I received my first Amazon royalty check today (for the month of February). I knew it was coming and didn't think much of it. Didn't really believe it would have too much of an impact on my psyche as a writer or an artist. But, surprisingly, it has.
I was notified via email this morning and it was a nice kickstart to the day. To officially be a paid writer is quite an accomplished feeling. Granted, watching the royalty checks grow in monetary size is the next step. Getting the same amount every month without any sort of exponential growth will have quite the opposite impact on my productivity over time, I'm sure.
When I tell people that I'm striving to make a living as an author/artist, I get all kinds of cocked-eyebrows and snooty eye rolls. If I bring up the fact that I have a three-year-old daughter? Forget it. I might as well be hanged or lynched. The "struggling artist" stigma follows us around wherever we go.
"Get a real job!"
"Provide for your family!"
"Stop dreaming and provide a nest egg, you silly bastard!"
The thing is, these people are right! Well, partially right. Providing for my family is priority number one. If providing for your family isn't the first thing on your mind, then you have some things you need to work out.
But the magical (not to sound too Doug Henning) part about the art world now is that it's become business – that is, if you're aspiring to run the entire show yourself. You're no longer the writer/artist, but you're the writer/artist/small business owner/marketer/street team/web designer/social marketing and SEO expert/salesman/the list goes on and on. I do more work now than I have at any job I've ever worked, which is a significant number, and some with an equally significant workload. The problem, as with any other small business start-up, is that I don't make any money doing it. Yet. Hopefully, yet. To say yet is to assume that I will. There is no guarantee. So I rescind the word yet.
At the end of the day, all I can do is put out great content and lots of it. If the fruits of my labor (I hate that saying) are out there, odds are that they will come in one way, shape, or form. That form could potentially be failure. And I'm okay with that. Rotten fruit exists. Some in our fruit bowl right now.
I think as a business owner, you have to be okay with failure looming. If you're going into something thinking that you can't (and by can't, I mean both cannot because you're too good to fail or cannot because you can't afford to fail) then you are not prepared to fall and will surely smack your chin on the concrete, knocking out a few teeth and making it even harder to get a regular gig on the business failure rebound. I digress.
Hopefully, March's royalty check will be a tad more. And more after that. And so on and so forth. I would sign on for a modest income for the rest of my days if it meant being successful in what I love. But my family will tell me that I sound like a broken record, because I've been saying that since the beginning of time.
Incremental and consistent is all I can hope for, which is quite fitting considering that is the same thing you, the reader and customer, expect from me. I will hold up my end of the deal. I just hope that you continue bestowing upon me your sweet fruit. Wait, what?
-Justin