I Will Reach $10,000 USD monthly in Self-Publishing.

[Vigilante]

Hello all,

First of all much deserved thanks goes to HELD FOR RANSOM and his thread over at https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/showthread.php/46006-Hello-from-Denver-self-publishing-success

This is my own progress thread where I will try my best to pump out as much books as possible, as entertaining as possible, to Kindle.

I've already hit the publish button on Kindle for my first book ever and is now under review.

Pumping out my second book as of now with an outline first.

My goals in this are:

To make enough money to quit my day time job
To make sure that I have enough capital so I can have a child while staying home
To make sure that my family will no longer be in a financial mess.
To escape the rat race
To be free with the mundane repetitive tasks of the people in society today who don't have a sense of purpose.
To be my own man.
To travel
To own multiple houses
To be the first in my family that actually makes money and lives his own life on his own rules.

MOTIVATION:

[video=youtube;g-jwWYX7Jlo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jwWYX7Jlo[/video]


Please. Join me in my quest and i'm sure we'll all make it together.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE HUNGRY

Throw all of those goals out.

Change your whole mindset.

Make your ONLY goal to be to provide books that people read and enjoy.

Then, all of the rest of your goals will come true.

Change the focus from YOU to THEM.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Wow.Big Update guys.

Turns out that I might be expecting a baby soon!

Very. Very. Excited.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Forgive me if you've posted the answers I'm about to ask for earlier in the thread. I'm now reading so many of these that it's cutting into my writing time, and alas, I have no time to go back looking for info.
So, my questions. Have you posted your book links? I do support and read books by authors I 'know' through social media, and although I'm a bit behind, would do that for you as well, unless it's a genre that just completely turns me off. Steam punk comes to mind.

If you're remaining anonymous, as I am, I understand. If you haven't posted and don't want to, but would be interested in my opinion, you're welcome to PM me. I have read and kept confidential several of the authors who post here.

I haven't posted my books up on here. I think i'll do that when I join the INSIDERS but simply because of it's public domain and exposure of this forum, I wouldn't want others to see. I would definitely send you a copy of my book. What's your e-mail? Or we could PM.

I am a bit shy when it comes to sharing my work though, I do feel like my work is quite shitty compare to the others that I've seen, if you ask me.

Thanks for the support

_____________

UPDATE:

My word count is gradually picking up I've pumped out about close to 2K today in an hours worth of time. I'm feeling quite satisfied now but know that I can definitely do better.

Other than that, nothing else to update with. How is everyone else?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Held for Ransom]

Throw all of those goals out.

Change your whole mindset.

Make your ONLY goal to be to provide books that people read and enjoy.

Then, all of the rest of your goals will come true.

Change the focus from YOU to THEM.

Couldn't have said that any better myself...

Glad we could inspire you. Now go write good books. A LOT OF THEM. The rest will follow.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Hello all,

First of all much deserved thanks goes to HELD FOR RANSOM and his thread over at https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/showthread.php/46006-Hello-from-Denver-self-publishing-success

This is my own progress thread where I will try my best to pump out as much books as possible, as entertaining as possible, to Kindle.

I've already hit the publish button on Kindle for my first book ever and is now under review.

Pumping out my second book as of now with an outline first.

My goals in this are:

To make enough money to quit my day time job
To make sure that I have enough capital so I can have a child while staying home
To make sure that my family will no longer be in a financial mess.
To escape the rat race
To be free with the mundane repetitive tasks of the people in society today who don't have a sense of purpose.
To be my own man.
To travel
To own multiple houses
To be the first in my family that actually makes money and lives his own life on his own rules.

MOTIVATION:

[video=youtube;g-jwWYX7Jlo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jwWYX7Jlo[/video]


Please. Join me in my quest and i'm sure we'll all make it together.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE HUNGRY

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Held for Ransom]

Shake it off and just keep writing.

