Knight_Writer's Revamp Publishing Thread

[Knight_Writer]

Hey everyone,

I’m Knight_Writer and I’m in self-publishing (pretty obvious I guess).

Personal Side (or skip to Publishing Side):

A little about myself: this is my first post though I’m not totally new to the forum since I’ve been lurching for quite a while. I started self publishing a few months back. I mainly publish on Amazon. My original plan was to expand onto different platforms but have not done so yet. Back in the day, my original goals were to make $X,XXX-$XX,XXX amount of money per month (money goal constantly change). In short, I was too hung up on the event and essentially had no concrete goal at all. In the beginning, I didn’t make much but once I started making what I considered decent sales, it just got to my head, and I keep thinking about the Non-Existent X money at the end of the month.

This is the shameful part for me. I don’t have respect here since I’m consider new and what you might hear is pretty bad which will only make me look worse so here goes. Many great people on this forum progress and moved forward not each month but each day. Always improving, Always trying to be better than yesterday. Looking back on myself, I moved backwards. I wanted to say I did my best but I’m only fooling myself, being delusional. It’s part of why I made this progress thread. I need to get pass this so that I can move forward and make better strides in both myself as a person & make my half-a$$ ‘business’ into an actual one.

I have not given my all from the start. I can’t say I wake up every painstaking morning to get started, but I did put in effort (just not at the same level as others nor where I picture/want myself to be at). A few months into it, I began to write less instead of more. This started when I made a couple grand per month. I was waking up not in the morning but way past the afternoon (usually 12-2pm). Wow, I knew I was terrible, but I didn’t do anything to change. Shame on me. I was super lazy plus I probably thought I was hotstuff. Boy was I way over my head. Who was I kidding?

Today I made sure to wake up at 8:30am, sleeping about 4.5 hours. Totally irrelevant but I ate a bagel this morning. While sipping a latte, I realized how much daylight I had left from this small act. I wanted to turn a new leaf. Felt the best I ever had in a long time even though I didn’t sleep much. Surprised. I think it’s because I took the first step in changing myself, my lifestyle, and ultimately my future. With that said, I don’t want the ‘change’ (used loosely since it’s only the first day) to stop just there nor did I want it to be just a whimsical one day. I want to look back at this in the future and hopefully see the positive changes I made.




Publishing Side:

Okay enough about boring faults that everyone have but don’t need to hear more of. Onto the publishing side:

I start off by recounting & comparing last month to this current month which I don’t know if it’s appropriate or not. Basically a huge slump like a wake-up call.

Jan 2015 Stats:
Sales: 1143 (Average 36 Daily)
Borrows: 4373 (Average 141 Daily)
Expense: ~$900


Current (Feb 20) 2015 Month Stats:
Sales: 520 (Average 26 Daily)
Borrows: 2088 (Average 104 Daily)
Current Month Expenses: $236.64


Here’s My General Starting Plan (Basically some changes to myself):

-Try not to obsess over my numbers too much

I kept record of my sales/borrows per month on a daily basis not to gauge my progress, but I was bordered on obsession as to how many sales and how much I earn that day. Idea started out good, then I did it for the wrong reason. Used to be like checking every other hour or so. This has to stop. I want to limit myself to progress myself to possibly two checks a day. With the constant checking, I know when the bulk purchases occur and when the numbers usually don’t change. Pace myself and maybe move onto weekly checks. Then go from there.

-Becoming more active in writing books & my business

I began by writing my own books & outsourcing them. I have stop writing my own for a while and that’s where I see one of my problems at. I know for a fact that my work enthusiasm slacked both from doing less work contributed with making sales. I experienced big dips which I’m not proud of. It’s my own fault but that means I can change it. I plan to get back into writing to re-ignite the passion I use to have while maintaining my outsource writers.

-Create & stick with a routine workday

I’m not entirely sure if this is considered a plan or even the right approach. Basically I’m telling myself to get busy. My original goal was to get 5,080 downloads (sale & borrow) by the end of the month (Feb). This won’t happen with the way I had been doing things anyways. My new goal is to maintain an acceptable workday routine for a week (at the very least 8 hours/day investment). I think I need to start here before making any $/# target goals. I think about 'work work work' But I think I should pace myself so that I don't run out of steam on a 'marathon run'. My thinking is that I should see how long I can stay focus for in a sitting. This way I can incorporate breaks and hopefully increase my productivity/attention instead of trying to push myself over the edge. The longest I recall writing for is 4 hours straight. Well that's about it for now.

Feel free to voice your criticism/thoughts/suggestions if any.

 

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[monerap]

Thanks for sharing information. What is the main reason of decrease in sales? Is it only laziness?

 

[axiom]

Dude, you're already ahead of the vast majority of people when they start here. Doubt and demoralization is a part of climbing out of the slow lane.

I'd recommend The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It will help you develop an awesome morning routine. Since I read it a few months back, I've been getting up at 5 and its been incredible.

Getting up just 1 hour earlier each day = more than 2 weeks more time each year. That is a huge advantage.

 

[Digamma]

Sleep is overrated. You have all eternity to be dead.

