First up, I'd like to say that I neither particularly enjoy writing series nor reading them. Nor am I in any way telling you that you have to write one in order to succeed at self publishing. Being the kind of writer who tends to do what he wants regardless of whatever anyone else is doing (or you can substitute that for "poor"!), I have a love and hate relationship with series.
Once, many years ago, I refused to ever write a sequel. Then I wrote Tube Riders, and realised that while the story ended it was only part of a larger story, which has now been expanded into a trilogy (due for imminent release - I hope ...) with the possibility of further books in the same world. So I broke my own rule, and I chastise myself every day. However, its a cool story, and I'm hoping that finally, after two years, I might make some money from self-publishing when the next two series books come out. Then I can go back to writing standalones that no one reads ...
So I love them and I hate them. But, however you feel, there are several reasons why writing a series is a good way to be successful (read in that make sales and money), and why many self-published writers do nothing else.
1. Never underestimate the power of a sequel.
Basically, if you have a good first book, a large percentage of people will want to read the sequel. And the second sequel, and the third. Of course, if your first book is a bag of toss then it won't matter how good your sequels are. Saying that though, self-publishing is littered with one star reviews on second and third books in a series saying something along the lines of "even though the first one sucked, I bought the second/third/fifteenth to see if it got better. It didn't." Sucks to get a bad review, but you'll be several dollars richer for every muppet like this who comes along.
2. Readers love familiarity
There is a reason why millions of trad writers have recurring characters in their books, even though when you really look deeply at how that character is constructed there's often very little to set them apart from any other random person. I love a good Agatha Christie, but I've read a couple of Poirots where he doesn't show up until halfway through, and even then it's almost as an afterthought. You could replace him with any other random inspector who could do the same thing, but it wouldn't be the same and it wouldn't have the same mass appeal. It's branding. Go to your bookshelf and pick up a couple of books that have recurring characters. Try to jot down what they say or do differently to any other person, what sets them apart. For many there will be something, sure. But for others, all you've got is a name, but that's power.
3. You can work the free book system.
Amazon Select used to be a goldmine. Like everything else I've done in life I came into it after the goldrush was over, when it was about to go belly up. What used to happen was that you gave away 30,000 free copies over a few days, and while you'd get a few asshole one star reviews for your kindness you'd also a couple of thousand post-free sales because of the increased visibility. Now, you just get the asshole reviews, because Amazon has tweaked their systems so that you don't get any extra visibility at all. So on a standalone book Select is basically a waste of time, unless it's so good that people will go stumbling out into the street in the dead of night to tell people about it. However, when you have a series you can hammer that first book, or even get it set perma free (you have to publish it for free elsewhere and hope Amazon price-matches - this is what I've done with the sampler for Tube Riders) and make your money off the sequels. This is how many big selling indies are making their money.
4. You can afford to take an advertising hit.
There are few sites where you'll make money from an advertisement. Even most of the better websites are a case of pay $20, make $10 from sales, but if you have sequels you have afford to take those hits, because the sequels sales will make up for it.
5. You always have something to write about.
So, your trilogy is done and dusted. But is it? What about the prequel, or the spinoff featuring a couple of minor characters, or the new trilogy featuring the kids of the first lot of characters? When you write a series you do more than just tell a story, you build a world. And the stories you can get out of that world are infinite. And because it's connected to your first series, it has the same appeal to fans of those books. It's names and branding all over again.
So, there you are. Some reasons why writing a series can be successful. Feel free to add any more you think I've missed in the comments below.
And if you want to see how badass my own series is, download the free sampler of Tube Riders (22 chapters) here.
Chris Ward
21st October 2013
Monday, 21 October 2013
Sunday, 22 September 2013
Fighting through the low times
There comes a point during any self-publisher's journey where you start to doubt yourself. Am I really as good as I think I am? Am I really in the right profession? Should I just give up and try something else?
It's an easy situation to be in, particularly when you're surrounded by people doing a whole lot better than you are. It's easy to let the bitterness slip in, to feel aggrieved or frustrated at someone else's success, particularly when you can't understand why you're unable to replicate it.
There could be a number of reasons why someone is more successful than you.
They might have more books out.
They might have a large friends/family network all wanting to blog/Tweet/Facebook them to give them a chance to get off the ground.
They might have really good books, the kind where someone reads it and just has to tell everyone they know.
They might be writing in a more popular genre.
They might be incredibly business savvy, incredibly hardworking, or incredibly adept at knowing what kind of covers, blurb or pricing works best.
