own and started making friends with people. I'm STILL friends with some of those people I met in those early years and that is very awesome and exciting and makes me happy. I truly feel so much gratitude for some of the relationships and friendships I have built through this site.
When you don't really have much of a following, I think it's easy not to see the consequences of your actions because there isn't really a ripple effect. In a way, it feels deceptively freeing, because you basically exist in your own little privileged echo chamber. But that feeling of ignorance can also cushion you from understanding your privilege and the potential for harm that badly worded reviews can have. It wasn't until after my follow count started growing that I began to really critically think about things like using inclusive and unbiased language, or not sounding totally hateful when writing a review for a book that really made me angry, or the importance of reading and supporting authors who are marginalized even--especially-- if seeking them out might take effort on my part. A quick Google search or browsing through Goodreads's Listopia feature can yield all kinds of crowd-sourced curation on all kinds of marginalized authors and content creators.
As my follow count continues to grow, I sometimes find myself thinking more about how my words will be perceived than how I felt about whatever I'm writing about. And while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, because people with privilege should think about how they wield that privilege and how it can affect others and also how they can potentially use it to elevate those who have less or none, I do sometimes find myself feeling pretty bewildered and exhausted by how I got to this current place. Since books are so intensely personal, people looking at your virtual shelves or book reviews sometimes feel like they know you (I have another essay planned about this subject as well), and that sense of familiarity can cause people to feel entitled to make blanket statements about who you are and what you stand for-- which are oftentimes incorrect. I'm not talking about genuinely problematic behavior that deserves to be called out (or in), either, but sentiments like, "You must be a bad person if you didn't like this book" or "Only someone totally stupid would think this or that." And honestly? Unless whatever they're saying is truly harmful, 99% of the time, it's not worth the trouble to refute it. Part of the reason I turned my comments off was because I just got so tired of devoting my mental energy to people who wanted to come into my comments section to insult me. I'm just trying to live my life, my dudes. Just like you.
People often ask me how I got to my follow count and I can usually tell them honestly that part of it was trying to be authentic and honest while also actively making an effort not to be a dick, but the rest of it is luck-- and, yes, privilege. I actually deleted all of the reviews I wrote from when I was in my teens/early twenties because I felt like they didn't really represent who I was as a person anymore, and a lot of them read as very angry and negative. One of my biggest regrets on this site is for all the times I allowed even a little of that to seep into how I interacted with some people on here. It's not an excuse but an acknowledgement that I'm not perfect and I'm always trying to do better. More visibility made me really think about the net effects of my actions as a content creator; it's caused me to read more diversely and to try to behave more compassionately. It's also taught me that it's okay to step back when I don't have the cognitive bandwidth to deal with people anymore online, and that deleting a review can sometimes say even more than writing it did in the first place.
But sometimes, when I look at my numbers, it really does freak me out. It often doesn't feel real, and when I think about it too hard, I feel unworthy or undeserving. Because even though I work hard on my reviews, so do a lot of other people-- people who might work twice as hard and have half or fewer people looking at what they write-- and I understand that a lot of what I have now is because I was lucky. I'm grateful for that, but having that knowledge does sometimes make me feel like a fraud. At the end of the day, all I can do is try to be the best person I can be, support other creators, and remember why I joined this site in the first place: because I was so fucking bored in my college stats class and wanted to connect with other readers.
I actually signed up for this website in the aughts, before it was purchased by Amazon. I was just out of my teens and had no followers. None of my friends used this website. At first I didn't even write any reviews, I just stalked what other people wrote and quietly shelved and rated my books for my own records. Eventually I started writing reviews of my own and started making friends with people. I'm STILL friends with some of those people I met in those early years and that is very awesome and exciting and makes me happy. I truly feel so much gratitude for some of the relationships and friendships I have built through this site.
