25% creating

content/post/2024/02/25percent-creating-75percent-hustling.md

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+---
+title: "25% Creating, 75% Hustling"
+date: 2024-02-17T19:35:00+01:00
+categories:
+  - braindump
+---
+
+In retrospect of several creative endeavors, on average, I feel like I spend 25% of my time creating, and 75% hustling. I don't think that's a healthy balance at all: it should be 60%+ creating and 40% or less hustling. Yet in this world where uninterrupted yelling is the norm to get your stuff to sell, it seems that I have little choice.
+
+This ad campaign driven approach to do business has been bothering me for quite some time. I want to _create_, not to keep on poking people to take a look at my creations. I want to _create_, not to publish campaigns periodically and overflow other people's feeds while sending money to Meta. I want to _create_, not worry about the black hole the creation will end up in if I don't do enough of the hustling. 
+
+The first draft of my book [The Creative Programmer](/works/the-creative-programmer) took roughly three months to write. Before that, most of the thinking and idea-connecting work was already done. Then it took another good year to re-write it into an acceptable publishable form with the help of editors. For _The Creative Programmer_, I explicitly opted to work together with the publisher Manning because I had the illusion that the 75% hustling work would be handled by them. After all, I am indirectly paying them to do so as my royalty rates are, compared to indie publishing, laughably low. 
+
+I was wrong. Besides initial social media and standard website campaigns, I was expected to do the hustling myself. I was encouraged to attend conferences and submit talk proposals, but neither the ticket nor the accommodation costs would be reimbursed. Considering that on average I make `€2.5` per book sale, I would need every single person in two rooms of 200 people to buy a copy in order to break even. 
+
+I put in more hustling work. I did interviews, participated in podcasts, posted on forums, wrote technical articles directly or indirectly promoting the book on tech news sites, and gave talks (locally!). None of that really bore any fruit. Since the early access release, My Q3 2023 report tells me that we shifted 2.056 units in total. That's a low number for such a technology-agnostic book---in fact, I'm starting to doubt I'll ever see another penny besides the initial advance. 
+
+Don't get me wrong: I absolutely do not care about the money: I wrote it in 2022 as part of my paid PhD job. What does bother me though is despite the 75% hustling, efforts put in so far are generally wasted. And I hate hustling. This makes me think next time I just should care even less and definitely self-publish: if it's out there, it's out there, and if someone happens to find it, great, but if not, also great, at least then I can fully focus on the creation part and completely trash the dreaded hustling part. 
+
+That's fine by me since my income doesn't depend on those royalties, but what if they do? Then you'll probably need to crank up that hustling percentage or at least learn how to play that game more efficiently---and learn to live with it instead of gradually resenting it. 
+
+The problem isn't limited to my pathetic authorship attempt. A few years ago, my wife tried to make it as an independent jeweler, which here in Belgium is an incredibly crowded market dominated by cheap e-stores that maximize profit by importing junk from China combined with hiring entire remote Indian teams to do their dirty ad work for them. Needless to say, it is simply impossible to compete with them. Of course, hand-crafted silver jewelry at premium prices aren't the same as cheap knock-off necklaces, but it's easy to be intimidated by all the social media business screaming, even by other local jewelers that seem to want to play that game very eagerly. Two years later, she gave up in frustration. 
+
+In a local television show called [Andermans Zaken](https://www.vrt.be/vrtmax/a-z/andermans-zaken/), a well-known business expert interviews and helps all kinds of entrepreneurs who are facing an urgent problem: high expenses, little to no revenue. The number one solution, time and time again, is to launch an online ad campaign. At that point in the show, as I shake my head in disbelief, I zap to another channel. 
+
+I understand the basics of how economics work under the greedy watch of capitalism, but that doesn't mean that I have to agree with its principles---especially when it comes to my urge to exert my _Homo Faber_. 
+
+I think I'm done shouting at the void. Perhaps I should instead let go of [my urge to publish](/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/), (un)consciously somehow still expecting people to care.