Hello from Denver - self publishing success

[Held for Ransom]

Hi everyone. I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

I joined here yesterday but was first introduced to the MFL in December of 2011. I am A LOT older than most here (42) and certainly not a millionaire by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, until the past several months I have never earned enough from any business I have started to support myself completely from that business. I have always worked for others in one fashion or another until recently. But, as of this month, I have earned more in a single month than I ever did working for myself (obviously) or anyone else. This has been an absolutley incredible acheivement for me which took forever to happen but now that it has, I feel 20 years younger.

So I'm not going to waste alot of time talking about all the things I've tried to become successful over the years. It's just not important to me anymore. Pretty much I used to think that sucked at everything I ever did, but then I read MFL and I realized it was the choices I was making that was the culprit.

Now I'd like to say that I read MFL and wham, I started on my fastlane within 24 hours but that would not be true. I still struggled. Mostly because I was mired in several things which produced modest results. But then in mid-2012 I finally burned all those bridges, focused on one thing and it all turned around for me. You see, it was around that time that I a friend of mine (who is not a serial entrepreneur but a real writer) told me about some success he was having writing e-books for platforms like Kindle, Nook and the like.

So, I researched it a bit and to make a long story short, one thing led to another and this month, it looks like I'll clear somewhere around $15,000 for my fiction titles.

Of course I realize that this road violates a couple of fastlane principles - control (ultimately Amazon and the rest are in control of much of what happens) and entry (anyone could write an e-book). Otherwise, it's been scalable as hell, definitely separates my time from my money and, the way I write, is without question an A-Z process.

In other words, I've been able to systematize much of what I do. I think that was the biggest surprise of all to me. But, when you really learn about what the big earners do, it's all systems. Very, very, very few successful fiction writers do it for "passion" and in fact write in a formulaic manner and cater to what the genre wants to read. Honestly, I truly believe that almost anyone can do this if they work this as a system.

Not being a writer myself (thank God for Word's spell and grammar checker!), I relied heavily on my ability to do market research and understand the Amazon ecosystem throughly (in terms of keywords). In my mind, this is definitely what has made me successful in this so far. Aside from that, I am an expert in creating catchy titles, coming up with eye grabbing covers, writing enticing descriptions and hooking folks when they "Look Inside" at the first 10-12% of my books. Of course, I do the very best job I can as a writer but I'm no Shakespeare. Luckily, it turns out that it doesn't matter at all.

My formula is simple.

Step 1 - Look at what is selling.
Step 2 - Come up with my own spin/version of it and sell it.

That said, I don't want to mislead anyone that is reading this... Behind the scenes, within that simplicity are mutiple layers of complexity that represent my system. Nothing I do is accidental or "inspired". I don't write for inspiration or passion.

I write for people and markets. That's it.

Over the long run, I think that this will be my true fastlane. That is, exposing my systems approach to others. The true beauty of it is is that there is no saturation possible. There are thousands of e-book categories on Amazon and hundreds of thousands of possible methods for serving those markets. In my mind, my system is like a Swiss Army knife that can be used in whole or part to achieve goals.

In fact, I hired a programmer last November to help me automate much of the research I do on the biggest platform of them all - Amazon. It is still a long way from being finished but even what I've come up with so far has quintupled my income. I am pretty confident that if it works for me, it will work for others. Time will tell of course - I am still very early in all stages here.

In the meantime, I am writing and building up my credibility as a "non-writing/author" expert. I believe that if I am able to demonstrate competence at a high level using my approach that it will make my job of implementing my fastlane easier down the line. I haven't seen alot of folks on here self pubbing but I just wanted to put this out there for anyone lurking and thinking about giving it a shot.

A word of warning if you do decide to try... Understand that it will not happen overnight.

It took me 227 days or, more precisely, 732 hours, 38 minutes and 44 seconds in working time to get there. How do I know? I use a time tracking program called Toggl to categorize and track every single minute I spend in my business. Again, part of my system since time is my most precious asset.

Beyond the time, it took me 34 titles (ranging from 8,000 - 20,000 words each) to break the $10,000 earned in a single month threshold. You see, once I ironed out what worked (and didn't) in my market, it all turned around - my last three titles have been awesome sellers.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you decide to try it you probably won't get a bestseller but everything sells so just keep at it. In fact, if I can keep doing what I've been doing, I've got a roadmap to $20,000 and even $100,000 per month mapped out.

I figure that even if I'm half wrong, that's still $50,000 per month!

Will I get there? I have no idea. It's a rough and tumble volatile, cutthroat business with Amazon constantly mucking around. But, what business doesn't have an equal number of threats? All I can do is keep it at and see what happens.

Anyway, sorry again for the lengthy post everyone. I hope that I am able to add some value here over time.

Thanks alot MJ for the inspiration - it has changed my life!

 

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[Held for Ransom]

Hi everyone... Wall of text below. It's an answer to another PM from a member here. I have a busy writing schedule this week so I really can't answer that many questions right now, unfortunately!

My guess is that this post will could spawn more questions so please be patient if you have them. It probably won't be until sometime over the weekend or early next week until I can get to them.

Anyway, I've posted what we discussed which may (or may not) help someone here if they are curious at all about how I size up a market.

Sorry again for the length! :groove:

--- Begin Wall ---

Hey Darren! Great to hear from another writer on here... I've answered your questions below. I hope that they help you.

1. Would you mind pointing me to one of your books? I'm always interested in seeing what successful people have written.

I asked my wife if she would mind if I shared my pen name before I joined here and she requested that I don't for now. So, I have to respect that. I'm sorry, I hope you can understand.

2. You mentioned you've written 8,000-20,000 stories. Are these in Amazon Singles?

No, they are just short novellas basically.

3. Do you think the shorts are better to write?

That depends on your market. In mine, they are pretty commonplace. The downside to short works is that while they are easier to crank out, they tend to have a much shorter shelf life. In the end, you have to write on a consistent basis to keep up with the fall off and to maintain momentum - especially on Amazon.

My true interests are in dark fiction, fantasy and the likes and I would appreciate any advice you'd be willing to share.

What follows are the most BASIC things I would look at it if I were you...

The first thing is that if I were you I'd try to find the largest subcategory of fantasy that I could compete in and figure out what the potential is for a good selling title.

It boils down to demand in that market and whether or not you can produce something that people want to buy.

Within fantasy as a whole, Amazon currently lists 57, 854 results. Now, dark fantasy only has 366 results which means 1 of 2 things to me.