They might be very, very lucky.
A lot of writers say they feel no bitterness, envy or jealously towards other writers. Some of them might be telling the truth. Many will be lying. If you're making a thousand dollars a month it's a lot easier to not feel jealous of someone making $2000, but if you're writing/marketing three hours a day for $10 on a good month, it's a lot easier to feel that frustration, that "why not me?" feeling.
September marks the 18-month mark of my self-publishing adventure. I've published 31 different items under four different pen names, including three full-length novels, half a dozen novellas and several collections of short stories. I even have one work of non-fiction (but it's a secret!)
I've sold roughly 1800 books, more or less 100 a month, which is far, far better than many thousands of indie writers, who are probably going green with envy right now and can only dream of the kind of success I've so far attained. I hope so, I really do.
That's a joke, kind of. I've not made any money. So far this September, only 4 of my 31 titles have registered a paid sale. I think, at the time of writing, I'm still a little in the red.
I work on my books in the majority of my free time, roughly three hours a day on average. That's a lot of time to spend on not making any money (okay, I could be watching TV, which is much worse).
Why don't I make any money? Firstly, I plow it back in. As I got more sales, I invested in better covers, editors, proofreaders. All my novels are now going through a formatter, because I'm not happy just having an uploaded Word document, I want my books to look pro. I want there to be no distinction between my work and say, Stephen King's (although for the most part, my books are a lot shorter ...). I want my books to be awesome inside and out. I'm a complete computer illiterate, so it's easier to farm these tasks out. But that costs a little money.
I've built up a firm base. I have a decent if unspectacular social media platform, and a solid, well-reviewed backlist.
Yet still the doubts creep in. In March or so I gave up doing free promotions on novels. What used to happen was in exchange for some douchebag review or two you'd end up with 50 - 100 sales if you gave enough copies away. It was enough to massage the bank account a little, although the bad reviews always used to hurt. Doesn't matter how many five-star reviews you get, those one-stars really sting.
Suddenly things became hard. Getting reviews was difficult, getting on bargain book promo sites was tricky, getting any sales at all without reducing the price was near impossible. August was my worst sales month since my first, which was only four days long.
Then a couple of days ago I got rejected by a pretty piddly promotion site, after labouring for six months to try to get the prerequisite number of reviews.
I wanted to bury my head in the sand. Am I ever going to get anywhere doing this? Surely after 18 months I deserve a break?
I wanted to get bitter, I wanted to get resentful. I wanted to stand up on a rooftop somewhere and shout, GOD DAMN IT! WHY AREN'T I SELLING ANY BOOKS?? MY BOOKS ROCK BUT NO ONE WILL BUY THEM!! ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY??
Or something like that. Then I realised. No one owes me shit. Not Amazon, not other authors, not friends or family. It's just me, and it's all up to me. And that list of stuff other people are doing that makes them sell better? Not my problem. My problem is my books, and my books only.
You have to fight through the bad times. You have to get proactive and not turn into one of the whiny little pricks you find in places like the KDP Forums, the kind that will go and one-star more successful authors just to feel better about themselves. I've never done it, but I've had it happen to me, and it sucks.
You might be struggling to stay afloat in a sea of internal negativity, but you HAVE TO DO IT. DO NOT GIVE UP. You have to reach and reach and reach for that olive branch of positive energy that's dangling over you and haul yourself up it on to dry land.
Here's what you have to do.
1. Write more books. Obvious, but so true. No one can totally control the market, but one thing you can do is keep churning out those words, and the more books you have out the more chance you have of having one take off.
2. Become a better writer. All I ever here is "how can I sell books?", when you should be asking, "How can I write better books?" The same way as with everything else. LEARN. Buy study guides, listen to advice from other writers, watch online lectures, practice. You want to be so good that anyone who buys one of your books has no choice but to buy all the others.
3. Get proactive about marketing.
Research. Try new places. Bust ass looking for reviewers. There are huge lists of review bloggers out there, you just have to contact them. You need five reviews to get on Bookblast, eight for Kindle News and Tips, 10 for Ereader News Today. Stepping stones. Take one at a time, gradually lifting yourself up.
4. Relax.
Okay, I couldn't really think of anything interesting to write for number four, but you need to remember that unless you're like 95 and you're expecting to die in the next week or so, it's not a race. You have lots of time. Many traditional writers took decades before they were able to give up the day job. You have all the advantage - no production schedule, no one rejecting your proposal or telling you to write your book over from scratch or to write something different in another genre. YOU are the master. YOU CHOOSE what gets published and when. It's the perfect situation.
