On Dreams Coming True.

I've mentioned in a few places that I've wanted to become an author since I was about six years old. Considering most childhood dreams seem to die at some point, either because they're too unrealistic ("I want to be just like Batman!") or not glamours like they are on TV ("I want to be a police officer!"), I find this to be somewhat of an amazing feat.

Even though I didn't go through the whole process of querying agents and publishers on my lovely masterpiece, this is, in some sense, a "dream come true". Why? Because people have purchased - yes, they've paid money! - for something that I wrote.


Yesterday, I jumped for joy as I saw that I had sold seven ebooks - 3 copies of The Dowry and four copies of Family History: Part 1. Considering both are currently up now for $2.99, that means that I made about ~$14 yesterday. It won't pay the rent or anything, but that's $14 more than I made then when those same novels were sitting idly in my hard drive.

Around this time last year, some friends of mine happened to run across some photography I've done. Truthfully, I scoffed at the idea, because I honestly could not think of a reason somebody would actually pay for photographs I've done, especially when I'm so willing to put them up here for free. Hell, I have an entire DeviantArt profile full of stuff I took just for fun that's free to view. To this day, it still seems silly to go out and attempt to sell these photos for anything more than free.

Truthfully, though, if they had told me the same thing about my writing, I probably still would have scoffed. One year ago, even though so many people were doing it, I still would have laughed at the idea, because who would want to pay for my work? My words? Impossible!

Yet sometime in mid-November, I was browsing Reddit's r/writing and came across this post by a man under the throwaway username "Throwaway_Writer". Basically, the entire post briefly mentions that he made $1000 in a single day - all from writing.

And suddenly, profiting off the novels that had been sitting in my hard drive for nearly two years didn't seem so impossible.

I started asking questions; first on that thread, then on others. I began scouring r/writing. I remember that I had previously dedicated this day to my studies, though all of that was quickly thrown out the window as I found myself focusing more on these "dreams" I had so badly wanted to achieve for so long. I had long ago decided that I was not going to traditionally publish either Family History or The Dowry, so it's not like I had that tying me down in any way. Honestly, neither of them were ever going to get picked up by publishers, except for maybe The Dowry - though even that would have required a lot of work.

I actually divided Family History into two at the suggestion of throwaway_writer himself, who actually had suggested dividing it into three and selling them for either $2.99 each or $0.99 for the first and $3.99 for the rest. Two, of course, was a more natural division for the story.

That day, I settled on a "publish-by" date of January 1st, though I actually didn't meet that since boyfriend and I had decided to take a road trip that began on the 28th of December. Though I did do a few things; I started this blog on December 1st, began tinkering with covers, and did some editing on Family History, which included the separation of the two stories. Despite everything, I did end up putting Family History up for sale up on Amazon by January 4th, which coincidentally, was also the 3rd anniversary of boyfriend and I being together.

So far, though, nothing's glamorous. I'm not running around the country talking to Oprah and signing the breasts of fan girls (because all girls want their favorite female authors to sign their breasts). Believe it or not, I've got a couple of guest posts coming up this weekend, which might do something for sales, though I'm not hopeful. I've also got a twitter account - again, that's got to count for something, no?

Yet despite the lack of glamour, the pitiful sales numbers, and everything else, I do have this: I'm able to cross "Get Published" off that ol' bucket list. Cheers to all the ambitious authors who've been able to do the same.