The first is that it's dominated by big names or there's very low demand. In either case, it might not be worth your time if your goal is to make the most money possible. Of course, that may not be your only goal, which is fine, but as someone who's on this forum, my guess is that your goal is at least partially financial.

But assume that you want to investigate further...

I would sort by New and Popular and then examine each listing for the following for at least the first several pages of results in Amazon. Compile your results in a spreadsheet and it'll give you a rough idea of the market's profitability.

1. The Sales Rank (if it's anything above 10,000, I generally ignore it unless it is at least several months old - I'll explain below).
2. Whether or not the title is published just on Kindle (by someone like us) or is offered through a publisher. In my experience, this is a much better apples to apples type of comparison than comparing your work to something that has the backing of a publisher.
3. The number of pages. This will let you know basically what the market expects in the category in terms of book length. It's not set in stone, you can do whatever you want, but it's good to have a feel for it.
4. The publication date. Here's the thing about this. What I like to see is a title that has good age (>3 months and a rank of <10,000). This will tell you a couple of things. The first is that if it can maintain a rank of 10,000 it means that it has probably had ranks in the low 1,000s at some stage. Once you get down to this level you are going to be selling 75-100 copies a day of whatever it is. But books are wasting assets (sort of like a stock option) and as time goes on, more people purchase it and demand starts to wane. So, if I see a title that still has a low rank after 90 days, I know that this is something I may want to model in my own writing. Usually you will find that this is a person who has been around for a while and has a decent catalog. It's worth taking the time to look at how they market on Amazon (cover, description, etc.) and learn from it.
5. The price.
6. Now add everything up in a spreadsheet and assign a dollar value to it. An easy way to do this, is to just make a spreadsheet with columns for the title, the length, the pub date, the sales rank and the price. A formula that I came across for estimating sales rank in Excel is =EXP(10.526-(0.92*LN(A1))). Basically, put the Sales Rank value in column A1 (or whatever column you want) and then copy the formula to B1 (or whatever). It will spit out a value that is roughly the number of sales made per day. Multiply that times the list price to come up with a gross revenue number per day for that title. The formula isn't terribly accurate but it's better than nothing and will give you a feel for market viability which is really all you are after. Once you have all the gross revenue numbers together, total them and that will tell you roughly how much money all of those titles make as a group each day. From there, it's up to you as to whether or not you want to give it a shot.

By the way, you can also do this whole process by entering a keyword first and then seeing what pops up. You could start at the root directory of Kindle e-books or drill down to Fantasy and do keyword research from there as well. Keyword research is a whole topic within itself that I don't have time to get into at the moment.

As you know, you are going to be entering 7 keywords with your title anyway, so you want to do solid keyword research also.

It's the same basic approach otherwise.

Anyway man, I know that's alot to throw out there but that's the basic method I use to get a feel for a market. As I mentioned, I have been working with a programmer to automate alot of this but it's not there yet so I still have to use this longhand method. It's a pain but it's like the old saying, "Measure twice, cut once."

The same thing applies in fiction writing on Amazon. While it's possible to have a runaway bestseller, it isn't likely. I'd rather put out 20 consecutive titles that will be sub 10K for a few months each by doing solid research than by risking it all with a monstrous tome that no one buys.

Hope that helps!

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[Held for Ransom]

@ MJ - Thanks for the kind words. I was pretty surprised to see you comment. I can't tell you how much your ideas have changed my life man.

@ Twiki - Thanks, yeah it's been some work but really it's just intense periods of focus, rest and then repeat. I shoot for one new title a week but I actually have averaged about one new title every 10-14 days. YMMV but in my niche, titles have a shelf life so new producing new content on a regular basis is just part of the game.

On question A. One market/niche/pen name so far. I sort of dug around before I got started to figure out the average sales rank of the top sellers in the biggest fiction categories. Then, I just narrowed it down to a few that I thought would be relatively easy for me to get into within 3-6 months. From there, I picked one and stuck with it. It's one of the most competitive categories on all Amazon so I figured if I went where there was lots of money, that some of it would come my way. There's people that makes wayyyy more than I do so there's plenty of room to grow.

As an aside, that's the biggest mistake I see people complaining about on writer's forums - lack of sales. But if you read between then lines, I'd say that 95% of the time their work isn't targeted to a deep pool of buyers. So, instead of trying to fix the problem, they carry on about how their novel which took them five years to write doesn't sell. Then they blame Amazon or whatever when in fact they are just ignoring the needs of the market. It's sort of like the karate studio example MJ gives in MFL. Same thing. People doing something for their own selfish desire instead of producing what the market wants.

On question B. Early on, I stopped looking at reviews of my work. The first time I got a one star, it crushed me. But soon thereafter, I got over it. See, I've gotten five stars on stuff that barely sells and gotten more one stars on my very best selling title than anything else. I couldn't speak to whether they are fake or not. I know there's lots of people gaming it but I just don't pay any attention at all.

I think the bottom line with e-books is that it's zero risk for the buyer so reviews are probably not as big a factor as if I was buying a 60" flat screen. What I mean is that you have seven days to return a book on Amazon.com and when it's just $2.99 or whatever, I think most people just kind of shrug and say, "Well, I'll read it anyway. I can always return it."

I know lots of writers think reviews are everything but in my experience, they haven't made much difference. That's not to say that if all my work got five stars I wouldn't sell way more but they don't get that, there's nothing I can do about it anyway and I'm doing alright so honestly I don't care. Besides, if you do the math on the reviews to sales ratios, less than one half of one percent of my buyers leave reviews so it's just not even an issue at all.

Just my 2 cents...

In general, my basic rule is that if it distracts from my writing, I avoid it. This also includes obsessing over my stats all day long. I monitor them daily. Some people do more or less but that is just what works well for me without disrupting my work flow too much.

In the end, I only care about two things once I publish a title - sales and returns. I have targets for both. In my mind, this is the market voting for my work and so they are the only metrics I care about. What people say about my work doesn't matter. All I care about is what their wallet/purse says about it.

It usually takes me about 10 - 14 days for the numbers to settle out when a new title goes live but if I don't see the sales I'm after and/or the return rates I want, then I know I missed the mark.

Hope that helps!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

F*cking awesome intro and it feel honored to have another self-pub'r here!

And yes, self-pub violates some of the Commandments (control namely due to Amazon's power) but you still maintain your brand and name. When my next book is finished I still would be able to sell 1000's without Amazon due to having built a following.

