Later this month, October 25th, my fifteenth book will be published.
That is wild. I’ve said these words out loud several times in the past few days, and it doesn’t seem possible or real. It feels like I’m still the aspiring author struggling to find an idea worth pursuing. It feels like I should still be that young author desperately querying my first novel.
But I’m not.
I’m no longer an aspiring author. I’m a full-fledged author.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it most of the time.
I’ve only recently been comfortable telling other people that I’m a writer. You know, when you see a friend from college that you haven’t seen in ten years and they ask what you’ve been doing, I used to skirt the question and avoiding saying that I wrote books. I didn’t want my lack of “bestseller” status or my lack of a literary agent and a big 5 publishing house deal to invite pity. I didn’t want people to think I was a failure or that I was bad at writing.
So I kept my books to myself, like I used to keep fanfiction to myself. It was a dirty little secret that no one could know about, because I didn’t want them to make fun of me.
I was a very self-conscious kid and teenager. That self-consciousness and the fear of being seen as “weird” faded in my mid-twenties, thankfully. I made weird friends, joined online communities of other readers and authors. I learned to be comfortable in my own skin, my own hobbies, my goals, my aspirations. I learned to like the things that made my personality, the things that made me how I am.
That personal growth is just one thing that has changed since I published my first book in 2016. Well, “changed” isn’t really the right word. Let’s go with “evolved.”
When you are just starting out on your writing journey, there are so many authors with more experience who are willing to give you advice for free. They want you to succeed, because they were once in your shoes. They were once a young, baby author too. There are also others out there who will take advantage of your inexperience and your eagerness to be a writer. They will try to sell you your dream through services they aren’t always qualified to offer and knowledge that they themselves did not obtain first-hand. I call these dream-sellers sharks. That’s what they are. They scent the fresh blood in the water and they hunt.
I have fallen prey to some of these shark scams, and I’m not proud of it, but it’s done and there’s nothing I can do about it now except warn other young authors.
Almost every piece of writing advice that I’ve paid for, I’ve found somewhere else for free. It’s all online. Either in the blogs, newsletters, YouTube channels, Substacks, Podcasts, or social medias of authors, agents, or editors. There are so many good people out there in the publishing industry who are willing and capable of giving you advice – the same advice these sharks will try to sell you.
So, lesson #2:
No one can sell you a publishing deal. No one can sell you the secrets of landing an agent, or a big-5 publishing contract, or whatever it is they claim to sell. Do not fall for these scammers. They want you to give them money.
*Now, there are plenty of legit services out there that you should pay for, like editing. A good editor is worth every penny, same goes for cover designers. I’m talking about about the people who want you to pay for insider information, or something like “The Secrets the Publishing Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know,” or “5 Steps to Being a Bestseller.”
The best way to improve your craft is to READ and WRITE. Read voraciously both in and out of your genre. Read legit books on the craft, those that are tried and true. Which ones are those?
I enjoyed Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. She goes through the beats of the Save the Cat outline and then the second half of the book breaks down popular novels into their story beats.
I also have The Truth about Fiction by Steven Schoen. I read this one in college (for my BA or my MFA, I don’t remember, but probably MFA). This book isn’t very long at all, but it’s delightful and insightful about the truth about writing fiction.
I know I read others over the course of the past 15 years, but those are the two that sit on my self.
My rule of thumb when it comes to writing advice is to always be paranoid of who’s giving it to you. If it’s someone who has one book under their name, I don’t know if I’d take it to heart. If it comes from a prolific author, a tried and an true storyteller, someone who has proven again and again that they understand how to craft a story – I would take that advice more seriously.
I would take all writing advice with a grain of salt, regardless. Like Stephen King’s advice to write every day. I do not agree. He, of course, is a full-time writer, and I work a full-time job outside of writing, like so many other authors.
