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Are Writers, Artists, and Creatives In Competition with One Another?
Even in a crowded market, we’re not competing with each other.
In trying to learn how many authors are self-published, no search I’ve run on Google can give me a number. Between Amazon and other services making self-publishing increasingly easier, it’s safe to presume that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of self-published, indie authors.
The number I have been able to find, according to Bowker data published in February of 2023, is that 2.3 million books were self-published in the US in 2021. That’s a lot of books.
How many genres does that cover? What degree of proofreading and editing has gone into them? How do they sell compared to traditionally published books?
The question I don’t ask, that some might is — how much are indie authors competing with one another? The answer is not at all.
To be fair, yes, we are competing to get readers, people clicking and buying our books, and sales. But that’s not the competition of author versus author. Rather, it’s a matter of how we do promotions, marketing, use social media, mailing lists, and the tools at our disposal to draw in and entice readers to read our books.