Insofar as the big FL C's (commandments) I'd say SCALE and NEED are the two most important and it seems like you got that covered.

So, I researched it a bit and to make a long story short, one thing led to another and this month, it looks like I'll clear somewhere around $15,000 for my fiction titles.

Fricken Fastlane! Love it! Now that's a type of figure where your life can start to change!

I've got a roadmap to $20,000 and even $100,000 per month mapped out.

Each book you write builds the momentum.

Look forward to hearing more from you.

 

[Held for Ransom]

Answer to another PM - LONG!

If you don't mind, I have a few questions:
1. When you say to sort by New and Popular, would you do this on the broader category you want to get in, or the lowest sub-category? I'm assuming a sub-category or niche, but would you dig to the deepest one?

Depends on what you're after. It's going be tougher to compete at the highest level of any genre but it doesn't mean you should exclude it from your research. If you see an indie crossing over from a sub category to the main category, that might be something you want to investigate. That's no easy feat.

2. If there are a lot of big time publishers in the category that are just adding Kindle as an electronic option, do you shy away from that category? or just ignore those books?

Well, I would never say you shouldn't be aware of everything that is happening in your niche. Of course, you are going to see the monster hits up there. Everyone knows what those are in their respective niches so what I try to find are people like myself who are doing well.

My reasoning is this...

I really have no idea what goes on behind the scenes with big time publishing. Usually when publishers are involved they have huge mailing lists and routinely engage in book bombs when titles get released. A book bomb is a coordinated purchase of a new release on a mass scale to game Amazon's ranking algo. Paid reviews are not unheard of, etc. There are just so many shenanigans that it's impossible to try and reverse engineer it.

That's why I just look at people who I feel like I can match up against. By that I mean independent publishers. It's usually pretty obvious who's doing their own thing. The covers are kind of homemade looking. The publisher is Amazon Digital Services, etc. Their author profile has a picture of their cat, and so on. So while I may never get to #20 in the Kindle Store with my approach, I have been near 1,000 repeatedly. When you get to that level, you'll be selling a healthy amount each day. And you're kind of under the radar still which is fine with me.

3. Sale Rank - so when you're doing your calculations, do you ignore >10000 sales rank unless it is >3 months old? and you say if it's above 10K you ignore it... so.... since this is not Best Sellers and just New and Popular, I'm assuming that sales ranks will be varied...hence the ignore if over 10K. So if it's >10K sales rank and brand new, then ignore? if >3 months then use in your calculations?

The example I gave was of someone who already sort of knew the kind of fiction they wanted to produce. Your questions are somewhat different but alot of the same basic approach would apply.

But, the 10,000 SR and 3 months aren't absolutes. It's just something that's served me pretty well when I don't know the market very well. Even in my sub niche, there are further sub niches that I've had to investigate. All those numbers tell me that this is a title that's selling at a level I'm happy with over the course of several months.

In general, if something is new and has a rank of more than 10K, it usually won't show up on the list against the better selling titles anyway. To get bestselling status or hot new release status in my sub niche I generally have to get below 5K rank. The thing about those lists is that they tend to be fickle. That's why I look at things with longer track records rather than just trying to catch a hot trend.

On the other hand, you can make a lot of dough quickly with trends. It boils down to preferences.

1. Pick your lowest sub-category that you want to get into, maybe one level higher depending on the number of books.

Yep.

2. Sort by New and Popular and look at the first 2-3 pages of books.

Yes, or as many as you want. People do buy from page fifty so if you feel like it's worth it, take a peek.

3. Get numbers for books that fit this criteria:a. Self-published - not big name publishing house books b. Sales rank <10K AND pub date >3 months c. Price

Self vs. publisher. It's up to you for the reasons I outlined above but if you are in a narrow niche, that may be all you have to work with. 10K and 3 mos., again just a quick rule of thumb. You may find evidence to the contrary that suits your objectives better.

4. Things like book length are an indication of how long typical books are, so you can model yours after that, but this is not a hard rule

Right. It's just more an indication of consumer preference in that niche. At least, that's how I see it.

Then, once you do this, you may have just 5 books if there are a lot of big publisher books in this category, or you may have 20 books. Doesn't matter (or does it?).

Doesn't matter to me. Heck you could have way more than that in a big niche. But I've had success within a broad niche for a certain keyword where there were only five titles competing. All of them were bigtime publishers and all the books had ranks of less than 5K and were between six months to five years old. My reasoning was pretty simple. Obviously people are using this keyword but literally no one is directly competing for it. So, I wrote a title around that keyword and within a month, I was selling 80-100 copies of that a day.

So, that's an example of something to the contrary. But, the basic rule still applied. There weren't five titles with 5K that were on the HNR. They had age and track records which told me that this little honey hole had a steady demand that lasted YEARS in some cases.

The bottom line is do you think that you could write a good enough title to get similar ranks to the books you are looking at or not.

Use the formula for sales rank to # of books sold as an estimation, then multiply by price of the book, then add all of them up. This is the gross revenue for indie books in this category per day - very roughly.

Yeah, very roughly but it's better than nothing. At least as far as I am concerned.

Then maybe choose another (sub) category and repeat, and see which one is more/most profitable and go into that category to write your book.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. After you've done it for a while, you start to get a feel for the relative strength of one type of niche versus another, one book length versus another, and so on.

Question: why not sort by Best Sellers or do this on the Best Seller status instead of New and Popular? Seems that would be a good/better indication of how much money the niche is making per day.

You can sort by as many different ways as you like. I tend to avoid HNR and bestselling lists for the reasons stated above. If I do look at them for research purposes, it's only to get a feel for overall market trends but otherwise they are too volatile for me.

I know this is really just a guess anyway, and a general idea of what a category makes, so I guess it's all just trying to guess which niches make the most money and getting into those.

Right, well, it's an educated guess but yeah, it's an inexact science - that is 100% true. It's a bit of art and science for sure. It's more about stacking the odds in your favor. That's really all I am trying to do with all of this market research stuff.

Everything in business is percentages and odds and math in general. The same is true here. At least that's how I look at it. So, for some people who don't think that way, my methodology won't resonate very well. All I know is that as I have continually measured and monitored my results have improved. Of course I have no idea for certain if that will continue but in the meantime I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

Truthfully, there's even more to examine - also bought lists, keywords and Author Profiles and on and on. I haven't touched on any of that but if Amazon puts it out there, it's worth considering IMO. They are a money printing machine and my goal as publisher is to slip my titles into that well designed framework as quickly as I can.

