Writing is hard. 

I don't necessarily mean the actual writing part. That usually comes pretty easily to me. I just switch on the movie in my head and start writing what I see. The characters and the scenes unfold, along with the blocking, pacing of the scene, and the dialog. 

What's hard is being the writer behind everything else. When you publish independently it's not an "if you build it, they will come" situation. You have to market the book with dozens of posts, schedule and pay for ad campaigns, build a website, build a mailing list, hire audiobook narrators (which I still haven't done yet, I apologize, I'm working on it), and somehow manage to write the next thing. When you edit your own novels, make your own covers, and manually do your own formatting like I do that gets even more in depth.

I've just been trying to teach myself how to build a Meta ad campaign because from some of the numbers I'm seeing it's actually very worth it.

The thing is, though, it's hard because it's a career. It's a job, not a hobby. From the outside perspective it might seem really simple, I know. The industry isn't what it was even five years ago. Now there are loads of people "writing" books with AI, with AI covers and AI bots boosting their reviews on Amazon. They're putting out several books a month, under different author names. I saw three books from a "firefighter romance" series on the shelves at Books-A-Million the other day. AI covers, three different author names, published a month apart from each other.

It would be easy to let a machine do all of the hard work and just rake in the royalties.

Then what is the point of the job? You can't call yourself an author if you let AI do the work. In fact, you've stolen micro bits and pieces of many someones' hard work and tried to pass it off as your own. You've used a microwave and declared yourself a gourmet chef.

I've gotten off on a tangent (but I remain against the Borg).

It's been a long day of promoting Original Sin. The new edition just released today, and my brain may be a little scrambled after my Meta ad-venture. 

Just know that if you're reading this I am beyond grateful that you took the time to visit my website and read my ramblings, and normally I'm a lot more positive than this, but I feel like it needs to be said that this job--and it is one--isn't easy. It's not a hobby. Hobbies are relaxing or invigorating and don't generally make you question your life choices when you check your sales reports and moths fly out of your computer screen like some miracle of disappointment. 

And that's on me, hence trying to build an ad campaign. 

It will be done, and these stories will find their heart-homes, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. 

Support your writer friends and indie authors in general. We're kicking butt out here, and doing it in style. 

We just might need a hug every now and then.