Dustin Tigner

To all the hopeful authors out there: The golden age of easier discoverability is ending quickly or has already ended. Amazon has made their ecosystem much less noob-friendly, and much more expensive to be competitive in. Going wide takes even more skill and effort. However There are still a lot of opportunities in literature (maybe even more than before). I think now newbies need to work harder or be more strategic to take advantage of them, though. There will always be authors still just lucking into success, but I think that avenue is a lot narrower now than it used to be. My .02 is to keep your genre in mind while researching ways to grow your audience. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for every writer. Reader habits and reader tastes vary wildly genre-to-genre. In fact, methods can even vary quite a bit author-to-author. I have friends who write in the same genres as I do with very little reader overlap. Unfortunately, it can take a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for your brand and for your readers. Writing is art. Art can take a long time to turn into a career. It might never. I think we need to accept this to find the zen to keep going when we're not being read. And respect the readers. Without them, we're all just a bunch of weirdos with a keyboard, telling stories to ourselves..