Oct 22, 2023·edited Oct 22, 2023Liked by David V. Stewart
You hit the nail on the head here - almost all "how to become financially stable" or "how to make a lot of money" advice requires you to already be financially stable and have money. 🤦♀️ Dave Ramsey's advice was for upper middle class who were wasting money on stupid things and getting into frivolous credit card debt in the 80s and 90s. It is absolutely not for today's middle class, or really anyone other than wealthy folks who are throwing money away and need someone to tell them what a budget is. 🙄
I think the Ramsey plan can be effective for the many people who earn decent wages, but struggle with impulse buying or otherwise find themselves unable to delay gratification. But yeah, if you are struggling with low earnings, his advice will be be of minimal benefit.
Excellent advice! In particular, avoiding any needless running costs and optimizing the necessary ones constitutes a key facet of success in basically every field of life, including home economics.
Thanks to a mutual for introducing me to this article. All points here I agree with. I personally find interacting with as many people as possible the best way to start garnering an audience. Cast the widest net, etc.
I completely agree with this (apart from the bit about using AI covers - which is undermining illustrators trying to make a living, I think). But the whole Patreon model is basically a way to monetise what you already have (i.e. people willing to pay you money). I would interested to hear more about alternative book marketing. Are you finding Substack a good way of doing this? Have you thought about serialising fiction via Substack? (I've seen a few people trying this, but not sure about it.)
Sorry, "Other people deserve my money" is not a good argument, and I noticed nobody was using it when all illustrated covers were replaced by photoshop 20 years ago. The industry doesn't care about artists' livings and never has. Outside of some fantasy and scifi, having an illustrated cover will hurt your sales at this point because the cover will not fit with the genre (sounds weird, but its true). For those genres where it is standard, it has to be really good and really appropriate (in brief, a painting). Usually that is a 4-figure minimum cost, and this is a tough business where most people don't even move 100 copies. I actually don't care whether its standard to do photoshop, or AI, or some combination thereof, but at a four-figure buy-in there are books I wouldn't write and publish because they are too risky, like Alshafaltha.
As far as book marketing, there are a few paths:
You pay to reach the audience
You give value to the audience to reach the audience.
I tell most people to choose the second path unless you have $50k sitting around to burn. That means making content people want to read or watch. Not easy, but it can be fun, develop real fans that know you, and best of all, is free.
That being said, Substack is not the place where I develop my audience but where I serve value and entertainment the audience I have captured elsewhere (YouTube, mostly). I've gotten a few readers this way, but not many. I already do serial fiction here but its for paid patrons only and is just a transcript of what I write live on the air, so you could technically read it for free by watching the VODs of the streams.
I serialized fiction on lots of platforms and as near as I can tell it just isn't very effective for audience building. People want contained ideas from blogs, and they want to buy full books, in general (always some exceptions). It's easier to get a person to buy and read a 2.99 ebook than get him to come to your blog every day or week for another installment.
Thanks for your thoughts about serialisation, etc. I think I agree. In fact, I prefered to pay 2.99 to read your book on creativity rather than listen to the free audio version on Youtube! (Which I enjoyed and found very useful, by the way.) I'm still tempted to give serialisation a go in some form - we'll see - but I take your point.
Regarding AI and book covers, I should say that as well as being a writer myself, I'm a professional book designer and illustrator, so I can see both sides. I appreciate that authors want to save money, but I can also see how AI eats away at viable income streams for illustrators and designers. By the way, I'm using "illustrator" here in a broad sense. What's called illustration these days can often involve manipulation of stock images (what's called photo-bashing), as well as, or combined with, more traditional drawing and painting techniques (albeit their digital equivalent). The sort of sci-fi/fantasy covers that you see on books these days are therefore, in broad terms, illustration (as I'm calling it). A great many illustrators have made the jump to Photoshop, or some similar software, so I'm certainly not railing against that, as I use it myself. And nor am I saying that we, as authors, MUST pay for expensive illustrated covers. There are plenty of human-made/illustrated covers that you can buy cheaply, either as pre-mades or customised, so it's certainly not a case of either you use AI or you break the bank. My point is that AI is replacing a whole swathe of artistic endeavour in a way that will make it extremely difficult for those artists/designers to earn a living. Now you may say, "Well, that's what happened in the industrial revolution, and we're still alive. You can't stop progress." But the industrial revolution took a terrible toll on generations of working class people in the name of "progress". So even if you say "AI will produce new jobs, just as industrialisation did", then there is still the issue of how we help people transition - if that's even possible.
