Writing books is a very long process. You can imagine writing books as a process, like you write a thousand words a day, and then maybe in 30 days you have 30,000 words.
However, it doesn't work like that because it is difficult to write a thousand words a day, and even if you do, you might not write it every day, and therefore writing 30,000 words of books, which is a good range of a nice nonfiction book, is difficult.
Coming to the fiction books, it requires even more words because it needs to fit the length and the breadth of the books which are already popular and for which machines already exist. So you need to write in a certain page range anyway, and it's an exhausting process.
Process Of Writing Book
There are many layers to writing a book. The first is you write the content, and it might take you anywhere from a month to a year or maybe multiple of years.
Then there's a second thing, you need to edit the book. Sometimes you can do it yourself, sometimes you need to find a team for you who can do the editing for you.
Then you would realize that the half the content you have written is a waste of everyone's attention. Those get edited out and maybe you need to rewrite the book. Draft 1, draft 2, version 1, version 2, and it keeps on going. And somewhere along the line, you get tired and you say, that's it. I'm done with this book, I'm done with this idea, I'm done with this thought process, and I want to put this out in the world.
But this is not the end of the journey, this is the start of a journey. Now you need to make sure you have a cover for your book. And that is a very tricky thing because you always say that don't judge a book by its cover, but a book is always judged by its cover.
So no matter how much better your content is, if you don't have a compelling cover, maybe your book isn't picked among thousands of other books. So you spend the most money on the cover of the book, and then it's ready, but then the rejections start.
Traditional Book Publishers Truth
If you're not famous, if you don't have a 10,000 following already, then you're not going to get published by the big publishers like Random, Penguin, or any of them. It's not going to happen.
Earlier in the old days, the traditional publisher used to publish famous people or people who have following, and also they used to bet on the newer people who don't have a following, but their content sparks something and they took a bet and maybe it becomes successful or failure, but doesn't matter, they took a chance.
But the stage that we are in right now, traditional publishers don't take a chance. They simply want to publish the book, which is a guaranteed success for them.
So either you need to be very famous, the book sells by your name, or you have a distribution channel yourself in which you can sell the book. And if you don't have both, I'm sorry, the only way available for you is self-publishing.
1000 True Fans
In self-publishing, maybe you sell 10 copies in your whole career, and that is a massive waste of your time if you're looking to earn money from the writing of books.
So the better way would be to either get famous, which is a very hard thing to do, or try to get 10,000 followers who will at least be interested in the type of writing you have and maybe in your book. And if you do that, then you need to do this before you even write a book. So maybe you do the work for 10 years and accumulate 10,000 people who vouch for you and can... Say, I might be interested in a book.
Then you write a book and maybe it sells and maybe traditional publishers take a better name and then you have a book. But despite all of this, the chance of success is very rare and it would be very outlandish and lucky for you to sell 10,000 copies of a book.
Earning Money From Books
If you're writing a book for money, then it's a very difficult and very strange path to money. So the answer to the question, can you earn money from writing books?
And the answer is yes, but for the most lot of people, the amount is negligible and the people who do earn money, a decent amount of money, they would rather be doing something else to earn the decent amount of money which would be less painful.
And the very few percentage who make millions and millions of maybe billions of dollars from books are a very small percentage and very lucky people. Someone might win the lottery, but it might not be you. It's the famous saying by the Seth Godin and truly resonates the plight of an author.
What is the verdict? Should you write a book then? And I would advise, yes, sure, go ahead and try to get that following or get a fame and maybe you get successful, maybe not, because that is also a luck game at the end of it because you might be very talented, but people might not be interested in the type of content you write or maybe it's just an algorithm punishing you and you get nowhere. But it's still okay.
You Should Write The Book
I would still suggest you to go ahead and write a book. Don't write a book because you want to become a millionaire or maybe earn a decent living from it.
Write a book because you have something itching which has to be packaged in the form of a book and you want the world to have an option for it.
Even if one person buys the books, that should be a successful rate for you because you are writing the books so that you have a condensed think for your thought process or an opinion or an assertion and you want to package it into the book, so it's available to people who want to take a chance and it's also for your own reference and to just put it out of your system and just of doing art in a different way.
Surely it doesn't earn you money, but it's okay, you are doing art and it moves you, even if it doesn't move anything else. Go ahead and write a book.