^ THAT ^

Otherwise, I don't recall if you've shared your genre at all but each one has its average return rates. In mine, it's around 5-7% on average. My personal average is around 5% most months. What I find is that whenever I put something new out, the return rates are usually about 3 to 5 times than what they average out to be a couple of weeks later. I have no idea why. Perhaps you are experiencing a bit of that phenomenon yourself.

There's a small caveat and I'd say that if (for you) the returns are WAY higher than normal, you may want to take a look at the blurb, the title or possibly even the categorization you picked. The last one is less likely but still a possibility. In any case, if it's way out of whack, there might be a disconnect between what you are saying about the book and what your readers are getting out of it.

Otherwise, returns are uncontrollable and for the most part insignificant. Books are just merchandise after all.

All the biggest companies in the world get their products returned all the time. It's just a cost of doing business and besides, it's Amazon's policy anyway. You get seven days to return it, no questions asked.

On the other hand, at Barnes and Noble, trying to return an e-book is harder than getting a next day kidney transplant. In fact, of the thousands and thousands of books I've sold there, I've only ever had ONE, that's right, a SINGLE return. Now, is that realistic? No, I don't think so. I think it's at least in part a function of B&N's policies just like the liberal return policy is Amazon's.

But as an author, B&N is only about 8% of my monthly income. Each and every month, Amazon is 90+%. The point is wouldn't you rather sell nine times as many books overall if it meant a certain percentage of them came back?

I would.

Most authors tend to view their work as reflection of themselves which makes a even single return, let alone a one-star review hard to stomach. Rather, consider that your books are just like any other product in the marketplace. Even people who are in your target market may not like it for umpteen reasons.

It could be quite possible it has nothing to do with you or your book at all.

Perhaps they are just the type of person who returns a lot of e-books or maybe they bought the wrong book or perhaps they don't want their husband seeing what's on the Kindle!

You see what I mean? Those are just some things to consider if you are taking it personally. There's no way to know.

Does Nike get mad when people bring shoes back? What about Nordstrom when people return clothes they've already worn? Or even you, think about what you have returned in your life and why. Sometimes it's a legit reason and other times, ehhh, maybe not so much.

Someday you'll have 20 or 30 books up. Wait until someone buys your whole catalog, reads it and returns it. It happens to everyone sooner or later.

At first, you're like :icon_super:

And then you're all :404:

Although it's VERY HARD, it's best to detach yourself from all of these kinds of things you cannot control. It makes all the difference in the world over the long run.

Again, my wise friend to the north of me summed it up best...

Shake it off and just keep writing.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mark Anthony Le]

Well done on upping the word count. Doesn't it feel great every time you break through a new barrier?

When I had my first 5k day I felt almost euphoric until I read over what I'd written - half of it needed some serious editing. I settled back into my normal routine of crafting my stories at a rate of about one thousand words every thirty three minutes (basically, writing 3,000 words per day) and the quality soon went back up.

I'm sure I can hit, and beat, my previous 5k figure but the wake up call of my first effort makes me realise that I need to temper speed with quality.

Hell yea it felt great! I hadn't felt like that in a while.

I'm currently pumping out 2k of words coherently of course. So luckily I wouldn't have to correct it *fingerscrossed.

I'm in the process of rereading the 2k to 10k book again.

UPDATE:

Didn't really get to type much today but pumped out about 1.5K words today.
I find that writing and making it work without deleting has proved TREMENDOUS in making my word count go up. The fact that we're typing on a computer allows us to pump out words easily but I find that as easily as it comes out, it's also easier as ever to delete it. That is the problem I've been facing the past several weeks.

I pump out a good amount of words and then realize that I have to delete some because I THOUGHT it didn't work. Ever since I implemented the notion to NOT delete any of the words I type, I find my story and characters EVEN FASTER and BETTER than I had if I deleted. Following DWS's stuff, I find that my creative side knows more about stories than my logical and rational side ever would. So i've been trying to implement some ideas of just letting the words flow onto the page without deleting or letting my rational side come into contact with the words.

