My first attempt to actually increase my sales started in 2008 or so when I put my first novel up on Amazon. That novel, Plague, and the followup collections went on to do better than everything else I have all rolled up together. It also earned me credit for predicting the dismal reaction to the 2013 West African Ebola epidemic in some circles. Royalties maxed out at ~$200 a month for a while before dropping back by 2016 as I had no idea how to maintain the momentum since it was completely out of the blue. I'd also soured on that series due to several things and was in the process of trying to switch my focus to other storylines and products. By 2018, my royalties had dropped nearly back to $0 per month.

My second attempt began in 2019 with the release of my first card game, Death Derby: A Post-apocalyptic Card Game. It is basically the vehicle combat section of my TTRPG turned into a stand alone card game and was at that time, and still is, my biggest single project to date with nearly $10k in custom art. Of course, this wiped out anything I'd been up before that point, which is why this stuff is an 'expensive hobby', and not just in time. Sales started off good, especially since it was combined with a renewed advertising push. I regained a quarter of my lost monthly royalties by the end of 2019. Then the damned pandemic happened. Or more correctly, some shit for brains got it in their head to push artists to provide their work for free to 'entertain people under lockdown'. I guess the same type of person that think they can train AI and repackage peoples' stuff as their own without royalty payments. This resulted in a massive free product overload and people literally downloaded years worth of books and games to check out in less than a couple months. Obviously, this tanked the sales I'd just got going since you can't sell anything when people are giving so much away for free. For about a year, the only way to get copies out was to virtually give them away. It took two years for sales to start to recover, ie, for people to start to burn through all the shit they downloaded. This, of course, would have taken many players out of the game, literally and figuratively, so the thinning of the crowd isn't entirely unwelcome and very obvious. Very obvious also are all the people gone who thought they had a career in writing 8 years ago. Many are still around and many of them are doing far better now. Many more are gone and the ranks are an ever revolving door of newbies using Grammarly and other gimmicks to write their 'masterpiece' that's just like a dozen other books they couldn't be bothered to read.

My third attempt, second comeback, began in 2022. It is a renewed push with a five year plan that involves an extensive advertising campaign centered around one thing: content creation. Specifically, blog posts about nearly everything to do with my writing, games, and other hobbies along with a very planned out product release schedule. Post-apocalyptic Escapades, my second major card game, was the centerpiece of this push in 2022, which continues through 2023 and into 2024 with TTRPG and Ott and Ren releases. Writing focus will move to my monster series called Two Vampires and a Government Agency in the end of 2024 as that series is finally continued. So far, it's worked. Sales are not increasing as fast as they did in 2019, but that's to be expected as it will take at least another 2-3 years for all the free stuff people downloaded to be burnt through. However, the effort is planned and will be sustained for literal years at the pace I'm currently setting. All that will be topped off by a very major, secret project that will be released in 2028.

So, no essay of mine is complete without some cruel truths that I've seen or learned the hard way.

First and foremost, you probably won't make any money. Or even produce that much. Price's Law says that 50% of the output of a thing is done by the square root of the people doing it, ie, if 100 people are writing, 50% of their total output is from only 10 of them and the other 90 writers produced the other 50% of content. The balance of money is the same. Hence, unless you put your nose to the grindstone, you simply aren't going to produce enough to be long lasting or to even make anything at all. You're literally ahead of 90% of other writers if you finish something and make something from it. Technically, I'm in the red on my spending and therefore have not 'made' anything right now, and am only climbing out of a hole, which is where most are after advertising, editing, and artwork costs even if they've 'made' something.

Second, and the worst wannabe writers want to hear, is that you have to have a job. Writing isn't a job unless you're a reporter, it is only a skill. There's a reason that the first novelists were rich people who could sit around writing after buying candles, paper, and ink. It's the equivalent of an old man telling a story at a campfire. There is no utility in it beyond entertainment or propaganda. Sure, you can beg people for 'grants', but you're not learning anything. You're not people watching. You're not involved in complex, possibly adverse, social interactions. You've not living in the world if you do not go out into the world for a job and deal with all the people you deal with. And without dealing with people, what are you writing about? The stupid stuff you seen on Tik Tok or Twitter? Exactly, because when reviewers say 'this show sounds like bad internet jokes', it was wrote by someone who sat around on the internet all day instead of people watching. Furthermore, you have to have actual skills. Typing is no longer a skill, it's a necessity. Computer use is no longer a skill, it is a requirement. Programming is no longer a skill, it's being badly done by AI. Actual skills are stuff like farming, animal husbandry, tool use, weapon use, feats of dexterity, mechanical skills, etc. The stuff you need when something happens to the internet and you can't cry to someone for help.

Third, you have to write. And I don't mean using autocorrect and Grammarly or some nonsense program that makes the same errors over and over and makes their users sound carbon copy. I mean turn off the autocorrect, turn off everything else, and write. And if you can't do it? Well, then, you aren't a writer and you have a lot to learn. You don't like singers that sound good on a song because of autotune and like garbage or lip sync live, right? Of course not. And Grammarly and Shakespeare and related programs are just autotune for writers. You're not doing it if you're using them and the first step of becoming an actual writer involves deleting them from your life. There's nothing faster about them. There's nothing easier about them. I type 80 words a minute and wrote and edited this whole essay in less than two hours with breaks and you're going to beat this with Grammarly? Try. I'll wait.

Fourth, and possibly the hardest, you don't read reviews. They have zero purpose. I've not read any for at least three years. Here's why. If you're new, you should be part of a critique group or getting other feedback rather than random feedback, so you learn some stuff and you figure out what effect your words have. If you're experienced, you should already know what effect your words have and should already have a grasp of what you're doing, so therefore have no reason to care what reviews say. If you're at your job, experienced, kicking butt, and some dude who's called in three times in the last month and has to be helped all the time says 'nice job', or 'that's wrong', or 'you suck', do you give a shit? I don't. They're worth a sarcastic laugh and told to 'screw off' if they loiter too long and that's perhaps too much credit. So to make it clear, either you're new and learning from experienced people or you're one of the experienced people. Either way, you have no reason to read reviews unless you're just curious or narcissistic. On that topic, a 1 out of 5 is worth as much attention as a 5 out of 5 in the writing world. You don't want 3s, which is mop bucket blah level. You want love or hate and it doesn't matter which since they're different sides of the same coin.

Overall, the possibly the worst thing anyone can go to college for is writing. There's worse in so far as uselessness goes, Liberal Art degrees for instance, but there's not any worse for the bullshit. I don't know how many people I've talked to out of college who either think they're going to be Stephen King or constantly lie about what they've wrote because they can't finish anything. Hint: the more a writer talks about actually writer, the less they're writing. So don't talk about writing. Matter of fact, don't even tell anyone about what you're doing until it's at least halfway done.