Those, however, are pretty awesome numbers. Let's talk some business facts. What do you publish? How do you manage the writers?

 

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[Knight_Writer]

What is the main reason of decrease in sales? Is it only laziness?

There could be other reasons like shelf life, popularity, shifts in market, number of readers, and such.

Of course when I started out, I didn't really worry about this. As far as I was concern, I picked a market and went with it. As of right now, I was on the mindset of scaling. People talk about publishing more books. So it's like if the rate of publishing is greater than the dwindling rate = scaling profit. Probably not exactly right but close to what I thought made sense.

For supported details & information: my total downloads month over month has always increased except for Feb which will be less than Jan and most likely to be less than Dec (2014). Since mid Jan and Feb been my laziest times, yeah I would say that.

Doubt and demoralization is a part of climbing out of the slow lane.

I don't know if I would say I doubt myself but rather want to get back on track again. You do make a valid point though.

I have heard about the book before. I'm sure there are some great concept ideas there. I don't know if I'll get to it, but I will keep it in my mind. Thanks for the suggestion.

What do you publish?

In general terms, I dealt with romance and in erotica. I don't go more in detail than that of what I write about. I know there are competition in both. Then again, I'm sure people can say that for all broad markets. While nothing is guarantee, there's so much that's still untapped. Not much else I can offer you expect to go ahead and take a stab at it if you want. Part of Success is finding what works best and what doesn't.

One key note though: it's not so much as the market but the focus niche. But the catch is a trade-off. With a broad market, you might get huge numbers of potential readers but they may never be interested in your book. With focus niche, the general idea is that there's more targeted audience that are more willing to buy your particular book since it's what they are looking for. Whichever works for you. Just a generalized concept idea. I think a lot of people already know this or considered it before so I'm just reiterating what someone should have already said.

How do you manage the writers?

I'm guessing you're talking about how I find them? Writers are tricky. I'm not sure exactly how to land a good writer. I just try (hire) them for a project and see how it turns out. Whether I want to continue our relationship or not. I don't know about good or bad but it's mainly does the writer work or not for what you are doing. You should know after getting the story. I guess it's just a sense. My simple (though not sure about efficiency) way is to test them. Normally time & money will tell.

If you're talking about 'manage' as in what to assign, I can only guess that this is going to be different for everyone. I written a book before outsourcing so I knew at least vaguely what some people wanted to read. Therefore I make up some of my own ideas (sorta like mini plotlines) of what I personally would write and then allow them to work with it. Sometimes I give them more detail if I feel like it. Although it can be time consuming if the story turns out wrong, I can edit/add/change the story however I see fit. It's kind of expected.

Though I do have a folder containing work that are plain horrific just not really worth the time to edit or change. I just don't rehire those same writers. Someone did gave me the idea to hire a writer to sort of fix them up.

 

[Knight_Writer]

Here's a brief update on what's been happening.

Short thoughts on some things I do:

Creating story plots/ideas.

Generally at least 2 new ones each day.

The ideas outline a brief idea and can be expanded if I choose to. Mine range from short thoughts just jotted down to like a script including possible dialogues, actions, events, characters and such.

It’s great for constantly thinking up of fresh ideas.

It serves a lot of purposes. When writing a new story, I would pick ideas that interest me the most. I expand on my original ideas into a story outline. The rest are altered to be given to outsourcers. I open the original idea file when doing story edits as well to refresh how I first wanted the story to turn out.

I also open up old ideas to expand but this usually doesn’t happen. One thing that does is I take an old idea and twist it into something different – new story with some different elements.


Respond to any freelancers where outsource work is being done.

Priority varies with this. It can be quite time consuming depending on what I have to respond to. Highest priority goes to moving the work flow along. Example of this, writer submits a written story. I would want to get it to my editors as soon as possible if using. If not, I would do a scan through it. I would either assign a new task or ask for some corrections if needed. In taking it, I would drop it into a folder marked for self editing into a finish product.



Writing – the main job

Rate of writing depends on my interest, my desire quality, and the ideas that come up. Sometimes I get bored so I hop from one story to another. The more different they are, the more fresh ideas I usually come up with. Luck breaks are when ideas keep pouring in. There are times when I work on two or three stories at once along with the story broken into multiple sections since I utilize a story outline so there’s at least some general idea for event flow. If you’re a person who likes to get something completely done in one go, might not be a writing method for you. As for me, as long as I can finish to the end product whether it’s an hour or a month, I’m okay with that. On the other hand, if you are just starting out, you most certainly would like to get that first book done. I wouldn't worry too much on things like word count/writing rate/number of hours spent but rather focus on the end results.



Some notable things:
-Published 3 new works. 4th is nearly complete.
-More of an afternoon/evening writer than morning. Daily tasks done in morning: messages, ideas, outlines, cover ideas - helps facilitate mind to think so writing is easier later on.
-Reviewed daily excel sheet and graph indicates stabilizing instead of spikes. May be a good thing. Tells me where I'm at.