BY FAR it has been the best move. I feel that I've barely just honed into my creative side and that i'm barely scratching the surface. I think that if I start to find other alternatives to come into contact with my creative side without my logical rational blocking my way, I can hone in on that inner subconcious and voice that has come to watch and read so many different stories, to let it all out.

Just my tip of the day and what I've learned so far.

ALSO i've been highly contemplating joining the INSIDERS. Really. I feel that perhaps my stuff that I share should go in the INSIDERS forum since it's literally my progress thread.

Thoughts?

 

[WeMoE]

Throw all of those goals out.

Change your whole mindset.

Make your ONLY goal to be to provide books that people read and enjoy.

Then, all of the rest of your goals will come true.

Change the focus from YOU to THEM.

This just changed my perspective! thanks

 

[JAJT]

To make sure that my family will no longer be in a financial mess.

Money can't solve this.

Only the understanding of your existing financial habits and what needs to change (and then actually changing) will help.

If your house is on fire, you don't quickly build a bigger and bigger house to outrun the fire. You put out the fire first THEN you can rebuild while making sure you don't accidentally set the house on fire again.

(I don't know your situation, but the above to applies to the vast majority of North America, so excuse the generalization).

 

[Lauryn]

LOL @ returning free books.

Sometimes the book is returned because the person wants their 99 cents or doesn't see the value in your story. Like they've all said, don't take it personal. Same with one star reviews - unless there's a specific and valid point made in their negative review.

Trust me, people PAY people to leave bad reviews.

 

[jimr]

Well done on upping the word count. Doesn't it feel great every time you break through a new barrier?

When I had my first 5k day I felt almost euphoric until I read over what I'd written - half of it needed some serious editing. I settled back into my normal routine of crafting my stories at a rate of about one thousand words every thirty three minutes (basically, writing 3,000 words per day) and the quality soon went back up.

I'm sure I can hit, and beat, my previous 5k figure but the wake up call of my first effort makes me realise that I need to temper speed with quality.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Personally, I love the INSIDERS section, and would definitely recommend it if you're interested. There's some great stuff there, but much of the best stuff is unrelated to your personal fastlane path (writing/authorship/fiction).

On your current path, this progress thread is probably in the perfect place (the "Outside"), because this is where most of the authorship progress threads are. If, however, you decide to reveal your pen name on the forum, and don't want it searchable, moving your progress thread to the Inside would probably make sense. But when/if you do that, your audience for your posts will be considerably smaller, since not all of the authors are INSIDERS, and thus, wouldn't be able to read or respond to your posts. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply man. Sounds great. Definitely purchasing a subscription after I start making some simply for the sake of sharing ideas with like-minded individuals.

UPDATE:
Finished up my novel. Now I'm getting the cover being done and outlining my next novel. Currently raking in only 1 sale as of last week. Pennies pennies pennies. All the 50k+ Earners started somewhere right? Haha.

I've noticed that one of my genres are picking up most of the cash so I might have to drop my second work to pursue the one that's making money. Other than that, How is everyone doing?

 

[AllenCrawley]

Update on the sales?

@Mark Anthony Le last seen Jan 3, 2014.

Let's hope he's busy writing.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

@Mark Anthony Le last seen Jan 3, 2014.

Let's hope he's busy writing.

Hahaha it's been going well!

I've been so busy lately. The self publishing income has been trickling in from books I've written when I first started.

It certainly isn't easy. But it definitely is doable.

I'll post later tonight with a better update. Right now I'm running in between meetings and consulting.

It turns out that as I was taking off with my self publishing career, my offline service consulting project I had going from years before took off completely unexpectedly.

I'm in the midst of juggling both and I know MJ warns against breaking monogamy. So it's been kindve a juggling act for both sides of the project.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[smarty]

I Will Reach $10,000 USD monthly in Self-Publishing.

maybe it's a good idea to set a precise deadline.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mark Anthony Le]

Ahh. Book is now live

Man, formatting the the novella in Apple's Pages was a pain in the a$$.

I enrolled in the free countdown special with kindle select just to get the ball rolling first with exposure.

