Writers Don’t Like Money

Writers are very strange people. It might be the artist thing, but we’re they’re weird, whiny, very egotistical, and argumentative. Maybe it’s a human thing, but the one thing I’ve found that confuses me is that writers constantly say, “I don’t care about the money.” Huh?

Call me crazy, but I love money! Show me the money!

Money helps me pay for things like food to eat, a roof over my head, gas for my car, bridge toll, and parking. It also helps me pay for things like editing for my next book, website hosting, and a cover. Money is a means, but never an end. It is used to get things you want and need.

It baffles me to see writers say that they don’t care about money. It’s thinking like that that reminds me that writers are terrible business people if they can’t change their mindset. More importantly, it tells me how egotistical they are.

Writers have a huge ego. It’s all about us them and they want people to like us them. I constantly see posts and tweets about how they want to have thousands of downloads so they make their book free in hopes of that.

It’s not about increasing sales because they’re not in it to make money. It’s about having as many eyes on their work so that they feel good about themselves. It’s also why they feel so down when they get a bad review because it’s a case, “Nobody likes me.”

I used to blame publications and places that wanted writers to work for free. I remember seeing an ad offering .0001 cent per word. I laughed out loud as I thought paying someone .01 a word was terrible. After the laughter, I couldn’t help but wonder why even bother with that insulting rate?

But there are writers that will work for less than slave labor. It’s all to have their names in the publication or something. It’s weird.

If you’re going to be an indie writer, you must change your mindset. You must like money and plan to get that money because all businesses want to make money.

Sure, there will be times where you will fail and it will cost you money, but if you work smarter, not harder, you will succeed.

Marc Johnson