Just the one, dear

This post originally appeared on my ko-fi on May 25

Since 2022, May has always been my worst month, sales-wise. (I know that’s a grand total of two Mays, but 2020-2021 were great years for indie authors.) May 2024 is my actual worst month ever*. It’s May 17th as I am writing this. I have, so far, sold one book – a single copy of Storytellers. If not for my Ko‑fi supporters (thank you SO much!) my writing-related income this month would be €3.32. I spend €9.99 a month on the aggregate app that allows me to see how much I’ve earned (or not) for tax purposes.

I’m not depressed about this – in April I sold 51 books (half of them in 0.99 sales – still). This isn’t a post about the costs of publishing a book either, that’s coming one day in the future. What happened was that I had to ask myself a question: why should I keep writing?

*this puzzle is solved at the end of the post

Money?

I generally don’t give young authors advice, but here’s one bit: if you want to become rich by writing books, playing the lottery is a more sensible thing to do. Your chances are about the same and you won’t have to deal with rejections and one-star reviews.

When I was writing Storytellers, I needed to escape the reality of my life – chronic pain that chained me to my profiled chair, and sometimes made me cry as I lay on the floor, praying for my painkillers to kick in. Writing was a lifeline. I expected it to become a very expensive hobby, because I was not going to put out an unedited, unproofed, half-arsed book (perfectionism literally costs money). So, I saved €100 a month from my disability benefits, begged for discounts on everything, celebrated the fact that in my old life I was a graphic designer, and so knew how to format a book and make the covers.

Obviously I hoped to sell books. I don’t think anybody throws thousands (yes) of dollars into a fire just to watch them burn. I didn’t know if Storytellers was any good, though, much less whether anybody would be willing to give it a chance. Yes, the super deluxe boxed sets sold out before I unveiled even one sentence, but they (the boxed sets, not sentences, although some of those, too) had horseshoes inside, and I was pretty sure people were buying horseshoes with free books thrown in.

Storytellers did very well. Not just for self-published standards. It did really well. I no longer had to put money away for editing etc., I could actually afford to write Children without having to ask for any discounts, Storytellers paid all the costs in advance and continued to sell. Then Children also sold respectably, although not as well as Storytellers, and recouped the costs, which meant I was actually in the black. I have written most of Why Odin Drinks on the Macbook Air in my lap. My royalties from the first half of 2021 paid for that Macbook Air.

Three years later, the “A” key is beginning to misbehave and I am rather seriously worried, because with my 2023-2024 sales I can’t afford a new laptop, and Apple is not famous for its cheap repairs. Thanks to my Ko‑fi supporters, I saved enough money to pay for the Land cover, and it’s not like I was spending money on anything in 2022-2023, so yes, I can still afford to publish what I am working on.

As long as I finish at least one before my “A” key gives up the ghost.

Fame?

Good Gods, spare me from fame.

‘Fame’ is a relative word, of course. When I used to be on X, 20% of fame meant having lots of followers and 80% – not following lessers. I remember following two Important Authors and trying to properly interact, and being completely ignored. That is, until I became an SPFBO judge (more about the contest here, on my Brand New Old YouTube Channel!)… and suddenly I was Important Enough to get a follow. Let’s say this didn’t make me feel better about myself. Or this author. Or their books.

The indie sort of ‘fame’ means becoming Known in Certain Not Very Large to Be Honest Circles. When one of my (now) best friends contacted me first, I was on the rising wave from the release of Children, carried relentlessly by Storytellers, and my first thought was a weary “cover quote, I suppose?” He didn’t want anything from me. He believed that I was ‘famous’ though, and I laughed until I cried.

I told him I was on the top of the B-list of indie authors. Quite a lot of people knew there was a writing Bjørn. Not necessarily who he actually was, or what he did. (By now, I’m not even on the D-list; leaving X might have improved my mental health, but not my status in the #writingcommmunity) (the third M is important). I know someone who went the opposite route, ascending from nobody to an Important Person. They worked hard on meeting and befriending the right people, and at some point it turned out that I was no longer the right people. And this is how I found out that #writingcommmunity ‘fame’ changes people. Into ones who don’t follow you back until you become Important Enough.

Fame does one more thing to people that I want to avoid: makes them believe their own bullsh– typo! Fans. Once an author/musician/artist of any sort reaches certain level of fame, they assume that their farts are so much better than peasants’ farts they should be paid per fart, and those farts should be available in limited edition golden-sprayed packaging in selected toilets of the highest calibre. They no longer need an editor, or critique partners, they know everything best. Impostor syndrome can actually be your friend.

