Great post by HMWARD. "I turned down over a million bucks in trad deals, plus other tips for Indies"

[Rawr]

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,178537.0.html


QUOTED FROM KBOARDS ABOVE:


Over the past year I've been offered over 1.5 million bucks in advances offered by huge publishing houses. I told them to show me a marketing plan that knocks my socks off and I'd consider their offer. I had this notion that they knew what they were doing and could do it better than I could. They said they had all these ideas and they're gonna blow my mind, which was a requirement for the deal, b/c the pay was too low.

About the money - if you have a book that hits #1-10 on the Kindle store, tons of people have the mistaken notion that it's gonna blip and fall and you're fun in the sun will end...unless a trad pub picks you up.

It's math time! A book in the top ten sells around 5-10K copies per day. Let's take the average and give the book some wiggle room and say it's selling 7K copies a day @ $2.99. In 7 days you'll have made (net, not gross) over $100,000. So BIG TRAD HOUSE offers you $200,000 for a three part series.

'Sign here,' they say. 'Sign fast! You want to strike while the irons hot.' 'A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush.' 'It's a sure thing and if you don't sign, then you could loose everything.' <--They actually said all the crap to me, and its crap. If the book nets $100K in a week, what will it do next week? What about next month? What about next year? Never mind those other 2 books. Bad deal.

The most recent offer was for a high six figure deal on my next novel, on spec, sight unseen from one of the big 5. I gave the same terms - show me a kick *ss marketing plan and I'll consider it. They were excited and on it! They were going to wow me. Like I was gonna be so wowed that I'd die of the wowness. True story.

Dude, the marketing plan I got back was the equivalent of, 'we're gonna do stuff.' Their email list - yeah, they don't personally have one, but this archaic place does - had 2K people on it. That was the bulk of their plan.

My email list has over 30K ppl on it and I do a ton more stuff than they presented. There's a post in here about my release day marketing plan, most of which is free and time consuming. I still do that. It's listed in here with details.

THEY DON'T DO THAT MUCH.

I said no. And laughed. A lot. It was so weak.

My point - do NOT think that they have any clue what they are doing, because they do not. There is a marketing method that is called 'see what sticks' where you take a plate of spaghetti and toss it at the wall. There's no planning, no nothing. Just take it and throw. That is what the big houses are doing. Every marketing plan had that element of 'fate' and hoped that I would be the lucky piece of pasta that stuck.

Screw that. I want someone who knows what they're doing. Apparently, that's me. I'm good at selling intangible goods. I know that, but I assumed there would be better things that I hadn't thought of. I still consider myself 'green.' Yeah, it turns out that I'm not.

Everything you do should have a purpose. All ads should be directly targeting your demographic for your book. 'Toss it at the wall' is very costly and honestly, it gets you a very poor ROI (return on investment).

Here are some of the highlights of my Indie career since I started. March marks my 3 year Indie anniversary. I was not previously published. I started at zero. I was a photographer, with a theology degree that cost a frickin fortune.

•I sold 4 MILLION+ books since 2011.

•DAMAGED: THE FERRO FAMILY was the #1 bestselling Indie Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace title of 2013.

•DAMAGED: THE FERRO FAMILY was the #14 bestselling Kindle title on Amazon of 2013.

•In 2013 alone I had 11 different titles on the NEW YORK TIMES bestsellers list.

•I'm a NYT, WSJ, USAT bestselling author.

•THE ARRANGEMENT series sold over 1 million copies in 2013. Dude, they're serials. People hate short books. Riiiight.

•I've been a top 100 Amazon author every month of 2013, often in the top 10.

•In 2013 I released a new title about every 2.5 weeks.

•My formal education is in theology.

•My titles tend to focus on elements of the human condition such as poverty, hope, grief, and loss.

•I had multiple titles hit #1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites.

•DAMAGED: THE FERRO FAMILY was in the Amazon top 100 kindle titles for over 100 days in 2013.

•H.M. Ward owns H.M. Ward Press (formerly Laree Bailey Press). Other indies thought that I was trad b/c of my press. I'm not.

•Prior to this I was a nationally acclaimed professional photographer. I shot the covers for Demon Kissed 1-5 and Catalyst before I retired from photography in Fall 2012. Until then, I was a FT photog and a PT writer.

I started by using facebook and only facebook to connect to readers outside of my social circles. There are other ways to do that, but I'm a big believer in don't wait for them to come to you.

My first book cost me $125 to produce. I was butt poor from a theology degree that cost well over six figures. I didn't have extra money to mess around with.

I had a big NY agent for my 1st book and was looking at the traditional route. I told her to pull it--I wanted to publish it myself. (Many thanks to Joe Konrath and his awesome blog).

