How burnout starts:

I recently took a course on how to be successful on You Tube with audiobooks, and halfway into it, I thought, “This is how burnout is born.” Essentially, you need to upload an entire book at least once a week. An entire book. Every single week. Let that sink in.

Unless you write shorts, you’ll eventually run out of content unless you figure out something else that you can consistently do over there that will keep audiobook listeners happy. (Just because people enjoy listening to your audiobooks, it doesn’t mean they want to see videos of you talking, even if the videos are related to your books.)

Consistency is how you stay up in the algorithm at You Tube. Staying up in the algorithm is how you get more subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more views you get. The more views you get, the more ad revenue you will bring in. Now I understand why content creators on You Tube post videos all the time. If they don’t, they lose money. Just like an author will lose money if they don’t keep publishing books. People forget you if you don’t keep up with things. They don’t mean to forget you. It’s just that new stuff keeps people engaged, and if you don’t have something new, you’ll slip off the radar.

As if one book a week isn’t hectic enough, You Tube’s terms require PG content in order to maximize ad revenue. So if you put up a book with sexual content, you won’t make as much money. In fact, You Tube reserves the right to demonetize your channel, which means even if they do run ads on it, you don’t get anything. (I have a channel on You Tube, and even though some ads are on it, I don’t get anything.) This means an author who has steamy content has to go into each book and remove any content that will get the book flagged. It takes time to do that. Then you have to put the chapters together into one video and create a graphic to go with it. Uploading the audiobook is the easy part.

Thinking through the implications of rapid release

I think all of this work would be doable if you are going to do one book a month, but to make this something an author can benefit from monetarily, this has to be done once a week. Yes, I realize that you can do these well in advance and schedule the audiobooks to go out later, but what happens when you run out of books since you are rushing through your entire catalog like this? What will you do? Quickly write more books to put into audio format? Can you realistically do all of that while publishing in ebook and paperback format, keeping up with emails, doing your record keeping for tax purposes, sending out newsletters, updating your blog/website/social media content, and other things that authors find themselves doing?

I guess you could if hire ghostwriters or use an AI program to write the books for you, but how good will those books be? How can you guarantee quality? And while not popular to talk about, what is the ethical implications of using AI to write for you? Also, when a reader wants a book from you, how would they feel knowing you are not writing them? When a reader falls in love with your work, they are investing in you (the person who is writing the books). That is why your name matters when it’s on the cover of the book. Maybe some people don’t care how a book is written if they enjoyed it, but to consistently buy from the same author year after year, I think the author has to matter because that author is bringing the reader something that the reader values. I just don’t see how ghostwriters or AI can stand up to an author who writes their own stories.

This whole mindset of “get books out as fast as you can to make more money” reminds me of the rapid release thing with Amazon that was popular years ago. Like You Tube, Amazon works on an algorithm that favors new content.

This is how burnout happens. You push yourself to do a lot in a short period of time, and since you need to keep up the pace to stay relevant, you just keep doing it. You can manage to keep up with all of this for some time. It’s not going to hurt you right away, and that’s one of the things that is so dangerous about this method of writing and publishing as fast as you can. You believe you can keep it up because for a while, you do. You just tell yourself, “This is a job. Butt in chair. Write even if you don’t feel like it.” I told myself this for years while struggling to find a way to keep money flowing into my bank account. Over time, this is going to affect you. The human brain was not made to keep up with a hectic pace all the time. We need time to decompress. We need time away from work to build up our reserves. Creativity needs a break.

There are a couple of problems when you chase after money. 1. It’s never enough. No matter how much you make, you always want more. So even if you reach a goal, suddenly you need a new one. You can’t just be happy with where you’re at. 2. You can’t keep writing and producing at a fast pace forever. Something is going to catch up with you. It could be your health. It could be an unexpected repair that requires your attention. It could be an additional member of the family like a baby. It could be the death of a loved one. It could be the need to move to another location. It could be a marriage. It could be a divorce. My point is that anything can happen at any time. When it does, you will not be able to keep up with the rapid pace.

If I want to get right back into burnout, I would pursue this thing with trying to make money with my books on You Tube. I don’t know if I want to do anything with You Tube at this point.

Books are more than widgets

All I know is that I want to write my own books, and I want those books to be something I will enjoy. These books are not just widgets on an assembly line. They are a part of me. They should be a part of me. And sometimes a part of my readers slip in there. If I find out someone who reads my books like a certain character or would like a certain “character type”, I try to figure out a way to make that work into the current story I’m working on or in a future one. This is why working with a series (or even series within the same world) is so much fun. You can bring beloved characters back if a reader wants to see them again. When I write that story, it’s even more enjoyable because I’m bringing that reader along with me. I think of that reader when I write the story and when I reread it. It gives me someone on the other side of the page to think about that deepens my enjoyment for writing. Books are not just “things”. Books are personal.

How to avoid burnout

To avoid burnout, I do have some tips. Burnout happens when you write stuff you don’t enjoy, and it happens when you don’t allow yourself sufficient time to rest. You need to take care of your health. You need to get enough sleep. You need to spend time with people you love because time is one thing you can’t get back with them. So really, it’s all about balance. Yes, you need time to write. But you need time to do the other stuff, too. The best way to avoid burnout is by having the balanced life. Rapid release doesn’t allow for that. My advice, for what it’s worth, is to forget the rapid release mindset if you want to preserve your creative edge.

A possible alternative to chasing after money

If money is tight, maybe pursue investments where money will grow while you sleep. To me, this is the less stressful way of building up money. At my age (50), I don’t expect to build a million+ dollars with my investments because I started last year, but I do expect to build more money than I would by pursuing the rapid release mindset. In rapid release, you’re probably going to rely on assistants. You will be paying those assistants. You have to calculate that when factoring in actual profits. You will also pay self-employment taxes, which means you have to take that out of actual profits. So it’s a continual hamster wheel of work. You might make more, but you will have to pay more in order to keep going up in income. I realize that investment is not a guarantee. (But if the market completely tanks, that means the economy has tanked, and even the most successful author will be worrying about how to find food at the grocery store.)

I’m not telling anyone to go into investing. You will need to do what is best for you. But I have decided to put the excess money I get into investments. With the Roth IRAs, I won’t have to worry about paying taxes when I take the money out, so that is a win-win. I will pay taxes on the 401K and general investment account I have, but at least I get a break on the Roth IRA. But I expect that, overall, the money will grow. All I have to do is let it sit there. I see this as the more sustainable way to go. I don’t have to write and publish at a fast-necked pace. I can sit back and enjoy writing, which is what I really want to do. Definitely study up on investing and learn the way this works if you’re going to dive into this. I know I still have a lot more to learn. But the hardest part of anything is getting started.