I do everything in my power to ensure that and no detail is left to chance.

You really just have to do the best job you can with the information you have and try it out. Unfortunately, that's really the only way to be sure. You won't know if you've cracked the code on any market until you put out in the wild. The difference between where I'm at today versus where I was when I started is that I have a much better feel for what my readers want. After you do it a few times, you will as well.

The bottom line is that the more you do it, the better you'll get. And even though I'd like to say that every title I put out sells 100 copies a day, they don't. But, my misses are more accurate now. In other words, they may not sell 100 but they'll usually sell 15, 20, 25 a day for quite a while. Add ten of those up and you have $500 a day. That's basically how I look at it now.

Hope that helped!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

The goal is to make the most money and gain the most repeat sales on other works.

A new author's number one objective should be to get readers, scale, at any price. I would suggest new authors forgo the idea of "making money" -- instead, create an objective to CREATE READERS who love your writing and build a following. You asset, as a writer, is a following. If your grow your following, fans, readers, the money eventually will follow and in much larger quantities than if you start off with a price discouraging that acquisition of new readers.

 

[Held for Ransom]

I've also thought the barriers to entry (people hopping on bandwagon etc) and control are issues with this
But as someone trying to make a bit of extra money from this I'm really grateful for your take on things.

I appreciate what you are saying here. It's funny because when I started, everyone was saying the same thing.

It's too crowded, everyone is doing it, etc. And, you're right, anyone can do it. I agree 100% and I've said as much which is a problem from a Fastlane POV.

But, I think that in the long run, most people just don't stick with stuff whether it's e-books or whatever. For instance, I can tell you that when I login to my Author Central account on Amazon.com and look at my Author Rank, I can scroll back all the way to last fall when they first started to track that stat. Now, really it's a useless statistic but there's a point to what I'm saying...

Back then, I was in the 3,000s+ in my sub genre! So, what I mean is that last fall there was 3,000+++ people already writing in my sub genre. Talk about no barrier to entry!

I already knew I wasn't a writer, never desired to be, etc. so I had to figure something else out if I wanted to give it a legit shot. So, I just kept looking at the winners. What were they doing? What types of stories were they writing? Could I do something similar, or different or better?

I just kept plugging away - 1-star reviews and all. I even had someone once say they wish they could have given me negative stars.

Hilarious! :eusa_clap:

Fast forward six months, and I'm firmly in the Top 100 of my sub genre, day in, day out. It's one of the most competitive genres of all so if a guy who doesn't write and sits on his couch can do it, anyone can.

The point of all of this is not talk about my rank or anything but to illustrate the point that I could have looked at my situation when I was 3,000+ with only a handful of titles under my belt and said, "Bah, too competitive. It's not worth the $100 I made in September. E-books don't work."

I'm not saying that you are saying that but I'm saying that it's worth sticking with if you are interested at all.

So, for whatever reason, I didn't quit. I just kept digging. I could see the money there. I could look at their sales ranks and see it. I just knew I could do it. I just needed time.

Today, I'm right there with them and I'd say to anyone that the same opportunity is still there. You just have to be willing to ride the highs and lows of it all, of which there are many. Getting there is one thing, staying there is a different animal altogether.

One piece of advice that I hope is useful to you;Your wife is a wise woman. DO NOT tell anyone or show anyone your author page or books. People will saturate your exact market and make it harder for you...

I'm actually keeping it private for a different reason entirely but again, it's kind of the same thing. I don't think there's any competition for good content.

As I mentioned above, I'm not a writer by profession and I'm one of the top ranked writers in my category in the WORLD. How insane is that? Like I outsell NY Times bestsellers with publishing houses behind them and everything.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Amazon makes the whole thing very democratic from a competitive standpoint. All of the competitive intelligence you'll ever need is right there for the taking.

It's f'ing amazing when you really think about it. At least as things stand right now, the little guy really does still have a chance.

But, I think most people think it's a real barrier so they don't even try. I don't think there will ever be a saturation point for good stories. People have been writing them for 1000s of years and that won't change anytime soon.

 

[Held for Ransom]

OK, who here is still in self publishing? Show yourselves, as going through the thread there were dozens interested.?

Yep, right here. Three year anniversary coming up. Thanks @MJ DeMarco. You changed my life, man.

I am forever grateful.

The game has changed with KU2.0, what are you currently up to?

My best month ever in August (only took me 35 months to get there) but well within the range I discussed at the beginning of this thread many moons ago. It's taken a lot of work and it's never been easy but I'm hoping to break the upper limit of that range in two to three more years if all goes well.

FWIW, I'm 100% KU 2.0.

Exciting times...

 

[RahKnee]

I just hit the "save and publish" button in my kindle publishing account on a 120,000 word book. That is a great feeling. Looking forward to getting many many more out there.

 

[Held for Ransom]

So do you think that the same type of success can be had by writing how to/the secrets of .... informational type books if you followed the same market identification processes?

Hmmm, well the actual research process would be the same but you'd have to consider the average Kindle reader. In other words, I suppose it's possible but I don't know that the books in and of themselves would be successful unless the reader could be further monetized.

Honestly, I wrestled with this question myself before I began and ultimately concluded that I wasn't an expert on anything of value. Still, e-books appealed to me for alot of the reasons I listed above earlier in this thread. Anyway, one day I was discussing the issue with my wife (e.g., should I go with fiction or non-fiction) and she said something that just made total sense.

In essence she said, "Well, aren't people that own Kindles basically the same people who buy books?"

It was kind of a duh moment for me. I was thinking like someone who was trying to apply what I knew to make money rather than looking at where the money was being spent and figuring out if I could compete in that way.

And, if you look at where the big money is for books, it's pretty much fiction hands down.

That said, I would consider non-fiction if I had some other way to monetize (via the principle of magnitude). For example, I've read a bit about your journey here. Let's say that you are able to turn the fashion truck business into a viable enterprise. Well, with an e-book, you could setup a funnel for people who might be interested in taking training to learn how to do it vis-a-vis an high ticket training course or if you are thinking of franchising, same thing.

In other words, someone buys a $.99 e-book on Amazon which leads them into your funnel. Your training system costs $10,000 or your franchise fees cost whatever. In this way, the book becomes your round-the-clock salesman. It's a low risk purchase and it gets people familiar with you. You can get them on a mailing list for more info and the like with all of it leading to some big transaction for you down the line.