Through most of July and August I was busting my ass getting the final Tube Riders book done. Now that's been drafted, I have a little more time to address marketing and see if I can't figure out what to do about my plummeting sales.
What I've been doing -
I set up Goodreads giveaways for two of my paperbacks. This is a way to get more visibility for your books and to potentially get more reviews.
I've done some research into online markets, and I've spent a bit of money here and there. Not much, $10 here, $10 there, trying to get a bit more visibility.
I've tweeted and blogged more (hello!). I've linked my blogs on Stumbledupon and tweeted them.
I've set up a Facebook ad for one of my books, which I put on special price.
I printed out a bunch of photographs of my book covers, and during a recent trip back to England I "strategically" placed them in potentially beneficial locations. For example, the next person to use my seat on the airline I took will find a Tube Riders bookmark inside his in-flight magazine. Not sure if it'll help, but you have to think outside the box sometimes.
What have been the results?
Well, nothing spectacular, but yesterday I sold four books. That's four more than I sold the day before. I can't be sure that had anything at all to do with my renewed efforts, but it felt like it did.
And sometimes that's enough.
Don't let the bitterness take hold. If you've decided you're in this for the long haul then stop stressing about today or yesterday's sales. Think about where you want your sales to be in 2015.
Fight through the low times. If you keep writing, they'll pass.
Chris Ward
September 23rd 2013
It's an easy situation to be in, particularly when you're surrounded by people doing a whole lot better than you are. It's easy to let the bitterness slip in, to feel aggrieved or frustrated at someone else's success, particularly when you can't understand why you're unable to replicate it.
There could be a number of reasons why someone is more successful than you.
They might have more books out.
They might have a large friends/family network all wanting to blog/Tweet/Facebook them to give them a chance to get off the ground.
They might have really good books, the kind where someone reads it and just has to tell everyone they know.
They might be writing in a more popular genre.
They might be incredibly business savvy, incredibly hardworking, or incredibly adept at knowing what kind of covers, blurb or pricing works best.
They might be very, very lucky.
A lot of writers say they feel no bitterness, envy or jealously towards other writers. Some of them might be telling the truth. Many will be lying. If you're making a thousand dollars a month it's a lot easier to not feel jealous of someone making $2000, but if you're writing/marketing three hours a day for $10 on a good month, it's a lot easier to feel that frustration, that "why not me?" feeling.
September marks the 18-month mark of my self-publishing adventure. I've published 31 different items under four different pen names, including three full-length novels, half a dozen novellas and several collections of short stories. I even have one work of non-fiction (but it's a secret!)
I've sold roughly 1800 books, more or less 100 a month, which is far, far better than many thousands of indie writers, who are probably going green with envy right now and can only dream of the kind of success I've so far attained. I hope so, I really do.
That's a joke, kind of. I've not made any money. So far this September, only 4 of my 31 titles have registered a paid sale. I think, at the time of writing, I'm still a little in the red.
I work on my books in the majority of my free time, roughly three hours a day on average. That's a lot of time to spend on not making any money (okay, I could be watching TV, which is much worse).
Why don't I make any money? Firstly, I plow it back in. As I got more sales, I invested in better covers, editors, proofreaders. All my novels are now going through a formatter, because I'm not happy just having an uploaded Word document, I want my books to look pro. I want there to be no distinction between my work and say, Stephen King's (although for the most part, my books are a lot shorter ...). I want my books to be awesome inside and out. I'm a complete computer illiterate, so it's easier to farm these tasks out. But that costs a little money.
I've built up a firm base. I have a decent if unspectacular social media platform, and a solid, well-reviewed backlist.
Yet still the doubts creep in. In March or so I gave up doing free promotions on novels. What used to happen was in exchange for some douchebag review or two you'd end up with 50 - 100 sales if you gave enough copies away. It was enough to massage the bank account a little, although the bad reviews always used to hurt. Doesn't matter how many five-star reviews you get, those one-stars really sting.
Suddenly things became hard. Getting reviews was difficult, getting on bargain book promo sites was tricky, getting any sales at all without reducing the price was near impossible. August was my worst sales month since my first, which was only four days long.
Then a couple of days ago I got rejected by a pretty piddly promotion site, after labouring for six months to try to get the prerequisite number of reviews.
