Am I Good Enough?

As a writer, I struggle a lot with whether I’m good enough to do this for a living.

It seems sort of arrogant that I should expect people to pay money for something that I would do anyway. I think a lot of other people feel this way too, as the prevalence of electronic books has gotten cheaper and cheaper until it’s almost as if writers are giving away their work just so someone will read them.

It’s a tough situation. Made worse that careers in the Arts rarely get the same respect as someone in business or marketing or other white-collar jobs.

Of course this is something that everyone, not even writers, struggle with. Am I good enough?

Truthfully – I actually believe I AM a good enough writer to do this and making money from it. I do think that if someone spends time (and let’s face it – writing a novel takes a heck of a lot of time) and produces something entertaining – that people searching for that type of entertainment will pay for it. Not astronomical prices, mind you, but something.

But what? What is a fair price to pay for a book these days?

I don’t know the answer. I do know what *I* like to pay, but I’m not sure I’m a typical reader.

Personally, I’ll pay up to $9.99 for an author or book I’m really interested in. I rarely pay more. That’s my tipping point. It sucks that since I’m in Australia that I don’t get a lot of the lovely cheaper prices for many books (I really want Cuckoo’s Calling, but it’s over $15 for us Aussies – and yes Amazon I can see it much lower so why can’t I buy it at that price too (don’t get me started)).

While I will pay that much, it also depends on a lot of things: genre, cover, premise, author, what comparable books are priced at, and so on.

I’ve also been conditioned that the range of $2.99-$4.99 is a reasonable price. Whether I would pay more or not for some of those cheaper books is a conundrum because I don’t know (because I don’t have to).

I rarely buy books at 0.99 cents. RARELY. It’s such a non-price that it also doesn’t seem worth it. Either price your book at free or bring it to $2.99 or higher. The exception is short stories.

I don’t know when I’m going to write another book and publish it. I do know it will happen, but when is the big question. I’m busy with other writing projects – other more profitable ones that it seems I have no time to write another dark fantasy or suspense novel. But I want to. It’s always in my mind. I considered delaying another writing project of mine so I could do just that. But then I saw the bills. Maybe if I can build up my savings a bit more, first.

Or I could write a book slowly. 100 words a day which doesn’t seem that difficult. That means for a typical 60,000 novel it will take me 600 days, or just shy of two years. Two years … on second thoughts I might wait until I have more spare time – I don’t think I could remember what I wrote at the start of the book if it took me that long to write.