Of course, I'm just making all of that up off the top of my head but there's no question that there are opportunity seekers on Amazon all the time. And, you don't even have to physically own a Kindle to read a Kindle e-book so if you can target a book correctly, it's very likely you could get enough people in the funnel to make it payoff.

So, assuming that I did want to go the non-fiction route you are suggesting, I would really have to have some idea of how I could use the e-books as a loss leader/funnel to a more expensive item. I've read of anecdotal success people have with this approach. Now, within that framework, brainstorm ideas and then do the same basic research I outlined above but instead of doing within a fiction category, you would pick the relevant non-fiction category and figure out who the leaders are.

For instance, if you look here - Kindle Store › Kindle eBooks › Nonfiction › Business & Investing › Small Business & Entrepreneurship › Entrepreneurship you can see (at that time of this writing) that there are 9,316 results in this category.

I would peruse the list (or others) in this area of non-fiction and isolate titles that are similar to what you are trying to achieve. Ignore all those goofballs selling Millionaire books . Now, you probably won't find a book on how to start your own fashion truck business but you will find books on "how to make money online", "how to start an e-bay business", etc.

These are your target readers - they are opportunity seekers. So even though it might not make sense to examine why some of those books do well, try and see if they have a funnel. How are they monetizing the reader besides simply selling e-books? Chances are that at least some of them are trying.

Anyway, that's how I think about the kind of stuff you are talking about.

Wow, shocking... Another long winded reply!

But to sum up, I would say that as a general rule pick fiction if you want to make money from just selling books. Pick non-fiction if you have another way to monetize the book readers.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

An update: In a little over a week, here's where my first two books stand:

Book 1: 7 sales, 4 borrows. (Amazon apparently pays $2 per borrow so that's actually a good thing.)
Book 2: 6 sales, 0 borrows.

I did a free-book promo for two of those days. Book 1 had about 300 downloads. Book 2 ha about 200 downloads. (I did nothing to promote the free book giveaway.) It's still kind of soon to know if the free-book promo was worth it, but I believe I would (and likely will) do it again.

I'll state up-front that my genre isn't erotica. I thought this might be a little tougher road in the beginning, but my logic (which may prove to be faulty, of course) was that a non-erotic genre might offer a longer shelf-life per book. My two books are in similar genres, but not similar enough to get many cross-over sales, so really it's like I have only one book out.

These sales do seem low compared to erotica, so I sometimes doubt my genre choice. But I'm not going to give up on it until I have at least seven books out. I'll be publishing my third book within the next week or so.

Still, it's wonderful to actually publish, rather than waiting to be blessed by the traditional route. It's quite empowering!

 

[ChickenHawk]

Status Update: My third book just hit #19,634 on the Amazon Kindle store. I know this is very small potatoes compared to established authors, but it's so exciting to see progress. In contrast, my second book peaked somewhere around #46,000 and quickly fell down to oblivion. I realize my latest book will likely fall just as fast, but for now I'm enjoying the burst of encouragement. (BTW, it's not like I've sold a ton of books. Actually I've sold about 30 of this latest book so far, and that's counting borrows and international sales. Still, it's so darn exciting!)

One word of advice to anyone thinking of doing this... Once you've gleaned the basics from this thread, you'll learn WAAAAY more from actually doing it than reading about it. I've read this amazing thread about four times now, but some things really didn't hit home for me until I'd gone through the process personally. Even if your first book is crap, and you burn a pen name, you'll learn so much more from hitting that "publish" button and watching what happens than by seekng perfection your first time out.

 

[Held for Ransom]

Hey everyone,

A couple of things...

The first is that I know I've been MIA the past few weeks on the forum but I wanted to let you know that I'm not dead or anything, I'm just refocused. It's a long story but since I first posted here last April, I have just gotten involved in a bunch of different forums and crap that is unrelated to writing and at the end of the day, it has put a serious cramp in my business. Until I dropped off the radar completely, I was literally spending all of my time posting and answering PMs and whatever...

It was just... too much.

The second thing is that I need to publicly apologize for a misunderstanding I had with Vigilante here on the forum. For anyone that cares, we worked it out between ourselves privately last week but I wanted folks here to know that we'd hashed it out. Sometimes when you read stuff, it comes across one way when something else was said. Anyway, I was out of line for dropping the hammer like I did. AFAIK, we're good and I hope it stays that way.

Sorry again bro.

So, I need to refocus on what got me here in the first place. I don't know how long it might be or anything like that until I start posting regularly again. I hope it won't be all that long but it is what it is. As some of you know, I'm still answering PM's as often as I can so feel free to drop me a note if you want. I've been following all the various progress threads here and I'm super stoked to see so many of you taking so much action. It is very inspiring.

By the way, if the current trend holds, my latest is headed towards the Top 500 in the Kindle store so if a scrub like me can do it, you most certainly can too!

All the best. Back to writing...

HFR

 

[M&N]

If you're willing to share, it would be interesting to hear more about this. When you say you started treating it like a real business, what did you do differently? For example, was it in the quality of your writing, choosing a different niche, or marketing/promo efforts? $650 in your first month sounds pretty darn impressive, congrats!

Thanks. My first attempt looked like that: I checked on Amazon what genres were "ok" to enter and outsourced two short stories in two different genres. I published them without putting any effort into description, keywords and the covers weren't that cool too.

Couple months later I decided to give Kindle another try. This time I did things differently. I chose one niche, the one that was popular and not "strong" enough so I could compete with other authors. I published 5-6 ebooks in one month (but $650 regards sales of 4 ebooks). I paid more attention to my covers, keyword, categories and descriptions. What's interesting, the first book had a really nice start and it generated most of the sales for that month. Funny thing, this is the only ebook I've written myself (hey maybe I should be a writer?!). When I saw that I can really make money with this model, I started outsourcing all my writing and acting more like a publisher.

But please don't be fooled by the numbers, unfortunately the sales went down significantly. However, I admit that I haven't done any marketing outside Amazon so far. I just find it hard to spend time on promoting $2.99 ebooks, I prefer to gain more exposure by publishing more of them. Now I enter more niches and I plan to have around 60 ebooks total by the end of the year. It's a nice side passive income, but from my experience it's pretty unstable and I don't have much control. I outsource everything so I'm not going to be a famous author or something like that. I rather plan to work on this business until the end of the year, analyse things and maybe sell all my ebooks.

I learn a lot, it's a great experience, but I know it won't be my fastlane business this time. But if you're a creative writer, it can totally work for you. Self-publishing is huge right now, but in my opinion you need to be the author yourself to be able to take things to the next level.

