Teens & Self-Publishing: Passive Income

Today We're Going to Talk About Lightning...

What does lightning have to do with publishing books?  A. Lot. 

Well, it has a good deal to do with your author mindset.  As far as being an author goes, mindset is kind of like putting on a pair of glasses.  You can wear rosy ones, blue ones, or super dark nightshades.  There are many views you can take on your writing, but here's the catch: you decide which glasses you are wearing.

That's your author mindset.

You Have Choices

1. You can hope for the lightning strike.  In the publishing world, this is looking at your writing and expecting to make it big with your first book.  In case you're wondering, there are approximately 1 million ebooks published each year.  Your chances of being struck by lightning this year are 1 in 700,000.  You literally have a better chance of walking outside and getting hit by a bolt of lightning than you do of making it big with your first book.
2. You can think long term.  You can look at each book as an opportunity to grow as a writer.  With one you learn what it takes to finish a book, then a series.  With another you learn more about researching an audience and how to write something you love that other people will love too.  Or you focus on how to craft a better story line.  Or you make your characters more realistic.

The Value of Long-Term

So what does the long-term author mindset have to do with Passive Income?

Everything.

As a teenager writing a book or series, I encourage you to look at each book as a chance to become a better author.  If you do that, and put out quality books, your back list will pile up. 

Imagine that you make two dollars a book.  Say five books sell every week.  Ten dollars may not sound like a lot, but the income is passive.  You have already done the work, you never have to write that book again, but you continue to make a little cash every week.

Now imagine that you decide to keep writing.  You get better at it, and get better reviews.  You have ten books selling every week.  Then twenty.  You put out quality work, little by little.  By the time you're forty you have forty books to your name.

Or you can finish your series and never write another thing.  But the income it makes is still yours.  For life.  Not a bad result from a high school English project

PS - Current copyright laws mean that unless you sell your rights, that passive income is yours for life, and then it passes to your next of kin for seventy years! Not a bad legacy!

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