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I do take comfort in numbers like those on Author Earnings - showing that there is a possibility that I may one day see some financial reward for the effort. To be perfectly honest, I doubt if I'd bother to publish if I was fully convinced there was no chance at all. I'd still write, it only costs time and it's what I like doing, but I wouldn't put in all the effort that feels like work, and costs out-of-pocket dollars, to publish the result if that chance didn't exist. To that extent I suppose I am in it for the money.
And I would like my books to sell well, both for the money and as a measure of my success as a writer, so I'm not trying to say that the numbers mean nothing to me. But I think that spending too much time worrying about the numbers at this point (while I still only have two books out and third on the way) is probably counterproductive. I think that a certain fatalism is required. We keep writing and trying to improve ourselves, and take comfort in knowing that independent publishing does not stand in the way of success, while still remembering that it doesn't guarantee it either.
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