2026 marks the tenth anniversary of my first novel, The ’86 Fix, landing on Amazon’s virtual shelves. Sitting here now, ten years on, I still find it hard to believe that I make up stories for a living. It’s a job that many people envy, and I know that because every other person I meet tells me how much they’d love to write a book. Spoiler: they rarely love the idea enough to actually sit down and write one.
Anyway, for those who harbour ambitions to write books for a living, I thought I’d share with you a few lowlights of the job. And I need to stress the word job, because that’s what it is. If you want my definition of a job, ask yourself a question: if you won the lottery tomorrow, would you continue to get up every day and do the thing you’re currently paid to do? If the answer is “fuck, no”, then you have a job.
Enough preamble. Here’s the 10 worst things about writing books for a living, according to me…
1. “Have you written anything I might have heard of?”
Asked, on average, four times per social occasion. It’s the reason I’ve avoided interacting with new people since the pandemic.
The honest answer (“possibly, but I’ve no idea what you read”) has never satisfied anyone. The polite answer, reciting your titles like a station announcer at Waterloo, usually earns a blank stare, a slow “Hmm,” and an immediate change of subject.
2. The one-star review about the delivery/condition
There exists a special category of Amazon review, posted by readers who appear to believe they’re rating the people who pack and deliver the book, rather than the actual thing they ordered. “It arrived dog-eared. One star.”
It’s akin to one-starring a restaurant because the bloke at the next table wore red trousers. Granted, the sight of a man in red trousers is enough to ruin anyone’s evening, but you can’t blame the restaurant.
3. The mid-manuscript wobble
Every book, without exception, arrives at chapter 19 (this is research-backed; my own research, conducted by counting). Chapter 19 is the point at which you become convinced that English is no longer your first language. Or second. Verbs become optional, and plot threads multiply like Japanese knotweed.
Any prior conviction that the book might eventually become a global bestseller fades to grey. Then black. An existential crisis usually ensues.
4. People assuming we waft between coffee shops and literary festivals
The mental image, I gather, involves a vintage typewriter and a cat optimistically named Hemingway. The reality involves a five-year-old laptop and a pair of faded grey sweatpants I bought from Sports Direct in 2021. The frown is permanent; the delivery drivers have learnt to leave the parcel by the door.
Literary festivals do exist, but I’m of the same mindset as Groucho Marx: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
5. Celebrity ‘Authors’
Every Christmas, the publishing industry holds a kind of solemn ceremony in which it lines up the front tables of every airport bookshop with the “memoirs” and “novels” of reality TV stars and footballers’ second wives. The books bear the celebrity’s name on the front but are usually ghostwritten, or at least co-written, with a collaborator: a ghostwriter by any other name. For reasons I’ve never understood, many thousands of people will buy the book, fuelling more celebrities’ entry into the literary world.
Can you think of any other industry where this happens?
If you’re a plumber, you’ll never have to compete with Ant and/or Dec for a bathroom re-fit. And if you attended an interview for your dream job, wouldn’t you be a bit pissed to discover you lost out to Amanda Holden?
I don’t like celebrity authors, just in case you’re still in any doubt.
6. Creativity ebbs and flows. Mortgage payments do not.
There is something specifically cruel in the relationship between the muse and the direct debit. The muse takes a fortnight off in early November. The mortgage company does not. The boiler demands an annual service whether or not you’ve cracked chapter eight. Inspiration, it turns out, runs on its own clock; the collections department at my local council does not.
Beyond the financial stress, there’s the matter of time. I now loathe people who ask what I’m up to at the weekend, knowing I’ll be sitting at my desk, trying to make sense of the senseless. And don’t get me started on bank holidays.
Being an author means working when you really don’t want to, because you’re terrified that the creative juices might run dry at any moment.
7. The three stages of writing a book
Stage one: the idea. The best moment in the entire process, lasting approximately forty minutes. It typically arrives in the shower, in the car, or, most cruelly, at 3am, when committing it to paper requires you to leave a warm bed and locate a pen that hasn’t run dry.
Stage two: the writing. The middle six months during which you actually produce eighty thousand words. There are days where the prose flows, and you feel like Dickens. Those days are rare. Mainly, extracting legible sentences from your head is akin to shitting a cactus. Slow. Painful.
