[Progress Thread] Fiction Ebook

[McNandez]

My apologies if this will end up being a wall of text! My hope is that someone will get something out of it.

Actions Taken:
* Used Held For Ransom’s tool + several hours on Amazon to determine popular fiction genres
* Deduced that serial erotic romance, mystery, and post-apocalyptic/sci-fi were top contenders (YMMV); decided that I could write an erotic romance most quickly out of those
* Extensively outlined a three-book series. I’m aiming for each book to be between 15-25k words. I’m using a pretty firm 3-act structure for the series and each book to make it easier to write faster
* Wrote, edited (then rewrote, re-edited, then read out loud several times) an erotic romance story of approximately 18k words
* Picked a title & pen name, then bought a cover image from this guy: goonwrite.com. There was a slight detail on the image that I overlooked, but I’m still pretty happy with it. He was reasonably priced, worked fast, and I had no trouble uploading the image
* Compiled my document & cover image on Scrivener - this is pertinent because part of my formatting problems, which ate up a lot of time, were due to me not knowing to include a title page, front matter and table of contents prior topreviewing it
* Researched and then made a list of categories and keyword phrases to use when uploading. I also made sure to include as many of these keywords as possible (without making it sound like I did so) in my book description.
* Signed up on Amazon and uploaded my document, cover, description and keywords

Actions Forthcoming
* Set up my author page
* Finish second book (slated to be done with the first draftthe week of 10/07)
* Be considerably better with formatting, organizing and uploading
* Look into buying a positive review from someplace like Fiverr. Initially I had a lot of issues with this, but thanks to the fastlane mentality, I feel like this is akin to a company investing in SEO for their new product; also, thanks to reading Influence, I know that “social proof†could go a long way in getting me readers. (Granted, I could ask a friend or a family member to leave a nice review, but long story short, I’m in the closet about writing an erotic romance)
* Once a few reviews are up, participate in Free Promotion days on KDP Select and try my hand at marketing on ebook blogs and sites, as well as testing different tactics to measure any effect on sales
* After the 90 days of KDP Select are up, decline to re-enroll, and publish with other distributors
* Continue being inspired by the members here who are action-takers in their respective fields
* Update my thread to share what I learn

Mistakes:
* Being disorganized with my drafts and files
* Spent too much time worrying about formatting in Word, when I should’ve stuck with Scrivener
* Spent too much time setting myself up on Nook, iBookstore and Kobo; I should’ve decided if I was going to stick with KDP Select beforehand
* I’m not yet sure if this is a true mistake or not, but I am wondering if I should’ve waited before all three books were done before publishing

Observations:
While getting to this starting point is just the beginning, the work going into it was a huge learning process. This was at times frustrating and discouraging, but having a finished product that I’m happy with was well worth it.

Although steamy, sweaty stories are not my cup of tea, the research I did told me that it was the preferred cup of a multitude of people. Thanks to MJ’s book, as well as a bunch of other resources, I know that it’s not about what I like. For now, it’s enough for me give readers the best story I can. The stuff I’m learning about presentation, marketing, copywriting, etc. will come in handy when I can afford to be more precious about my work.

Getting the “your book is available in the kindle store!†email was a much-needed gust of wind in my sails. I don’t know how this will turn out, but I’ve built a product, and now the market gets to tell me what to do. I might be a n00b at this, but I feel so much further along on my road than I did even three months ago. I am nervous, but excited and hopeful.
Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far!

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Congrats on your progress! It looks like you've taken a real, methodical approach to this, treating it like a business.

Reading you post, I wasn't 100% sure if I understand it correctly, but it sounds like you've got one book officially up for sale on Amazon, a second book written, and a third book outlined? If that's correct, how long has your first book been "live" on amazon? And how are sales going so far?

Great update, and please keep us posted!

 

[COSenior]

Look into buying a positive review from someplace like Fiverr. Initially I had a lot of issues with this, but thanks to the fastlane mentality, I feel like this is akin to a company investing in SEO for their new product; also, thanks to reading Influence, I know that “social proof” could go a long way in getting me readers. (Granted, I could ask a friend or a family member to leave a nice review, but long story short, I’m in the closet about writing an erotic romance)

Please don't buy a positive review. It's not only an iffy proposition, but you don't need to spend the money. You need more than one review, so go to Goodreads, join http://www.goodreads.com/group/show...e-erotica-new-and-upcoming-books-authors-care and ask for reviews. The #14 post on my progress thread gives extensive details on how to go about it.

