Romance Times Take Away

This post was "memoed" (technical term for voice recorded for a later date) for myself to give to you. I'm cleaning up my language and taking out the "ummmsss..." along with the "and...and...and..." so that you can comprehend what the hell I'm saying. Memoed's should not be heard by an audience. Much like first drafts should not be seen by editors. Here's what I memoed:

So I am back from RT literally about 25 minutes ago. After unloading my stuff after driving home from Las Vegas I have some thoughts on RT. I listen to people on how it's an incredible time to be an author but also how very difficult time it is to be an author.

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Data shows, according to Mark Coker, that e-book sales have plateaued.

Before you freak out…this is good news.

OH my God, Stephanie! You’re fricking nuts!

I see this actually as a good thing. Some people are gonna think doom and gloom ahead. However, my thought is...good. All the PLR people will go away. They'll finally do something else that's hot, new and exciting. Real authors, real storytellers will remain.

If your thinking about becoming an author, I know that only the real ones will continue. So while some may say that it's too late to be an author I would think, well then it's too late to be a musician, and artist, an IT support guy. 

It's a great time to be an author. You have your choice of being self published, traditionally published, or both. The stigma about him being self-published isn't so much there. I know there are sticklers, but as a reader do you only read books by Harper Collins? Penguin? I only read from the Harlequin, pirates line, no exceptions. Really? Have you checked that book your reading? Just because it has a title page, Copyright page and a table of contents doesn't mean it's not self published.

The market has opened up. People who want to make money off their writing can become an author, find their fans and create an Empire. And so here's what it means... it means that things are going to be what they're going to be. Yes, you are competing for reader attention. But reading is a thing ya know. Yes, authordom is a little harder. Getting famous is probably going to take a little more time. The Kindle goldrush has come and gone. No longer are the days here for any ditzy blonde to upload their book and become a millionaire, after she forgets she ever made an account and uploaded a book to amazon. Sorry that was really specific and yes, it's personal. Ask me in the comments if your curious.

So back to my topic...becoming a living off your royalty checks type of writer is no longer going to be easy like it was in  2012. But it's still available to you. The people making crap are going to go away. The people that really don't want to be authors are going to go away. The people that find out that promoting a book is too hard are going to go away. So yeah, that's fine. That's okay. If you know authordom is what you want then try your hand. Discover how much writers bust their ass. Oh shit, this is really hard work.

It's up to you to decided if it's something you want or to move on and do something else. All the better. Because writing is hard. Unless you have all the time in the world, you have to fight to write and keep writing.

As for me, I'm going to be here. I'm going to stay here. Even if I lose all the authors under my publishing wing, it doesn't matter. (Let me clarify--my authors matter, but if they don't want to do it anymore I'm not going to fight them because most have published and had a fun ride! But they want to keep going and I'm dedicated to see them shine!)

But what this all means is... Get your shit together. Have a business plan. Schedule yourself to write. Map out release dates. Calculate and experiment on what marketing works for you. This was the biggest take away I got from RT.

All in all, RT was a wonderful conference to meet and network with other authors and readers. It also motivated me like a good conference should!

Until next time!

XO ~ Stephy