Hope that helps!

 

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[Rawr]

I broke what I made at a job vs what I made from writing last month. Thank you MJ for the amazing forum and the mindset, and thank you HFR for lighting up one of the paths to get there and the dedication.

 

[ChickenHawk]

Progress alert! Based on the inspiration of this thread, I've picked up fiction-writing again. In a new record for me, I've just drafted a whole book in three weeks. It's in a short genre, and my book is just 18,000 words, but it's amazing what can be accomplished when you're motivated and inspired.

I still need to create some illustrations, but I should be publishing it within the next month. See, this is one reason this forum is so great. It motivates action.

THANKS AGAIN, Held for Ransom, for sharing your success and expertise. Also, if you wouldn't mind sharing it with another person, I'd love the tool you've mentioned.

 

[ChickenHawk]

She said everyone says I should publish them but I have no idea how to find a publisher or even get one to consider it.

I can say firsthand, getting a traditional publisher to consider a book is incredibly demoralizing. The first novel I wrote, I managed to secure a top New York agent to represent it, (odds of this alone are like 10,000-to-one, based on agent stats), and my book still didn't sell. My second novel couldn't even generate agent-interest. Both of these books were in the 90,000 word range. This meant I spent months and months on something that would never see the light of day by the traditional route.

I only mention this to reinforce how empowering the concepts described in this thread are. You can write a book and KNOW it will get published, because you're the one doing it.

 

[Held for Ransom]

What are everyone's thoughts on this, especially you, Held For Ransom?

Honestly, I never read stuff like this but pretty much I agree with Rawr's take on it...

I'll take the advice of people who made money in this - and I'll write WHAT SELLS first. Later, what I think is fun to write for myself.

The only exception is I really don't ever see myself doing anything writing-related "for fun".

This is not directed at Rawr or Pinnacle but I see writers say stuff like that alot. You know, write what they "want" to write. I mean, I guess that's okay and everything but their expectations need to match their reality.

VERY VERY VERY FEW books that follow this path will ever sell at all and honestly, this whole notion is baffling to me. These authors are "doing what they love" in the context of writing and that is why they suck at making money and they lash out in jealousy at people who do.

Seriously.

You never see this kind of nonsense in any other business but writing.

Consider these examples...

• When is the last time Microsoft produced a new O/S "for fun"?
• When is the last time McDonalds came up with a new burger "for fun"?
• When is the last time Disney released a new movie "for fun"?

I think you get my point.

Writing novels is a business. Authors are in the business of entertainment. We write stories that people read for money. It is seriously hilarious to me that so many authors either don't understand this basic premise or the *acceptance* of it is somehow beneath them.

Get over yourself self righteous author dude. If you want a classic example of the kind of person I am talking about, check out that link. These clowns are all like this guy - bitter, self hating losers who somehow think that they are better than everyone else and that people who read popular books are idiots.

After reading it, I'm sure you can see why I could care less what tools like that think since their books don't sell for jack squat.

For that matter, I really don't care what anybody says about what works or doesn't. The market basically tells me everything I need to know. I get the sense from some postings in the thread as well as PMs I get that people want the part about "what to write" to be harder somehow.

It really isn't.

I 100% swear on my life that I look at what sells and come up with my own version of it.

That's it. I promise that's all I do and I'm barely a lowly mid lister!!! In other words, anyone here can probably do as well if not much better but only if you change your perception about what it is you are doing.

If you want to do well understand that you are writing for money which means that you will probably have to write things people actually want to read (i.e., follow trends).

Yes, I am a HACK that chases popular trends but I'm not alone. Many of the richest authors in the world do the same thing...

• 50 Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction. Even though the author did not initially produce it based on chasing a trend, Twilight was a massive success and had a huge built in demand.
• Here on this forum, I posted a story about Jasinda Wilder who basically took the same approach of following trends and now she and her husband pull in nearly six figures PER MONTH.

Lastly from my POV, the scenario he lays out would *never happen* with people that take the same type of approach I do.

He's got it backwards. You don't come to the table with your novel in mind and try to retrofit it to "What's Hot". You start with with the trend itself and produce your work based on that.

However, at least he's being honest about not following trends himself!

His novel, which is 359 Kindle pages long and was published on 4/9/13, now has a Sales Rank approaching 300,000 (at the time of this post). So clearly he is following his own advice and happily spending probably 100s of hours of his life writing things that no one wants to read.

Good job bro.

Really, the only way to figure out if what he says is true or not is to do for yourself. From experience, I can tell you that thinking like that is what makes it easier for guys like me to make money.

What would happen if someone published an adventure story, and then added sex scenes to it and published it under erotica?

Problem for me is this - I think even if i switch this to include more sex scenes, the erotica CUSTOMER might not accept it as it is not written that way.

With Erotica, the sex typically (though not always) takes precedence. If it were me, I would look around and see if there were already any titles selling along the lines of what you want to create. If there are and they are selling well enough for you, then it might be worth considering.

I've been using Literature and Latte - Scrivener Writing Software | Mac OS X | Windows as an outlining and writing tool and it has helped a lot, I'm much more organized and efficient.

That's funny because I found it to have exactly the opposite effect on me!

Even so, I know that there's TONS of people that swear by it. Plus they have a really active user community so it definitely has a lot going for it. I guess everyone has to experiment to find the environment/tools/strategies that make them the most effective.

Thanks for the suggestion JLH!

 

[Michael Raphael]

10 hours+ of writing. 2 days of editing. 2 days for sales page (still needs a bit of work). Over a week of disputing titles and working on cover. First day officially published.

Thank you COS*, NextGen, Chaz, ChickenHaw*, everyone else -really too many people, and most importantly HFR for all of the support, insight, and overall motivation to help me publish my first work. I don't know how it will go, but I can not wait to tell you my journey.


Amazon.com: Write off the Page: A Simple Guide for Sophisticated Character Development (Improving Your Lifestlye) eBook: Raphael Rapoport, Slickview Studios: Kindle Store

 

[Held for Ransom]

Glad to hear it! FWIW, my sales keep climbing upwards - at least for the time being. I have an outside shot at $20,000 (probably more like $17,500 - $18,000ish) in sales this month.

In addition, I had my first title ever break the 1,000 rank mark in the Kindle Store (it's gotten as low as the mid 800s) so the opportunity is still there if you figure out what the reader wants and give it to them.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

*I* happen to agree with you that reviews don't matter but on many of the author forums I post on, I am very much in the minority there...

