More on Being Average

Did you know that 20% of self-published authors make no money? 

In 2025, according to Google, there were at least 3.5 million books self-published in the US alone. That means 700,000 of them earned $0.00. Depressing. Yes, there are definitely factors that play into that, and we probably all know what those factors are; the key one being marketing failure. Although from scanning posts on various Goodreads groups, a large percentage of self-published authors do no marketing at all. Or what they label "marketing" is, well...posting in Goodreads groups. (That's not gonna work.)

Then there are the fundamentals that many newbies don't take into consideration, such as having an appealing and genre-conforming cover. That may not be due to naivete, but lack of funds. Or the blurb is dull and just plain written wrong. Writers who are publishing their very first book probably don't take the time to study blurb writing, or even know that they should. They begin filling out the KDP setup fields, get to the description area and wing it. I mean, how hard can it be, right? You know your story; just tell people what it's about.

But many authors do do it right, and they still make no money. You'll never guess how much I've earned in royalties across all my books, lifetime. Be prepared to be wowed: $360.28. Yes! You read that right! That takes into account 19 books, four of which have since been unpublished. And two of them I wrote under a) my own name; and b) a different pen name. So, as far as April Tompkins goes, she's a big fat failure. Some that made money were never marketed in any way, a couple were very lightly marketed, and one was marketed to the hilt. The royalty differences are negligible.

So, I guess I can't claim that my books have made no money. Averaged out, my earnings amount to about $25.00 a year.

Trying to make money in a creative field is not foreign to me. I experienced it with pushing music, and lemme tell ya, music is far more difficult to sell than books. Our band's one and only album sold zero copies. (I've still got a box of them in my closet, if anyone's interested.) Marketing music and marketing books face similar hurdles, though. If you don't put yourself out there, nobody's gonna know you exist. We were a recording band, not a performing one. So, there were no gigs at which to hawk our wares. Also, very few sites offered digital music for sale at the time. Our options consisted of trying to get our tracks included in music libraries and/or attracting the attention of a music supervisor for TV and movies. The latter effort was not cost-free. We did get one of my songs used in a student film once. No money, but...

One of the music libraries sent us a check each year for about $25.00. So, that's on par with my author income. Nowadays, one can earn a few pennies by being on Spotify (and other digital music sites that are essentially worthless, such as Amazon Music), but regardless of the number of plays we've gotten, no checks have been forthcoming. In that way, it's akin to Kindle Unlimited, only worse. At least Amazon will shoot you a couple of cents when somebody reads your work.

Why am I recounting all this? Because I realize that whether it's songwriting/recording or writing fiction, being average is not a money-making proposition. We probably all start out thinking we're awesome. Because we did it; we created something. That's pretty awesome in itself, right? How many people can claim to have created art? But eventually we come to realize that there are a bunch more talented people out there than us. "Hey! That wasn't the deal! I'm special, dammit!"

Simply by searching around a bit online, scoping out the competition, we discover there are truly superior artists out there. That's a big blow to the ego. It causes us to rethink this whole "art" thing. There's a guy my husband and I know, have known for years, who's a great musician and who always claimed to have written songs, but never once shared any of his so-called songs with us. We laughed about it. It became a running joke between us. We were convinced his "songs" existed only in his imagination.

Then the other day, out of the blue, he sent us a few. My God! They're great! Here he was all these years, complimenting me on my lyrical skills, only to learn that he was only humoring me. Well, that was deflating.  

But it was also freeing. Whose standard have I been trying to live up to? The great ones whose work I stumble across online? That's never going to happen. If everyone's great, great has no meaning. 

My only goal should be to become better. I might continue to be average, but I can shoot for "above average". I shouldn't compare my output to other people, but to myself. That's all I can control. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Even the great ones have weaknesses. Take advantage of the strengths and work to overcome the weaknesses.

So, my goal right now is to become a C+ student. If the manuscript I'm revising right now is a solid C, how hard can it be to raise it half a grade? That's doable, even with my limited talent. 

My other goal is to stop comparing myself to others. My choices are to be happy that I bettered myself or to become despondent over not being quite good enough. Shoot, I want to be good enough for me.