Here’s where things get tricky.

Most writers will agree that writing a book is not inherently an easy thing to do. However, if you ask most published authors, especially self-published, they will typically tell you that they prefer the struggles of writing a book to the myriad complications and roadblocks when it comes to publishing and marketing.

Yes, We Can Talk About Money Now.

If you’ve dreamed of being a successful author, you’ve likely realized that at some point, you actually need to get paid.

When you’re launching a writing career and struggling to get your first work published, it often seems like the worst part of the writing business is rejection—those dry, pitiless notes and emails that say your book “isn’t what we’re looking for” or “was interesting but ultimately didn’t engage us.” Rejection is a grind, and can really wear on you.

Writing is one of the most “if you know, you know” careers in the modern world. But the only people who truly know what it’s like to have a writing career are the people who have them.

I’ve always been a bit of a Grinch. The more people want me to be excited about the holidays, the more hostile I tend to become, which has led to a steep decline in party invitations in my life. As it turns out, being the Grinchy curmudgeon who likes to make 10-minute speeches about the commercialization of the holidays does not make you popular, which is information I could have used twenty years ago.

The answer for a lot of writers is “I don’t know.” And, frankly, that’s a legitimate answer. Many of us started writing when we were young out of a natural instinct, a desire to tell stories, and an innate love of language and words. Even if we’ve tried to analyze our process, chances are we don’t know as much about our inner lives as we might like. There’s a reason a lot of writers refer to “the muse,” a mysterious source of ideas and inspiration: Whatever subconscious process goes on to deliver ideas to us often seems like a message from beyond, some kind of cosmic beam we’re somehow tuned into.

I have a writer acquaintance who works very, very slowly. Whenever we discuss the craft or business of writing, I’m always amazed at the amount of time they put into every stage of the process: The research, the outlining, the drafting, the revision. They’ve been known to work on a single short story for years.

A running joke I have in my informal writing and social media is the title of my eventual memoir. For a while, it was going to be “Blondes, Bombs, and Bourbon: The Jeff Somers Story.” Then it was “Confidently Incorrect: The Jeff Somers Story.” Most recently, I’ve settled on “Who Needs Pants, Anyway: The Jeff Somers Story.”

Whether you’re talking to agents, editors, or publicists, one of the critical elements in any promo plan is “comparable titles” also known as comps or comp titles. At some point in your publishing career, you will face this dreaded challenge. Traditional publishing leans heavily on them to minimize their exposure and shorten lead times, but even self-publishing uses them for publicity and market expansion.

When my first novel, Lifers, published, I made almost zero plans to promote it. I thought that promoting the book was the publisher’s responsibility, so I basically settled in for a nap and waited for the royalty checks to come in (spoiler alert: this didn’t work). Then, a few weeks later, Lifers received a capsule review in The New York Times Book Review. My wife and I ran out and bought every copy of the paper we could find, and I settled back to take a longer nap and waited for even larger royalty checks to arrive.