The Slump

It's not an easy process, writing novels. Sometimes, when you work on something for two years, you think that it has a larger audience than it does. Truth is, writing books about trans and nonbinary people is always going to be a tiny niche in a large world - one that doesn't, unfortunately, turn a profit. Even keeping my costs as low as I possibly can, most of my novels never earn out what I spend to publish them. Things haven't been great for publishing as a whole in recent years, but books aimed at a tiny sliver of the population? The rule of selling is that there has to be a market, and in this case, the market for books about middle-aged trans men is slim-to-none.

I took out some ads on Amazon to try and boost the sales of Conversion Dysphoria Blues and other backlist titles. I didn't invest more money than I was willing to lose, but after three months, the experiment was a dismal failure. Out of two-thousand impressions, I got a handful of clicks, and none of those converted to sales. The fish aren't biting, and I have to face a fact after twelve years writing - my novels, written largely for my own self-expression and because they're the kind of books I'd like to read - don't appeal to more than a handful of people. A lot of trans people don't want to read trans books, because they don't want to be reminded of dysphoria, transphobia, and the other challenges we face (and that's fair!). Cis people balk at something they don't fully understand, especially with some of the negative press surrounding trans people, and my uncompromising queerness doesn't spare their feelings.

So novel writing is a hobby, and that might be for the best. Trying to make money out of fiction writing has been twelve years of trying to wring blood from a stone. The cycle of excitement pre-release that turns into depression post launch is bitter after so many years trying. Right now it has me in a terrible slump. I'm the wrong kind of writer for the mainstream, and I have no interest in trying to mold myself into a different kind of fiction writer. I'll always be that weird person (probably somewhere on the autism spectrum), who doesn't always relate well to others, and when I try to write typical stories about average people, it falls flat. The kind of books that make money for others don't work for me. My characters are quirky eccentrics who live in my head rent-free, who fight the good fight, who come through in the end. It's not everyone's cup of tea. I've accepted it.

There's more than one way to earn money writing, however. I've dipped my toes into the world of freelance writing. It's not glamorous work by any stretch of the imagination, but writing articles and blog posts for people who need them may well subsidize the next cover or round of editing. I've yet to make my first dollar, but I'm laying the groundwork while I'm blocked on my fiction writing to earn income in other ways. Hopefully I can make something work so that I can finally sever the cord between my art and the need to earn more money than my regular full-time job pays me.

Then I might be able to look at my paranormal novel's first draft without the belief that it's hot garbage.