Stage three: the editing. The literary equivalent of cleaning the carpets after an orgy at a swingers club. You know it must happen. You can see what needs doing. You know you’ll hate every minute.
I once spent an hour deciding whether “a moment later” should in fact be “shortly afterwards.”
Enough said, I think.
8. The Sunday-afternoon plot hole
You’re sitting at your desk on a perfectly serene Sunday afternoon, tidying up the manuscript for delivery, when you suddenly realise the entire structural logic of your fourth-act revelation requires a character to be in Margate on the same day she is, very clearly and on page 84, in Manchester. The implications cascade.
Three days later, you’ve rewritten forty thousand words, broken something else trying to fix the first thing, and quietly considered taking up beekeeping.
9. Other authors on Instagram
Open Instagram on any given Tuesday and you will find a fellow author standing in a lavender field, manuscript loosely clasped, with a small bookshop dog at her ankles. The caption: “And just like that, draft six!” followed by sixteen emojis and a heartfelt thank-you to her beta readers.
You glance at your own desk. A plate containing the evidence of your custard cream addiction. A coffee cup with something growing inside it that may, in time, become a friend. The same chapter you started two weeks ago. You close the app and feel marginally worse than before you opened it.
10. Marketing. Or: the slow realisation that no one outside your immediate family gives a shit
You have written a book. Outside your immediate family and one loyal aunt in Devon, nobody knows. Nobody is going to know unless you tell them. And telling them in 2026 involves shouting into a series of algorithmic voids whose owners do not read books, in front of audiences who increasingly resent any post that doesn’t include a 90-second dance routine.
The marketing problem facing the indie author is not, strictly, marketing. It’s the slow understanding that a book is a product floating in a sea of other products, and the only way it ever surfaces is if you grab it by the ankle and wave it about yourself. Several times a week. For years.
And yet
None of this, in fairness, has prevented me from continuing to write. The job remains, despite the ten complaints above, one of the few I would still choose if I had my time over. And there’s one good reason for that: readers.
I regularly receive emails and messages from random strangers who’ve stumbled upon one of my books. 99.9% of those emails and messages more than make up for my ten gripes. And the thought that at any given moment, someone somewhere on the planet is reading words I penned, and finding joy in those words, makes me smile. It is a feeling that never grows old, and one I’ll remain eternally grateful for.
To Conclude
If you’ve read this far, you’re either a fellow author with strong feelings about chapter 19, or you unwisely asked one what he or she does for a living. Either way: my novels exist because readers like you keep finding them. The ’86 Fix if you fancy a man with a second chance and a can of Coke. Who Sent Clement? if you’d prefer a double-denim ghost from 1975 punching his way through modern London. No Easy Deeds if 1990 estate agents and a mysterious old woman who knows too much sounds like a Friday night well spent.
You’ll have helped one author’s marketing strategy feel slightly less futile — and possibly delayed his retraining as a plumber by a full six months. That’s assuming Ant and/or Dec don’t get there first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is being an author a good job?
It is one of the most rewarding jobs on Earth and one of the most quietly demoralising, often during the same Tuesday. The freedom and creative satisfaction are real, but so are the income volatility, the marketing burden, and the chapter-19 panic. Most working authors love it and would not swap it for anything more sensible.
How much do indie authors actually earn?
Indie author earnings vary wildly. Most earn under £10,000 a year from royalties. A successful indie career sits in the £30-100k range, while a small group of full-time professionals earn six figures. Almost no one earns what the romantic image of authorship suggests. Most authors have a day job or a patient partner.
What is the hardest part of writing a novel?
Most authors agree the hardest part is the middle of the first draft, around chapter 19, where the early enthusiasm has faded and the ending feels miles away. Editing is the most tedious phase. Marketing the finished book is, for many indie authors, harder than any of the writing itself.
Why do authors complain about Amazon reviews?
Amazon star ratings are not separated from the book itself, so a one-star review about delivery, packaging, or print quality lowers the book’s average in the same way as a literary one-star review. Authors have no way to dispute these, and a handful of postman-related complaints can quietly tank a new release.
Do authors write full-time?
A minority do. Most authors juggle the writing alongside another job or a freelance career, and even full-time novelists spend a significant slice of each week on marketing, admin, accounts, cover design, newsletters, and answering reader emails. The image of an author spending forty hours a week at the keyboard rarely matches the diary.