The Surprising Truth About Writing a Book in Today’s Digital Age Revealed

Midway through writing Chapter 2 of my book, this question kept hitting me: Is writing a book even worth it anymore?

With flash fiction contests, lit mags, Medium posts, Substack newsletters, and AI-churned content everywhere, the quick wins feel like the smart move.

It sounds so simple: write 500 short pieces, build a loyal following, and earn a gajillion dollars with a self-sustaining automated funnel that works while you sleep your life away on your own private island beach— why would you even spend months or years on one big project when you could go viral overnight?

Here’s my honest take: quick wins are saturated, but so is the long game. But the book still matters — if you do it right. Unfortunately, the reality is that “doing it right” takes time, money, skill, dedication, patience, and the willingness to write poorly with little to no feedback for longer than you’d think possible.

Most people don’t have that kind of bandwidth. I’m lucky: thanks to my years of service in the military, I’ve earned benefits and positions that give me the rare luxury of testing both at once — writing a full book and experimenting with short fiction on the side. No more excuses, just a plan and execution.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about the “quick game” versus the “long game” as I research both.

The Quick Game: Speed, Feedback, and Micro-Earnings

Writing short works isn’t useless . In fact, I’d advocate starting here to build skill and stamina.

In English-professor-training, we called this low-stakes writing: it’s short, quick, and relatively painless. If you’ve ever posted on a discussion forum or written a reflective journal for class, you’ve done it. Most writing on the internet is actually low stakes writing.

It’s scary at first to hit publish — but you quickly realize it’s harder to get attention than you think. That’s a bonus: your early stories won’t get far, but you’ll still develop your writing chops and your tolerance for…