That is my sweet spot. 3500 WPD gets me a reasonable work day without too much stress and time for all the other things in a full-time author’s life who also has to read a great number of stories as part of a series of anthology collections. The people submitting those stories deserve my full attention to give them the best feedback possible. My goal is 3500 WPD, for each and every day of the year.
I have different goals that involve publishing books on time, getting covers ordered months before they’re needed, better managing my ad campaigns. The words are a given and my refuge.
It’s the other business stuff that demands good goals.
There are standalone stories and there are series. That’s it. Some books are long and some are short. Some series only have two books. Some only have short stories. (These are called serials.)
My first four books were in three different genres. I strongly recommend you don’t do this, unless you are already a marketing expert and are able to parse your newsletter by genre and maintain separate lists like an old hand.
That was way more than I could handle when I first started publishing. I would recommend that you stay with one genre for at least your first few books so you can build your understanding of the processes involved in being a professional author. Changing genres means you get to do it all over again. This keeps you from building on previous gains. It steepens your learning curve, because what works in one genre may not work in another.
Marketing is easier for anything that the readers have seen before. You should already have them on the hook because of your engagement. Many wait with bated breath for the next installment, and they will always want it before it’s ready. This is good stuff, because these are your hardcore fans. They’ll pick up the first book in a new series because they like the way you write.
It is easier to sell ten books to one person than one book to ten different people.
Writing a new story (the power of a backlist)
I published at least one book a month for the first two and a half years that I was writing full-time, right up to the publication of this book. Add a bunch of short stories, anthologies, a few different collaborations, omnibuses, box sets, and all of a sudden, Amazon thinks I have seventy-nine titles.
I write every day and a fair number of words. I rarely delete too many words. I might move them into a different story, but dammit! I typed those words fair and square and I’m going to use them.
I love short stories because I can focus on a single topic. I get to remove the complexities of a multi-POV story and take one situation, build it three-dimensionally. Six thousand words later, I have something I can put into an anthology and get my name out there. No one knew me at the beginning. Of course. So I couldn’t get into any anthologies. I started my own and everyone who wanted to come with me on the ride joined in. We threw a good cover on it and published away!
It was a great learning experience. Then I did another one and a third one. Now I’m going to a fourth one because of the quality of the submissions in the third book. We have four of the short stories/novelettes get considered for the Nebula and one of the stories (congratulations, Jonathan Brazee!) actually made the Nebula’s final ballot. How about that for exposure for all the authors within?
Usually exposure leads to frostbite and dying of hunger, but as authors, we need to get our names out there and keep them out there. That’s why politicians will put their name everywhere before an election. They want you to look at the ballot and remember that you’ve seen that name somewhere.
That is what makes ads important, which goes to backlist. I run AMS ads on all of my books. At least one ad, usually three or four because I want readers to constantly see my name and my books. Someone with that kind of backlist must be doing something right. Let me pick up one of his books.
So keep writing. Build your backlist. There are top authors with only six or seven novels published—A.G. Riddle comes to mind. First, write an incredible book, and second, the longer it’s out there before the next one comes out, the more you’re going to have to spend on ads to keep the sales up. And then spend more and more until you hit an equilibrium. Eventually, you are going to have to publish a new book to remain viable or you’ll run out of ad cash, whichever comes first.
Here is a two-week pie chart of my backlist earnings as shown by the BookReport dashboard. Each one of the slices is revenue.
That pie chart does not include sixteen collaborations because it only shows books that I personally published through my KDP dashboard. It also doesn’t include other revenue streams such as audiobooks (I have seventeen different books as audiobooks as of this writing) or paperbacks (I have all my books made into paperbacks because I love being able to hold my own stories).
Let’s talk about paperbacks. I spent a career in Marine Corps Intelligence. Everything I did was a secret. Every report I wrote, every briefing I gave. I retired with a chest full of medals and not a single thing that I had written. Working as a business consultant, I liked being able to see a final product, like the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. I got to work with the people building that ship and it was great. When I started writing, I knew that I would make paperbacks because I finally got to hold something in my hand that I made.
And there we are. My paperbacks pay for themselves because I have enough fans who only buy books in print, but it’s not a windfall. As an indie, I can make a decision that I’ll continue making paperbacks as long as I keep writing because I can do that. I am responsible only to my myself and that is a great feeling.
Keep writing. Keep filling that shelf. A thousand words a day every day for a year means you’ve written four nice length books. Keep doing that and pretty soon, you’ll have a pie chart that looks like mine—every book contributing to your bottom line.
Improving your word count
I was a tried and true pantser, flying by the seat of my pants, telling the story as my fingers hit the keys. For more than two years I did it that way, but then I got busy. Running author conferences and managing a publishing empire (with enough titles, just changing the back matter takes a full day), I needed to increase my word count while my available time to write decreased.