But there is a deeper point. There are good reasons to think that the AI revolution is different to previous paradigm shifts (see e.g. Martin Ford's "Rise of the Robots"). A greater percentage of people will be put out of work, and the concentration of wealth will be greater, for AI is parastic on human productivity to a much greater degree than previous forms of technology, making obsolete a far wider range of skills. And if you think you're safe as a writer or a musician, you're not: it's coming for you too. Yes, perhaps the higher end of these forms of production may still stand out as distinctly human, but for the purpose of commercial exploitation - which is where some creatives earn a living (if they can) - this will no longer be viable. UNLESS, we do something (legislation, boycott, basic universal income, etc).
Anyway, I don't have the answers, but my general point is that using AI as a short-term cost-cutting measure will have the long-term effect of undermining your own ability to make a living from your creative output. Note: I'm not saying "artistic output", because, as you've rightly pointed out, that's extremely hard, but rather the ability to take that skillset and tailor it to meet market needs. Those jobs are now being replaced by AI.
I read this months ago but now I'm back on Substack I wanted to come back and comment I'm so glad you gave this a name. So much business & life advice can be reduced to this category.
p.s. I recently re-listened to Keys to Prolific Creativity on YouTube (very gracious of you) and I'm now several chapters deep into my first novel and my business has seen a huge boost. 🔥 Been following you since your Last Jedi content went viral and stayed for the interesting takes. Love your work. Hope to support your work properly in the near future. 🙌🏻
Gasp! Real writing advice for free? Gasp! You should totally be charging the big bucks for this!
In all seriousness, for the small amounts of success I've had over the years (it waxes and wanes), it basically all boils down to that quote from Butch Hartman: Go out and do the thing. Eventually people will see you doing the thing, and they will come to you and pay you money to keep doing the thing.
I have been following you on youtube and x for a while, and I have greatly benefited from your writing tutorials. But as far as social media is concerned, I'm not going to go there. I'm social media shy. I have reason to be due to some past mistakes. And this will probably affect the rest of my internet career. This will also make it difficult for me to "build an audience." I hate it, but there it is.
You hit the nail on the head here - almost all "how to become financially stable" or "how to make a lot of money" advice requires you to already be financially stable and have money. 🤦♀️ Dave Ramsey's advice was for upper middle class who were wasting money on stupid things and getting into frivolous credit card debt in the 80s and 90s. It is absolutely not for today's middle class, or really anyone other than wealthy folks who are throwing money away and need someone to tell them what a budget is. 🙄
It's so funny you mention Dave Ramsey. I agree, his advice has always just sounded to me like "just stop being poor lmao"
It's not terrible advice but it always has built into it an assumption of current success.
I think the Ramsey plan can be effective for the many people who earn decent wages, but struggle with impulse buying or otherwise find themselves unable to delay gratification. But yeah, if you are struggling with low earnings, his advice will be be of minimal benefit.
Clark Howard was always my more preferred finance guru
I wonder where all those $20/hr PT jobs walking dog and delivering pizzas that Ramsey mentions are. I've looked for them.
Excellent advice! In particular, avoiding any needless running costs and optimizing the necessary ones constitutes a key facet of success in basically every field of life, including home economics.
Love this advice. Great job putting this together, David.
Thanks to a mutual for introducing me to this article. All points here I agree with. I personally find interacting with as many people as possible the best way to start garnering an audience. Cast the widest net, etc.
I completely agree with this (apart from the bit about using AI covers - which is undermining illustrators trying to make a living, I think). But the whole Patreon model is basically a way to monetise what you already have (i.e. people willing to pay you money). I would interested to hear more about alternative book marketing. Are you finding Substack a good way of doing this? Have you thought about serialising fiction via Substack? (I've seen a few people trying this, but not sure about it.)
Sorry, "Other people deserve my money" is not a good argument, and I noticed nobody was using it when all illustrated covers were replaced by photoshop 20 years ago. The industry doesn't care about artists' livings and never has. Outside of some fantasy and scifi, having an illustrated cover will hurt your sales at this point because the cover will not fit with the genre (sounds weird, but its true). For those genres where it is standard, it has to be really good and really appropriate (in brief, a painting). Usually that is a 4-figure minimum cost, and this is a tough business where most people don't even move 100 copies. I actually don't care whether its standard to do photoshop, or AI, or some combination thereof, but at a four-figure buy-in there are books I wouldn't write and publish because they are too risky, like Alshafaltha.
As far as book marketing, there are a few paths:
You pay to reach the audience
You give value to the audience to reach the audience.
