Selling Systems vs. Creating Systems (of Creative Care)
I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, in part because a lot of individuals are doing some amazing things within the writing community. It's innovative; it's interesting, and as someone who has been both on the publisher and on the author side of this industry for a very long time, I tend to look at things from a different perspective. And there's one difference that I've really found lately in the marketing. It's shifted.
I'm seeing a lot more book coaches talk about creating sustainable, profitable author careers while selling the same old systems, and using the same tactics that got us into the current state of publishing to begin with.
The question boils down to this: Are they selling you something that will help you with what you're doing? Or are they invested in helping you feel better and be more creative?
The non-profit world is interesting, because at least for the animal rescue causes that I've been involved with, the goal is to put yourselves out of business. Now, we can be honest with ourselves, no one is solving the equine, cat, or dog, overpopulation anytime soon, and the phrase "until they all have a home" seems a long time away. But as someone who did run a local non-profit that did eventually do enough education to put itself out of business locally, that is the ultimate goal. To solve a problem.
The thing about book marketers who promise you a turnkey system is that the problem is never solved. Not completely. You can take what you learned and apply it to the next book and the next, but platforms change, markets change, and there's always going to be some new turnkey system for people to sell.
My goal is to change someone's relationship with their writing, not endlessly extract money from them. And honestly, I believe everyone has a right to access transformative change, even if they can't afford four figures that end in 7, and no, it's not their fault, and they're "not trying hard enough" if they can't. Although my work is aimed at earning enough profit so that I can have a modest standard of living (I don't need six or seven figures to be happy.), my pricing is such that hopefully more people can access my services.
Which is why my work is focusing on helping you create systems of creative care. Now, I'm not going to say that those systems won't change over time. Our lives change. We change as people. And that means our systems of care, whether it's creative, spiritual, physical, or whatnot, have to change with us to adapt to our evolving life. But if I can help authors feel better about their work and feel better about their writing, and perhaps feel better about how they relate to this crazy industry we're in without bankrupting them or having them run up credit cards, well, I feel good about that too.