I bet this is partly due to your reasons for writing. You write to make money. If your books sell, you consider the venture a success. I've been involved in writer's groups before, and actually had to distance myself because they believed it was wrong to write with money in mind.

I argued the point. Fiction aside, I pointed out that writing was paying my mortgage and feeding my family at the time. They decided it was okay, because I wrote non-fiction for an employer. The whole thing left me feeling terribly out of sync with the other writers. I drifted away and never went back.

Have I mentioned how much I love this forum? Here, there's no shame in seeking financial rewards for our efforts, or in shaping our efforts with financial rewards in mind.

 

[Twiki]

The Excel formula that you've provided here is GOLD++ alone... thank you so much! Maybe there aren't technical barriers to entry into self-publishing anymore, but there will always be barriers in terms of (lack of) persistence and wishful thinking (dreaming that the first one or two tries leads to a runaway Harry Potter-type bestseller). It's like Seth Godin's concept of the Dip --- how many people are crazy enough to keep plugging away at something for 30+ books???

I agree with Santa that your wife is smart about her suggestion, and whatever other reason you have for not revealing too much is totally understandable. I think another good reason for not revealing your niche is that it'd be giving too much of a hand-out to people --- just serving it on a plate would actually hurt them because they wouldn't have to then go do the research and analysis steps you've provided, so they'd never understand the process and get a feel for the underlying principles.

 

[Held for Ransom]

I wonder if you could hire college students(english / creative writing students are always hurting for jobs) and do an "internship" course for them(could even pay them like $500 stipend on completion). You give them a few topics you've already researched and they write it with your guidance. Might be able to scale it and publish 10 books / week rather than one?

Hey ZDS. I think that's a possibility for non-fiction. But, if it were me, I would still do it myself if I were writing non-fiction. As I examined subjects that I thought would make good non-fiction sellers (in and of themselves) I kept running into the same issue. Namely, I'm not really an expert here and what's worse, beyond the $2.00 royalty from Amazon, I really had no way of getting more revenue from the book sale.

So, in my initial thought process, I was left to consider publishing a lot of non-fiction books on lots of different topics and hoping I could sell enough books that way. But then I hit another snag with the "keyword based" writing approach. By keyword based, I mean using some keyword tool and looking up phrases like, "How do I do XYZ?" or whatever. You see this kind of advice everywhere for non-fiction. Anyway, back to my dilemma... Suppose a reader was to browse my Author Central profile where all of my books are listed. There I've got e-books on "How to Date if You're Shy", "How to Run a Hot Dog Stand" or "How to Make Money with Forex".

Do you see what I was doing? I was trying to sell a lot of books by giving the market what I thought it wanted. What people really want in these areas are actual real-life experts, not a guy who hired someone to write stuff about it. Once they hit that profile page, it's pretty clear I'm not an expert on anything. Anyway, that's where I ended up with that. I figured that when or if I ever actually became an expert at something, I'd already know how to produce the e-book.

But, here's the really ironic part of all of this that didn't occur to me until I was a few months into my fiction writing...

With my fiction, it's not unusual for someone to grab 5 or 6 of my titles at once. In fact, I've had a couple of occasions where people have purchased my whole catalog. So, at the end of the day, I achieved my goal - selling lots of books and I didn't have to anything other than write to accomplish it.

There were no long hours of Google keyword research, no hiring writers/editors/graphic designers, etc. In fact, when I really sat back and figured out how much time each of those outsourcing tasks were to going to be costing me, it just wasn't worth it - for me.

So, I'd never tell someone absolutely don't do this or that. I think that it depends on your objectives but even so, I really believe from the bottom of my heart that if you can be a real expert in one thing, you have a much better chance of success in non-fiction over the long run versus the "keyword based" writing strategy that plagues much of the non-fiction category.

You don't have to look too hard to find it!

 

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[ChickenHawk]

What a thought-provoking thread! Congratulations on your success, and thanks for the inspiration. WOW.

It really has me thinking. I've written two-plus novels, but didn't want to self-publish, because the general advice was always, "once you self-publish, you'll ruin your chances of a traditional publisher taking you on." But you've got me rethinking this in a couple ways.

1. Money-Making Potential. I personally know traditionally published authors who make almost nothing, even though they have agents and a publishing house backing them. Your earnings are blowing them out of the water. With success like this, it really don't matter if a traditional publisher ever expresses an interest in your work. You've carved out a niche, and thus, don't need them.

2. Word Counts. Man, what a thought-provoking idea, focusing on shorter-lengths rather than long traditional novels.

That's so true, too, about Kindle books. I buy those $2.99 novels all the time, figuring, "Heck, it's cheaper than a mocha, even if I don't like it."

I like your philosophy about negative reviews. With a lot of people, an initial bad review would've stopped them right there. But you stayed focused. That's a good lesson. I've participated in writing groups. Writers can have incredibly thin skins. That's just one of many reasons you're succeeding where so many have failed.

Speed +

 

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[Held for Ransom]

So, let me see if I understand correctly: Search Amazon, find best sellers, model them, sit down and write, upload to Amazon and other similar sites. Is that pretty much the broad strokes? Brilliant. Can you send me the link too please?

That's it in a nutshell. PM sent!

Does the novella publishing model not work in other genres or something?

It works in Romance... At the end of the day, you should forget about the length of the book and just focus on the market. If your book is shorter than others, so what? Just put it out there. In my experience, someone will ALWAYS complain that the book isn't long enough.

Just go for it. Get something published, make mistakes, get bad reviews, make no sales and improve.

That's the best way to know for sure.

For example, my next title will be out in about a week from now. I haven't put anything out in nearly two months due to some chronic health issues that have finally started to improve.

Will it sell? I think so but I don't know for sure - even to this day. Those feelings never go away totally. I'm sure even the best writers in the world have them at some level. Anyway, just wanted to put a little encouragement out there for you Thrifty.

 

[Held for Ransom]

Updates on my setup...

So I've made some major changes to my writing setup recently. I was having all kinds of chronic neck and back pain some of which kept me bedridden for weeks on end. It's basically been a problem since January but it reached a breaking point in the late spring.

Anyway, I finally had some breakthroughs with my therapy. In addition to that, I have since invested considerable amount of money into a sit stand desk, a new computer set up with multiple monitors and also I have revisited utilizing dictation software.

I am using the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking (Version 12). The single most important advancement that they've come up with is an app which allows you to do dictation through your smartphone. This is great for me because whenever I'm stuck I tend to walk around and think about what I want to write next.