I tell most people to choose the second path unless you have $50k sitting around to burn. That means making content people want to read or watch. Not easy, but it can be fun, develop real fans that know you, and best of all, is free.
That being said, Substack is not the place where I develop my audience but where I serve value and entertainment the audience I have captured elsewhere (YouTube, mostly). I've gotten a few readers this way, but not many. I already do serial fiction here but its for paid patrons only and is just a transcript of what I write live on the air, so you could technically read it for free by watching the VODs of the streams.
I serialized fiction on lots of platforms and as near as I can tell it just isn't very effective for audience building. People want contained ideas from blogs, and they want to buy full books, in general (always some exceptions). It's easier to get a person to buy and read a 2.99 ebook than get him to come to your blog every day or week for another installment.
Thanks for your thoughts about serialisation, etc. I think I agree. In fact, I prefered to pay 2.99 to read your book on creativity rather than listen to the free audio version on Youtube! (Which I enjoyed and found very useful, by the way.) I'm still tempted to give serialisation a go in some form - we'll see - but I take your point.
Regarding AI and book covers, I should say that as well as being a writer myself, I'm a professional book designer and illustrator, so I can see both sides. I appreciate that authors want to save money, but I can also see how AI eats away at viable income streams for illustrators and designers. By the way, I'm using "illustrator" here in a broad sense. What's called illustration these days can often involve manipulation of stock images (what's called photo-bashing), as well as, or combined with, more traditional drawing and painting techniques (albeit their digital equivalent). The sort of sci-fi/fantasy covers that you see on books these days are therefore, in broad terms, illustration (as I'm calling it). A great many illustrators have made the jump to Photoshop, or some similar software, so I'm certainly not railing against that, as I use it myself. And nor am I saying that we, as authors, MUST pay for expensive illustrated covers. There are plenty of human-made/illustrated covers that you can buy cheaply, either as pre-mades or customised, so it's certainly not a case of either you use AI or you break the bank. My point is that AI is replacing a whole swathe of artistic endeavour in a way that will make it extremely difficult for those artists/designers to earn a living. Now you may say, "Well, that's what happened in the industrial revolution, and we're still alive. You can't stop progress." But the industrial revolution took a terrible toll on generations of working class people in the name of "progress". So even if you say "AI will produce new jobs, just as industrialisation did", then there is still the issue of how we help people transition - if that's even possible.
But there is a deeper point. There are good reasons to think that the AI revolution is different to previous paradigm shifts (see e.g. Martin Ford's "Rise of the Robots"). A greater percentage of people will be put out of work, and the concentration of wealth will be greater, for AI is parastic on human productivity to a much greater degree than previous forms of technology, making obsolete a far wider range of skills. And if you think you're safe as a writer or a musician, you're not: it's coming for you too. Yes, perhaps the higher end of these forms of production may still stand out as distinctly human, but for the purpose of commercial exploitation - which is where some creatives earn a living (if they can) - this will no longer be viable. UNLESS, we do something (legislation, boycott, basic universal income, etc).
Anyway, I don't have the answers, but my general point is that using AI as a short-term cost-cutting measure will have the long-term effect of undermining your own ability to make a living from your creative output. Note: I'm not saying "artistic output", because, as you've rightly pointed out, that's extremely hard, but rather the ability to take that skillset and tailor it to meet market needs. Those jobs are now being replaced by AI.
I read this months ago but now I'm back on Substack I wanted to come back and comment I'm so glad you gave this a name. So much business & life advice can be reduced to this category.
p.s. I recently re-listened to Keys to Prolific Creativity on YouTube (very gracious of you) and I'm now several chapters deep into my first novel and my business has seen a huge boost. 🔥 Been following you since your Last Jedi content went viral and stayed for the interesting takes. Love your work. Hope to support your work properly in the near future. 🙌🏻
Gasp! Real writing advice for free? Gasp! You should totally be charging the big bucks for this!
In all seriousness, for the small amounts of success I've had over the years (it waxes and wanes), it basically all boils down to that quote from Butch Hartman: Go out and do the thing. Eventually people will see you doing the thing, and they will come to you and pay you money to keep doing the thing.
I have been following you on youtube and x for a while, and I have greatly benefited from your writing tutorials. But as far as social media is concerned, I'm not going to go there. I'm social media shy. I have reason to be due to some past mistakes. And this will probably affect the rest of my internet career. This will also make it difficult for me to "build an audience." I hate it, but there it is.
Incredibly refreshing. Keep it up.