Sipho Moloi asked Sipho Moloi:

Does popularity matter to you? Will you be able to continue publishing long term if you remain an unpopular/unknown author?

Sipho Moloi It doesn't matter a huge amount, but it would be nice to have at least a small group of fans who routinely buy my books and engage with my social media content.

In regards to the long term, I will commit to publishing until I release all 5 books in my Armored Piercing series. If I don't see decent enough success after publishing AP5, I might give up on self publishing altogether. The main reason I went the self publishing route was because there were no traditional publishers in my city. The publishers here expect a large payout upfront in order to edit, publish, and promote an author's book, which I can't afford. If I didn't self publish, I wouldn't publish anything at all. It would be nice to have a successful indie book and then get picked up by a trad publisher, but that's not likely to happen.

There are self published authors who would be happy to publish for the rest of their lives even if each book sold 0 copies. For me, it's hard to be motivated to continue publishing if I don't get a decent return on each book. Since Armored Piercing is my magnum opus, you won't have to worry about me quitting self publishing anytime soon. AP3 will likely release in 2026 at the earliest, while AP4 and AP5 are many years away. But like I said, if I don't receive decent success after AP5, I'll probably throw in the towel at that point.

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