However, one of my newest favorite pieces of writing advice comes from Brandon Sanderson (from his 2025 lecture on writing via YouTube) where he said that just because a piece of writing advice isn’t good for you know, doesn’t mean it won’t be good for you later. It might not matter to you right now, where you are in your writing journey, but it might matter ten years down the road. Writing advice, publishing advice, marketing advice – it all depends on where you are in your career, in your discovery of your style.
And this brings me to lesson #3
Don’t rush yourself. Don’t get mad that the draft you’re struggling with isn’t shaping up like you dreamed it would. Take a break. Take a walk. Let that creative muscle relax.
Sometimes the words don’t come. Sometimes I stare at the cursor. There have been weeks where I don’t write more than a chapter.
I used to have this panicked feeling that I’d die before I published my book, or that the world would end and it wouldn’t matter anymore. Then I published my first book, then that fear morphed into a new one: fearing that I would die before I finished the series, or that the world would end before I finished it. Then I finished that series, started a new one, finished that one, and I have two more series and half a dozen half-baked WIPs in the metaphorical oven.
That panic to get my book out into the world as soon as possible has lessened. Do I still rush things? Yeah. But I’ve come to understand that the point in every book where I think it’s ready to be published is really just the point where it’s ready for someone else to look at it, namely an editor.
I still have fears. Only now they revolve around my creative well drying up, all my stories sounded the same, repeating the same plot over and over, and getting caught in some stupid social media scandal that doesn’t really exist but you know how the internet is. I also fear never breaking through that glass ceiling above my indie author head, never breaching the realm of success that is reserved for traditional authors.
I fear that I have no idea what I’m doing, even after all this time. The marketing is constantly shifting. The wants of the mainstream readers are shifting. My reading habits have shifted.
This leads into lesson #4:
Write the books you want to read. Write characters that you can be obsessed with. Write worlds that you can’t stop thinking about. Write books that you as a reader would love, that other readers in that genre would love. Write because you enjoy it, because you love stories – not because you think writing a book is a way to make easy money. Don’t be in this for the money. You will be disappointed.
I spend more than I make back. I know that someone out there is saying that I’m not budgeting correctly or I’m not marketing correctly if I’m not seeing that ROI. I’m sure they’re right. There are people out there whose entirely job is about ROI and advertising. But I’m too poor to hire any of those people, because marketing takes money. You don’t always see the return.
Especially now when everyone and their sister is trying to market a book. The click-price of a BookBub ad has doubled since I ran my first ad campaign through them. Because everyone is trying to get their book seen. The ad with the highest bid wins, so the more money you throw at the ad, the more often it appears. It’s become a form of gatekeeping, this idea that an author needs a big budget in order to get their book out there.
But that’s not going to stop me from writing and publishing more books. It’s in my blood now. I’m fully infected with the author’s curse. If I stop writing, I will die.
Lesson #5
One thing every author has to understand is how to take criticism – good and bad and stupid. Because, let’s face it, book reviews are a thing. They are a big part of this business. Book reviews sell books. Having a good rating gets your book noticed more. I’m sure there’s something in the algorithm of Amazon, but I don’t know it, and I don’t think anyone else knows it either. But we all agree that having more reviews is good.
But with book reviews come the bad reviews. The reviews that give you one star because they hated your writing or your protagonist. One review will rave about your worldbuilding and the next will say it was the worst worldbuilding they’ve ever read. One review will lavish over your love interest while the next will say they were flat and boring and had no personality.
It is a part of the business. Bad reviews exist. Stupid reviews exist. Reviews that don’t make coherent sense and read like they were written by an angry third grader exist. There will be someone out there who doesn’t like your book for whatever reason. However, it’s important to remember that we, as readers, also have books and authors we don’t like. It’s a part of being in the creative entertainment business. I have movies I love and movies I have no interest in watching.
As an author, it is easy to let the bad reviews get under your skin. It is easy to feel like it’s a personal attack on you, on your person, your ideals and beliefs. It’s not. It never is. When it is, however, that goes against the terms and conditions and can be reported, like when they call the author mean names and make fun of the book. That can be reported. But but bad reviews don’t do those things.
