52 books in 52 weeks. Writing them.

[Charnell]

The other reason I wanted to start in 2016 was to get Xmas out the way. But just as I write that sentence, it's given me an idea for a Xmas related book.

Speaking from experience, you should probably start a lot sooner. Last January my sales quadrupled from December. This could be due to plenty of factors, but think of all the Christmas gifts of Nooks, Kindles, and vendor gift cards that are given out each year.

Also, I would be hesitant about books based around holidays. Have fun and experiment a bit, but Christmas is only 1 day a year. Would you read a Christmas-themed book around Valentine's day, St. Patrick's Day or Halloween? Unless you have a killer marketing plan, will the juice be worth the squeeze? I guess there's only one way for you to find out.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

Speaking from experience, you should probably start a lot sooner. Last January my sales quadrupled from December. This could be due to plenty of factors, but think of all the Christmas gifts of Nooks, Kindles, and vendor gift cards that are given out each year.

Also, I would be hesitant about books based around holidays. Have fun and experiment a bit, but Christmas is only 1 day a year. Would you read a Christmas-themed book around Valentine's day, St. Patrick's Day or Halloween? Unless you have a killer marketing plan, will the juice be worth the squeeze? I guess there's only one way for you to find out.

I think I will be changing the start date the way things are going (which is well, might have to edit my first post).

Great points about the Christmas period! Might make the book winter themed instead, and see what happens.

Progress update:
Haven't made the desired tweaks to the website yet BUT! The book is done!
Just needs to be edited which I shall do tomorrow, as well as the website stuff I wanted to do today.
Then publishing!

Some notes: My writing speed seems to be about 1000 - 1500 words per hour, which I have no idea what that means in the grand scheme of things, but it means my 10000-20000 word books will take 10-20 hours to produce, which doesn't sound too bad (but what do I know yet, this in at the deep end stuff).

Writer's Block works like a beauty! Only problem is when you set your target too high and have to finish it with "k k k k k" to reach the marker (I finished 500 words earlier than expected at 5000, I thought it would take 5500-6000 and got my estimate wrong.

Frankly had enough typing today, so adios amigos! See you tomorrow.

 

[LifeTransformer]

So the rest of the year, the whole 3 months of it, you're going to "plan"? Why not just start next week and work from October 11th, 2015 to October 11th, 2016?

Or freelance and get a feel for writing books the rest of the year, so you have experience when you write yours.

Sorry I missed this, it looks like it might be changing anyway the way things are going.

"No time like the present?" no shit, if only people extrapolated on that thought more often.

 

[contract]

52 books?

What if no one even buys the first one...

 

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[NVious]

I think you need to read another 52 books. Better yet become the alpha male of knowledge and read 104 books in 52 weeks.

Keep planning as well. Never stop planning - you can start making changes in your life in 2037. There's no rush.

The guy is planning to write 52 books and you're talking about "planning?"

Isn't this the incessant action taking this forum memetically spits in hiveminded unison?

 

[LifeTransformer]

52 books?

What if no one even buys the first one...

Then they might buy the second, third, fifth, tenth, twentieth or 50th. What kind of question is that?

Did you read the thread at all?

EDIT: That wording might sound negative, what's your thinking behind that question?

 

[Charnell]

The guy is planning to write 52 books and you're talking about "planning?"

Isn't this the incessant action taking this forum memetically spits in hiveminded unison?

I think you missed the sarcasm.

This thread is akin to the daily/weekly "I'm going to make [insert large sum of money] this year with my new [zero experience endeaver]". To make such a bold claim such as writing a book a week when you haven't written a book is far-fetched, but you never know what people are capable of.

I personally know self-publishers that do a book a month and make a killing, and some that do a short story a week and make a killing, but in both cases they have been either writing for a long F*cking time and their writing has become almost formulaic or have the marketing down to a science.

If @LifeTransformer would have named the thread "Jumping into self-publishing", it would have gotten 0 attention.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

I think you missed the sarcasm.

This thread is akin to the daily/weekly "I'm going to make [insert large sum of money] this year with my new [zero experience endeaver]". To make such a bold claim such as writing a book a week when you haven't written a book is far-fetched, but you never know what people are capable of.

I personally know self-publishers that do a book a month and make a killing, and some that do a short story a week and make a killing, but in both cases they have been either writing for a long F*cking time and their writing has become almost formulaic or have the marketing down to a science.

If @LifeTransformer would have named the thread "Jumping into self-publishing", it would have gotten 0 attention.

I'm just glad I didn't say I would write a book a day .

Maybe next year's thread.

Anyway! Few tasks to do today, but no writing only re-writing (there is no writing, only re-writing).
Website shouldn't take too long to finish.
Then formatting and hitting "publish" exciting times!

Updates when finished.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Website done and ready to go.
Done all the book information, but the formatting and editing is kicking my a$$! (will definitely think about outsourcing this when I can).
I reckon this will be published by tomorrow night's update! OOOOOHHH .

 

[LifeTransformer]

So close to hitting that publish button!

Editing is done, but I'm struggling to get my book's table of contents done correctly......

 

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[Delmania]

Out of curiosity, have you had any hits on the website?

 

[LifeTransformer]

Out of curiosity, have you had any hits on the website?

