Bad Ideas People have about Writing and Publishing
Ollie Ander
Is probably just a couple cats in a trench-coat—the hair shedding and sunlight napping are highly suspect.
In the age of virality there are a lot of bad ideas about writing circulating the internet. More than "bad writing advice" (which is usually a matter of famous authors treating subjective preference in method as law), there’s plenty of misinformation about the writing industry by those outside of it, and misconceptions about the writing process by those who do not actively practice. Allow me to clear up some of the bad ideas about writing you may have heard floating around and set the records straight!
Self-publishing is "Passive Income"
One of the most naive ideas about writing and publishing is that it’s a good "passive income." During the hustle culture boom, everyone was trying to come up with passive income schemes. The most hyped evergreen product pitches were publishing books and offering courses, based on the idea that: once you’ve published a book, all you need to do is sit back and watch the royalties roll in…
While that’s not completely false, calling book sales a "passive income" disregards all the up-front effort that goes into writing and publishing the book. Sure, every sale after that point is "free of the active effort of writing" but the hours you spend on writing a manuscript compared to the payoff will far outweigh any minimum wage. For an average unknown author, making $2 on a royalty sale per week doesn’t balance out the months of full-time hours put into making the book (and that’s being generous).
Calling publishing a passive income also ignores any need to actively market the book to get sales—which most authors have to do, every day. Books don’t sell themselves. Authors who drop their book on the internet and do nothing to promote them afterwards learn that lesson the hard way: nobody will know it exists! So to consider book sales a form of passive income is disingenuous at best, and promoting people to oversaturate the market with half-hearted products at worst.
Go Viral and Prosper
Booktok has birthed unprecedented author success stories. Whether or not you hang out in Tiktok’s bookish community space, you’ll have noticed its influence transcend to the industry at large in the "trope-ification" of book marketing. Booktok makes it seem like skyrocketing any book into a bestseller is only a few keywords and a couple, quick video clips away...
As much as we all yearn for recognition from our writing, it’s a bad idea to go into marketing looking for Booktok success—it’s not been a blessing for everyone who has found it… Using trope marketing can be a double-edged sword. If your story doesn’t live up to the expectations of a particularly trendy trope or have the promised quality, readers will be more disappointed than they ever were excited. Some authors hit with virality have consequently had their books review-bombed.
Virality could come to you at a time when you’re not quite ready yet (ie. lacking in craft). Everyone is fixated on the sales numbers in the moment, but few are thinking about the after-effects. If your book isn’t up to snuff, that amount of exposure could hurt your career far more in the years to come than the immediate success was of benefit. Even if you can manage to attain viral stardom, you need to ask yourself whether it’s a good idea for your career (or your mental health) in the long run.
Self-publishing is for Traditional Publishing Rejects
Self-publishing is not a route that authors only take because they’ve been rejected by traditional publishing. Now, more than ever, authors are choosing to self-publish as a first choice, to maintain creative control and royalties.
Of course, there are plenty of self-published books that were not given the time or care they needed before being put out into the world, but there are more resources and services available than ever before to get self-published authors up to a quality that rivals (even surpasses) big publishing houses.
Traditional publishing is a grueling, lengthy process. It’s not that authors who don’t want to deal with the traditional process are merely impatient, they are aware of the risks of signing away their rights and having no control over release details. The devastation of a book being bought then having its release passed over for years, or "killed on sub," is a risk many authors are not willing to take.
AI is a Cheap Alternative
Generative AI is a shiny new tool some writers have leapt to add into their workflow under the assumption it will save them time and money, but it is not nearly so worthwhile as might initially seem. Outside of ethical concerns for the means of GenAI’s creation and continued usage, relieving yourself of any creative control over your projects is a risk to your copyright and brand:
-Outsourcing research to GenAI is unreliable. Large Language Models (LLMs) can "hallucinate" answers, and do not have the capacity to fact-check the credibility of information they source and repackage.
-Asking GenAI to write or alter your words means you do not know what (most likely illegal) source it’s pulled that wording or syntax from. If an LLM manufactures copyrighted material into your work, you will be none the wiser.
-GenAI works are not available for copyright protection.
-Using a GenAI cover to replace the cost of working with a human artist/cover designer will close off sales opportunities. Conscious consumers block GenAI users on sight, which will deny you access to all those potential fans for the rest of your career. Likewise, anyone using GenAI for covers or promotional work will inherently be under suspicion for use of it in their writing, and lose readers’ trust, as well as their interest.
GenAI is only a cheap alternative to hiring an editor for your writing—or freelancers for your marketing—if you don’t take into consideration how damaging it could be to your reputation, or how it will isolate you from wider fan spaces.
Those are the top, debunked, "bad ideas" people have about writing: books are not "passive income," virality can hinder long-term success, self-publishing is not just for traditional rejects, and GenAI is not a cheap alternative to needing editing/cover services. If you love writing and genuinely want to pursue it, against the odds and other people’s bad opinions, discover $ How to Become an Author: 7 Step Guide to a Writing Career$ .
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