I work about 80 hours a week. I have two assistants that help me manage paperwork. I just hired them b/c I had been going nuts trying to do everything myself. Hubby helps me with all the numbers stuff and when I get sick (I've been fighting an illness for the past 3 years) that knocks me on my *ss periodically.

If you forget everything else in this post, remember this:

If you don’t have the gall to believe in yourself and your work, no one else will.

Bring it.

Own it.

And don't worry about mistakes, because they're the stepping stones to success. I notice I never say 'I failed' - I say 'well, I jacket that up,' and try to figure out where it went wrong so I can fix it. Failure is an excellent teacher. Learn from it and try again.

I feel like crap today, so forgive my typos and such. I wanted to take the time to share this b/c stuff like this helped me. I'd see ppl's posts about how they were getting ahead, buying a laptop with their earnings, or read Joe's blog and seeing his income, and it made me keep going. I'm glad I did.

Being an Indie completely and totally rocks.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Wow, that's a GREAT post!

(Edit: I've just got to add that it's telling that she works 80 hours a week, even while dealing with health issues. That's an awful lot of hard work and dedication to churn out book after book and keep her readers so highly engaged. Ahem, all this to say she obviously got "lucky.")

 

[Gale4rc]

Rock on, you are awesome!

 

[Rainy_TX]

Great post and read! Thanks!

 

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[limitup]

I always applaud any type of (legal) business success, but exactly who's definition of success involves working 80 hours a week? Doesn't sound very fastlane to me.

 

[ChickenHawk]

I always applaud any type of (legal) business success, but exactly who's definition of success involves working 80 hours a week? Doesn't sound very fastlane to me.

Probably, she could work zero hours for the rest of her life and still be very, very rich. I'm guessing she continues to work so hard because the iron is flaming hot, and it's in her best interest to keep striking.

 

[limitup]

What I mean is, if she's making good money why doesn't she outsource more of whatever she does, so she doesn't have to work 80 hours a week. Maybe she enjoys working 80 hours a week, but other than that I don't see the point. She should read eMyth lol

 

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[ChickenHawk]

why doesn't she outsource more of whatever she does

It sounds like she's outsourced a ton of it, but she can't outsource her writing voice. For someone as successful as H.M. Ward, she obviously has a unique voice, a certain way of crafting her stories and putting them into words. And even if there were another writer with the skill and style to copy it, they'd probably have enough talent and ambition that they'd want to write under their own pen name, and build their own income stream.

If I were even to have a smidgen of her amazing success, I'd never outsource my stuff for fear of disappointing my audience. Probably, I'd write like crazy for a few years and quit when it was no longer fun or satisfying.

That's just my theory though. I'd be interested to hear what others think.

 

[Chris R]

What is it exactly that takes writers so long to start earning a real living? I've seen the recent report by Hugh Howey which outlines the growth of the self-publish industry as a whole vs the traditional way, but at the individual level, what is the vision that is seen even while knowing that most only sell a few books? What keeps them going?

 

[limitup]

Yeah you're probably right. I hadn't read the whole story and assumed she was cranking out more generic content that could be written by lots of people. My bad...

 

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[Held for Ransom]

Great post @Rawr.

What is it exactly that takes writers so long to start earning a real living?

Hmm, it's really hard? Kind of kidding but not really.

The hard part is the grind. Showing up every day and typing when sometimes it's the last thing in the world you want to do. But if it's your job to do it, you show up, no matter what. You know?

At the end of the day, an author no matter who they are (Top 100 or newb) earns a per word wage. With any luck, that wage rises over time and separates their butt from the chair. This parting of the behind from the chair is also referred to as the "Fastlane". In the meantime, becoming a successful author for most folks is an accumulation of consistent, applied effort over a long period of time, usually many years.

It's not really different from any other business here on MFL. It only *seems* easy. It only *seems* like it shouldn't take 80 hours per week. But, what business in its early stages doesn't require this level of effort?

Very few is the answer.

What keeps them going?

Stubbornness?

I remember reading somewhere once where most folks feel as if they "have a novel in them."

Lots of people want to run their own businesses as well yet as MJ points out over and over, most fail.

How many people actually, really write a book? Not many. How many write more than one? How about 30+ like H.M. Ward or spend half their life devoted to the craft like @ChickenHawk before they hit it big?

Even fewer still.

The real truth is that this is a business like any other. The explosion of self publishing changed it in many ways but in the end, it's still the same old keyboard and leatherbutt game it's always been. In all likelihood, you will write millions of words on your path to getting there, so if you go for it so get a comfy chair.

Leatherbutt signing off.