By Geoff Micks
Website| Books| Bluesky| Audio Drama Podcast
In the late-1990s I finished a novel around the same time I finished high school.
It was terrible, but I learned from the experience.
I finished my second novel as I was finishing university, and it was pretty good. Better than pretty good, really. It was that shiny brass ring all writers reach for but few ever convince themselves they have grasped. It was, “Good Enough.”
I got a literary agent, and for a couple of years he shopped it around the publishing houses while I rewrote my first novel to also be, “Good Enough.” In the end, both were long works of historical fiction about cultures without much real estate in the zeitgeist, and a risk-averse publishing industry chose not to take a chance on me. My agent never cost me a penny, and I never made him one. We parted on friendly terms. After that I had two novels ready for the world to see, and the world —or at least the tastemakers and gatekeepers who decide what the world reads— was not interested.
Twenty years and several finished and half-finished books later, I am what the publishing industry more and more calls an ‘Independent Author’ with less and less stigma attached to it. Whatever success I have found, I found for myself.
I used to joke that my royalties covered my bar tab. Now they pay for some nice vacations. Assuming the trajectory of my side-hustle does not change, I am on course for a welcome supplemental passive income in retirement. I also write as part of my day job, and my career and paying hobby reinforce one another. All this is to say I am at the point where the good people behind t.a.l.e. feel I am qualified to write an essay offering advice to other writers in my position or on their way to this not-unhappy place.
Here are some takeaways I can offer you.
Keep writing, and finish what you write.
The difference between an aspiring writer and a writer is the writing. You have to put in the work. Luck is where opportunity meets preparation. If you are given a chance to really do something, are you ready? Procrastination and Imposter Syndrome are both real, but they are also just you standing in your own way. Discover and stick to reliable writing habits that work for you. Make the thing. If it’s bad, you can polish it up or start over informed by the experience. You can’t improve something you didn’t do. That applies to everything, especially art.
Treat any publishing advice more than 10 years old with extreme scepticism.
The rules have changed as the industry has changed, and new technologies have further disrupted and fragmented how writers write and readers read.
Within my adult lifetime we have gone from the expectation that you must pitch by snail mail with an enclosed self-addressed stamped envelope for agents and publishers to use for their reply, to where that is now a laughably antiquated idea.
Within the last two decades, self-publishing has gone from sneering accusations of “vanity presses” to how most authors find success, and even the traditional publishers now find many of their best new talent and titles by pitching themselves to writers who have already demonstrated that their stuff sells well without them.
Put yourself out there. Find and build community.
Writing is a solitary activity, but being an ‘Independent Author’ is not. Join or start a writers group online or in person. They will keep you honest, accountable, and productive. Engage in online conversations about writing and the business of writing. They will keep you informed and motivated. Reddit has thriving subreddits relevant to every genre and every aspect of being an author and getting published. Substack and Bluesky users often joke that they are all writers flogging their writing to other writers. That’s fine. You know who reads a lot? Writers!
Have an author’s website, even if no one visits it. One day someone might Google you, and when they do, there should be something written and formatted by you as you would want someone interested in you to see it.
Pick several social media channels and say stuff there regularly. Plug yourself and your writing, but also make content that the people on those different platforms will enjoy to the point where some small portion of them ask, “Who is this? What else do they do?” You don’t need to become an influencer, but you do need to have an established presence. Those are the table stakes of being an ‘Independent Author’ nowadays.
Say yes to things. Experiment.
The landscape of modern publishing is evolving so fast, anything purporting to be a current map is either obsolete or has a looming expiration date. If someone tells you to try something and all it is going to cost you is a little time and talent? Do it. Who knows what will come from anything anymore?
I once had a humourous blog post go viral to the point where I was quoted in the New York Times and the Washington Post, NPR broadcast an interview with me across 160 radio stations, and the now-defunct Vice Media hired me to write an animated short for them that aired on HBO. Did any of that end up selling my books? I have no idea, but it certainly did not hurt. None of it would have happened if I didn’t publish the blog post.
Cherish every kind of win.
When I was first starting out as a writer of historical fiction my goal was to have my books shelved next to Michener’s at the bookstore. Maybe I will get there one day, and maybe not. In the meantime, there’s a man out there somewhere with a line from one of my books tattooed on him. He emailed me about it. A Bolivian woman I have never met made her American husband read one of my novels to understand her better. She friended me on Facebook to tell me so. I have been having a decade-long conversation by email, text, phone, and even in person with a fellow in California who read something of mine on a whim while on vacation and decided to reach out.
None of those are a three-book deal with a generous advance from one of the Big Five publishing houses. (Worth saying it was the Big Six when I started trying to get published. It might be the Big Four or Big Three by the time you read this.) I still think about all of those people who loved what I created and more whenever I sit down and write something I plan to put out into the world.
If the publishing industry ever had a Golden Age, you and I missed it. That does not mean a paying public will not enjoy our work if and when they find it. We need to remain positive and productive and open to new ideas, and above all, we need to keep writing.
Good luck to you, and to all of us.
About Geoff
Geoff Micks is a Toronto-based writer and corporate communications professional who has organized more than 125 executive-level industry conferences across North America and Europe. He is the author of Inca (2011), Zulu (2012), Beginning (2016), Middle (2017), and End (2018), the last three of which he has adapted into an audio drama, The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast (2025). His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Public Radio, Vice Media, and HBO.