2014 Self-Publishing Winners So you want to be a writer and make a million bucks. You want people to fawn over your books and hang on your every word? Well, how do you do it?
By the seat of your pants and a whole lot of hopes or with careful planning, continuous monitoring, and longer hours than you’d work at the 9 to 5 affair?
How many writers are there in the world? Millions, easily, and if we go by the amount of books on Amazon (at least 2.4 million in the Kindle Store) we can probably get a good guess.
So what should you focus on in 2014 to make your self-publishing dreams come true in that sea of other authors trying to do the same thing? After all, self-publishing can seem like a real strenuous track and field kind of day, and while there can be many hurdles confronting you, there’s also lots of opportunities for you to sprint ahead of the pack.
By the seat of your pants and a whole lot of hopes or with careful planning, continuous monitoring, and longer hours than you’d work at the 9 to 5 affair?
How many writers are there in the world? Millions, easily, and if we go by the amount of books on Amazon (at least 2.4 million in the Kindle Store) we can probably get a good guess.
So what should you focus on in 2014 to make your self-publishing dreams come true in that sea of other authors trying to do the same thing? After all, self-publishing can seem like a real strenuous track and field kind of day, and while there can be many hurdles confronting you, there’s also lots of opportunities for you to sprint ahead of the pack.
Approaching the Starting Blocks
How are you going to approach your output? Are you shooting for 3 novels this year, 5 non-fiction books, or a release each of the 12 months of the year? All are possible, but you need to focus on your approach. First, which areas of expertise do you have? Myself, I can talk about ESL teaching all day if I have to, mainly because I taught it for 5 years. And since these are non-fiction books that can be of any length I choose, I think it’s safe to say I can get one of these books out nearly every month.
I write a lot of SEO for people. Now, I don’t know as much about SEO writing and content marketing because I’ve only been doing it for a year. So my approach to that will be different from ESL. I figure I could probably get 3 SEO books out in 2014 if I wanted to.
I know quite a bit about Montana history because I researched and wrote 2 eBooks on it. My approach to this is different still from the other two because I simply don’t know as much about this subject as I do about the others – a lot less in fact. I mean, I can’t tell you right now what exactly was happening in Butte in 1875. So my approach for these books takes into account the fact that I need to do lots of research, and in that regard I’d be happy to get 2 to 3 of these books out this year, although that might be pushing it.
If you dabble in both fiction and non-fiction like I do then you need to develop different approaches there as well. For instance, when I’m writing non-fiction I can just do it faster. Mainly I do this type of writing more. Sure, it requires some research that can slow you down, but not as much as creating everything from nothing, which is what fiction writing is.
I write a lot of SEO for people. Now, I don’t know as much about SEO writing and content marketing because I’ve only been doing it for a year. So my approach to that will be different from ESL. I figure I could probably get 3 SEO books out in 2014 if I wanted to.
I know quite a bit about Montana history because I researched and wrote 2 eBooks on it. My approach to this is different still from the other two because I simply don’t know as much about this subject as I do about the others – a lot less in fact. I mean, I can’t tell you right now what exactly was happening in Butte in 1875. So my approach for these books takes into account the fact that I need to do lots of research, and in that regard I’d be happy to get 2 to 3 of these books out this year, although that might be pushing it.
If you dabble in both fiction and non-fiction like I do then you need to develop different approaches there as well. For instance, when I’m writing non-fiction I can just do it faster. Mainly I do this type of writing more. Sure, it requires some research that can slow you down, but not as much as creating everything from nothing, which is what fiction writing is.
Figuring Your Energy Output
How much time and energy do you have and how badly do you want it? Some people write thousands of words a day, some people write hundreds, and some only wish they could do either.
If you want to be successful with self-publishing in 2014 you’ll need to figure out how much energy you’re willing to put out on a daily basis to reach your goals. There are many ways to approach writing, such as writing in blocks or spurts, or even blocks and puzzles, as opposed to long bouts, and you really need to experiment and see which glove fits best.
The bottom line is that it all comes down to you sitting down and moving your fingers over keys. How quickly you can do this, and at what level of quality, is wholly dependent upon how often you do it – nothing else. Sure, reading more helps and having a good vocabulary or education couldn’t hurt, but some of the smartest and most well-read people in the world only have one book out because they lack the discipline to do more.
Routine and discipline – they work for militaries and writers across the world, and I can’t praise these two concepts enough.
Perhaps you want to enlist another author to help you as well. Passing off the baton to someone that will help carry the word count load is often a good goal, and it’s working wonders for other authors.
If you want to be successful with self-publishing in 2014 you’ll need to figure out how much energy you’re willing to put out on a daily basis to reach your goals. There are many ways to approach writing, such as writing in blocks or spurts, or even blocks and puzzles, as opposed to long bouts, and you really need to experiment and see which glove fits best.
The bottom line is that it all comes down to you sitting down and moving your fingers over keys. How quickly you can do this, and at what level of quality, is wholly dependent upon how often you do it – nothing else. Sure, reading more helps and having a good vocabulary or education couldn’t hurt, but some of the smartest and most well-read people in the world only have one book out because they lack the discipline to do more.
Routine and discipline – they work for militaries and writers across the world, and I can’t praise these two concepts enough.
Perhaps you want to enlist another author to help you as well. Passing off the baton to someone that will help carry the word count load is often a good goal, and it’s working wonders for other authors.
Determining Your Length and Stride
There’s no reason you need to put out books that are of the standard paperback length. Novels typically range around 300 pages, and that’s a good number for Amazon. But people can’t pay attention to the 30-minute TV show they’re watching and their attention is held more by the 30-second ads. In other words, attention spans are going down and with them the ability, or desire, to read longer works.
