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Why Most Books Fail Before Making Any Sales
Hint: It’s not because it’s good or bad.
In August 2023, I decided to return to my reading habit.
I went to a bookstore, walked to the viral and best-sellers section, and picked up a contemporary romance novel that had one million reviews on Goodreads, and people on social media couldn’t stop talking about it.
By the time I finished it, I was disappointed. The story was weak, the plot almost nonexistent, and it relied entirely on repetitive sex scenes to keep readers hooked.
My first thought? I can do better than this.
If a book like that could go viral, then surely a well-written, compelling story would have a chance.
I’d been writing for different online platforms for five years, so I knew it was a challenge I could easily accomplish.
So I did what any overly confident writer would do: I opened a blank document and started typing.
I had a story idea I’d been carrying around for months, and it felt like the perfect time to finally bring it to life. What I didn’t realize then was that writing the book would be the easiest part of the journey. The real challenges would come afterward in ways I never anticipated.
Self-doubt will kill your book before anyone reads it.
Six months later, I had finished my first novel. 70,000 words of what I believed was a compelling contemporary romance with interesting characters, an engaging plot, and much more substance than the bestseller I’d read.
But I couldn’t bring myself to publish it.
Despite having been writing for 5 years, making a book was something completely different from what I was used to. And I began to have various doubts about the quality of what I had written.
“What if people hate it?”
“What if it’s not as good as I think it is?”
“What if I’m delusional about my writing skills?”
These thoughts paralyzed me. My manuscript sat untouched on my computer for another three months while I made excuses about “needing more time to edit” or “waiting for the right…