Pumping out book number 2 now. Highly debating whether to continue the 2nd book as a sequeal to the first book or literally dive into another novella completely.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[GuestUser113]

Hello all,

First of all much deserved thanks goes to HELD FOR RANSOM and his thread over at https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/showthread.php/46006-Hello-from-Denver-self-publishing-success

This is my own progress thread where I will try my best to pump out as much books as possible, as entertaining as possible, to Kindle.

I've already hit the publish button on Kindle for my first book ever and is now under review.

Pumping out my second book as of now with an outline first.

My goals in this are:

To make enough money to quit my day time job
To make sure that I have enough capital so I can have a child while staying home
To make sure that my family will no longer be in a financial mess.
To escape the rat race
To be free with the mundane repetitive tasks of the people in society today who don't have a sense of purpose.
To be my own man.
To travel
To own multiple houses
To be the first in my family that actually makes money and lives his own life on his own rules.

MOTIVATION:

[video=youtube;g-jwWYX7Jlo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jwWYX7Jlo[/video]


Please. Join me in my quest and i'm sure we'll all make it together.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE HUNGRY

Not to emphasize what everyone has said already.

"You are writing for the reader, who is your ultimate gatekeeper. Get your work in front of them, even if it’s one at a time, one reader a month or year." Hugh Howey from My advice to aspiring authors

 

[COSenior]

You've made a great start, so congratulations. Welcome to the club. Hope to see you post good progress regularly.

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

UPDATE #2

Just finished off a 4500 word count after 3 hours of writing. Averaging I guess about a thousand and some change for each hour.

My word count has picked up dramatically after developing an outline first. It has help cement my ideas when I hit a rut.

You guys should definitely try it!

 

[joanna]

But then the issue of money comes into play once more

To be honest *money* isn't as big of a problem, as *accounting* for it. Also you do need a designated person who manages such a colaboration from their account since I don't think any of the platforms allows for multiple owners of a book (other than tagging someone as author). I think what some author groups do is create a legal entity that manages all that stuff and the authors are then part of that entity. It's quite nicely explained here for anyone interested:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DHPQGN0/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

It's a good read overall, too.

Question: do you guys suggest getting a cover paid for on Fiverr ? Or is it better off learning how to do it on my own ?

Answer honestly a few questions:
- Have you got any design background or at least a decent eye for design?
- Have you got any skills already in using something like Photoshop or Gimp?
- Realistically what is your budget?

Fiverr is an option if you're completely broke and have no skill or intention to learn it - let's be honest, anyone can find spare five bucks. Though you should really, really check out the examples they provide, and preferably find someone who has examples you like, in your genre. There are a lot of gigs that frankly, even a beginner with a bit of taste could do better, but you can also find some good things there.

If you're kind of broke and say yes to 1) and maybe even 2) than you could try going the DIY route. (I really need to finish my non fiction book on this topic...). If you keep it simple you can do really great stuff on a budget.

If you have a bit of money to invest, and learning design is not something you want to spend time on (for fun or otherwise), absolutely go for a designer. There are pre-mades available at very affordable prices. Almost a flagship example of pre-mades: http://goonwrite.com/

Your cover is the first thing people see. Until you have a strong fanbase and/or spread like wildfire via word of mouth, let's not kid our selves - people do judge books by their covers. And if they don't like your's enough to click you blurb and writing really don't matter. A good title can do the trick too, but the cover is the main thing.

Stock photos - if doing erotica careful which stock site you choose. There's also the tricky part of "do not portray the model in an offensive manner" - it's vague as hell but if you keep your covers tasteful you *should* be OK (not a lawyer disclaimer goes here). Also most stock sites even for ebooks will have a copy amount limit on the cheaper licences (I use thinkstockphotos, so I know their's is 500k, and then you have to get the extended license).

 

[joanna]

How do you do it on your own?

Here's an example. Or scratch that, there was a great thread on kboards but it seems to be gone now. Darn.