The website is purely to capture leads at the moment.
But, When the book is published, there's going to be a blog post about the book targeting some keywords that relate to it.

Does anyone know... Can you use your own Amazon affiliate links to sell your own books? If not, I'll track any website to book traffic some other way.

Not worried about that at the moment too much anyway, getting this TOC done is my main challenge at the moment.

 

[Charnell]

Does anyone know... Can you use your own Amazon affiliate links to sell your own books? If not, I'll track any website to book traffic some other way.

You can.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

You can.

Cool! That's that problem sorted then.

 

[Delmania]

The website is purely to capture leads at the moment.

Have you captured leads yets? Setting up a product page pre-launch is a good way to validate there's interest in your book, especially if you combine it with paid traffic like AdWords and Facebooks ads.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Have you captured leads yets? Setting up a product page pre-launch is a good way to validate there's interest in your book, especially if you combine it with paid traffic like AdWords and Facebooks ads.

No, no leads captured yet.
If I was working on one of my "bigger" books I'd certainly do that method you mention. I can target the keywords of this particular book when it's published though, if I decide to of course.

Finally got the table of contents fixed, went for the gorilla pushing random buttons technique and kept trying different combos and finally made it work.

One last read-through to make sure I haven't missed anything, then publish!

 

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[LifeTransformer]

Published!

 

[LifeTransformer]

Right, first book is in review so I'm starting on the next one!

 

[LifeTransformer]

Managed 1750 words per hour today (new "PB") so hopefully that's a sign my speed is improving.
First book has gone live in the store! (does that make me an author now? lol).
Second book, in the grand scheme of things is coming along fast already.

Focus plan: Get out all of the content I have planned for this pen name before doing any others.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

Second book cover done. Progress!
This second book was a 1/3rd started, slowly moving myself onto the challenge of a fresh book from start to finish. This is dummy run 2.

After publishing the first one, I now ( feel) I have a process which the second publication should help to cement.

Also had time to read a bit of; Getting what you want by Robert Ringer, what a book! Maybe I'll write one someday .

 

[LifeTransformer]

Ever read your own writing back and think it sucks? Me neither.

Does need some work though.

 

[LifeTransformer]

That last comment! Hahaha I couldn't be more wrong!
Gave the first book to an editor and he returned with a completely different book.

Writing needs more work than I thought, but never mind. Onwards!

I've spent some time reading, but book 2 is also almost done. I'm expecting to be able to publish it by Wednesday.

I'm tempted to unpublish book 1, edit it a lot more and then re-list it. Not decided on that yet.

Glad these are still being classed as "dummy runs". Not sure I'm ready yet, but we'll see how book 2 goes first.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

Unpublished the first book, needs more work.

Goals for this week are to finish writing the second book and re-edit the first one. Publish both by the weekend.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Second book is written.

I mentioned in one of @EricZ's threads that I might re-think my strategy. Here are my thoughts:

I think the 2 books I've done so far are good on an entertainment level, but the editing needs work and is too time consuming. So I need to figure out a way to get over this barrier before proceeding properly with the challenge.

I'm also pondering whether to change my goal to 1 high quality book per month.

I've been thinking a lot about marketing strategy this week so far too. I think I've got it nailed down, and am going to create a mind-map type thing to give it a visual representation. At the moment it's in my head.

 

[Mattie]

So much stuff in this thread. Just write the book. lol

 

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[LifeTransformer]

So much stuff in this thread. Just write the book. lol

I have, 2 so far.

Got my marketing plan down into a mind-map today too. Re-published the first book with a few tweeks too. Second book will be published by Friday.

 

[Mattie]

Yes, I hear seven a week is good on some video. I'm getting annoyed with other platforms because one said create and publish your book here. And there's nothing there, and I thought I was imagining things so looked everywhere on the site. I suppose it would help if you had an actual place to publish your book if you're saying your a platform. lmao! I don't know whether I should just leave it, or contact the stupid people. I think it tells me they're stupid, and don't know what they're doing. And another one there's another problem waiting forever for activation. Omg. This is like the third one and wasted an hour and half doing stupid crap on dumb websites.

 

[Boozoon]

I decide to postpone writing my self publishing thread here cause I can invest the time actually writing. I just found that thought funny and wanted to share it.

For editing I use this beauty ->
prowritingaid.com/en/Home/Index

Magnificent. Just magnificent.

 

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[LifeTransformer]

I decide to postpone writing my self publishing thread here cause I can invest the time actually writing. I just found that thought funny and wanted to share it.

For editing I use this beauty ->
prowritingaid.com/en/Home/Index

Magnificent. Just magnificent.

Aha! There we go. Thanks very much Boozoon!

That should solve that problem.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Update:

2nd book is written and I've done some manual editing, don't want to publish until I've gone over it with the tool above (haven't purchased it yet).
Started outlining some more stories yesterday, and have began fleshing out the 3rd book already.

What might happen is I'll have 3 books or so written before I publish any more, this might not be a bad move to release more than 1 book in a week.

I did say write 52 in 52 weeks didn't I? ;-) I'm joking there is another reason for me stalling further launches, I want to make sure I've got all my "funnels" in place. And don't want to go back over each book adding in links to the newer titles.

Maybe I shouldn't be stalling on publishing, but I've got a plan and a vision that I think will work, time will tell.