Become a Successful Indie Author

by Craig Martelle

  Have a great visual to accompany your snippet—your cover or even other artwork. I’ve downloaded graphics from DepositPhoto at a total bargain price and used those to generate interest in my books on my social media because I could relate a scene to what was shown in the picture that I bought for one dollar. The license allowed for that. (Always make sure what the license on these photos allows. If it says private use only, don’t get it!)

  If you are exclusive to Amazon, you cannot give away more than 10% of your book. If your story is 60k words, you can post up to 6k worth of snippets. That’s a lot of snippets. Or you can post all 60k, but take down those posts the second you hit publish. The limitation is that you can’t give away more than 10% while you are exclusive. Before you publish, you can do whatever you want. It’s your book and the only person you need to answer to is yourself. It’s nice being the boss, so take good care of your best employee.

  How do you build a following?

  I addressed this in Chapter 2, but not in detail. I am personally a fan of building a following organically—those people who like your writing. Secondarily, I like people who like my genre. I am not a fan of people who will sign up for my newsletter because I’m giving away an Amazon gift card. I know a lot of authors who do this, counting on the numbers game. Ten percent of 100,000 people is still 10,000 good folks, but what if it’s one percent or less? My experience with pure freebie promotions that are unrelated to my books in any way, not genre and not me as an author, is that it is a fraction of a percent who are engaged. I pay to maintain an email subscriber list. A fraction of a percent does not cover my costs in maintaining the extra number of names. So I don’t do these anymore. I do targeted listbuilding efforts only.

  InstaFreebie and BookFunnel can fill the void in providing a forum where you upload your reader sample—up to a full book if you want. Both sites will collect email addresses of those who want to download your offering. You don’t have to have a mandatory opt-in, but I always use it. That is my minimum price to get my stuff for free. I offer one of my short stories that I also have on Amazon for 99 cents—it’s not in Kindle Select (KU), so I can offer it elsewhere. If a reader doesn’t want to give me their email, they can still get the story and I’ll get their 35 cents. That is a reasonable trade, for me.

  I only use BookFunnel, because it does everything I need it to do. I bought the big package from them so I can do whatever I need to do however many times I need to do it. I don’t use it anywhere near what I need to in order to get my money’s worth, but it is there. I’ve run some group promotions off my BookFunnel because I can support 5000 downloads.

  That’s neither here nor there, but it is a good segue into another methodology for gaining quality followers.

  A cross promotion. The single best effort to add quality subscribers to my list came through a ten-author anthology. We each wrote space opera, so we all had a lot in common. We provided a short story that I consolidated under a nice cover. We formatted it and made it available via BookFunnel. We each notified our own email lists. And then I ran narrowly targeted ads on Facebook as well, looking only at space opera fans who also were Kindle readers.

  We picked up 1400 new subscribers that we shared among the ten of us. (We had that disclaimer in numerous places throughout the anthology—signing up to get the book signed the person up for ten lists.) I have lost about 400 of those, but the remaining 1000 are the highest quality—readers willing to pay for good space opera stories. Many have become superfans and those folks are worth their weight in gold. The total cost for 1400 email addresses? It would have been zero had I not run the FB ads, but as it turned out, it was about $40 total.

  And that’s why you don’t run Facebook ads to collect email subscribers. Those cost $1 to $2 each to get. That is probably the most expensive thing you can do to find subscribers. I paid a couple hundred dollars for less than that many new subscribers and the worst part is, I’m not sure they are all that great. If I had a one for one buy-rate, then I would get an ROI at that cost. But I don’t. So I don’t gather names that way.

  The great thing about most email services is that you can parse the names of the signups. Use a separate link and list for those who sign up from your back matter. The back matter is what you put at the end of your book. If someone finished reading your story and continued into the back matter, then you have a winner. And if they then clicked on the link to join your newsletter list from there (or typed it in), then you have a fan and the making of a superfan. Keep those people segregated. You can carry on conversations with them, get feedback, give them samples of your work while you’re writing, and they become your superstar beta team. If you get too many fans signing up via your backmatter… That’s a ridiculous statement. You can never have too many superfans. Nurture them and they will be your foundation to a hugely successful career.

  Newsletter Cross Promotion

  “Hey, Bob! You write space opera. I write space opera. How about a swap? I’ll promote your next release when it comes out and you promote mine.”

  That is the crux of a swap. It can work out well and is generally between peers, those authors on the same plateau on the climb up the mountain of success, which is best left to the readership to determine. The attitude that makes this work is that a rising tide lifts all boats. Readers can read far more than we can write. Sharing a group and opening your readers’ eyes to a bigger world is a great thing. The readers will determine what they like and what they don’t like. It also helps you raise your game. If you are swapping with authors that you think write better than you, what are you going to do about it? Me? I’d pay my editor a bonus to crank up the heat!