I wanted to bury my head in the sand. Am I ever going to get anywhere doing this? Surely after 18 months I deserve a break?
I wanted to get bitter, I wanted to get resentful. I wanted to stand up on a rooftop somewhere and shout, GOD DAMN IT! WHY AREN'T I SELLING ANY BOOKS?? MY BOOKS ROCK BUT NO ONE WILL BUY THEM!! ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY??
Or something like that. Then I realised. No one owes me shit. Not Amazon, not other authors, not friends or family. It's just me, and it's all up to me. And that list of stuff other people are doing that makes them sell better? Not my problem. My problem is my books, and my books only.
You have to fight through the bad times. You have to get proactive and not turn into one of the whiny little pricks you find in places like the KDP Forums, the kind that will go and one-star more successful authors just to feel better about themselves. I've never done it, but I've had it happen to me, and it sucks.
You might be struggling to stay afloat in a sea of internal negativity, but you HAVE TO DO IT. DO NOT GIVE UP. You have to reach and reach and reach for that olive branch of positive energy that's dangling over you and haul yourself up it on to dry land.
Here's what you have to do.
1. Write more books. Obvious, but so true. No one can totally control the market, but one thing you can do is keep churning out those words, and the more books you have out the more chance you have of having one take off.
2. Become a better writer. All I ever here is "how can I sell books?", when you should be asking, "How can I write better books?" The same way as with everything else. LEARN. Buy study guides, listen to advice from other writers, watch online lectures, practice. You want to be so good that anyone who buys one of your books has no choice but to buy all the others.
3. Get proactive about marketing.
Research. Try new places. Bust ass looking for reviewers. There are huge lists of review bloggers out there, you just have to contact them. You need five reviews to get on Bookblast, eight for Kindle News and Tips, 10 for Ereader News Today. Stepping stones. Take one at a time, gradually lifting yourself up.
4. Relax.
Okay, I couldn't really think of anything interesting to write for number four, but you need to remember that unless you're like 95 and you're expecting to die in the next week or so, it's not a race. You have lots of time. Many traditional writers took decades before they were able to give up the day job. You have all the advantage - no production schedule, no one rejecting your proposal or telling you to write your book over from scratch or to write something different in another genre. YOU are the master. YOU CHOOSE what gets published and when. It's the perfect situation.
Through most of July and August I was busting my ass getting the final Tube Riders book done. Now that's been drafted, I have a little more time to address marketing and see if I can't figure out what to do about my plummeting sales.
What I've been doing -
I set up Goodreads giveaways for two of my paperbacks. This is a way to get more visibility for your books and to potentially get more reviews.
I've done some research into online markets, and I've spent a bit of money here and there. Not much, $10 here, $10 there, trying to get a bit more visibility.
I've tweeted and blogged more (hello!). I've linked my blogs on Stumbledupon and tweeted them.
I've set up a Facebook ad for one of my books, which I put on special price.
I printed out a bunch of photographs of my book covers, and during a recent trip back to England I "strategically" placed them in potentially beneficial locations. For example, the next person to use my seat on the airline I took will find a Tube Riders bookmark inside his in-flight magazine. Not sure if it'll help, but you have to think outside the box sometimes.
What have been the results?
Well, nothing spectacular, but yesterday I sold four books. That's four more than I sold the day before. I can't be sure that had anything at all to do with my renewed efforts, but it felt like it did.
And sometimes that's enough.
Don't let the bitterness take hold. If you've decided you're in this for the long haul then stop stressing about today or yesterday's sales. Think about where you want your sales to be in 2015.
Fight through the low times. If you keep writing, they'll pass.
Chris Ward
September 23rd 2013
Friday, 20 September 2013
What does a Createspace book look like? Part 2
I have an extremely popular blog that gets a lot of hits every day about
what a Createspace book looks like. Even nearly a year and a half on I
get emails from people about it, but its starting to look a bit dated
now, so I thought I'd give an update, as my books really don't look like
that anymore.
The book featured on my original blog here was done at a cost of $120 (for the rights to use the photo, but everything was my own work. Interestingly enough, the books you will see in the pictures below, whole taking longer to produce, actually cost a little less. The benefits of experience ....
You can see from my careful thumb placement the width of the spine, 1.8cm to be precise. Head of Words is 96,000 words and this paperback edition came to 308 pages. With these dimensions I am about to sell it for $7.99 and make roughly a dollar profit.