When you don't really have much of a following, I think it's easy not to see the consequences of your actions because there isn't really a ripple effect. In a way, it feels deceptively freeing, because you basically exist in your own little privileged echo chamber. But that feeling of ignorance can also cushion you from understanding your privilege and the potential for harm that badly worded reviews can have. It wasn't until after my follow count started growing that I began to really critically think about things like using inclusive and unbiased language, or not sounding totally hateful when writing a review for a book that really made me angry, or the importance of reading and supporting authors who are marginalized even--especially-- if seeking them out might take effort on my part. A quick Google search or browsing through Goodreads's Listopia feature can yield all kinds of crowd-sourced curation on all kinds of marginalized authors and content creators.
As my follow count continues to grow, I sometimes find myself thinking more about how my words will be perceived than how I felt about whatever I'm writing about. And while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, because people with privilege should think about how they wield that privilege and how it can affect others and also how they can potentially use it to elevate those who have less or none, I do sometimes find myself feeling pretty bewildered and exhausted by how I got to this current place. Since books are so intensely personal, people looking at your virtual shelves or book reviews sometimes feel like they know you (I have another essay planned about this subject as well), and that sense of familiarity can cause people to feel entitled to make blanket statements about who you are and what you stand for-- which are oftentimes incorrect. I'm not talking about genuinely problematic behavior that deserves to be called out (or in), either, but sentiments like, "You must be a bad person if you didn't like this book" or "Only someone totally stupid would think this or that." And honestly? Unless whatever they're saying is truly harmful, 99% of the time, it's not worth the trouble to refute it. Part of the reason I turned my comments off was because I just got so tired of devoting my mental energy to people who wanted to come into my comments section to insult me. I'm just trying to live my life, my dudes. Just like you.
People often ask me how I got to my follow count and I can usually tell them honestly that part of it was trying to be authentic and honest while also actively making an effort not to be a dick, but the rest of it is luck-- and, yes, privilege. I actually deleted all of the reviews I wrote from when I was in my teens/early twenties because I felt like they didn't really represent who I was as a person anymore, and a lot of them read as very angry and negative. One of my biggest regrets on this site is for all the times I allowed even a little of that to seep into how I interacted with some people on here. It's not an excuse but an acknowledgement that I'm not perfect and I'm always trying to do better. More visibility made me really think about the net effects of my actions as a content creator; it's caused me to read more diversely and to try to behave more compassionately. It's also taught me that it's okay to step back when I don't have the cognitive bandwidth to deal with people anymore online, and that deleting a review can sometimes say even more than writing it did in the first place.
But sometimes, when I look at my numbers, it really does freak me out. It often doesn't feel real, and when I think about it too hard, I feel unworthy or undeserving. Because even though I work hard on my reviews, so do a lot of other people-- people who might work twice as hard and have half or fewer people looking at what they write-- and I understand that a lot of what I have now is because I was lucky. I'm grateful for that, but having that knowledge does sometimes make me feel like a fraud. At the end of the day, all I can do is try to be the best person I can be, support other creators, and remember why I joined this site in the first place: because I was so fucking bored in my college stats class and wanted to connect with other readers.
June 14, 2023
In defense of dark romance
I want to talk about something I've been noticing in the book community and it's how people who don't read dark romance tend to talk about and criticize dark romance.
Dark romance, if you didn't know, is a subgenre of romance that tends to explore "darker" themes: so it might have dub-con, or non-con, or morally ambiguous leads, or taboo relationships that maybe don't fit into the "lighter" archetypes of romances on the other end of the tonal spectrum.
There are a lot of valid criticism that can be-- and should be-- had with dark romance novels. Obviously, when people decide to tackle weightier subjects, there's some responsibility on behalf of the creator to handle those subjects well. Failing to do so doesn't necessarily make them a bad person (more on that), but it can lead to what is-- subjectively-- a bad book.
But what I've been seeing more and more is this sort of moral grandstanding: that people who read dark romance novels are being conditioned to fail at having healthy relationships because they are romanticizing "toxic" relationships that will lead to a failure to recognize potential red flags in romantic partners.
And I'm sorry, but WHAT?