Congratulations on taking action! Get that next story out as quickly as you can to build momentum, and you'll be golden.

 

[McNandez]

it sounds like you've got one book officially up for sale on Amazon, a second book written, and a third book outlined?

Thanks!

Before I started writing, I outlined all three books with broad strokes, but only one is totally completed and up on Amazon. It went live yesterday morning, and I haven't sold any yet.
The second book is outlined down to the chapters; I have about a third of the first draft written. The third book is only outlined as it relates to the arc of the story. When I get to subsequent drafts of the second book, I'll start outlining the third in more detail.

 

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[McNandez]

Please don't buy a positive review. It's not only an iffy proposition, but you don't need to spend the money. You need more than one review, so go to Goodreads, join http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...s-authors-care and ask for reviews. The #14 post on my progress thread gives extensive details on how to go about it.

Thanks for the idea, and the specific post to look for on your thread! I will look into that today.

 

[britnidanielle]

Hey there. Good luck on the progress! How are things coming along?

 

[McNandez]

Hey there. Good luck on the progress! How are things coming along?

lol, thanks! I am actually taking a break from the home stretch on the first draft of the second book at the moment. I'm aiming for 20k words, and have about 3k left to go. In my first post I said that "the week" of 10/07 was my goal, so it looks like I will just make it

When that's done, I'll print myself a copy and spend two days:
* finding/buying a cover
* trying not thinking about the story at all so I can approach it with semi-fresh eyes
* coming up with a second draft plan, i.e., listing problems from macro to micro
* roughly outlining ideas for forthcoming romance titles

Then I will dive right back into it. I haven't decided if I will try to get beta readers for the second book, but based on COSenior's great advice, I've made some friends on Goodreads. Right now I just want to get my story down.

 

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[Breaking Free]

* trying not thinking about the story at all so I can approach it with semi-fresh eyes
* coming up with a second draft plan, i.e., listing problems from macro to micro

Now I'm taking you literally, only because of the term "second draft." You may mean something different, and you may already know this, but I wanted to call it out because, well, anything beyond a "rough draft" hasn't helped me at all.

To confirm, I'll reference Dean Wesley Smith again.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=9879

For the TL;DR crowd, it's summed up by your rough draft is done by your creative brain, and subsequent drafts are done by your logical brain. Rewriting anything can kill it creatively. However, cleaning it up by using various tools, and a does-it-make-sense test by a beta reader are still great.

But we all have our own methods, and a second draft (followed by a third) may very well be yours. Just don't think you have to do it to write good fiction.

 

[joanna]

Just wanted to chime in on the DWS topic. There's a lot of truth to it, but also different people write in different ways. Unless you're really talented or have honed the craft side of writing for a while you're rough / first draft might not be of publishing quality. If I recall correctly DWS does leave a lot to the editor. So if you want to subscribe to this methodology a professional editor is a must.

Also if you stick to "write no matter the mood" methodology the words written when "you're just not feeling it" can sometimes be a bit of a Word Vomit (tm). Personally on a really bad day if I force myself to write it can look very basic - lacking setting, lots of telling, question marks instead of dialogue, or even text that resembles a scene outline than a scene itself. Not all the time but I do allow myself to write this way sometimes for the sake of progress and actually getting the creative side of my brain moving - nothing worse than being stuck in a scene because of a single line of dialogue, cause you can't find the right word or phrase.

Not to even touch on the planner vs pantser debate between writers

Good luck with the book McNandez, great progress so far!

 

[McNandez]

Good luck with the book McNandez, great progress so far!

Thank you!

There's a lot of truth to it, but also different people write in different ways.

I totally agree with this. I've worked with other writers on a variety of projects and one thing I've learned is that giving writing advice is a bit like giving parenting advice: it can be extremely useful, but will often sail right over a person's head when unsolicited.

Something I wanted to add to is that I also think that different kinds of writing call for different approaches. I'm a freelance contributor to a humor website and a TV show, and my job for those is to basically Word Vomit (joanna's TM) as many jokes about a topic as possible on a weekly basis. When I think too much about those, they definitely lose some of their luster. I know that when I have to do any sort of explaining, or if I have to use way too many words, the joke is a dud, even if the idea is there.

However, I've worked on projects where we outlined for days before writing a single word, then did a few drafts before handing the product over. I guess overall, my experience has taught me to trust my gut when it comes to approaching a project - to me, these ebooks call for a mix of word spurting, clean up, then a polish before I consider them ready.