Any way. Here's some tips:
http://www.creativindie.com/8-cover...-use-to-manipulate-readers-into-buying-books/

And that's an interesting read, even if you're not planning on having a custom photoshoot
http://www.orbitbooks.net/2013/07/10/making-of-a-cover-series-david-dalglishs-shadowdance-series/

If you want a quick start here's a 6x9 standard sized psd I use as a starter for covers.
http://bookcovermasterclass.com/6x9-front-cover-with-print-bleeds.psd

Here's an extract from a presentation I did some time ago (sorry, just the slides, no commentary)
http://bookcovermasterclass.com/fonts-presentation.pdf
My favourite font site for free stuff is dafont.com, since it's easy to look for "free for commercial use" stuff.

What do you do with the stock photos? Do you combine it with multiple different stock photos, play with the coloring and then just slam on a title?

Depends. If you're starting out and don't have the photo-manipulation skills, then it's better to stick to single photo with a few effect, or really easy blends. Otherwise it shows. Despite being a designer for a long while, I still wouldn't consider myself that great at combining multiple random photos, not to mention to do it well it takes a lot of time - you need to get the lighting right, shadows, proportions between the two photos, often different exposure, and so on.

I feel like it's taking away from my writing time though.

Yeah, it can do that to you

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Update #7:

PHEW! Published my 2ND Book. MAN does it feel good

I decided to mock up my cover and I felt it looked good. I'm going to test it out and pay for one from Fiverr. If my cover doesn't sell for about a week or two, I'm going to use one that I'm going to buy from Fiverr and test that out to see what the conversion rates are and whether or not my covers really do suck

Anywho... Off to Outline #3. I'm debating whether or not I should continue a 2nd book series for my first book? Or write a new one completely. My first book only made two sales in a week. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not. But I think I'll probably try to buy a cover for my first book as well since my cover was self-made for it too.

Decisions decisions decisions...

 

[COSenior]

It seems that my 2nd book has gotten a purchase with a refund immediately as well. Seems like they're finishing my book really fast and returning it.

Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. I was devastated the first time someone returned one of mine. Seriously, who goes to the trouble to return a 99c purchase? But, don't take it personally. Some people are just cheap. Some people are scam artists. And some people just aren't going to like your writing--you can't please everyone. Shake it off and just keep writing.

 

[santa]

Seems like they're finishing my book really fast and returning it

There can be a ton of reasons for that. Expect it, embrace it even. Wait until you start getting reviews slating your book..keep going and you'll have that to come

Simply just plugging away

:icon_super:

 

[ChickenHawk]

Seriously, who goes to the trouble to return a 99c purchase? But, don't take it personally. Some people are just cheap.

On the Kindle Boards, one author said you haven't really lived until someone's returned one of your FREE books. Somehow, that made me feel better about the couple returns I had, because this made no sense whatsoever.

 

[Hicks]

On the Kindle Boards, one author said you haven't really lived until someone's returned one of your FREE books. Somehow, that made me feel better about the couple returns I had, because this made no sense whatsoever.

LOL.
I had a one star review because the 'look inside' function wasn't working (nothing to do with me)!.......on a free book.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[COSenior]

On the Kindle Boards, one author said you haven't really lived until someone's returned one of your FREE books. Somehow, that made me feel better about the couple returns I had, because this made no sense whatsoever.

Oh, my. I'd probably put my head in the oven, lol.

 

[COSenior]

I literally laughed out loud. Thanks man

UPDATE:
My writing schedule has been hectic as all hell. Damn. I've been trying to squeeze writing into every single second of my free time. I haven't even had time to visit you guys

So... Here are my realizations:

MORE TIME =/= MORE WORDS

My god did I learn this the hard way. The more time I squeezed into writing the more I felt like my writing was sloppy and terrible. It was almost as if my creative side was burnt out from the overload of the work I gave it. I'm going to figure out a way to make it work though. Perhaps one of my outlines in writing is wrong.

So far I'm working on a lengthier book just to see if I get more traction in my category. Even though the large majority of my category uses 200+ pages, I'm testing the waters to see if they respond more with different unique twists that are much shorter aka novellas or in general they stick with longer books.