In the past, I would have to walk back to my computer, sit down make a quick note of my idea and then get back up. Now, the app is always running on my phone and so if I get stuck while I'm typing I can walk around until the ideas come to me. And I find that the more I use the app the less and less I type. I am just getting better at dictating my books.

So, I just thought I'd throw that out there. I'll continue to experiment with it but at this point if I can realize a 20% increase in my typing speed that could mean 20% more books per year. Of course book sales could grow by much more than 20% since it's not linear by any means.

Hope that is useful to someone.

 

[Held for Ransom]

Nora Roberts interview...

This was a repeat broadcast, but Nora Roberts was interviewed on "Sunday Morning"... For those that don't know, she is a Romance writer of L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y status.

Highlights...

• She got started as a stay at home mom because her two small boys were driving her crazy and she needed an outlet
• In her 30 year career, she's written more than 200+ books and has 400 MILLION books in print (Hey, how about that... write a lot maybe???)
• To this day, she still thinks that writing is VERY HARD (I was so relieved to hear that...)
• Today, her income is estimated at $60 MILLION annually

Link to the video interview

 

[dschwartz06]

Working with Amazon's Algorithm

Great thread here, as I've been slowly building up a solid portfolio on Non-fiction e-books on the kindle store, hiring ghostwriters for under $300/book for quality material. I make sure to hire ghostwriters only with relevant experience on the topic.

From an investment standpoint...even if you price your books at 2.99, the returns on well positioned e-books are freaking incredible. Anything that you can make your money back within a few months is worth looking into. I invest in real estate full time and do this on the side, and a few of my real estate mentors have paid me $1000 just to teach them how to publish their own books! This was validation enough for me to actually create a full training course online to sell within my real estate tribe (www.PublishingProdigy.com if you're interested in checking it out!)

It's true that you lack Control using Amazon, but here's an awesome article that shows you how to work with their algorithm's:

Keys to Understanding Amazon

In particular, it says that your book description should be at least 500 words for maximum SEO exposure...interesting read.

Congrats on your success man, you inspired me to keep growing my portfolio!

-Dan

 

[Jonleehacker]

Inspired by this thread, I hit "publish" this morning.

Not taking the same route as most people here, as fiction writing would be like pulling teeth for me, and writing non-fiction allows me to better use my marketing skills and I have personal knowledge of this topic.

It was A LOT more work than I expected, but I am experiencing a very enjoyable sense of pride at seeing something up on Amazon with my name on it.

Any feedback from the experts on here would be really welcomed.

Thanks to Held for Ransom for this thread to get me going, I've actually had a secret dream of writing a book for many years!

Fart Free Vegan: Food Combining for Detox, Weight Loss and Energy. by Jon Symons

 

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[Rawr]

I want to do an update as I passed my first month.

I've sold 300 books. Out of those my first book is 70% of the sales, my 2nd short story is 20% and another short story 10%.

I write in the popular market, had a great cover, a solid blurb and my intro started fast, this is my best guess on the success of book 1.

When you have book 2 that's when things get more fun, one book helps the other, and you see your own titles on your also bought.

Usually the 30 days end with your book slowing down. To counter this I am releasing another longer work, longest so far and about 35k. I am more nervous about this book doing well than anything.

I haven't used Select. BN nook sales were around 10% last half of the month and 18% this month.

I do not use .99 I use $2.99 because it is 6.5x more money. I also believe $2.99 and under is viewed negatively, I haven't measured this by I will try a .99 title when the next one in the series will be out.

Strategy wise I have misintrepreted HFR's approach and hadn't picked a niche to work THROUGH. Unless you consider Romance a niche.

I have been pirated and put on torrents. I commented on the upload and said please review the book. Someone has.

Book 2 didn't have "look inside" show up for 10 days. It was killing my sales. Books do rebound. I don't know why new readers suddenly discover your book as it goes into the deeper end (80k+ rating) but to go from 100 to 50k you just need 1 sale. To go to 30k you need 2-3. Come backs are possible in this game and feel so good when the book does.

Only things that really matter is sales and return ratio. Only 5% of people don't like my books. I am grateful and amazed by this number.

For publishing on Apple you need a mac. I don't have one so I gave 15% to draft2digital and they do it for me. So far I don't have any sales on kobo or apple as half of the titles are taking forever to process.

I have changed covers on my 2 short stories about 6-7 times. The first covers always could be imporved as far as my experience went. The font work is crucial.

Cover doesn't have to TELL the story. It has to ADVERTISE, to LURE to click on the book.


Put all your other titles in the back of your books with links to them. Get amazon affiliate so you can get extra 4-6%. I haven't yet and I missed out on a decent dinner because of it.


Get a MailCheat(Chimp) mail list, put the link in the back of your book. Email list is the ONLY thing that will definitely improve your sales.

I am going to get a website, and may be a blog, although I don't want to blog much under a pen.

A great book is the best thing for sales. Honestly, i've seen bad covers (same stock images I used actually), with terrible fonts, in the top 50.
if you have a great book you have the bloggers and the word of mouth, two huge things that will propell you forward. If my book sucks I can't give it to 50 people in exchange for a review. If my book is great, I just got 50 reviews with at least 4 rating. I hope one day to have a great book. Until then, market, cover, title, blurb.








mindgames:


I realized new fears develop as you write and learn more about writing. I sometimes wish I didn't read anything about writing at all and just kept writing. Unfortunately there is a lot of good advice out there among all the fear.

I have no choice but to ignore the fears, for they keep me away longer from the 'publish' button. I can not write Lolita right now. I can either sit and cry about it as my book sits there, or I can just finish the damn thing. And finishing it is what I got into this business for in the first place.

"Long term professional writers sit down and write, when they feel bad, when they can’t think of a thing, when the process hurts, when they would rather be out in the sun. This is a job, a great job, but still a job."



I think in this game long term you will need to have a point where you either have a lot of books and still put one out every month, or you get great at writing and put out less, after you have 5-9 under your name. Then you will need to write may be once every 3 months. The point is - are you ready to make this your life? Or are you using this as a vehicle for something else?


Covers, blurbs, writing for the market - things worth repeating said best by a very successful author.



Writing is not hard work.




A huge thank you to HFR and others who helped along the way. HFR, I can't thank you enough man, because all my life I looked at writing and said "I'd love to, but it doesn't pay." and you came in here and whispered that it does. That was all it took.

 

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