Writing is a horrendous curse sometimes

I hate being a writer. I love being a writer. It is a curse. When you write something, you work so hard on it. You are overjoyed when your publisher decides to take it. Then you think to yourself, why the heck did I DO this because you enter the editing phase and that’s just so much work. But then when that ends, you get excited again because they send you cover ideas. You begin to feel like a REAL author!! Finally, the book comes out then nobody reads it. I mean a few people read it—but there are millions, literally millions, of books out there on Amazon, at the library, in Nook, all over the place, and there are very few readers these days. Not too many people read. The competition is fierce. And how the heck do you get your book out there TO be read? In the old days, your publisher would take care of advertising. Now, no publisher does that unless your John Grisham or Stephen King. You’re supposed to do your own advertising but that’s crazy. And most people who would read MY book want print, which they would have to get from A—- (I’m afraid to say the name here, but you know which seller I mean, the place that sells everything.) All the smaller publishers sell print books through them. A—- takes 50% of the royalties AFTER EXPENSES, which means on the print books, my publisher gets $1 and I get $1. We get slightly more on electronic books. Even so, if people buy the electronic book from my publisher’s actual site, my publisher and I each get around $2 (I get less). With that kind of income, how am I supposed to really pay for advertising.

In author’s groups I keep hearing that I should be self-publishing, but then I’m going to have to pay an editor and someone to create a cover and there’s no guarantee I’ll sell any more than I do through my publisher and at least I’m not LOSING money on something I’d probably be doing anyway because I love to write. But I feel like someone who has worked very hard preparing a party and then no one shows.

On the other hand, the few people that have showed have given me good reviews. I just wish I could get something going where they’d read some more. And now I just found out that with my novellas (shorter works), if they’re under 20k words, they won’t come out as print books at all, so I’m not going to bother with those anymore. *sigh* Why couldn’t I have found some other pursuit. Writing sucks. It’s so much work with so little return. At least it’s a great escape from this awful world when I need it.