First, write every day. There’s nothing like practice to get better at something.
Second, outline! I know, this is me, and I’m suggesting you write an outline. It makes the story easier to write. Easier means quicker. When I have a moment of exceptional clarity, I will put everything else aside and write the story. It will be a series of events, snippets of conversation, bullet points of things, with lots of “and then.” It will by heavily infested with typos and whatever. The only thing that matters is that I now have a complete story, anywhere from 2k to 10k words. When I sit down to write the book, I can jam it out and the first draft is pretty good. I managed to write the last book in two weeks because I had an outline. I think this will be my new norm. The important point is when a story comes to you and you see it all in your mind, get it down right then. As a full-time author, it’s so much easier for me to put everything else aside and work on the outline.
If you have a day job? That’s more problematic, but if you have a recorder on your phone, tell the story there. Skip lunch if you have to. You’ll figure out what you meant to say between bites of your peanut butter sandwich. The sacrifices we make for our art, which then becomes a business. You’ll be amazed at the leaps and bounds you can make when you have the story and just need to chip away at it. I can type 1500 to 2000 words an hour with a good outline. Sure, I flesh out the scenes, go back and forth to add three dimensions—the senses, the colors, those things that bring a scene to life—but the main story rips through.
It doesn’t take too many of those hours before you have a full manuscript in your hand. Maximize your productivity while minimizing your time investment. Sounds like a business premise.
What I found is that a story written like that flows better and reads better from the outset. My editor makes fewer cor
rections, and my beta readers complained that I was trying to put them out of business because there were so few typos remaining. I like improving the quality of my words, but that didn’t happen overnight or easily.
It took writing. A lot of writing. After two and a half million words, my first draft is pretty good and with that high-speed outline (not a real outline, just a story stripped to the barest of bones), then I can get those out quickly and with high quality.
You know who the best judge of quality is? Your readers. Not other authors. I figured out why the quality over quantity debate continues to rage between some authors. They are trying to denigrate others because of their own inability to deliver a quality manuscript quickly, which isn’t a condemnation of anyone. I have practiced long and hard to get to this point. Did you ever believe that someone could run a mile in four minutes? Maybe you grew up knowing nothing but the four-minute mile.
I didn’t. It took that first man to break the mark and then others followed quickly. You have to believe. And you have to train to meet a higher standard.
And the only thing that matters to you as an indie is what you yourself do. You can only control what you do, not what anyone else does. You shouldn’t see what they do as a denigration of anything you do. If you think they do something better than you that you’d like to accomplish, work toward it. You can get there. You can write better. You can write faster. You can do whatever you believe you can do by working hard at the right things. It may not come next week or next month—hell, maybe not even next year—but the only one who can hold an indie back is the indie.
Remember that part where you are in charge of everything you do? There you go. Break’s over. Time to get back to work.
Social Proof
How do you know if your book is any good? Can strangers tell you? Will family tell you their truth, or will they say they love it because you wrote it?
It starts with a cover that aligns into the genre of the readers you’re targeting. If you write westerns and science fiction readers are picking up and panning your book, that has nothing to do with your writing. That has everything to do with your marketing.
When your sales are low, like most authors have as they first start out, your friends and family will drive your Amazon “also boughts,” the books that people buy who also bought your book. This happened with one of my books.
The number four book was How to Knit Clothes Using Your Cat’s Own Hair. That wasn’t very helpful for readers who picked up that book and saw my science fiction book as one of their recommendations.
For social proof to matter, it has to come from your book’s genre. Maybe you cross multiple genres and you believe your book should appeal to a broader audience. I like to think my Free Trader series applies to cat lovers as well as science fiction fans. This has proved right over time, but not something I thought of when I first published the book. Same thing with Young Adult. The Free Trader has little sex and not graphic in any way, and no swearing. I tagged it for thirteen and up. Reviews told me it was YA. So I rebranded it, targeted new ad campaigns, and my sales increased dramatically.
Reviews can tell you a lot about your book. Someone might write a better blurb than you as part of their review. I have no shame. I’ll use their words if theirs are a better hook than what I have.
Even if you get five stars, read what they say and what they don’t say. Many authors don’t read their reviews at all. I suggest you can learn a lot, like why I needed to rebrand the Free Trader as YA.
You need ten reviews if you want to run promotions on some of the sites like Robin Reads or ENT. Outside of that, reviews don’t give you anything tangible. You don’t get an improved book ranking. Amazon doesn’t promote your book more just because you have fifty or one hundred reviews. What reviews show is that people liked your book and went out of their way to drop a few stars your way. I see one hundred as a magic number, then one thousand. A book with a thousand reviews is a big deal. In my experience, I get about one review for every fifty to one hundred books sold.