It’s not personal. They are reviewing the book, not you, and just because one personal didn’t like the book, doesn’t mean it’s a bad book or that you are a bad writer or that you should quit.
When I started writing, everyone said that I needed a tough skin. I needed to grow a thick skin. I didn’t get what they meant – until I did. I’d like to say that I grew that thick skin overnight, like pudding, but that’s not how it happened. That thick skin built up like a callus, with repeated use, repeated hammering with words that didn’t feel nice to hear. It took time to build up that thick skin.
I think I skipped the worst of the thick skin because I started out in fanfiction. I got the worst of my writing out in those spaces. Those readers also helped me start the foundation of my thick skin.
Lesson #6
And it is easy to feel offended and attacked when someone doesn’t like your book, or you as an author, and you might want to lash out, to attack back, to point out how stupid their review was, or that they clearly didn’t read the book – don’t. Just don’t.
Don’t ever engage with the rage-bait community. They exist solely to piss people off and reap the content it brings them. They want the attention. They want to make people made. More angry comments = more attention = more views. They’re trolls.
Always be humble when it comes to your career. Don’t engage with bad reviews and trolls, be polite and gracious to those who take the time to leave a review.
Yes, you might want to engage with the readers, because we are also readers at heart, but once you step into that author space, you are no longer just a reader. You have left the space behind. You are now an author. In the author space. We can look into the readers space, but we’re not a part of it anymore. That doesn’t mean we can brag about the books we’ve read or uplift other authors or talk about our books. But when it comes to the reader space of reviews, that is not for us. That space is for readers.
In this industry, it is easy to let imposter syndrome knock you down and let your self-doubt kick you. It’s easy to see the apparent success of other authors and feel inferior. It’s easy to look at the finished product of another author, a finished book that you love, and feel like you could never write something so good.
But a part of being an author is to keep writing. To keep improving. To keep going regardless of how hopeless it seems. Yeah, you’re going to get knocked down. You are going to fall. You might fail. Your books might not get you that dream agent or that big advance and the contract. But if you quit because it’s hard, you’ll never get there.
There are a handful of traits that all authors share: persistence is one of them. You have to pick yourself up when you fall. Build a writing community that will support you and uplift you.
Of all the things I’ve learned in the past 10 years of writing and the 15 books I now have under my name, persistence is the one thing that has come naturally. I want to write. I enjoy writing. I will write even if the world implodes and all I have is old notebooks and #2 pencils. I will be crafting stories if only for myself.
If you want to be an author, you have to enjoy the work. I love the work, the tedious work of finding names for characters and places, building the worlds, sorting out the plot, discovering potholes and then mulling over then for days before the inspiration strikes. I love the busy work of writing. I’ve taught myself about marketing and market placement, how to marketing and use software like Canva to make promos and ad fodder, and how to navigate the author space – how to occupy the same virtual space as big name authors whose work I adore.
I started out in 2016 treating writing like a side hustle. A hobby I wanted to bring in extra cash. I wanted that full-time writer status and all the glory and fame that came with it, but I was not ready. My craft wasn’t ready. I, mentally, wasn’t ready. It was a gradual change. One day, I realized I was talking about my books and my career as if it were a hobby, and I wanted it to be a real career. A professional career. So I started treating it like one. I starting thinking of it like one.
And it’s wild how that mental shift has changed how I look at my books. Yes, I write because I love it. I enjoy the work. I also want this to be my life’s work, my livelihood, my full-time income.
I’ve tried to tiptoe into other spaces within the publishing world, like editing, marketing, and I even applied for internships at literary agencies (to no avail). My skillset lies with the writing itself. That’s not to say I couldn’t enjoy another role within the publishing industry, but for right now, I want to be the creative. I want to be the writer. That is where I belong.
This is who I am.
Beatrice B. Morgan 