I’m going to give you some really bad advice that I nonetheless stand behind. It’s pretty straightforward so I’ll just say it first and then explain more. If you’re going to follow it no matter what, then you can skip the rest of the article and just go do you. Here it is:
Write a book and publish it. Don’t do anything else. In fact, don’t even finish this article. Just write and publish. That’s it.
Okay, if you’re still here, then here’s a list of just some of the things other people will tell you to do: hire an editor, pay for a cover, run spell check, pitch agents, look for publishers, create an author site, submit to magazines or anthologies, build a brand, and a million other things you need to do in order to be a real writer. Don’t do any of them. (If you must pick one, do the spell check thing.)
Here’s a thing I know about myself: I’m good at stopping. If there’s a roadblock in the way, I’m perfectly happy to pull over, drink some coffee, and forget where I was going. If you’re a writer, chances are you do the same thing. How many novels are you sitting on because nobody liked it or you couldn’t sell it? How many short stories do you have that need editing, a cover, a publisher, or a diaper change?
The truth is that in order to be a published author all you need to do is write something and submit it to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. That’s it. You literally don’t need to do anything else at all! I know it sounds ridiculous, but I promise you that all those people out there telling you what to do and how to be successful can’t guarantee your success any more than I can. All they can promise is more work and less writing.
One of the biggest myths going around, especially about self-publishing, is that your book needs to be well edited in order to sell copies. People say it left and right, but when asked to back it up with numbers, the truth often comes out: good books don’t sell much better than bad ones. At the end of the day a book should be well edited for the sake of art, not commerce. And while art is a perfectly valid reason, it’s still a choice you get to make without threatening the end of the world.
There are plenty of best selling books that are poorly edited. You can think of a few I’m sure, and just going through the top-ten lists on Amazon will make it pretty clear what readers think of good editing. Maybe it’s tragic, maybe it’s sad, but it is what it is, and arguing that it’s what sells books is disingenuous.
But here’s the larger point I’m making: write a book, publish it, and then write another one. When you decide you want to do better, find a beta reader. When you want to make the next jump, then hire someone to make a beautiful cover before you upload a new book. Try asking a friend to proof something for you. But go at your own pace and don’t worry at all about what anyone else thinks. Keep writing, keep publishing, and keep trying.
If you’re still reading it’s most likely because you’re angry and agree with my assessment that this is terrible advice. And maybe it is if your only goal is to be a great writer or a well renowned one (although I’m still not convinced). Success on the other hand doesn’t give a shit about any of it. You will most likely publish some horrible things, I surely have. But there’s no reason to be afraid of writing a bad book. In fact, there’s probably some good reasons to do so, the first being how much you’ll learn from the experience. And no amount of editing will make a pile of shit any better.
We all have a different process, and we all need different things to make art, or in this case books. And for some of us it’s simply to keep going. If you need to remove the roadblocks that so often get in your way before you can keep writing, then I’m here to tell you that’s okay. Fuck the roadblocks. Go around them, ignore them, or drive right through them, because the reality is surprisingly simple:
All you need to do to write a book is write it. And all you need to do to publish one is publish it.
And I bet you can do that.