Don’t blame other people when they don’t buy your work

Russell Nohelty 7

It is never somebody’s fault they didn’t buy from you.

This is one of the hardest pills to swallow in this game, because we always want to blame somebody else for our misfortune, but the truth is that if somebody doesn’t buy, it is entirely our fault.

Maybe we didn’t explain it right, or maybe we didn’t target it right, or maybe we didn’t package it right, or maybe it just wasn’t good enough. Maybe we didn’t spend enough money promoting it or didn’t get our audience excited enough about it before launch.

Of course, it might just be that we guessed wrong and we made a mistake. Perhaps we were ahead of the curve or behind it. It’s possible we picked the wrong time of year to launch, or went up against a similar product with an insane budget that drowned us out. It could have been a thousand things, and it’s your job to analyze why people didn’t buy, but you can’t ever blame the customer.

Something we have done is broken, and we need to suss it out and fix it. Those faults are entirely on us, though. Luckily, we can fix them, and try again, but don’t blame your audience for your mistakes.

Transitioning from selfish to selfless creating

I used to say that I made things for me and me alone. I figured people would like it if they liked it, but I didn’t care if they did or not.

On the other side of making many projects, I no longer think that. Everything I make I make for other people.

I love all of the things I make, but my motivations have completely changed. I don’t even know what I would do if I wasn’t making things for other people.

The more fans I get, the more I make my work to resonate with them, and my books are just a conduit for their joy. If other people don’t like it, I don’t care very much, but I do want my fans to love it. I want everything I do to resonate with them in a deep way.

It’s the evolution from selfish creator to selfless that I think has led to my success in the past few years. Now I think, what will they love that I will love, too, instead of just thinking about myself all the time.

Russell Nohelty

I write cool things, filled with monsters, humor, action, adventure, and generally awesomeness. Then, I sell those things to humans. I am pretty good at it.