The sad thing is, while I'm sure some of these critics mean well, what this sort of bad faith criticism actually demonstrates is internalized misogyny. It's shifting the blame, first of all, from abusive partners to the people who read these books and "set themselves up for failure." Which is a huge NO. Abusers cause abuse. Not the victims and certainly not the romance novels they read.
Second of all, romance as a genre is seen as the domain of women, queer, and femme-presenting people, so it's kind of sus that the burden of this "you are what you read" mentality would fall upon their shoulders. Nobody is checking up on the horror or thriller readers to see if reading all those books about vampires and dead bodies is conditioning them to be ghouls and murderers, so I fail to see why reading a dark romance novel would suddenly turn someone off the path of moral goodness.
Third of all, since when is it feminist to police what and how women and femme people read? If you're asking people how they can be feminist and read romance novels with dark themes, maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself: how can I call myself a feminist while denying people their agency?
Fourth of all, the act of reading demonstrates consent in the fullest. You pick up the books you choose to read and if it gets to be too much you can put it down. Also, unlike real life, characters in romance novels are guaranteed a happy ending, so unlike real life, there's comfort in knowing that the characters you're reading about can go through hell and back and still have a happily ever after.
It's very frustrating as someone who identifies as a feminist, who writes and reads these types of novels, to see the genre belittled by people who think they're doing some good but instead are contributing to the very societal infrastructures they're fighting against. I think this stems from a failure to understand that authors and readers can write and read about things that they don't endorse, and also from a sort of in-group bias that leads to people thinking that people who aren't exactly like them can't possibly share their values.
Romance, like feminism, comes in all kinds of flavors, and I think it's important to keep in mind that just because you personally don't like something, that doesn't necessarily make it immoral.*
*Otherwise, all motorcycle club romances would officially be illegal because I really can't stand that genre. :P
Dark romance, if you didn't know, is a subgenre of romance that tends to explore "darker" themes: so it might have dub-con, or non-con, or morally ambiguous leads, or taboo relationships that maybe don't fit into the "lighter" archetypes of romances on the other end of the tonal spectrum.
There are a lot of valid criticism that can be-- and should be-- had with dark romance novels. Obviously, when people decide to tackle weightier subjects, there's some responsibility on behalf of the creator to handle those subjects well. Failing to do so doesn't necessarily make them a bad person (more on that), but it can lead to what is-- subjectively-- a bad book.
But what I've been seeing more and more is this sort of moral grandstanding: that people who read dark romance novels are being conditioned to fail at having healthy relationships because they are romanticizing "toxic" relationships that will lead to a failure to recognize potential red flags in romantic partners.
And I'm sorry, but WHAT?
The sad thing is, while I'm sure some of these critics mean well, what this sort of bad faith criticism actually demonstrates is internalized misogyny. It's shifting the blame, first of all, from abusive partners to the people who read these books and "set themselves up for failure." Which is a huge NO. Abusers cause abuse. Not the victims and certainly not the romance novels they read.
Second of all, romance as a genre is seen as the domain of women, queer, and femme-presenting people, so it's kind of sus that the burden of this "you are what you read" mentality would fall upon their shoulders. Nobody is checking up on the horror or thriller readers to see if reading all those books about vampires and dead bodies is conditioning them to be ghouls and murderers, so I fail to see why reading a dark romance novel would suddenly turn someone off the path of moral goodness.
Third of all, since when is it feminist to police what and how women and femme people read? If you're asking people how they can be feminist and read romance novels with dark themes, maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself: how can I call myself a feminist while denying people their agency?
Fourth of all, the act of reading demonstrates consent in the fullest. You pick up the books you choose to read and if it gets to be too much you can put it down. Also, unlike real life, characters in romance novels are guaranteed a happy ending, so unlike real life, there's comfort in knowing that the characters you're reading about can go through hell and back and still have a happily ever after.
It's very frustrating as someone who identifies as a feminist, who writes and reads these types of novels, to see the genre belittled by people who think they're doing some good but instead are contributing to the very societal infrastructures they're fighting against. I think this stems from a failure to understand that authors and readers can write and read about things that they don't endorse, and also from a sort of in-group bias that leads to people thinking that people who aren't exactly like them can't possibly share their values.
