Why I'm Not Writing A 2nd Singlehood Book

Minds change.

Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.

Shrimp cocktail. Why not.

I don’t do stuff like this really, but I’d like to dedicate this newsletter to anyone who has ever asked me for writing advice. Anyone who’s ever felt stuck, held back, or in the writing industry’s “out crowd.” Don’t wait for a platform to present itself, build your own, that’s the only way to drown out the silence. They don’t tell you you’re a writer—you do. Get to it. xo Shani

I have written a book already. This isn’t about me giving up any sort of dream, because I fulfilled it. I self-published my book in 2021 because after three years of pitching to the gods and hearing “you’re a great writer, we just don’t see a market,” I decided to stop waiting for someone else’s permission to be who I am. So I paid the now defunct Scribe Media twelve grand to edit, design, produce, and publish my book for me. I made that money back four month’s from my book’s release date, and I will be in the green on it for the rest of my life. Most authors who go through publishing giants will never earn out on their advance—meaning they’ll never make a penny more on that book. These days, my book earns about $300 per month, which is nice of course, but not nice enough to make me exert the amount of effort it takes to write 70,000 words at once all over again while simultaneously doing work that pays me so that I can live.

The publishing industry has its darlings, we know that. Most of them are very, very famous and guaranteed to sell more copies of a memoir than the bible. Either that, or they’re a Tiktok star with some culinary ability or a very cute, even deceased, dog. Literal dead dogs have book deals and I don’t. You don’t have to sit with that thought too long, I’ve done it for you, trust me.