The Long Game

Many authors join Texas Authors & Indie Beacon and then abruptly leave as they are expecting to see quick results by us selling their books for them. This quick result concept also applies to when an author goes to a book festival. They expect to sell enough books to at least pay for their expenses. Both of these are short-sighted views on marketing books.

Texas Authors & Indie Beacon is about the long-term goal of creating a career as an Authorpreneur. Authors are creative people and want to write stories that move people and sell great numbers of copies. To do this is expensive and many authors want to see a return for their investment (ROI) as quickly as possible. Those authors miss the bigger picture of long-term growth. Just like expecting to earn their money back at the book festival, they miss the fact that someone they may have met may be that one person who loves their book so much that they can’t stop talking about it. That one person could in fact be the person that makes the author famous.

Would you go into a job as a new employee and expect to be promoted to the boss’s job immediately? Would you expect to be earning the top wages immediately? No. If your job required training of some sort, you may have gone to college or spent years doing ‘on the job’ training to become great at what you do and to be able to earn the big bucks. It is exactly the same with being an Author.

While you may be able to crank out a manuscript in a few weeks, months or within a year’s time, this doesn’t mean that it will be an instant best seller. Writing that book in today’s world is only 10% of the work. The remainder of the work is still ahead of you and may take years to accomplish. It is this aspect of being an author that Texas Authors was created for.

It seems almost funny for me, of all people to be typing this, as I am one who is impatient and wants to see results quickly. I have learned over the past 7 years to be patient and to work hard to create an organization that will help authors to succeed. I still have a lot of work ahead of me, and I am more than eager to work hard at times, not at all times, but most. I am willing to continue to work 80-100 hours a week to build several organizations that give authors all the tools and possibilities to succeed if they too are willing to work at it.

I have seen many authors take their time and grow with the organization and continue to grow successfully with their books. Some have won awards over the years, some have seen nice increases in book sales and many have been inspired to become the best Authorpreneur they can be.

Texas Authors and I are always eager to hear of new ideas and concepts that will help our programs, events and opportunities to continue to grow and become stronger. I will test things to see if they work and if they don’t. I will share with the membership my thoughts about those items. I do not want the author to reinvent the wheel. I encourage each author to plan to be with us for more than one year, maybe several years so that as we continue to grow and learn new and exciting things in the publishing world, that it too will help you to grow stronger and better as an Authorpreneur.

Don’t fall for those schemes where someone has a person that sold a million copies of their books and now wants to share how you too can do the same. They just want your money, and yes, a million other people bought into that scheme and made that sales person rich. Remember, of the over 1 million authors in the USA, only 10% have sold more then 100,000 copies of their books. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but it does mean you have to work at it, just like they did.

Texas Authors continues to become a serious player in the world of publishing, and as a member, that benefits you in more ways then you may know. That’s part of the team work and family of authors that we have created over the years. We welcome you to not only be a part of it but be a family member for the long term. Families grow stronger together, not apart!

If you would like to be a family member of Texas Authors (for authors inside Texas), please click here: https://txauthors.com/index.php/what-we-offer

If you would like to be a family member of Indie Beacon (for authors outside of Texas), please click here: https://indiebeacon.com/index.php/pages/membership-types