Why I’m Taking a Break from Writing Books

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From Jeff Rivera:

I am a lifelong book lover. I was the type of kid who preferred being in the library rather than playing recess or football with his friends. I’d always wanted to be an author and was fortunate at the age of 28 to have the first novel I wrote, Forever My Lady, which I originally self-published, become traditionally published by Hachette.

I soon found that I could make a comfortable living self-publishing (or indie publishing as we call it) and through ups and downs and changes from Amazon’s KDP including Kindle Unlimited, I held fast, wrote and co-wrote over 100 books under different genres and to this date, make a pretty consistent living.

Then, everything changed.

The last year and a half, I’ve noticed that consumer attention has shifted. Not only in terms of the all-you-can-eat monthly subscription models of Kindle Unlimited and Scribd, but overall.

When I had an honest evaluation of where consumer attention is, (not where I want it to be), I saw that it is on social media, live events, music, gaming, streaming services and others. How do I know? Not only is that where my own consumer attention is, but it’s where even my most fanatic readers has gone.

Indie publishing sales have gone up as a whole, but not for each author.  Brand author names aside, sales are spread thin across multiple authors and pen names.  Traditional houses have combat this by raising prices even though their own sales have dwindled in most cases, which is the same solution movie houses have done with with their lowering sales. The problem has become that the more they raised the prices, the less people have bought.

I pay attention to what people do more than what they say and on a recent nearly two month long trip to New York City, I watched people on the subways. New York is a great way to observe nationwide and even worldwide consumer behavior because there are tourists from all over the world.

10 years ago, when I lived in New York I would see at least 25% of people reading books, magazines or eBooks, on this trip, I was lucky if I saw one person reading a magazine. Perhaps there were some listening to audio books, but 90% of the train were looking at or listening to their mobile devices.

. . . .

Over the last nearly two years I had accepted the fact that most of my income would come from Kindle Unlimited. It was a blessing for me and kept my bills paid when actual sales dwindled. I too, am a Kindle Unlimited consumer and when I looked at my own behavior, it matched most of my readers.

Recently though, even Kindle Unlimited readership has dropped dramatically. Even with monthly promotions, coupled with the fact that open rates on emails dropped, it was the perfect storm for lower readership.

Don’t get me wrong, there will always be the hardcore readers, those who prefer physical books over eBooks but they are fast-becoming the minority instead of the majority.  There hasn’t been that one big book that everyone is reading in a long time, but I’m sure in the future, there will be one.  Gone are the days of Twilight and Hunger Games and Harry Potter.  I still consistently buy books in bookstores, but how many do I actually finish, really? How many do you finish?

Then, there has been the emotional toll, indie author drama aside, the constant grind of working on stories that I’m not that into just to feed the beast that may or may not sell is exhausting.

So, what is my solution: Filmmaking.  Working only on stories I’m passionate about.  Filmmaking is something I’ve been passionate about since I was a teenager. Even before that, I’d always been a movie-lover. I started down the path of filmmaking in my early twenties, but then shifted gear to books. Now, at the age of 41, I’m back again and this time, I’m armed with the experience my previous careers including being an author taught me.

Link to the rest at Jeff Rivera and thanks to Dave for the tip.