There you go. You have a dead book.
Every book is born dead, even if you were the one who carried it to term. You wrote it, corrected it, edited it, laid it out, made copies, and even gave a few samples to people. But without a publisher behind it, your book may remain right there, sitting still, waiting for readers who never arrive.
You hand a copy to someone you know and hear:
— I’ll definitely read it! I don’t have time right now, but I’ll read it as soon as I can.
And time goes by.
So you decide to look for a course on how to sell books and learn how to market your work. Suddenly, ads start appearing on your social media feeds, as if someone has discovered exactly what you need.
“Let’s sell your book!”
“I’ll teach you how to find sales channels and get your work into readers’ hands.”
You find courses on writing, marketing, promotion, positioning, and everything else that might exist between writing a book and actually selling it.
People appear claiming they have sold more than 50,000 books, published 17 bestsellers, and know the secret to achieving the same results.
There are even courses teaching you how to create courses about selling courses.
They all seem to have a magic formula.
I admit this sometimes bothers me. It reminds me of those courses on how to make your first million. The person selling the course may genuinely have earned their first million. But if a billionaire enters that market and manages to sell enough courses, they could make another billion.
Think, too, about that billionaire involved in a financial scandal of enormous proportions. Would he leave his luxurious dining room, his salmon, and his expensive wine behind to teach thirty people how to make money online?
And what about the guy who presents himself as a billionaire but seems to run a business with only thirty employees? Does he really have a billion sitting in his bank account? Or does his advertised wealth depend on the valuation of companies, investments, and assets that can be worth more or less depending on the market?
Having a net worth valued at one billion is one thing. Having a billion available to spend is another.
It's easy to confuse the two when someone needs to sell the image of a person who has discovered the secret to success.
He eats barbecue skewers but burps up caviar.
But let's get back to our dead book.
All right, you've found a course on how to sell books. Maybe the instructor really knows what they're doing. Maybe you'll learn useful promotional techniques, discover new sales channels, and reach readers you would never have found on your own.
The problem isn't that the course exists.
The problem is imagining that learning how to sell a book is enough to make a literary career happen.
An independent writer needs to become more than just a writer. They need to learn how to run a business, manage money, promote their work, find readers, and finance their own production.
The course is like a driving lesson for someone who wants to get a driver's license. It teaches you how to change gears, follow traffic rules, and operate the vehicle.
But it won't drive you to your destination. It won't pay for your gas, fill your tank, or fix your car when it breaks down.
It teaches you how to drive. The road is still yours to travel.
It might work. It might not. You can do everything correctly and still fail to achieve the results you expected.
That's why independent writers need to finance their projects within their actual means. Dreaming is good. Wanting to walk the red carpet, win awards, give podcast interviews, attend book signings, and have dinner with people in the literary world is perfectly understandable.
But that visible part may represent only 10% of the work required. The other 90% may happen far from the cameras, without applause and without anyone asking how your book is coming along.
Sometimes, you'll need to wash dishes, work as a waiter, park cars, or take any job that pays quickly enough to finance what you truly want to build.
And that's what made me think of a young woman.
She was beautiful, and when she told me she was a writer, she practically glowed as she spoke about it. She wasn't talking only about writing a book. She was talking about making a living from writing. Her social media was always full of interesting posts. She was someone building something, trying to find her place.
A friend of hers commented:
— But you're a waitress...
Yes, she was a waitress.
But she didn't see herself as nothing more than that routine. It was one part of her life she had to deal with while trying to build another. She was hustling, posting content, investing in sponsored links, paying for courses, and looking for guidance to help her get somewhere.
I imagined that girl as a heroine wearing a cape.
Except the cape could also turn into an apron.
I didn't see a waitress who wanted to become a writer.
I saw a writer.
And I felt small beside her, even though I had no idea whether she would ever achieve her dreams.
I imagined that girl coming home after an exhausting day, wanting to write but having no strength left. Maybe she cried out of frustration because she couldn't produce what she wanted. Maybe she tried to write a few lines, stopped, took a deep breath, and told herself:
— Tomorrow is another day.
Somewhere in the house, there was an aluminum container that had once held a can of chocolate drink powder. She had written the word “DREAMS” on it in red permanent marker.
Inside, she kept the money she was saving to pay a publishing company for services that cost R$22,000.
She lived with her parents. They followed her journey, but perhaps they didn't always know what to ask. After all, she could always answer:
— I'm writing.
It's difficult to explain what you do when the results aren't ready to be shown.