Romance, like feminism, comes in all kinds of flavors, and I think it's important to keep in mind that just because you personally don't like something, that doesn't necessarily make it immoral.*
*Otherwise, all motorcycle club romances would officially be illegal because I really can't stand that genre. :P
June 13, 2023
I have a TikTok!
Some of you probably saw the status update I posted a little while ago but I have a TikTok now! And I've even made a couple videos (pls don't laugh at them-- I know they're awkward, I'm SORRRYYYY LOL).
If you would like to follow and/or become mutuals, my handle is @NeniaCampbell. As with my Instagram and Goodreads, I'll mostly be talking about other people's books but will be self-promoting occasionally. Also, if you check out today's TikTok (Tok?) you can see me yeet two books for telling me lies.
♥
If you would like to follow and/or become mutuals, my handle is @NeniaCampbell. As with my Instagram and Goodreads, I'll mostly be talking about other people's books but will be self-promoting occasionally. Also, if you check out today's TikTok (Tok?) you can see me yeet two books for telling me lies.
♥
June 9, 2023
Detraction Playlist!
Since I'm serializing this work, I decided to share the playlist now. The book is set in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and has period appropriate music for every timeline. :D
I hope you enjoy. ♥
1. Wailing Wall // David Bowie
2. A Horse with No Name // America
3. Us and Them // Pink Floyd
4. Rhiannon // Fleetwood Mac
5. Sullen Girl // Fiona Apple
6. I Like Chopin // Gazebo
7. Hunter // Dido
8. Mistral Wind // Heart
9. Harden My Heart // Quarterflash
10. Genesis Ch.1. V.32 // Alan Parsons Project
11. Twist in My Sobriety // Tanita Tikaram
I hope you enjoy. ♥
1. Wailing Wall // David Bowie
2. A Horse with No Name // America
3. Us and Them // Pink Floyd
4. Rhiannon // Fleetwood Mac
5. Sullen Girl // Fiona Apple
6. I Like Chopin // Gazebo
7. Hunter // Dido
8. Mistral Wind // Heart
9. Harden My Heart // Quarterflash
10. Genesis Ch.1. V.32 // Alan Parsons Project
11. Twist in My Sobriety // Tanita Tikaram
June 7, 2023
I made a Reddit community!
UPDATE: I've temporarily changed the group privacy from private to restricted and removed the 18+ banner temporarily because people couldn't join. I will likely change this back at some point soon but this change is so people can find the group and join.
Hellooooo. I know a lot of authors have Facebook groups but I'm not super into those, so I made a Reddit group instead! It is private and 18+. I am thinking it will be a fun space to talk about dark romances and I will also post author news in there and maybe other stuff!
If you would like to join please feel free to submit a request(? does it work like this in private groups?) or message me and let me know if you would like to join and I will add you!
https://www.reddit.com/r/neniacs/
Hellooooo. I know a lot of authors have Facebook groups but I'm not super into those, so I made a Reddit group instead! It is private and 18+. I am thinking it will be a fun space to talk about dark romances and I will also post author news in there and maybe other stuff!
If you would like to join please feel free to submit a request(? does it work like this in private groups?) or message me and let me know if you would like to join and I will add you!
https://www.reddit.com/r/neniacs/
June 4, 2023
The financial reality of publishing as an indie author
So I keep getting comments from people who either want to know why I don't publish full time or who tell me that they want to do what I do because it's aspirational, and since most authors are pretty secretive about what they make and some people consider me "successful" in the industry, I feel like it's important to be transparent about what I actually make. I'm not complaining or grieving about my money, FYI. This is purely to give some perspective on why I can't do what I do full time and why I and other authors get frustrated with the issues of piracy and being told that we're hot shots making bank who should be grateful for the free "publicity."