  Having a list of 30,000 names doesn’t mean you’re a successful author, it only means that you have a lot of email addresses. Are they buyers? I would much rather share with a smaller list with a higher engagement rate than a list of 100,000 subscribers who don’t care and funnel the note directly to their spam folder, if they are real people, that is.

  But be careful. If you promote someone to your fans, you need to make sure that their book will satisfy your fans. At least skim the book in question, unless you know the author and their work. Remember when we talked about brand? Everything you do once you hit publish goes to your brand. You promote poorly written books with bad covers, then you will not be doing yourself any favors. You don’t have to crush a budding author, but you can tell them, “I have certain expectations from my readers and this book won’t fit with what they like.”

  New Release Notification

  The bread and butter of publishing. This is your first impression of the readers’ first impression of your book. Are they buying it? Do they remember that you exist? And that’s why you have a newsletter, so you don’t have to work so hard at providing content on a blog where they stop by every day to see what’s new.

  On publication day, you send your newsletter. Did you send one before publication day to let them know it was coming? Did you do any snippets? Did you whet the appetite by sharing artwork? Hungry readers are one-click buyers. Set them up and they will reward you.

  Amazon will send an email to everyone who follows you. So how do you get Amazon followers?

  Organically, because they clicked ‘follow’ when they were looking at your books on Amazon. You can also run giveaways and in this case, numbers are king, because you pay nothing to maintain the list. I gave a Kindle Paperwhite. I ran a bunch of Facebook ads, but also clicked for Amazon to open it up to anyone looking. The only condition to enter to win? Follow me on Amazon. I’ve run hundreds of giveaways using my books as well as other books from authors in my genre (with their permission, of course, although you can give anything away on Amazon—scroll to the bottom of the product page until you see the Giveaway button).

  By my count, I could have as few as a thousand followers on Amazon or as many as ten thousand. Amazon does not share that information, but I do pick up a number of sales when they send out their notifications. I follow myself
, so yes, I get my own notifications.

  BookBub is the gold standard when it comes to maintaining a parsed email subscriber list. Set up your BookBub author page and make sure you add your books every time you have a new release. If it fits in their criteria, they’ll send out an alert to your followers. This alert looks just like a Featured Deal, so take advantage, because this doesn’t cost you anything. Create your author profile at the partners.bookbub.com site and go to town.

  Claimed in your author profile within seven days of publication

  Novels and Novellas: 70+ pages

  Nonfiction: 100+ pages

  Cookbooks: 70+ pages

  Children’s picture books: 20+ pages

  There are some paid newsletter subscribers that will do new release pitches for you, but the value of those may not be what you want. Hit your social media, release your newsletter, make your blog post, share with like-minded authors, and promote the book with real ads.

  Yes, ads. You are a small business so you get to do all the things, but they aren’t overwhelming. I am very light on ads, myself, so I count on the professionals to guide me through their works on the subjects.

  Facebook Ads? Buy Michael Cooper’s book, Help! My Facebook Ads Suck. He’s also responsive if you have questions. He’s just a downright good guy who like numbers and data-crunching. He also writes great books so his stuff sells when marketed correctly. He shares all of that in his book.

  Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) Ads? Buy Brian Meeks’ book, Mastering Amazon Ads. Brian has a Facebook group for people to share results and tweak their approach. It takes work, but damn! You can make some money…assuming you have some great books and listen closely to the advice, incrementally putting it into practice.

  Getting Feedback

  Getting feedback on your books is like going to the doctor. You can accept one opinion and be happy, or you can get a bunch of opinions and select the one you like best. But you're still at the doctor because you have a problem. The remedy may be unpalatable or the one you like might not cure your problem.

  Welcome to being your own boss. You get to decide what to do.

  You, as the author, may not like the feedback you get. You may have found readers who are not in your genre OR there may be a real problem with your story.

  Anyone who takes the time to tell you something deserves to be listened to. Listen for the real meaning behind what they say. Sure, some people are mean and some people have no tact, but what you hear can make the difference between your success and your failure. A romance reader may not like your alien science fiction, but she’s your friend and read the book as a favor, for example.

  When you first start, you lean on your friends and family. As you progress, you find that they may not be the best at giving you feedback on your book. Understand that it takes time, but if you are in a readers group and become a writer, you will be able to find people within your genre. Don’t join that group specifically to thrust your book upon them. Read what they are reading and offer good feedback, without being too critical. Don’t try to prove anything. As I’ve said before, don’t be a dick. I may not like 50 Shades of Gray, but I can’t knock a book that sold ninety million copies. It appealed to the right readers at the right time. Good for E.L. James. And that is as critical as I would get in a group of readers or authors.

  How can you make sure you accept the right feedback and then take the best action for your business?

  Split Personality Disorder. You must step away from being the artist and step into the shoes of the business owner. Looking dispassionately at your work and then analyzing what you’ve done to get it in front of the readers the story is most likely to appeal to. Why is or isn’t it working? You need to be able to answer in either case.

