The noise silently killing your author career

✏️ Please stop doing this… ✏️

Have you ever felt like you are drowning and no matter how hard you paddle, you can’t keep your head above water?

For me, I was barely able to keep my head awake at my desk.

I would start my day, hoping to get my words in for noon. 3k each writing day was always my goal.

Suddenly, I’d get dragged away by my Facebook Ads Dashboard and spend hours tweaking it for no reason. I’d write 1k words.

Then I’d dive into cover briefs and publishing admin. Until I knew it, my day was gone, and I was racing to get my 3k words in after dinner.

Stress. Exhaustion. Eyes shutting while trying to bang more sentences out at my desk.

It’s embarrassing how many times this happened to me.

And no….

This is not about to be an anti-hustle culture essay.

I’m actually… all about that hustle, bout that bustle… no treble. Okay, that song reference was weird and uncalled for 😂.

But you get my point: I think pouring yourself into something you care about is a virtuous thing.

If you want to win at something, you also have to know what you are willing to lose to get there.

I have had a winning mindset my entire life.

In high school, I decided I wanted to win my schooling. I graduated top of my class of 900+ a year early.

During my gap year, I decided I wanted to win the publishing game. I pumped out 9 books in 12 months.

Then, during college, I decided I wanted to help indie storytellers like you win the future of entertainment. Have a long way to go — but the gatekeepers of Hollywood are firmly my next target (ahem, Creatorwood).

Locked and loaded. Ready to go. And utterly obsessed.

Maybe you are nothing like me.

But a lot of you are.

Big dreams. A desire to accomplish what you put your mind to. And to have fun along the way.

Here’s the silent killer, though….

What if you are putting your mind to the wrong things?

There’s one thing the most successful people I’ve seen have in common: a relentless focus on the signal that pushes them forward.

No noise. Almost all signal.

Think about spending 80% of your time only on the core things that really matter.

It’s why hard work isn’t even a metric that matters.

Sure, hard work is great. I have chosen an addiction to work over drugs — I have quite the addictive personality — but work for work’s sake is just mental masturbation of you convincing yourself you are getting to your climax (desired goal).

It doesn’t matter.

What matters are the things that push your author business forward toward your goals: likely to make a living from your stories, if you are reading this newsletter.

Seems like a simple goal.

Except there’s a deadly trap along the way.

Endless noise. Noise so loud yet enchanting that it’s impossible to distinguish from signal.

Let me explain.

School is a very linear path. For most of us, our day jobs are quite linear too.

Follow a rubric or set of SOPs. Excel enough to make your superior happy, and you are rewarded with a cookie, money, or grades.

Okay cool.

Easy enough to distinguish signal from noise when your path is linear. It’s all laid out in front of you!

The path of successful authorship is nonlinear af (that’s short for as f*ck).

There was a brief period when it felt like there was a linear formula for success.

Write and rapid release books in a defined subgenre. Run ads and watch as you double or triple your money back over time.

This was the path I followed.

Except along the way, I spent endless time and money in a noise so deafening, I didn’t even realize I was missing the point the whole time.

I wrote 6 books and rapid released them in my cyberpunk-ish series. It flopped horrifically.

That means I spent close to $10k and 1,000+ hours on a noise I was so convinced would save me that it should just be called a hallucination.

I spent time optimizing every little thing about my ads. In reality, who wins in marketing isn’t the person with the best headline but who can spend the most to acquire a reader.

The list goes on.

I was drowning in noise and desperately searching for someone to tell me where the signal was.

Guess what?

I’m not here to show you the signal.

In a world changing faster than ever, and one where everyone has their own idea of success, it’s up to you to decide what signal means for you… and go all in on it.

The best skill? Understanding how to look for signal in a world that is noisier than ever… and being willing to quickly adapt as where that signal is coming from changes.

Luckily, there’s just one question you have to ask to find your signal.

Who is my audience and are they engaged with my story right now? Double down on what’s engaging them — and if you haven’t found what’s engaging them yet, spend more time searching for it.

This is the core mindset behind Readers First, a publishing process I teach writers all about selling your book before you write it. Signal is king. I’m not here to give it to you, but instead find your unique path to it.

Once you find signal, double down and pour your heart into it. Whatever that looks like to you!

Want to dive more into Readers First?

At some point, I’ll be doing a cohort of the Readers First publishing process. You can join the waitlist here.

Just note, it may be a while before my next cohort… as I am deep in my own signal right now… time to make it so that any writer can make their book into a movie and reach way more fans (and of course make more money too 😊).

You can learn more about that here.

I’ll be back with another episode of Beyond the Book soon.

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick