I think I have gone into survivalist mode. I see so many books being published every day at Amazon. In a recent interview on Writer Groupie my guest mentioned 2200 a day. That’s a lot of books, folks. NY publishers are sitting back watching their slush piles grow smaller and smaller and they are laughing at the rest of us.

Yes, this is the slush they USED to have to deal with. 2200 books a day, y’all.

It’s enough to make me grab my bug out bag and race off into the wild. I think I have a better shot at making a living as a rainwater catcher in the rainforest (another sort of Amazon) than I do at getting someone to find out about my books.

Maybe this is why readers love apocalypic stories–to see who makes it out alive. I feel like I have been dropped into the pages of the next Hunger Games. Who will survive this book apocalypse? If in one week there are 15,400 books to come out, then that’s like 803,000 books a year. OMG.

How do WE survive self-publishing when everyone else is doing the same thing?

Well, for one thing, we have to be better. We have to be the best there ever was.(insert strains of The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band)

We must write GOOD books, ones that are worthy of being looked at. Put GOOD covers on them, and be GOOD marketers. Okay, maybe we should change those goods into greats. No wait. Excellent. The best we can be. We can no longer thrust our work into the world and say, “Oh, well, I can always reissue it if it gets a bad review. I can always update it. Issue a revised version.” No. I am saying noooooo. If you lose your reader on the first go round, they may never give it another shot-and what’s worse? They may never buy from you again.

Write an excellent book. Give it an excellent cover. And learn how to make people want to buy it. That is the main point (or three) of surviving this new world of the written word. It’s like food, shelter, and water. The basics.

Post up your thoughts.