WHY PUBLISHING IS NOT A RACE
I have been writing for more of my life than I haven't been. I have, at this point, drafted almost fifty books, and have published 24 of them. I have been strict with myself with how many and when things are published. For a time it was two books every year, one year I did three, and then I had a bunch of years where it was either one or none, all for health and such reasons. My first book was published 21 years ago in August 2005. This is not meant to be some kind of brag, or to make anyone else feel like they're not fast enough or anything like that. It is to showcase that I have been an indie author for a very long time, and even with that first book published at 23, I will still tell you, and it will still be one thousand percent true, that publishing is not, and neither has it ever been, a race.
These days (and yes I know that makes me sound super old!) there's so much emphasis on doing all the things as early as possible. People will push for accomplishments that also don't have a time limit because they feel, or are made to feel, like if they haven't achieved it by x age, they will be left in the dust. It's not true. It has never been true.
Now before you protest, yes, I am an old now, but when I was first published, I was 23. There various things tied to me wanting to publish young, the medical ones I'm not going to get into, but it felt like there was this societal push that everything we achieve is a race. If I didn't publish first, I would not 'win' that race. It led to me making choices about my publishing path back then, that I would never do again, nor advocate for anyone else to do either.
Shocking as this is to hear, I didn't win. I didn't come out ahead of my peers, other authors who published after me, who were at the same age, and in the same spaces, and were also publishing their first books. I might have 'beaten' them technically, but I did not win. I didn't publish again until 2011, and in that gap, and in the time since, I have really sat on the thought that you have to do something 'first' or it's not an achievement.
Which, firstly, sod that mindset, and secondly, why does it actually matter? I've had these kinds of discussions with friends, authors or not, about authors feeling like they are in competition with their peers. Readers, by definition, read. It's not like they are only allowed one x genre ever. They can, and do, read books by all different authors. Those authors, they are your peers, they are the people you should have community with. But for some reason, some authors, they genuinely believe that they have to destroy others in their genre and such because otherwise they will lost readers.
I mean, as a reader myself, if I saw that, I would seriously avoid that author and their books, but maybe that's just me. At the end of the day, you can choose to isolate yourself, to push yourself to breaking point to 'win' a race that was never one in the first place, or you can find a writing community, take the time you need, and come out stronger for it.
Whichever you choose, I wish you luck and readers!
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