  I bet there is someone who knows. The readers. Ask them. There will be some who like it. There will be those who don’t. If they start with, “I don’t usually read Rhinoceros Horror…” then that’s not who you want feedback from, although they can tell you about the quality of writing. “It flowed well, but I couldn’t get into the story…”

  Find the rhino lovers out there and see what they think! Even if you have to give the book away after not getting any sales. This is what a business person would do—a free sample and then have the person taking the sample fill out a survey for a coupon. It works. Start a conversation with readers in your genre and you will get better with each new word.

  Look at how much and what you have to explain, because if you have to explain something to a reader, they missed it. I look at input like that as I need to write it better where they can’t miss it if it is a key detail. Sometimes you do need to spoon-feed your readers. If they need to know the quadratic equation to solve a hint within your story, you may lose some readers, unless you’re writing a high school textbook, and then it could be spot on. Write for the audience and write for yourself. When you find where those two things intersect, then you will be a much happier author.

  Avoid the people who are too controlling. As I will always say, there are no set must-dos in this business besides one thing and that is find readers willing to pay for your work. Without that, it’s not a business.

  Everything else you do goes to that end. (Ethically, of course. The book stuffers and the scammers? Screw those people.)

  If you can’t look at your business because all you want to do is write? I don’t know what to tell you besides reiterating that you’re an indie. That means you do all the things. Sure, you could get an agent and try to get a traditional publisher deal, but the end result is simple. If you sign with them and make $100k in sales, you’ll probably see about $10k for you. Very few authors make $100k in sales with traditional publishing. Very few.

  With $10k? You’ll be at your day job. With $100k in sales as an indie exclusive to Amazon? About $70k. That means you can look at your day job and not be so quagmired in the daily grind. Also, do you have enough money to pay someone else $60k so you can pocket $10k? I don’t have enough money for that nor the desire, because I’m an indie and I can do all the things.

  Trolls

  The worst thing about being successful is the trolls, those bottom feeders who target an author so they can spew their bile in the form of one-star reviews, douchebag Facebook comments, random messages, and sometimes emails with helpful hints that aren’t hints at all, but demeaning and wasteful.

  First and foremost, understand that the issue is them and not you. Unfortunately, as an author, you have to maintain a certain public profile which makes you a target for trolls. So they become your issue.

  Don’t feed the troll! That’s like responding to a one-star review on Amazon, something you just can’t do. If you tried to carry on a conversation while you still thought the troll was a normal human being and they go off, cut the cord immediately.

  Block them on social media. Tell your email to route their emails directly to the trash bin. Hopefully they don’t have your phone number or real address.

  Safety tip: get a PO Box.

  Pen Names provide some level of protection, but you’re still a public person as an author. The troll could haunt your pen name’s persona.

  Whackamole—just delete everything that comes from the troll and move on with your life. Living in fear lets them win.

  When do you report them to the police or to the feds? The threshold for online criminal behavior is fairly high, unfortunately. A death threat where they also share your home address? You’ll want to call the police on that one. Almost everything else is gray. If you are afraid for your safety, call the police and get advice.

  Many trolls will find a new target for their ravings. You’ll have to wait them out because you don’t have much of a choice. If you feed them by trying to fight back, they’ll hang on longer. Relegate them to anonymity and move on with your life.

  What you can do is write. Keep writing and build a following of people who are happy for you, happy to read your books, and happy for your success.

  C
hapter 6

  Writing the next book

  Keeping Your Goals Alive

  Writing a new story (the power of a backlist)

  Improving Your Word Count

  Social Proof

  Staying Motivated (without alienating your family)

  Hitting the Wall

  The Value of Time

  Keeping Your Goals Alive

  The best goals are ones within your control. We all want our books to hit the top of the charts and sell zillions of copies. That might happen, but if that’s your goal, you will be disappointed a great deal until you’ve reached that pinnacle.

  What is in your control is word count, studying your craft, incorporating feedback into your continuous improvement loop, and doing better as an author with each new day. Maybe it is something as simple as helping a high schooler write and publish their first short story. You never know when the right kind word could make all the difference in someone’s life.

  Set your daily word count goal and then meet it and beat it until it’s no longer a challenge. Then raise the bar and go again. I’m a big fan of writing every single day. It’s something that I feel I have to do. It makes it so much easier to pick up in the middle of a sentence if you write every day. You’ll get back into your story more quickly and the words will flow better.

  When I first started writing full-time, my goal was 1000 words a day. I struggled to meet that goal for the first month. Keep in mind, I was doing it full-time and had trouble getting 1000 words. Fast forward one year. I wrote the second book in my space opera series in seventeen and a half days. It was 108,000 words in length. That’s 6171 words per day.

  That was my top-end. I haven’t been able to do that since, although I’ve averaged 3500 to 4000 WPD in nearly all stories after that.