Art?

When I start thinking of writing as ‘art’ I inevitably imagine a gloomy, middle-aged white man with glasses, sitting in front of a library packed with Important Tomes. I am, uh, a gloomy (on selfies, I don’t seem to have a face for selfies) middle-aged white man who sometimes wears glasses and who built himself a small library to sit in front of for YouTube purposes. I told a friend, though, to smack me in the back of my head in the shovel once I reach the #mystruggle level of self-importance.

A real Artist doesn’t need or want feedback, doesn’t need an editor (the way Karl Ove Knausgård works with his editor is…not how working with an editor looks), and always agonises over something Important. Such as himself. Well, only himself. He’s self-deprecating in interviews, knowing perfectly well that being self-deprecating makes him more Arty. And expresses himself in word salads. If you can’t understand the Artist, you’re not worthy of his bespectacled gloomy glance. Tome 10 of My Bespectacled Gloomy Glances available now.

My ‘art’ doesn’t have ass-thetics in it, doesn’t feature Sirs Daddies Mímirs, dark magic consisting of celery and mosquitoes, Goddesses who trip and end up with huge mud stains on their behinds, or Conservative Ladies of Iceland. Real Art is only supposed to be ironic-funny in a way only other ironic-funny people can pretend to understand – so clever that its funniness is above being funny. (I get this feeling from lots of New Yorker cartoons.) Art must be Important. The Artist must be Important.

As I mentioned earlier, I neither am, nor wish to be Important. I get about two pieces of fan-mail per year. It’s incredible to get praise from a reader who tells me I am their second favourite author after my own favourite author, Sir Terry Pratchett. Who only got knighted and recognised by Literature once he got Alzheimer’s, and had a hard time coming to terms with the sin of having Committed a Literature.

I agonise over certain scenes, rewrite them up to 50 times, remove a single comma my editor reinserted twice, because that changes the tone of the sentence. I want to write really, really good books. Once I stop using quote marks for dialogue *side-eyes Sally Rooney* get that shovel out and tell me to get in position, though.

Self-therapy?

I had no clue how very autobiographical Children was, even though I had given Magni some of my personal traits on purpose, and a lot of it is based on situations from my life. It turned out that the parts readers told me were dark – making me laugh ‘oh, this is just my life masquerading as fantasy’ – were actually not that funny. Only now, four years later, I am discovering that they have always been dark – and still are.

My writing is autobiographical to various degrees. No, I have never been a shape-shifting Goddess, but I’ve been a neglected child that never felt loved by his mother. (Here the TMI ends.) Land, the sequel to Children, is going to be partially autobiographical on purpose. An actual author joke – why waste a perfectly good trauma when you can mine it for writing material? Bloodbath & Beyond, the sequel to Why Odin Drinks, won’t seem autobiographical, but will be, even though only I will know where exactly. (Or not even that, as Children proves.)

I know I have repeated this threat many times, but there will be a memoir one day. Once I’ve finished actual therapy, and know which bits of my life have actually been funny.

But really?

I don’t know anymore how to not write. After Storytellers, my friends would ask “are you still writing?” Two years later, it became “what are you writing now?” Perhaps I haven’t actually published anything but one anthology story last year, but I’ve been writing nearly non-stop. Land, the second The Ten Worlds book, will FINALLY be published this November (I am manifesting, praying, and namaste-ing that brain will cooperate). Bloodbath & Beyond will follow in spring 2025. While I will already be working on the third The Ten Worlds book. And of course there is the follow-up to Storytellers.

I am not in immediate threat of running out of ideas. And as long as I have ideas and the ‘A’ key works, I will continue writing.

AND NOW the promised solution of the puzzle!

In February, I noticed a drastic drop in my royalties. There were a few 0.99 sales in March and April, which made the numbers look better. The sales ended. Both the 0.99 ones and my own. I was confused. Clearly, Amazon has changed something. Because my numbers have never been this low before, not even when I thought Storytellers was dead.

As it happens, Amazon did change something: their categories. I knew about that, because they sent warning emails, which I ignored, thinking vaguely “I’m sure this will do itself.” What did not occur to me was that Amazon might not even place my books in BOOKS. They were categorised as, say, “Fiction > Fantasy.” Except Amazon doesn’t sell items in a category named Fiction. (There is a joke begging to be made.) So, my books were not even listed as books.

A day after I fixed this, rather mortified, I no longer needed to think about writing despite having only sold one book this month… it was me, hi, I was the problem, it was me. *facepalm*

PS. That last week of May turned out quite well, actually…