Social proof. When the right readers read your book, they’ll tell you what they liked. Do more of that. If people are hesitant to give you feedback, then they probably didn’t like the book. Find out, fix it, and move on.
In other words, write the next book. The things I love to see most in reviews are “well written” and “can’t wait for the next one.” I’ve done my job and with each new book, sales increase. That is a great feeling.
Staying Motivated (without alienating your family)
Writer’s fatigue happens, whether you’ve had poor sales, bad reviews, or even something as simple as you’re tired of typing (or dictating). Maybe you think you don’t have any new stories to tell.
I can tell you what works for me. A new story, a short story with a fun plot or an odd twist. Those seem to flow for me. I can write one in one to two days, 5k to 8k words.
How about outlining a story? How about brainstorming? I’ll step back and write dialogue, something that I always find fascinating. I might design a cover, which just needs the perfect story behind it.
If your main work is giving you fits, step back. Jim Butcher said, “I don’t have writer’s block. I have a mortgage.” The work you don’t do today is the money you don’t get two or three months from now.
But fear isn’t a proper motivator. You become less creative when you work from fear. The words are hard to come by and are painful to get onto the page.
Step back. Close your eyes, and think about why you started writing. The imaginary world. The story. The colors and the emotions. The turn of phrase to paint a word picture. Whatever it is, disappear into that moment. Write down that outline, that scene, that story. When your mind is clear and in a different place, go back to your main work and look at it from a third-party neutral perspective. Why was it causing you grief? Was it this work? Discover the reasons you are having trouble.
If the story isn’t working, then figure out why. That nagging feeling you have is your conscience telling you something. You only have to listen closely to hear what it is.
If it’s a new book and you don’t know how it’s supposed to go, I can’t help you. Writers tell stories. If you don’t have a story, then what will you tell? The beginning, the middle, and the end.
I write the first chapter and then I write the last chapter. I go back to write everything in between. Knowing how it ends helps me to frame the steps to get there. I have a rough outline in mind with three subplots. I’ve written from one point of view to nine. The more there are, the more sticky notes I need on my white board.
Don’t despair, because there is always something to write next. I heard that James Patterson has thousands of rough plots in a closet full of notebooks. That is what you do when you’re not writing. All the stories haven’t been told yet.
I talked about goals. If you have a goal that your first book is a bestseller and allows you to retire on a beach somewhere, reality suggests that your first book won’t even break even until after your third book comes out as long as all three are in the same genre.
I broke even on my first science fiction book exactly six months after I published it, after the sixth book in the series was published. So don’t let the lack of instant success hold you back. Do you know who Hugh Howey is? Wool was his tenth book. It was a runaway blockbuster.
Finally, he realized success.
A couple other things you can try. Why sit and stare at the computer screen for hours on end? Give yourself a shorter overall writing period, sprinkled with sprints. Then get caught up on your recreational reading. See how other authors craft their words. Once you’ve written a book, you’ll notice that you read differently, you look at things with a more critical or more accepting eye.
As a creative person, losing motivation is a real issue. You simply cannot let it go on for too long. Remember what this whole book is about. Control what you are in control of. Writing isn’t just something to do, it’s something you love to do
. You can never let it become work, even though it’s your job, but it’s the fun part of your job.
Treat it that way and use writing as your escape from everything else.
Hitting the Wall
What do you do when you lose your motivation? Sales are lacking. No one likes your books. You’re not getting reviews. You’re writing and writing and no one appreciates any of it. And it’s not bringing in any revenue.
I suck!
The demon of crippling self-doubt affects nearly all of us at some point. It is real. As an author, you are a creative. It is a challenge to turn your imagination on and off, and then take those scenes and turn them into words. It is the storyteller’s challenge. As the production side of your business, you need to get the words down, otherwise there is no story to sell.
Do you have to sell the next story and you don’t have it written? It’s not flowing and you are going to miss your deadline?
Take a break and do something else. Explore marketing. There are hundreds of YouTube videos to help you. Buy a KU membership. For $10, you can reference a hundred books on marketing and the indie business.
One thing you can’t do is nothing. If depression is gripping you and holding you down, then only you know what can bring you out of that, whether it’s professional help, a distraction, or something else that has worked in the past.
To get the creative juices flowing, Thoreau had Walden’s Pond. Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory) did the mindless task of a busboy at Penny’s restaurant until the idea hit him. There’s a lot to be said for physical fitness, too. Being healthy is the best way to stay healthy. You need to feel right to write.
The Value of Time
Two years ago as a lawyer/business consultant, I billed at $250/hour and was gone from home half of my life. Fifteen months ago, I was making 12-14 cents/hour, but I was home. Now, an hour of my author time is worth well over $500.
Become a Successful Indie Author Page 10
