J. A. Konrath tells the truth about Writing and Promotion
"Amazon giveth, and Amazon taketh away."
I.
June 4, 2019:, J. A. Konrath wrote a long, and very detailed (but pithy) account of what's worked for him over his long career. (See https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2019/06/your-marketing-plan-wont-work.html)
I wrote about it then. And found it still salient and applicable now. So I updated a digest for you.
He tears up about everything anyone has ever recommended for succeeding in marketing as an author.
About everything. Really.
Social Media
“You’re not going to sell a lot of books on social media. …Stop thinking it will.”
How To Books
“There is no book you can read that will help you improve your sales to a degree that was worth the time and money you wasted on it.”
Advertising
“You're doing well if you break even. ….And all the effort you spend on ads is less time you spend writing.”
Publicity
“Once the publicity ends, the sales will go down.”
Konrath attributed his success to just one thing: His having a huge backlist and Amazon recommending those other books to buyers. When Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited, his income was cut in half and never recovered. But he still makes a great living. At his top, he made $800K a year - so, half of that is…
“Things you need to do, in order of importance.”
Write a lot of books. The bigger your backlist, the better.
My point: publish them everywhere you can, in all formats possible.
Have a Newsletter. In that, announce sales, new releases, and pre-orders. The people who follow you want to know that - so tell them with your newsletter.
Advertise in moderation. See what’s working out there.
Be consistent.
Here's Konrath's bottom line summation:
"One brand, one genre, stop experimenting, stop being a perfectionist, and
just write five good books a year in the same series.
Make sure they are professionally edited and formatted, have great covers and descriptions,
keep length under 75k words, and
make sure they have updated, clickable bibliographies in the back matter, pre-order pages for the next release, and newsletter sign-up forms."
“That's it. That's the sum total of my years of knowledge and experience. Doing that, along with a minimal social media presence and some moderate advertising, and maybe you can attain a following and make six figures a year.
Stop trying to find the answer. There is no answer. No answer, no logic, no reason, not even any scientific cause and effect.
”So focus on the writing. It's the only thing you have true control over.
Keep writing good books until you get lucky. That's your marketing plan.”
My take:
Yup. Speaks sooth.
Booksellers sell your books. Well-written books get recommended, get sales.
Yes, there are people that have built their sales up with advertising, once they mastered ads. And they devote some time to this - or hire someone that can. Meanwhile, the big names have tons of books out there. The correlation is lots of books out there.
They also diversify into courses. They diversify into non-fiction (which sells a lot longer than fiction - without more promotion than a good choice of keywords in your title, category, and blurb.
The whole scene with Substack and ConvertKit is different than writing books. So you could say this is more diversification. Another income stream. Sure, you could publish serials in your newsletter and then come back to publish as hefty paperbacks and hardbacks. And to be sure, your newsletter should have ads for your courses, plus your new releases.
And on Substack, there’s Notes - which seems to run different from Newsletters. So the Justin Welsh approach might work best on that. Might.
Your followers already get your Notes and Newsletter access. It’s then your job to make it worth their while to support you.
Which just goes back to better writing. And lots of it.
Certain things never change…
II.
More research showed this excerpt from May 2011:
THE BOTTOM LINE
I fully believe that the ultimate reason I'm selling so many ebooks is because I got lucky.
I was able to improve my odds by being a good writer, being prolific, being professional, and learning a lot about writing and promotion. But it still came down to luck.
Ultimately, there isn't anything we can do to guarantee success.
However, as I'm fond of saying, being "successful" isn't a good goal.
Goals should be within your control. "I want to hit the Top 100" or "I'm going to sell 10,000 ebooks by June" are not goals. Those are dreams.
Goals are "I'll have three books up on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords by September" or "I'll be active on Facebook and Twitter until I get 5000 friends each." Those are within your control, and worthy pursuits.
Everyone needs to stop worrying about things they have no control over, and focus instead on the things they can control. Write well. Be professional. Experiment. Learn from mistakes. Keep an open mind.
There are no longer any gatekeepers. But that doesn't mean being a writer has gotten easier.
You want the real secret for success? Work your ass off until you succeed, no matter how long it takes. Above that, he pretty much says the same thing. And then some. Such as:
Advertising. Joe's First Rule of Marketing is: Only do things that work on you.
I have never bought an ebook because I saw a Facebook ad, a Google ad, a print ad, or any kind of ad. Ditto postcards, bookmarks, or any sort of handout. I've never met any writer truly satisfied with the results of advertising, but have met many who aren't.
....
Remember the Four. I've noticed the books that sell best seem to be professional looking (covers, formatting, editing), have low prices, good product descriptions, and are well-written. Don't put up anything less than terrific on all counts.
....
Write More. The best advertisement for your writing is your writing. The larger your virtual shelf space, the more you'll be discovered.
III.
Again, Konrath tells us the marketing/business plan for any fiction author:
Stick to one brand, one genre. Produce five 75K books a year (for decades.) Write in series.
Well edited, great covers, and descriptions.
Enable signups to your list.
Keep your earlier books available for people to buy your backlist - keep the bibliography in the back up-to-date.
Enable sign-ups for preorders.
How is that different from writing 50 short stories a year?
None, if they're all about 7,500 words weekly on average.
Do the math: Five 75K books = 375,000 words. 37.5K divided by 50 books a year = 7,500 words.
Just over a thousand words per day, if you want to stretch it out. Or - take two days a week and crank it out, revise, proof, and publish. Keep a cover artist on a stringer. Learn to write spellbinding descriptions. Every 10 books, publish a collection. If you can find an editor who will work with short stories, fine. Otherwise, have them look at the collection and tweak it. Meanwhile, every week they have it, you've cranked out another book.
Write in series and serials. (Your last chapter is the opening chapter of the next story - too simple. Main character(s) are in major trouble again and you have to get the next one to help solve it...)
Figure you have about 4 days a week to play around with ads, and write some non-fiction books and their courses to diversify your income. Engage with your subscribers and keep them on board.
As long as you love writing, you've got it made.
It's a long-haul marketing and business plan. Ask Patterson, Roberts, Gaiman, et al. Start with one short story every week. Post it on Medium or Substack and learn how to write serials. Publish those in series.
And - Do the opposite of whatever is posed as “conventional wisdom”. 90% of the time you’ll be alright (as goes the old saying.)
This gives me a simple program:
My marketing plan - Substack. Focus on one thing - do it very well.
Restart writing a fiction short story every week - as a serial, as possible. Collect up and publish regularly. Or just keep publishing my back stories until I run out - and then start again from that point. (I do have over a hundred treatments waiting…)
Meanwhile, use my newsletter with its weekly updates, but have a section for the non-fiction book I’m writing. And make this Gladwell-esque so it pulls along from week to week, as a serial.
Continue using aggregators to publish everywhere for me. They save me time, which you can't get back.
Get decent backmatter in all my books. Update everything. Add an ad for the newsletter in each one. Work from the top-sellers back to never-solds. Update covers, blurbs, everything.
Port all my non-fiction to all possible formats. Fiction readers want cheap ebooks. Non-fiction readers want multiple versions. Especially courses (which are their lead-gens.) More versions - more income. Update everything, diversify everything.
Sure, once I have all these reader magnets and book formats published properly, then I'll start thinking about advertising again. Thinking about it. Meanwhile, I have more than enough to keep me busy and quite happy.
Hope your trails are happy ones.