Also, as joanna pointed out, DWS talks a lot about using an editor; aside from the helpful readers at GR, I'm my editor. Which is how I like it, probably because I'm a bit of a masochist and believe that it'll make me that much better overall as a writer.

 

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[McNandez]

Short Update
Actions taken since my last post:
* Finished second (and some) draft of the second book
* Bought a cover - more on that in a second
* Found a beta reader on GR; for some reason I am SUPER NERVOUS about this. I've had my writing torn apart by people I grew up reading and admiring, and for some reason that wasn't as bad as turning this project over to a beta reader. I'm treating this as market research in an effort to detach.

Units Sold of First Book: 7, with 0 returns. Not at all fantastic, but I've done no marketing yet thus far; most of what I've read about how to sell genre ebooks is that one book will sell another. As I've only one book so far, I am waiting until I have at least three up (or ready) before putting everything I've learned into action. These readers must have found me via searches, so I am paying careful attention to keywords.

Mistakes: I think I totally impulsed bought my cover for this one. I'm not unhappy with it, but looking at it next to others in my genre, it doesn't exactly fit. I am not yet sure if I'll use it when the time comes to publish. Does anyone have advice on how to choose a good cover? There's so much information online, and I'm not sure where to start.

Actions that have taken me:
* Broke a finger trying to catch a foul ball at a baseball game. This made it painful to write or even tap out notes on my phone for about two very long days. Also, I did not get the ball.

Actions Forthcoming:
* Will use my reader's notes in my final edit and do one last read
* Reload my first book with an excerpt from the second one and a link to its page
* Carefully (this time) compile my book in Scrivener with a cover, front matter, table of contents and author information
* Spend around a day building my book description and applying html to it
* Publish
* Get started on the third book in the series
* Continue my research and study of keywords and categories

Observations: Although I can't quite put a finger on why yet, working every day on a goal like this feels like it is going to change my life. When I got my first sale, my first thought was "I wonder what I was doing when they bought this". I've realized that writing the best story I can is only one part of the process, and I'm pretty excited to find that that doesn't scare me off in the least. This is the hardest fun I've ever had.

I'll update again when I have more to add, but I wanted to get this out there to hear other's thoughts on covers. Thanks for reading!

 

[Thriftypreneur]

Nice update, keep going.

I don't have much sage advice to give you about your cover question, being inexperienced myself. Maybe someone with more experience can chime in. I think if your cover is appropriately representing the genre/story you're selling, then it being unique from other covers in your genre would help it stand out among the lineup of other books on "also bought" lists. Good luck.

 

[COSenior]

Mistakes: I think I totally impulsed bought my cover for this one. I'm not unhappy with it, but looking at it next to others in my genre, it doesn't exactly fit. I am not yet sure if I'll use it when the time comes to publish. Does anyone have advice on how to choose a good cover? There's so much information online, and I'm not sure where to start.

I can't say whether it's the best advice, but what I did was take a look at the top 40 books in my genre and emulate what seems similar in the covers. Now, my genre's easy. Throw a half-naked man or woman on it, and someone's going to look. But get beyond that part. What are the expressions on the faces of the models? Poses? What's going on in the background. For series, is there a unifying theme? It isn't easy to describe a cover for a designer that both has the elements that sell your genre and doesn't look copycat. Then you also need one that reflects your particular story. I'm not sure my designer is achieving it yet. But I'm taking the same advice as for writing...just keep doing it and when you hit on the formula, go back and change the ones that haven't worked out.

 

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[McNandez]

Another quick update. Since my last post I have:

*Taken COSenior's advice and checked out the covers of the top performers in my genre and let it guide me. I ended up making a new one via Bigstock. That was a good lesson to learn.
* Published the second book in the series
* Contacted a handful of free kindle book promotion sites and will have 3 KDP promo days from 12/14-16 for book #1, which I reloaded with a excerpt to the second book. Getting pretty excited.
* I will be publishing a third book this weekend. It's not book #3 in my series, which may or may not be a mistake. I needed a little break from these characters but didn't want to stop what I'm calling my "Ebook Writing Schedule". I found a whole new story itching to get out and completed three drafts in a couple of weeks. It's a suitable length, fits in my genre, and will be another product on my bookshelf, so I'll see what happens with that.

A helpful reader of books 1 and 2 gave me suggesstions on what she'd like to see in the third book, so I'm going to re-do the outline for that one with her thoughts in mind next week.