An engineer can point to a building and say they worked on that project. A doctor can present their professional history, the patients they've treated, and the responsibilities they've taken on. A lawyer can show their office, their team, and the cases they've worked on.
And a writer?
How do you show an idea?
How do you present something that doesn't physically exist yet, something perhaps only you can see for now?
How do you convince someone to believe in a work that hasn't found its readers?
The book is being written, but nobody sees it. The work exists, but there is no building, no machine, no room full of employees to prove it. There are pages, files, revisions, and one person trying to turn what they imagine into something other people can read.
Meanwhile, the world keeps asking what they do.
This is precisely where many courses come in.
Some teach techniques that can help. Others try to convince you that the problem is your lack of discipline, your comfort zone, or your inability to take action.
You need to write! Time is running out!
It's true. Time is running out.
Writing under pressure can work for some people. A course can help you break out of inertia, set goals, and establish a routine. But the problem isn't always being trapped in a comfort zone.
Sometimes, you need to expand your comfort zone.
Think about that girl. She lives with her parents and can make use of the household's resources while trying to build her career. That doesn't mean she'll have those circumstances forever. It means that, at that moment, she has a real opportunity that may help her achieve something.
Why treat every form of security as an obstacle?
Why assume that, to prove you want something, you have to make your life more difficult?
Not everyone needs to quit their job, move out, go into debt, or put themselves in a desperate situation to demonstrate their commitment to their dreams.
Sometimes, the best strategy is precisely to preserve the conditions that allow you to keep trying.
But there's something many courses leave in the background: the routine.
Imagine you want to start a homemade savory-snack business. You research recipes, learn techniques, and discover a machine capable of producing 4,000 snacks per hour.
Four thousand per hour!
It sounds fantastic.
You buy the machine, prepare the space, and start imagining the money rolling in.
But then Monday arrives.
You have to get up early, prepare the dough, let it cool, make the filling, cook and shred the chicken, measure the ingredients, and get the ratio of fat to flour right.
Then you need to figure out the right oil temperature, keep the fryer close to 180°C when that is the process you've chosen, organize production, and prepare the snacks for sale.
The machine may produce 4,000 units per hour under the right conditions. But the dough needs the right consistency, the ingredients must be available, and the equipment must be loaded properly.
Maybe you'll discover that the machine can't keep up with your anxiety.
It has a production capacity. You have limited working capacity, a budget, a workspace, and a finite amount of time.
And you still have to sell the snacks.
Who's going to buy them? How will you promote them? How much will you charge? What will each unit cost? How much will be left after paying for ingredients, electricity, packaging, and maintenance?
The machine hasn't solved the entire business.
It has solved one part of it.
The same thing happens with writing.
You can learn to promote your book, build an audience, create ads, and find distribution channels. But you'll still need to write, revise, publish, promote again, manage your money, and deal with the possibility that the results may take a long time to appear.
The course can teach you what to do. It cannot perform the routine for you.
And there is an enormous difference between learning a technique and managing to incorporate it into your life.
Routine is hard.
It's hard because you have to repeat it when you're tired. Because the excitement of the first day doesn't remain intact for months. Because results can take time. Because sometimes you do everything you planned and still don't make the progress you hoped for.
No course can guarantee that you won't fail.
Not every writer will be recognized. Not every artist will be able to make a living from their art. Not every entrepreneur will build a successful company.
That doesn't make the effort of those who try worthless.
It simply means we need to stop treating success as an automatic reward for following the instructions correctly.
We can all aspire to build something within our physical, financial, and material means. We can learn, improve, experiment, and expand our possibilities.
But we don't need an easy catharsis, the kind where one big decision transforms everything and suddenly life begins to follow the script.
Where is the Hero's Journey?
Welcome to the real world.
Here, you can be the protagonist of your own story without having control over the ending.
You can work, study, write, save money, make mistakes, and start again. You can meet people who help, find unexpected opportunities, and discover paths you never imagined. You can also discover that some doors will never open, even after you've worked hard to get through them.
And the next day, you'll still have to get up.
Maybe to work as a waiter. Maybe to prepare another 4,000 snacks. Maybe to revise the chapter you couldn't finish the night before.
Maybe to put a few more bills into that old chocolate powder container with the word “DREAMS” written on it in red.
That's the part that doesn't fit into a course advertisement.
The Hero's Journey promises a story that moves toward transformation.
The Slave's Journey begins when you realize that life won't stop so you can fulfill your dreams.
You have to work to survive and, within the time, money, and energy you have left, try to build what you want.
And perhaps your greatest struggle isn't conquering the world.
Perhaps it's managing to preserve a part of yourself while trying to live in it.
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