Why Writing More Books Won't Save Your Author Career
And why writing more books won’t save your career
Writing more books won't save a stalling author career, because volume isn't what's broken. Most author productivity systems are built by one writer around their own wiring, and roughly 80% of authors don't share it. When you force yourself into someone else's system, you burn out your muse before the catalog can compound. The fix is an operational system matched to how you actually work.
I’ve been at indie publishing since 2002. That was the beginning of this era of online publishing, but wasn’t the beginning of online publishing in it’s entirety. I remember being told it wouldn’t take off this time, either.
But at that time, we were launching erotica, which is a common house hold term now. We wrote dozens of stories to appease the market and we made a lot of money doing it.
Those are the lessons I learned and took with me as I entered into the non-erotic publishing sphere: Produce a lot of books and people will give you plenty of money to read them.
What I didn’t realize was that I’m not a high-octane writer. Yes. I can write and produce a lot of books, but not for the long run. When I focus too heavy on tropes vs story, or quantity vs quality, or action plot vs character development, my muse dries out like a whale in a desert.
I’m not alone. There were hundreds of authors who started with me and there are only a few dozen of us left standing, many with new pennames and story arcs, but all flailing around the edges trying to keep from drowning in a sea we helped make.
What most authors measure success against
Most authors measure their success by their next:
Release
Ad push
Rebrand
Trend
Marketing tactic
Because effort is seen as the metric of success or the issue success isn’t achieved. I’ve seen brilliant authors fail and disappear and some brutally awful authors achieve crowning success. So, no. Effort is not the metric of success.
Luck has a lot of play in there.
But luck… often looks like hard work. Right?
To a point. Yes. You can’t have good luck if you don’t put in the effort, but if the act of effort kills you, your drive, or your muse/soul, then what’s the point of chasing it if it’s going to be your end?
Sure. Campaigns create spikes and those are great. Kickstarter helps you feel a little better because it brings in a little more cash. We’re not all the big fish who gets $100,000 for a Kickstarter, so a couple of grand feels pretty amazing.
I can’t tell you how to be the most amazing author the world has ever seen because I’m not that. I’m not a big fish. I’m not a medium fish. But I am a fish still swimming, and let me just tell you. The ocean has tried to eat me. Several times.
How am I still here?
For boring reasons. I’m… a strategist. I’m a creative analyst who finds great enjoyment looking for patterns in problems to locate solutions. I got a lot of experience doing that working in construction as a project manager. My job was to stay ahead of my field team to eliminate problems before they surfaced, and to provide solutions before they even reached that area of the installation.
I’m really good at that.
I grow electrical and general contracting business by stupid amounts. When I’m hired onto a company, they will see an increase of revenue starting at 400% on the low end to nearly 700% on the high end. And we’re talking millions of dollars, here. I didn’t do that with marketing. I wish I was better at that. I’m studying it. I’m pushing through it and I am getting better at it, but that’s now where I work.
I fixed operational issues.
But construction doesn’t fill my bucket. Publishing does. Writing does. Storytelling does. So, I turned my eye to the indie author sphere and used my years of experience writing outlines for authors.
There’s an operational system we can deploy here too.
The Creative Indie Problem
The problem most of us face is that we’re “too different” and creating “systems that work” often feels like jail. But that’s because most of the authors who are putting these systems out there built them around themselves. If you work like they do, then that system will probably work for you too.
But what happens when you’re one of the 80% it doesn’t work for?
Are you just lost?
Is there no system for you?
Are you too broken to make this work?
No.
Look. I created this system in 2022, and then disappeared from view so I could test it. I worked with several authors who fit in the packages neatly enough to test drive the system. And it worked… okay. It was a good idea.
But there were authors like me who it didn’t work for.
So, I kept testing. I kept tweaking the system until I had something that worked.
And what I discovered is that we are creative. And a lot of us don’t fit in one bucket. A lot of us - or the ones I got to work with - are hybrids. I am a Mythmaking Heartweaver. And if you think that sounds cool, wait until you hear how I react when sales dip: I question my worth and rethink strategy, oftentimes tearing out the entire playbook because I’m so worthless and trying something completely new. My readers are so exhausted by my efforts at marketing right now, it’s… deplorably unfunny.
However, knowing that about myself has helped me to build marketing systems that are now gaining traction every single month. I’m not quite back up to my peak levels yet, but I feel confident that I can get there.
And what’s more, I’m not burning out. I’m actually building energy to keep going. That’s… massive.
Real Indie Author is a reader-supported publication.
Using Systems To Build Your Career Instead Of Wishes And Luck
So, it’s time to pull this back and hand it to you.
It still needs tweaked because I haven’t run across every person imaginable. But I’ve got a system that can be modified and altered to your unique way of working. And, what’s more, it can help you create a viable schedule, a realistic budget, real launching campaigns, and incrementally build and scale your author career. And you don’t have to write and launch 20 books in a month, competing with AI-written books.
Want to see where you fit? Take the Author Architecture Diagnostic and see where you land.
I’d love to see you writing consistently because the world needs your point of view to shape their stories.
Why isn't writing more books growing my author career?
Volume only compounds if you can sustain it. Of the hundreds of authors who started alongside me in 2002, a few dozen are still publishing. The ones who disappeared weren't lazy — they ran a high-output model their creative wiring couldn't maintain, and the muse went dry before the catalog paid off.
Is burnout normal for indie authors who publish fast?
It's common enough to be the default outcome. Focusing on tropes over story, quantity over quality, and plot over character development drains some writers specifically. Whether fast publishing burns you out depends on your creative wiring, not your discipline.
What do I do if popular author productivity systems don't work for me?
Stop assuming you're the problem. Most systems were built by an author around their own working style, so they work for writers wired like the creator and fail for everyone else. Find out how you actually produce, then build the schedule, budget, and launch plan around that.
What is a hybrid author archetype?
A hybrid is an author whose creative wiring combines two archetypes into one integrated way of working rather than two separate modes. I'm a Heartweaving Mythmaker, which means when sales dip I question my worth and tear up the entire playbook. Knowing that pattern is what let me build marketing systems I can actually sustain.
