So, what happens when no one buys your book?

From the outside, it appears as if nothing changes for me. I still have the same day job and same house and same car. I don’t move tax brackets or have to sell a vacation home. I don’t need to pay back a publisher’s advance or have to endure a beating in the press.

Inside, however, everything changes. I question it all. If no one is going to read it, why did I put so much energy into that book? Why did I agonize over the phrasing that takes place on page nine or the metaphor on page ninety-nine? Why did I choose that topic or story and why did I think it would resonate?

I even begin to question my passion. What am I doing this for? Why do I spend so much time contributing my thoughts and words for so little monetary return? Am I any good at this?

Then, I always say to myself, no more. I quit. I don’t need this. My life won’t change one iota if I never write another book or essay or guest blog. I’ll have more time to focus on myself and my family and my actual career. I can turn my home office into a room that other people can actually use as well.

I feel this way for a few days, secure in the knowledge that it’s over, that this time I’m really done. I’ll have my seven books, stacked and displayed for posterity, and I’ll go pick up a real hobby like golf or fishing. Then I have an idea, then another, then another, and soon they’re stacked on top of one another in my mind, to the point that I have to begin writing them down to organize them and make sense of them. Before long, I’m in front of the laptop, ideas flowing and fingers flying as I create something new. This one will be different. This one will appeal to everyone because it is undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever written.

The cycle continues. Because while you want your stuff to be read and enjoyed and appreciated (and monetized), that’s not the reason you first started. The first time you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, it wasn’t to crack the bestseller list. It was because you had a passion and a feeling and you wanted to express it through the written word and you didn’t care if anyone read it, because you weren’t doing it for them, you were doing it for you. In a weird way, this entire process makes you realize that again because you don’t have to write, there’s no reason to, yet you’re back at it once again.

So, what happens when no one buys your book?

Ultimately, it makes you a better writer.