Getting From Newbie Author To Freedom

[jimr]

Anyhow, back to the topic. Finished my book a day late due to job troubles i.e. I don't have one anymore. No worries, my employer gave me a nice redundancy cheque which means I don't really have to work for some time. I think this might be my MJ moment .

So, 14,000 words done. Ready to publish and my cover creator bails on me - ARGHHHH! I have a new guy doing the work but my publication date as slipped by four days. Bit of a bummer but, hey, such is life - just have to plough on.

I'll be planning my next short tonight.

I have some more to thoughts on slf-publishing (which will be food for thought for seamles and, maybe, some others who are still dangling their toes a couple of inches above the self-pub pod) and I'll post them later this week.

Right, time for research on some of the less subtle forms of BDSM... later all.

 

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[jimr]

Oh, I nearly forgot (actually, I did forget then it came back to me at the last moment): if you're a bloke and you're writing erotica then you need to listen to this:

(talk about a gold mine of information). Actually, there's useful information in there for the ladies amongst us.

 

[Lauryn]

Way to go with the updates.

You know what it is over here when we get fired or made redundant. We collect what we can and just keep grinding harder.
Sucks to hear about the cover creator. Sometimes a quick cover from a site like www.goonwrite.com (I think @britnidanielle told us about this) can get you set up. Glad you have a new one on deck already.

Thanks for the videos. We'll be watching!

 

[jimr]

Ok, back again. I've made a conscious effort not to browse the web or log in to forums over the past five and half weeks as I wanted to make some serious headway with my next book. So, time for an update.

Sales
They ebb and flow. Some days I'll do ten, maybe fifteen sales on the eight books I have published; other days, one two, but it averages out out a constant figure of about five a day. Good but not great, yet. My short erotica is doing relatively well (have only had a couple of reviews but sales are what count). My longer horror/thrillers seem to be doing quite well and I'm pleased as this is a niche I feel fits my writing style.

Writing
Ok - and this is reason why I've absent - I have two new books. One is 60,000 words and is ready to go. To be honest, I'm not entirely happy with the flow of the story but I'm going to press the big, red 'Publish' button and see how it does (sales and feedback should help me test and adjust for future books). The second book is a sci-fi thriller with lots of zombie action and will be finished next week. This one is a bit of monster (should top 100k words when complete). Loved writing this second book and I hardly noticed the hours that went into writing it (which is a good sign, I think). My editor is eager to get a copy of the second for review as she thinks the storyline is very original.

Marketing
2 x MailCheat(Chimp) accounts set and all books will have a link for subscribing to my mailing list and my website (I've owned this for quite some time and it gets a moderate amount of traffic from the SEs so I decided it was time to utilise it as my author site). This evening I will be building a tumblr blog and start to showcase my book covers with some snippets of the stories included.

That's all. I'll check in again in a week or so. Keep working hard.

 

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[jimr]

Quick update today: 97,000 words and done. Five weeks effort and I'm pretty pleased. Time to start editing (whilst working on 4 shorts).

 

[jimr]

Wow! I need to invent a way to slow down time to fit in my commitments. Hmm, book idea forming...

Here's what I've been up since I last updated:

1. Publish Three Books
Ok, I didn't get the four that I'd aimed, but one of them is itr 60,000 words (horror/thriller). Went live yesterday and picked up a few sales almost immediately. I'll leave it for a week and then drop the price from $2.99 to 99c to give it a little boost in the rankings.

Also published two more erotic shorts - sales went a bit crazy with these and I'm still working out the figures (got a few returns). There were a number of borrows as well. Quite pleased, but could be better.

2. Mailing List
I haven't promoted my mailing list in my books yet, but, using other means, I have added about twenty subscribers in the last week (for my erotic literature - other genres to follow soon). I like this as it's a way of making sales without relying on Amazon, Apple, Google, etc (they could EASILY change the game with a few tweaks and I don't like being beholden to them).

3. Proof Reading
My sci-fi/horror (the book totaling 97k words) has been sent to three proof readers. One is a sci-fi fan, one hates the genre and the third is open to any kind of reading. This should give me a good spread of opinions as the sci-fi hater will look at the writing/language and NOT the story. The sci-fi fan should be able to give me his opinion on the plot with no so much focus on spelling, sentence structure, etc. The third proof reader is there simply because she asked if she could read it.

