This Strategy Builds Your Writing & Publishing Success
Your writing income comes from publishing - but not as "authorities" have been telling you. Follow this strategy - test it for yourself - and build a livable income.
This Strategy Builds Your Writing & Publishing Success
One size doesn't ever fit all. Because we are individuals. And also why no advice is useful until you test it. I like the phrase,
"Opinion is like a belly button, everybody has one."
And like some parts of the anatomy, they are better kept out of sight and not discussed in public.
What is discussed here I’ve tested - and am encouraging you test it for yourself. When it’s factually proved, it’s no longer opinion.
That said, I'm violating what Dorothea Brande talks about in the third chapter of her "Becoming a Writer." Well, mostly. (She says there, basically, keep your dreams to yourself until you have a decent first draft to hand around.) And my advice here is free, with the idea is that you test everything I say here. (Though some of us expose more than we should, perhaps.) What you read here will either work for you or it won't. Or parts of it might work. In looking over what I've produced in this career as a writer, and where success hasn't followed, some things stand clear:
You have to keep metrics.
You have to keep some sort of schedule.
Finish what you start, but come back to things you had to put off.
Audience building is key.
What you Measure, You Can Improve
Your top metric is subscriptions. Because being able to send information about new releases (and samples) to your audience keeps them in the loop. Next below that is paid subscriptions. This allows you to keep your lights on. Bills paid, etc. Before you can track book income, you have to have published words. That's the word count of books you've published that week. Also, to succeed as a writer, you have to read and you have to write. Daily.
The Writer's Schedule
The trick with all these lists of things is to get a schedule you can keep.
Stephen King, in his "On Writing" said his schedule was basically
Writing in the am.
Answering emails and doing business in the afternoon.
Reading at night.
His quota for daily words was 2000.
Rachel Aaron in her "2K to 10K" says to basically keep notes on what you are writing, where, and how much. Once you have several weeks of these notes, then you can see where your best production occurs and when. She found going to a local coffee shop was best, out of the house completely. And writing what she was most interested out of the story.
How you write, when, and where is completely up to you. What metrics you keep are just those that make sense to you. If you keep words written daily, then you'll be able to improve your word count daily. I prefer words published, as I usually work on completed works, and then need to get these out so they don't sit around and ask for endless revisions. (Muses can be nags.)
Also, if you publish two stories a week, like the prolific Corin Tellado did. She wrote mostly short stories and novellas. An average of one and two-thirds (1.67) titles published every week for 60 years. That's prolific.
All the pulp fiction authors you really remember stayed at it for decades.
Corporate vs. Indie - How Printers Became Publishers
"Traditional" publishing has long been mis-named. It's all corporate, including the in-house imprints Amazon has started. Traditions change. Printers used to produce magazines and books. Then some figured out how to make more income by adding marketing to the mix. Then editors had to be hired as well as proofreaders. Corporate book publishers also did magazine print runs. There have always been independent authors and entrepreneurs willing to pay printing, marketing, and distribution costs for their own books and magazines. The corporations eventually either grew and merged or went out of business.
When Smashwords helped ebooks became a "thing" then these print-based corporations made the ponderous shift clumsily. Print on Demand’s arrival helped Indie authors to keep their printed books available indefinitely - a tactic the corporate publishers have also adopted. There have always been corporate and independent. Self-publishing has now become the mainstream of indie publishing.
This isn’t unknown through history:
Charles Dickens ran his own magazine and produced most of the content for it as serials. As printing technology evolved and made printing more profitable, authors like
O. Henry could submit short stories to magazines and make a living from his longhand writing.
Jack London came a little later and was able to make the transition to printed collections of his short stories, for the audience he'd built from magazine readers.
Pulp fiction started as magazines and after World War II went to inexpensive paperbacks (mass market.) These would republish the novels they'd been publishing in installments monthly as regular books.
Many science fiction, fantasy, romance, and detective authors were able to make this transition:
Isaac Asimov is probably the most well known of these. And he is credited with over 500 books of his own, plus another 200 that he co-authored or edited.
Frederick Schiller Faust (Known for his 15 pen names such Max Brand, as well as creating Dr. Kildare) started in the pulps and moved to Hollywood script-factory at the studios there. He published over 500 novels for magazines and nearly that many shorter works as well. His books are reprinted today. Faust and William Wallace Cook (of "Plotto") were known for hammering out a million words a year of production, along with Erle Stanley Gardener of “Perry Mason” book and TV show fame..
Authors after WWII had fewer magazines to support their works, and the narrowing of corporate publishing opportunities tended to weed out authors. Our current Internet-based publishing has enabled writers to now do their own "printing" and marketing, so filling most of the work that the corporate publishers did for a smallish handful of authors each year.
Practically, this is making it easier for the corporate publishing houses, as they can now recruit and sign indie authors based on proven track record of sales — like Amanda Hocking who already established an audience for herself when she hit a million books sold on Amazon. She garnered a million-plus advance on her first traditional-publishing contract.
There is a huge, almost insatiable demand for stories these days. Because anyone can buy them cheaply (or "license" them, from Amazon and others.) And carry them around in bulk with their smartphone. If they don't like the computer-rendered audio, they can also buy audio books. Anyone can publish these days. The ones who are prolific and keep at it should be able to make a decent living regardless of the roadblocks put in their way. (They do have to master their own author craft in order to turn our perennial-selling books, not one-shot wonders.)
Corporate publishers like Amazon can't corner any particular market of indie publishing. No one online book distributor has all the readers or all the authors. Publishing wide through an aggregator seems the best bet at reaching potential book readers everywhere. (And then there are audiobooks, paid newsletters, courses, and bundles — none of which Amazon services.)
Publish Where You Get Paid
In the recent release, WriterpreneurOS, I came up with a different approach by the end of that book. Writers don’t just depend on their income solely by creating and producing books. One of the key points in our new release is to treat every book as an “idea container”. Key in your work as a writer-entrepreneur is to use that same text in as many formats/containers as it will support. Sure, books - in ebook, paperback, hardback, large format, audiobook. But also course. Also paid newsletters. Video is profitable, as well as podcasts. Of course, submit to magazines for paid inclusion.
This isn’t really diversifying your product lines. It’s the very same product produced in many versions. One book — multiple versions. Because no two readers want the same format. Expanding your publishing venues increases your audience potential and so increases your income.
We’re talking here about your running your publishing as a entrepreneurial adventure. Writer-entrepreneurs survive better, more comfortably.
The Tricks to Indie Publishing Success
These are mainly just a few:
Be prolific.
Consistently publish weekly and monthly on paying platforms.
Enjoy what you do and so will your readers.
Publish wide, everywhere you can and in all formats possible.
Keep at it and build a long career.
Eventually, you'll be able to reach for your million-books-sold title, and then your millions income earned. How fast you accomplish this is up to you. Most of it has to do with how prolific you are and how much you and your readers enjoy your writing.
The Simple Strategy for Writing Success:
Keep your metrics.
Figure out and keep your schedule.
Write as good as you possibly can and make every story better than the last.
Now available as ebook, soon as a paperback and several courses:
Soon available in even more distributors.