This is the front. I used Createspace's standard 6 x 9 inch format. I've experimented with different sizes but the price is calculated on page length regardless of height so obviously the less pages there are the cheaper you can price it and/or the more profit you can make. My book The Tube Riders, for example, is 600 pages long, and priced at $17.99. I make about 20 cents profit so its hardly worth thinking about.
This is inside the front cover. For these two books I upgraded on the formatting and hired Suzie O'Connell from Welman Creek Books, who was recommended by a friend. For $50 she added some interesting detail to the chapter headings and the front inside cover, taking the original design of the outer cover and using the same style. I was very pleased and now it looks really professional. Createspace's in-house charges are very expensive but with a little shopping around you get get a really good deal. I don't sell many paperbacks but they're now in place hopefully forever.
Some of the internal detail that Suzie did for me, including interesting chapter headings and dropped capitals at the start of the first line.
Here's a little of the inside of The Man Who Built the World, with some little graphics and the header at the top. For these books the font is Garamond size 11. In my previous post I was using Times New Roman, which I have since discovered is designed for newspaper columns. Apparently two of the most popular fonts to use for books are Garamond and Baskerville. I actually found that with a long book, Garamond came in at quite a bit shorter than Times New Roman. The Tube Riders shrank from 624 pages to 584, meaning, of course, that I could lower the price a little.
Anyway, I hope these pictures are helpful. As always, any comments or questions are welcome. If you want to make sure you get my future blogs then please sign up for the mailing list on the top right.
Chris Ward
20th September 2013
The book featured on my original blog here was done at a cost of $120 (for the rights to use the photo, but everything was my own work. Interestingly enough, the books you will see in the pictures below, whole taking longer to produce, actually cost a little less. The benefits of experience ....
Here's my stack of paperbacks which I bought for some Goodreads giveaways. The covers for both books were done by Su Halfwerk at Novel Prevue and cost $60 each for the ebook covers and the paperback covers together. I have worked with Su several times now and would thoroughly recommend her. She is very reasonably priced, fast, and loves the challenge of wading through my endless requests to get the cover I want. Each cover she does for me is better than the last and I look forward to working with her again in the future.
You can see from my careful thumb placement the width of the spine, 1.8cm to be precise. Head of Words is 96,000 words and this paperback edition came to 308 pages. With these dimensions I am about to sell it for $7.99 and make roughly a dollar profit.
This is the front. I used Createspace's standard 6 x 9 inch format. I've experimented with different sizes but the price is calculated on page length regardless of height so obviously the less pages there are the cheaper you can price it and/or the more profit you can make. My book The Tube Riders, for example, is 600 pages long, and priced at $17.99. I make about 20 cents profit so its hardly worth thinking about.
This is inside the front cover. For these two books I upgraded on the formatting and hired Suzie O'Connell from Welman Creek Books, who was recommended by a friend. For $50 she added some interesting detail to the chapter headings and the front inside cover, taking the original design of the outer cover and using the same style. I was very pleased and now it looks really professional. Createspace's in-house charges are very expensive but with a little shopping around you get get a really good deal. I don't sell many paperbacks but they're now in place hopefully forever.
Some of the internal detail that Suzie did for me, including interesting chapter headings and dropped capitals at the start of the first line.
Here's a little of the inside of The Man Who Built the World, with some little graphics and the header at the top. For these books the font is Garamond size 11. In my previous post I was using Times New Roman, which I have since discovered is designed for newspaper columns. Apparently two of the most popular fonts to use for books are Garamond and Baskerville. I actually found that with a long book, Garamond came in at quite a bit shorter than Times New Roman. The Tube Riders shrank from 624 pages to 584, meaning, of course, that I could lower the price a little.
Anyway, I hope these pictures are helpful. As always, any comments or questions are welcome. If you want to make sure you get my future blogs then please sign up for the mailing list on the top right.
Chris Ward
20th September 2013
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Talent vs Hard Work
It's been a while since I last posted so apologies for that. I've been hard at work on the last book in my Tube Riders series and I've not had much time for anything else (except work and feeding the cat).
This morning, over breakfast, I was reading a bit of The Angel's Game by Carlos Luiz Zafon (an excellent writer), and I came to an interesting passage which I think pretty much summed up value (or lack of it) of talent on its own.
In the book, you have the main character, a writer, David Martin, explaining a few things to Isabella, a teenager, whom supposedly has talent and wants to be his assistant in exchange for him mentoring her as a writer. Just after David has finished reading twenty pages of her manuscript, Isabella is keen to know if she has talent. This is what David says to her:
"I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step in achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete's strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve with it you need to need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon."
