I’ll be honest. I kind of miss blogging. It’s my site, my page, my rules. Unlike social media, where as soon as you post something everyone seems to think it automatically gave them the greenlight to share their opinion about your opinion, insult the poster and everyone else they don’t agree with, and basically just shit on everyone. Blogging is much more, dare I say it – refined.

Okay, so maybe refined is too strong a word. But, if nothing else, blogging definitely gives the poster a lot more control over who gets a voice on their own personal page. Sure, you can always delete out a comment on social media, but there’s no way to monitor them. So by the time you come across the offending comment six plus hours later, the damage has been done. You’ve lost face. The commenter, and everyone else who has come across the post and comment, believe you have tucked your tail between your legs and admitted defeat. Not so when it’s your own blog. You can hold comments for moderation and avoid scandal, drama, and all the arguments that could potentially come from the post – all with the press of a button. It’s pretty cool. And personally, I’ve missed it. Because, let’s face it, some of us are just plain sick of not having any control over our own pages and accounts on social media. Sometimes, getting back to basics, and just sharing information, is what I really crave.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

I recently shared the following post on my social media accounts (buckle up, it’s long).

… “I made the (very disheartening) mistake of looking at my sales figures for the past 13 years , since making the switch over to Kindle Direct Publishing through Amazon (I had spent the 5 years prior to this offering paperbacks direct through LuLu before making the move).

Readers, if you want the honest truth about why you can’t find good books any more, it’s because a huge chunk of authors who have been around for years (or in some cases like myself, decades) either can’t, or do not wish to, compete with the “burn and dump” authors – those who routinely embrace the MVP model where they publish as often and fast as they possibly can while putting as little work into their books as possible. It’s not financially feasible to continue to spend thousands of dollars producing a decent quality book when we are literally getting paid pennies per copy with rarely more than a few dozen copies sold.

And before anyone tells me I just need to market more, I am very well aware of that. And yes, I also know how to market my books. I’ve literally spent thousands of hours over the years and no telling how much money on courses and books and in groups and doing research and learning from authors who were routinely bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. The problem isn’t that I don’t know how. But I also know I can’t have a successfully thriving business by only spending $10 a month on marketing and promotion. It takes money and time to be able to successful market a book, and, unfortunately, more and more of us simply do not have any more money or time to spare. Most of us already invest every single spare second and penny we have into producing our books. There simply isn’t anymore we could possible give. The struggle is REAL.

For so many of us, the stress and financial burden of publishing is no longer a viable option, no matter how much we want to continue to write and create. As AI continues to infiltrate every last nuance of this industry, I fear more and more of us will no longer be able to afford to publish, or have the heart to watch all of our hard work go down the drain as more and more readers turn to cheap or free disposable entertainment.

This is a harsh reality for 99% of authors out there. It’s not easy, it’s not pretty, and it certainly isn’t cheap. But those sales numbers? Those are real, and it outlines just how tough this business can be. Unfortunately, we can’t fund the production of books based solely on the power of dreams and wishful thinking anymore….”

Yes, the keyboard warriors came for me. Because (gasp!) how DARE I value my work to the point where I actually expect to get PAID for those books I spent months writing and thousands of dollars producing? I mean – the audacity!

But seriously, folks. I really do miss blogging. I miss having a space that is just mine, a direct contact to my readers, where people actually gather and have fun and discuss things. (I actually miss old-fashioned message boards, too, but that’s a different matter).

Maybe 2024 will the return of the blog?