I've learned a little more about keywords and categories, but I haven't been able to quantify it yet. When I get a handle on what I've learned, I'll share it here to get everyone's thoughts and to offer help where I can. I've also gotten a little better with using html in my book descriptions, as well my compiling and formatting skills, which I hope will come in handy when getting this book ready for publishing.

 

[Rainy_TX]

what I did was take a look at the top 40 books in my genre and emulate what seems similar in the covers. Now, my genre's easy.

Fantastic tip!

 

[McNandez]

A quick (although unsolicited) update:
* I published book#3 recently - although it is not the next installment of the series, I linked it to my author profile. So far so good.
* I made myself wait a solid day before purchasing a cover for this one - my last purchased cover was totally an impulse buy and did not work at all. Goodbye, $, hello lesson I won't soon forget.
* My KDP days were actually pretty fun - I got some nice emails from readers and a positive review. I am not sure how to use my numbers to improve performance for the remaining KDP days I have on my first book, however.
* I use (and love) Scrivener, but lamented the fact that I couldn't easily write in Word and simply open it in Scrivener without having wonky formatting. This might be a "well, duh" thing for others, but I learned that I could still use word to work on my stories during breaks at my day job by saving it as a .txt file. This has shot up my productivity.
* I read the following books: Write. Publish. Repeat. & Your First 1000 Copies. Still looking for more, but I would recommend both to any interested fastlane author.

Roadblocks/Speedbumps/Potholes/Spike Strips:
* Book #3 was tougher to write than I'd anticipated - I needed a story I could write quickly, but the story that started to come out was much longer and more complex than I could concievably write in a few weeks. I had to stop and figure out a similar story that I could distill down to 19k or so words. This slowed me down by a week. I still have all my notes from the long story, though, and will keep it handy.
What this taught me is that when aiming for speed, the more detailed map I have, the easier it will be. YMMV, of course, but with my day job and another, wholly unrelated writing project, I need to minimize the thinking I have to do when I sit down to write.
In the past, I would still be wrestling with this project right now, refusing to budge until it was done perfectly, even though there was no particular demand for that specific story. However, I know from my visits here that my priority should be giving my readers the best product I can, as quickly as I can. So, thank you, fastlaners.

The Plan for the Next Couple of Months
* Book #4 will be outlined by 01/17 - this one will be a continuation of the series I started earlier
* I plan to publish #4 by 02/23, ideally sooner
* I will learn more about using KDP days, marketing, writing great descriptions, etc

 

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[COSenior]

A quick (although unsolicited) update:

You don't need to wait for a solicitation to give an update...there are so many of us doing it now that your thread will get buried if you don't make a post in it now and then.

Sounds like you have been very productive and have a solid plan for the near future. Way to go!

 

[McNandez]

Hello everyone!
Another update: I just finished the 1st draft of #4 this week; by my plan up there, I'm a little behind schedule, but it's not due to total laziness. I'm dealing with what I'm sure a lot of other fastlaners encounter: a bevy of other opportunities have come up, and I'm trying not to spread myself too thin.

I've read a few books in the interim that have given me loads of ideas on how to market my books and stay motivated:
Die Empty by Todd Henry
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal - I'm only about twenty pages into this one and already I've been blown away.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries. The references are kind of outdated, but still lots of useful information

Book #3 has exceeded my expectations - so far over 250 paid downloads with no returns and no KDP Days used yet. I'm *still* trying to figure out how to use the data to increase sales and set the table for the next one. I'm hoping something I've read will click. I can't let that slow down my publication, though, so for now I'm still forging ahead with the next book.

The Plan:
*I'm going to wait until the end of the second draft (mid-March) to purchase a cover for this book. I have a feeling the story is going to change a bit, and want to pick a cover that best conveys what I'm going for
*Looks like there is little to no demand to continue the first series: I linked my last book to my first two books, and I got not one but TWO emails from readers saying they were "surprised" at how different the latest ones were in quality compared to the first two. So I will link #3 and #4 together, start a new contact email under this new pen name, and burn off my KDP days for the first two.
* A first draft of book #5 is already in progress, as referenced in my last post. I hope to get this one out much faster than the current one.

Lessons Learned:
*I've learned that my productivity depends 100% on how well I take care of myself. I thought I knew that before now, but several days in a row with less than five hours of sleep had long-lasting repercussions.
*I learned that customer feedback is like a signpost