I could be wildly off the mark here, but I’m not when I say more authors will be putting out shorter works, or micro-publishing, this year and well into the future. Does that mean every novel you write can’t be 300 pages? No, but it does mean you can do what I did with Black Walnut and that is release a shorter 100 page work for a lower price that entices new readers to test your brand while lessening your reliance upon perma-free. After all, many things that work now will eventually go by the wayside, so the more $0.99 titles you have to offer the better you’ll be.
I could be wildly off the mark here, but I’m not when I say more authors will be putting out shorter works, or micro-publishing, this year and well into the future. Does that mean every novel you write can’t be 300 pages? No, but it does mean you can do what I did with Black Walnut and that is release a shorter 100 page work for a lower price that entices new readers to test your brand while lessening your reliance upon perma-free. After all, many things that work now will eventually go by the wayside, so the more $0.99 titles you have to offer the better you’ll be.
Jumping the Fictional or Non-Fictional Fence
What I love about non-fiction books is that they can be shorter and sell. Sure, they always don’t, but it’s a great strategy for fiction authors. If you’re always sitting at the office and hating it why not write a short $0.99 book on “15 Reasons Why Offices Suck” or something similar? It’s a fun use of your time, a good way to get some frustrations out, and a super chance to get your name out in front of tons of new readers. The more humorous your approach the better, and I bet you’ll find it makes your fiction writing better as well.
Now what if you only write non-fiction? Perhaps it’s time to write a short story collection, maybe even some erotica shorts. Put out your fiction under a pen name if you prefer, but I urge you to give it a shot and see what you can produce. If nothing else, it should make your non-fiction writing more vibrant and less-scholarly. Trust me, you don’t want scholarly, which really means dry, professorial, and boring. Fiction writers are good at cutting through that rubbish, and a little practice at it might be just the thing you need to increase your output this year.
Now what if you only write non-fiction? Perhaps it’s time to write a short story collection, maybe even some erotica shorts. Put out your fiction under a pen name if you prefer, but I urge you to give it a shot and see what you can produce. If nothing else, it should make your non-fiction writing more vibrant and less-scholarly. Trust me, you don’t want scholarly, which really means dry, professorial, and boring. Fiction writers are good at cutting through that rubbish, and a little practice at it might be just the thing you need to increase your output this year.
Overcoming Hurdles in Your Path
You’re going to encounter many hurdles in your self-publishing journey, and how you handle them is really up to you. For many authors, these are deal-breakers and cause them to lose all hope and quit. For others they’re simply part of the job and some of the punches that have to be rolled with.
Here are some that I encountered this year, and what I did about them.
Here are some that I encountered this year, and what I did about them.
- Reviews: This is a difficult topic and I broke it down further below. My main problem is that I’ve got the large backlist of titles, but I don’t have a lot of reviews. The book with the most reviews is Sell Your Book, with 26. Now, most sites won’t promote a book that promotes competing promotion sites, so that’s great, but it doesn’t help me much. The reviews I need are on my novels, but unfortunately I don’t have enough on most books. And if I don’t have any reviews (5 to 10) I can’t advertise with many sites. This is damn frustrating. So what can be done? I’m working on figuring that out and hope to post about it later if there’s interest.
- Good Reviews: This is what everyone wants, but you don’t always get it. Good reviews are important because they raise your overall review average. Take a book with a few one-star reviews and nothing else. That book might see a decrease in sales as it might turn off some readers. It will also take quite a few good reviews of four- to five-star before it gets up to a decent average of around 3.5-stars.
- Bad Reviews: These suck. I got a few on my ESL book English Last. I don’t see many sales on that book anymore. I’ve also gotten a few bad perma-free reviews, especially in the UK. Sales there seem unaffected by this. Mainly I just take them in stride, see if there are any valid points I can use to make my current books better, and move on. I never reply, and the most I do is hit the ‘no’ button to say the review was unhelpful. Find popular books you love and read the poor reviews there, or write out a response to your bad review and then delete it – whatever you have to do to move on without commenting to the review directly, which leads a paper trail any potential reader can look at, perhaps turning them off more than the original bad review would have.
- No Sales: This one is bad, perhaps worse than no reviews. I mean, at least if you’re getting a few sales there’s the potential there for a review to come through. Here there’s nothing. I’ve had many books like this over this past year and all you can really do is wait it out (which often does nothing), do some promotion, or lower your price. If you do a promo you’ll often have to lower your price, so I’d try to do those last two in conjunction. The best thing you can do with no sales is to just keep writing more books and putting them out, hoping one takes off and then these other titles eventually sell. It happens to many, and what else are you going to do, quit?
- Foreign Markets: Perhaps you’re selling well or decently in the US but you’re not selling that well in the other 11 markets that Amazon offers. If this is the case you’re losing money, especially now that Amazon did away with the minimum threshold for those currencies, which used to be $10 and now is nothing. That means you could get more money each month. So how do you increase sales overseas? I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it and write a post in a week or two. I will say that I do usually get 3 payments from Amazon each month, and now that the threshold is lifted I’ll probably get 5 to 6. In fact just today I got paid from 6 countries, with a small $2.38 that came in from Spain last week. It’s possible, and I’ll let you know how.
Well that’s all I’ve got. There are plenty of great predictions out there on what’s going to happen in 2014, but Joe Konrath has probably got some of the best ideas so far. Either way, what happens out there is really beyond your control, but what you do with your own approach, output, and problem-solving isn’t, and that’s what will pull you through until this time next year. Good luck!
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