Making It

It's wholly natural when you're young to hope or even believe you're going to become a star. When I was seven or eight, I'd play "pop singer" in my backyard, singing along to my portable radio atop our picnic table, putting on a show for the invisible masses. I may have even been convinced that this was my destiny (it's hard to remember). Never mind that there were a couple of roadblocks in my way. I was pretty shy and self-conscious, and I was only a middling singer at best. 

In later life when I formed a band with my husband, we envisioned producing hits. Neither of us actually voiced it, but it was there in the back of our minds. After all, we (separately) wrote some pretty stellar songs and while my voice never crossed the threshold from middling to "good", I managed to record decent versions of my creations after a few takes. If I didn't believe we were good, I never would have poured so much effort into promoting our music. Just like with self-published books, hundreds of sites exist for plugging music, and I tried a bunch of them. I wasn't overly picky. If a site didn't scream "scam" I submitted to it. We got included in a low level music library, from which we made about $75.00 a year, and we garnered fans from around the world ~ by which I mean, one fan here, another fan there. But all in different places! 😉 I submitted songs for what one might label, "casting calls", in which a producer or music supervisor advertised for a track with a certain vibe. These submissions weren't free, but they were affordable. We never got chosen.

After a while I lost interest. Lack of success will do that to a person. Things weren't panning out and they weren't going to. I wasn't completely naive about our music. Only a few of our tracks had live drums because we could only snag a drummer now and then, so we used drum tracks (hardly the same). I mostly hated my singing, but there are only so many takes one can do before it's time to move on and finish the thing. Still, I'd put a few of our tracks up against any indie band and I wouldn't feel ashamed. But alas, our big break wasn't forthcoming. 

I'm philosophical about that now. A couple years ago, I decided to slap together a couple digital albums of our music by way of CDBaby, which distributes its clients' music to various streaming services like Amazon Music and the biggie, Spotify. Thus, our music is out there, and I can proudly state that one of our tracks has been streamed in the thousands. No promotion; it was just "there" and people found it. Royalties from that? None. And it's never even crossed my mind 'til just now. I didn't put it out there to make money; I just believed (and continue to believe) that good creative works need to be shared, not buried away inside a computer hard drive. 

I saw a Reddit post today bemoaning the fact that the OP will probably never "make it" as a self-published author. He/she is 99.9% correct. Sure, lightning could strike, the same way it struck with my song, Ghost Town, but that's some pretty weak lightning. I'd generate more current shuffling across a carpet in winter. 

If by "making it", one means selling a million copies, have smaller dreams. To me, if anyone buys one of my books, I've sort of made it. It's the same principle as tucking my book away inside my computer. I won't do it. I created it and it's meant to be shared. Just like with our band's tracks, I'm not one hundred per cent satisfied with any of my books. That doesn't mean they're not good. It doesn't mean no one will like them. The (very) few reviews I've read showed me that readers by and large liked my books. And just like with our music, I only have a fan here and a fan there, but that's good enough. 

Without dreams we probably wouldn't do anything but watch TV and gorge on junk food. One needs dreams. Go ahead and shoot for the moon, but if that doesn't happen, an adjustment might be warranted. Pick a smaller dream and once you've reached it, know that now you've "made it".