Minimum wage in California is $15.50 an hour. So for a full day's work, that would be about $124. I spend about four hours a day writing every evening after I get off work, which would be $62 a day at minimum wage. I do NOT make that, most days, FYI. On a typical day, if I'm doing well, I make $20-30. And that's a good day. But if we took that rate and broke it down to reflect the four hours a day of work I put in per day (on work weeks), that would be $5/ hour, which is less than 1/3 of what minimum wage would be in my state.
The average rent for apartments in my area is $1900 per month, and houses cost $784,000. (These are averages.) Granted, my state is one of the most expensive in the country, so I could move, but I also have a day job, so I can't just uplift myself and move. But writing does not make me a living wage where I live, and does not even reach minimum wage. It is a labor of love. I do it because I love it and I love the connections it brings me, and I love being able to tell stories and have a hobby that brings in additional income on top of what I make to support myself.
Again, this is not a complaint. This is a reality check. I get people who complain about the prices that I set or who tell me that I should be grateful when my books are pirated. And I understand that I exist in a place of privilege where libraries are somewhat common and ebooks are relatively cheap compared to cost of living and wages paid. But I am not "rich" from writing, and make less than what I would make cooking burgers or working retail (which I have done), and I know a lot of people on this site would like to write full time, who are still really young and trying to figure out careers, so this is my note to you urging you to have a backup plan or to set a reality check for yourself. I have been doing this for ten years, and have not broken the glass ceiling of "writing for a living" yet. Sometimes, I doubt I ever will. That's something I have accepted because I love writing, but it is still a point of frustration for me when people accuse me of asking for too much for my books or for not devoting enough time to my work when it comes to the rate at which I publish and deliver.
Most writers do not make much. I have looked up the figures and I am on the upper end of what most indie authors make. I remember reading some stats that say most indie authors sell fewer than 100 books a year. For most people, most of the time, writing is not a living wage. It might not even be enough to get taxed on for most people, which means they are making less than $600 per year. So I am just urging you to keep these figures in mind if you're considering writing full time or feeling annoyed about paying $3.99 for an ebook.
Minimum wage in California is $15.50 an hour. So for a full day's work, that would be about $124. I spend about four hours a day writing every evening after I get off work, which would be $62 a day at minimum wage. I do NOT make that, most days, FYI. On a typical day, if I'm doing well, I make $20-30. And that's a good day. But if we took that rate and broke it down to reflect the four hours a day of work I put in per day (on work weeks), that would be $5/ hour, which is less than 1/3 of what minimum wage would be in my state.
The average rent for apartments in my area is $1900 per month, and houses cost $784,000. (These are averages.) Granted, my state is one of the most expensive in the country, so I could move, but I also have a day job, so I can't just uplift myself and move. But writing does not make me a living wage where I live, and does not even reach minimum wage. It is a labor of love. I do it because I love it and I love the connections it brings me, and I love being able to tell stories and have a hobby that brings in additional income on top of what I make to support myself.
Again, this is not a complaint. This is a reality check. I get people who complain about the prices that I set or who tell me that I should be grateful when my books are pirated. And I understand that I exist in a place of privilege where libraries are somewhat common and ebooks are relatively cheap compared to cost of living and wages paid. But I am not "rich" from writing, and make less than what I would make cooking burgers or working retail (which I have done), and I know a lot of people on this site would like to write full time, who are still really young and trying to figure out careers, so this is my note to you urging you to have a backup plan or to set a reality check for yourself. I have been doing this for ten years, and have not broken the glass ceiling of "writing for a living" yet. Sometimes, I doubt I ever will. That's something I have accepted because I love writing, but it is still a point of frustration for me when people accuse me of asking for too much for my books or for not devoting enough time to my work when it comes to the rate at which I publish and deliver.
Most writers do not make much. I have looked up the figures and I am on the upper end of what most indie authors make. I remember reading some stats that say most indie authors sell fewer than 100 books a year. For most people, most of the time, writing is not a living wage. It might not even be enough to get taxed on for most people, which means they are making less than $600 per year. So I am just urging you to keep these figures in mind if you're considering writing full time or feeling annoyed about paying $3.99 for an ebook.