All about testing and finding the right formula in my niches now.

How is everyone else doing?

I'm currently re-reading the book you cited earlier, and wondering if you just haven't hit your stride yet? As I told my ghostwriting client yesterday, it seems to be largely just believing you can do it. Like the author of that 2k to 10k book, I tend to write faster the longer I write. First hour might be 1000 words, but by hour two, it's 1500 and I know there have been days when I hit 2000/hour average. And those are the days when I don't want to quit writing when it's time to stop and cook dinner. The story's flowing, my fingers are flying, and I guess you could say I'm 'in the zone.' When I started writing none of that happened. One caveat--I seldom sit down to write if I have less than half an hour. It takes that long to get my head in the story.

But as many established writers say, my experience is not your experience--you'll find what's best for you as you keep working on it. I'm impressed with your dedication to your goal, and your willingness to test even if it means failure for one or two books. Thanks for sharing your journey.

 

[santa]

"MORE TIME =/= MORE WORDS

My god did I learn this the hard way. The more time I squeezed into writing the more I felt like my writing was sloppy and terrible. It was almost as if my creative side was burnt out from the overload of the work I gave it. I'm going to figure out a way to make it work though. Perhaps one of my outlines in writing is wrong."

Now this is where we have to find a writing system that works for us (and which can change over time, e.g. the great EL writing later;

). You might find that if you keep writing with a similar schedule, (but maybe emphasizing quality a bit more) that your writing quality does improve. A bit like someone playing speed chess, and getting their @ss kicked at the beginning but becoming a master of that over time.
OR, as you seem to be concluding, you may need to spend more time per word to get that quality to a good level. Which would be a bit more like traditional chess.
OR using a hyrbid or somehting totally different (checkers anyone?)...
The challenge we all have is knowing when to stick with a method (with tweaks) and when to go in a dramatically different way.

I think it is a continual evolution, and I loved what you said in bold. You'll find your writing process!

 

[Mark Anthony Le]

Mark Anthony Le - What are you doing to market your books? I am also curious to see what others are doing as well. I found the following article interesting: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing The thing is, how many of us just have a blog we've had forever related to our genre with tons of followers?
Anyway, anyone with marketing ideas for marketing fiction? Would be greatly appreciated! I just received my first fiction novel back from my editor and am making the final corrections/edits to it. Being a professional graphic designer, I've already created a cover so... other than that, I just need to dive into marketing.

All i'm doing is writing more books. I'm taking the DWS's way of marketing. I agree with him when he says that the only way to market a book is to just keep writing. The writing itself will give you more exposure via more books in amazon. But from the looks of the route you're taking (traditional i'm assuming) blogging and connecting with like minded authors in your genre and your audience will definitely help you.

Now this is where we have to find a writing system that works for us (and which can change over time, e.g. the great EL writing later; ). You might find that if you keep writing with a similar schedule, (but maybe emphasizing quality a bit more) that your writing quality does improve. A bit like someone playing speed chess, and getting their @ss kicked at the beginning but becoming a master of that over time.

Wow, thanks for the video. Definitely needed that. I actually might try a segment where I can't delete anything I type and see how that works! Sounds really good IMO.


UPDATE: WOW AGAIN!
I know I haven't updated this for several days now but I'm definitely keeping up with my work. I'm about half way done with the new book and am glad that I stuck with it. My method as of now is not to try to pump out as much as possible but rather take it easy and type out as much as I can with the allottted time that I'm given.

Moments after I found out that my gal was pregnant, I developed some sort of hives and eventually I itched at it and long story short I had an extreme form of Cellulitis which sent me to the ER and out of my day job for about two weeks. I've been home with my foot up dangling off the ceiling cerning books out on a consistent basis now.

I'm trying to keep it up, there might be times that I feel depressed and confused at life but I'm definitely trying to keep things going.

I hope you guys are all doing well too. I promise to keep this updated daily