What's coming:
-Developing 9 ideas to stories broken down into 3 new series.
-Possibility of expanding the series into 5/7 books depending on reader response.
-Revisit a select few published books & decide to change either the book description or cover. Purpose is to see an increase in those individual sales. Limiting only to one attempt for each & no change to actual inside content.
-Review my list of top sellers of standalone books and develop possible series idea for future
-Planning for story bundles, might get one release for March.
-Enter an interesting new market and write a book, primarily for fun with low priority no set launch date

Goal:
Surpass the month of February by 12%-15% at the end of March

 

[Knight_Writer]

Dropping in for an update.


A To-Do’s List

I been utilizing a list of things to do since it seems like something to maintain & promote activity and efficiency. A little different yet similar to what others may have done.

Break down and sort into priority levels of importance: top, mid-high, low-mid.

I find that I prefer making a list for an entire week instead of planning out day by day. This way, on a given new day, I can choose a few from the ‘master’ list. Of course sometimes I’ll need to improvise in case things pop out that require attention.

While one might not follow a list of to-do’s, I would suggest taking a few minutes to make one. Doesn’t have to be elaborate. It helps and the least it does is give you an overview of what you want to get accomplish.



Conclusion on Doing Changes (book description/book cover Only)

My conclusion is really unanswered. Perhaps it is too soon to tell, but this is what I came up with. The few data that I got can’t really help make an accurate judgment. Sales can change based upon day of the week. Overall, numbers didn’t change much. With that, I would have to say it’s not really worth it except for some circumstances. If there are no sales for quite a while (especially on a newly publish book), then it might be worth taking a look at. While I can’t say for sure, in my opinion, I feel like it would do some good to add upon the description if it seems too short or lack in some way. Needs some ‘flare’ to give an extra push for a person to either push the buy button or at least sample the content if you have any. Did not worry too much on covers. My stances is as long as it is visually appealing based upon targeted audience & compared to what others within the targeted niche are doing, you generally do not need to alter much. Some testing for books that fall off from the ‘shelve’ is probably the way to go for me. Other than that, no need.


Most likely my Bundle Plan

I’ve seen different approaches that authors used for bundles. A collection of standalones, collection of related short stories, a series bundle, a bundle of book 1’s of different series, a mix, and probably others. I have not got around much to the bundle plan but my best bet (the easiest to do) is bundle a collection of Book 1’s of different but related series. Easily done. Half the work is pretty much completed since some stories are created, though may need depending on what I want to do. I can simply discount the bundle. I can use it sort of as a funnel to promote readers to continue the series if they like the first book. If I had 3 books, that’s 3 chances of a reader moving to a second book. X books mean x chances and so forth. Odds look good while playing a numbers game. There are different pricing strategies to use/experiment. There seems to be a lot of pros in doing this and some cons.



The other one I did want to try is make a collection of related standalones as a way to promote myself within a certain niche. There’s no better way than for the reader to go to you directly to search for their need/book cravings if you can set yourself as the go-to author. Just some thoughts.


Work Accomplished

In terms of work, I have published the starting books of 3 new series. Most of the second books within the series are completed and looking forward to get them out. I was able to publish a few standalone works. Other than the 3 series (targets 2 new niches which I know can sell), I have not went into anything new. When approaching series, I generally do some standalone works kind of like to gain a foothold in a new market before creating one. I’m sure the other way around, series to standalones definitely work.

I noticed that I might have set the goal duration a little too short considering not much might change in sales within a month's time with publication dates in-between unless one really takes off. With that said, I don't think there's any benefit to changing a goal so I'll see what happens.

My simple graphs from my excel sheets show a potential positive trend for march compared to feb which gives the impression of current success yet my estimated projection numbers shows I'm a single day short of hitting the low end mark. This is good news since it pretty much means I'm on track. At the same time, things might fall off and drop so I'll have to be on my toes

The day to day changes of high and low pertains to weekday factor but the Less exaggerated spikes and dips seems like a good thing for evening out although I wouldn't mind consecutive spikes .

Note: Graphs are pretty much only good as visual indications. I would not advise to make predictions solely on them.


What's Coming Next:
-Maintain rate
-Marketing in the form of releasing some standalones (related prefered) with end page backlinks to new series
-Decide when to create bundle: come to a decision on either now or hold off until next month to possibly involve addition series
-Will not be writing for new niche but instead making a list of 3-5 of ones I may want to get into for upcoming month
-Utilize list to do brief research and plan for some standalone ideas worth pursuing
-Get 4 great ideas into standalone work / potential to expand into its own series
-Gauge the outcome of the new series, choose to settle on three stories for the series | continue with new ideas and expand to 5/7 | or introduce a new series in same niche to cater a broader audience/fresh ideas if worth it

That's about it for now.

 

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[Funke]

Hello Knight Writer,

How many books do you have right now?

I'm in non-fiction with 21 books and I also suffer from checking my daily sales every day. Days when sales are over 15 I feel confident, and when they drop my motivation drops!

Also, I feel like I'm not doing something or doing something wrong all the time. I am looking for 20/80 solutions all the time, going mad


I will be doing progress thread and I think I will also start a blog for that.