4. Storylines
Two new books planned: both sci-fi/horror. Story worked out and currently collecting all the visuals/snippets for my cork board (best invention EVA!). Planning on both books being 80,000+ words. I'll update you all next week.

Keep going, we're nearly at the top of the hill .

 

[Lauryn]

You've been doing awesome! Get it! <3

 

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[COSenior]

You must be doing something right, and my guess is that it has something to do with awesome production. 'Grats!

 

[jimr]

You must be doing something right, and my guess is that it has something to do with awesome production. 'Grats!

To be honest, it doesn't always feel like the 'right thing'. There are days when I look at my sales and think, hmm, what happened there? Then I go back and try analyse what went wrong. There are other days when things simply go well - today I settled down for a fifty minute train journey and by the time I arrived in London I'd 'accidentally' written just under 1.700 words (I did a quick review of the intended shape of the chapter before I jumped on the train and this really did help with the flow and tempo of my writing). Anyhow, I have some more chapters to invent for my new book. Catch you later, CO.

 

[jimr]

Ok, been pretty busy recently (including fitting in a holiday). The two books I had been planning on writing fell by the wayside due to an unforeseen turn of events. Normally I'd be stamping my feet and seething at the lack of activity, but I'm not because during the slow hours I discovered David Baldacci. Wow! Now he, and James Patterson are what it's all about about - simple grammar, tension and fast moving stories. I read a 583 page book by Baldacci in just over nine hours. I read a second in 10 hours. Lightbulb moment for there. Now I just have to find an erotic author who can emulate the style.

Just to clarify, I don't intend to steal or plagiarise Baldacci or Patterson, merely learn from them and how they work.

Back to the nuts and bolts: sic-fi horror has just come out of the proof reading phase and it needs a fair amount of work. I'm guessing up to two weeks of tweaking, but it's all good stuff. In fact, it was leaked to a few more people and they seem to love it.

Of the two books I have planned one is a little too close to a film in terms of the story so it's back to the board for that one.

The second book is finished. Another 60,000 words. Personally, I like it - now let's see what the public think.

I've talked about marketing methods in the past, but so far I've only dabbled. In the next month or so I'm going to be kicking off a marketing thread where I'll dump all my experiences for you to dissect and use as you will.

Laters.

 

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[Lauryn]

I like that you've found authors whose style interests and inspires you in one genre and are looking for cues to pick up in writing for yourself. I don't know if I've consciously tried to emulate anyone, though I know whose styles I love.

 

[Jakeeck]

Just curious, when you save you've written x amount of words, are you actually writing or typing? I assumed most people typed.

 

[jimr]

I like that you've found authors whose style interests and inspires you in one genre and are looking for cues to pick up in writing for yourself. I don't know if I've consciously tried to emulate anyone, though I know whose styles I love.

Hi Lauryn, what I meant was to find an erotic author who emulates the style of Baldacci so that I can better understand the effects of writing in a specific way, as opposed to me emulating them .

 

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[jimr]

Just curious, when you save you've written x amount of words, are you actually writing or typing? I assumed most people typed.

Hi Jakeeck, typing.

 

[jimr]

Wow! Four months of not posting on my own thread - bad. I didn't even get the marketing thread off the ground (but will rectify that this weekend - I'll post the link here).

Update:

Slowed the process down a little as I found far too many continuity errors, typos, etc in some of my books. With this in mind I read some of my older stories and was horrified at how bad they sound when read aloud - cue some serious editing sessions to tidy them up. This one task alone has consumed about 1 1/2 months of effort, but I'm happy with the new 'look and feel'.

My latest book was published in November. Out of the gate, it didn't sell huge numbers on day one. That said, it's on a slow burn right now - between 3 and 5 sales per day - and I'm actually pretty happy with the purchase stable purchase rate.

Since then I've written two more stories (one 57,000 words and on totalling about 80,000). Not really happy with either of those books and will be tidying them up over the coming weeks.

I've now decided to throttle back on the larger stories until I've honed my skills.

Marketing - links added to back of each of my books. Trying out a few ideas; more on this later today when I start the marketing thread.

Two more books planned; both short stories.

That's all for now.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

 

[Jam Wheel]

Great to see an update jimr! I am in the same city and can't imagine what your train journey is like to lay down 1.7K of words, but kudos for doing that!

 

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[jimr]

I'm up in Bucks so the journey takes about an hour. 1700 words is by no means tidy - I 'fix' the grammar and typos during the editing process.