What he is saying is that it doesn't matter how talented you are, if you don't put in the hard work you won't get anywhere with it. Just like every other writer, I often come into contact with people who tell me they can write, some who even look down their nose at me for writing my supposedly simple genre fiction (most of whom have never actually read any of it, I might add). The fact is, though, is that I'm writing, publishing and selling, and they're not. The world is ram-packed with so-called writers lauding their apparent talent, but talent is only a tiny part of being successful. The way to become a successful writer (or artist, or sportsman, or pretty much anything else) is simple:
Bust your balls.
That's it. Work your ass off and you'll get there. We all have different definitions of success. For some it might be finishing a single story. For others it might be selling a single story to some unknown ezine or small press. For others it'll be selling it to a professional magazine or to a major traditional publisher. Others consider success to be self-publishing a novel making hundreds of dollars on Amazon. For me, being a full time writer is my baseline for success. I have a decent enough job which pays my rent and allows me a couple of vacations a year, but to be a full time writer I would need to be earning a minimum of $2000 a month, a sum I've still not made in total in 18 months (although I'm close ;-) ). Earning that sum per month would allow me to survive full time and allow me to feel fully justified in telling all the doubters to shove their heads up their doubting asses. However, I know writers who make that sum PER DAY and don't feel like they've achieved any real level of success. It's all down to you.
What is certain though, is that you won't achieve anything with just talent. You can have all the talent in the world but if you don't get your ass on a seat and churn out some words day after day AFTER DAY, and then spend day after day after day trying to sell and promote those words, your chance of success is the same as finding a diamond in a garbage dump.
That is all. Work hard and don't give up.
Back to the WIP ...
Chris Ward
15th August 2013
This morning, over breakfast, I was reading a bit of The Angel's Game by Carlos Luiz Zafon (an excellent writer), and I came to an interesting passage which I think pretty much summed up value (or lack of it) of talent on its own.
In the book, you have the main character, a writer, David Martin, explaining a few things to Isabella, a teenager, whom supposedly has talent and wants to be his assistant in exchange for him mentoring her as a writer. Just after David has finished reading twenty pages of her manuscript, Isabella is keen to know if she has talent. This is what David says to her:
"I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step in achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete's strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve with it you need to need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon."
What he is saying is that it doesn't matter how talented you are, if you don't put in the hard work you won't get anywhere with it. Just like every other writer, I often come into contact with people who tell me they can write, some who even look down their nose at me for writing my supposedly simple genre fiction (most of whom have never actually read any of it, I might add). The fact is, though, is that I'm writing, publishing and selling, and they're not. The world is ram-packed with so-called writers lauding their apparent talent, but talent is only a tiny part of being successful. The way to become a successful writer (or artist, or sportsman, or pretty much anything else) is simple:
Bust your balls.
That's it. Work your ass off and you'll get there. We all have different definitions of success. For some it might be finishing a single story. For others it might be selling a single story to some unknown ezine or small press. For others it'll be selling it to a professional magazine or to a major traditional publisher. Others consider success to be self-publishing a novel making hundreds of dollars on Amazon. For me, being a full time writer is my baseline for success. I have a decent enough job which pays my rent and allows me a couple of vacations a year, but to be a full time writer I would need to be earning a minimum of $2000 a month, a sum I've still not made in total in 18 months (although I'm close ;-) ). Earning that sum per month would allow me to survive full time and allow me to feel fully justified in telling all the doubters to shove their heads up their doubting asses. However, I know writers who make that sum PER DAY and don't feel like they've achieved any real level of success. It's all down to you.
What is certain though, is that you won't achieve anything with just talent. You can have all the talent in the world but if you don't get your ass on a seat and churn out some words day after day AFTER DAY, and then spend day after day after day trying to sell and promote those words, your chance of success is the same as finding a diamond in a garbage dump.
That is all. Work hard and don't give up.
Back to the WIP ...
Chris Ward
15th August 2013
Friday, 5 July 2013
Don't cut corners
Most people are quite happy to throw their spare cash wantonly on whatever whim they feel like, be it clothes, beers, cigarettes, eating out, entertainment ... yet for some reason, when it comes to self-publishing, suddenly people "can't afford" editing, proofreading, decent cover design, formatting ... can't afford to pay to advertise, can't afford to do pretty much anything, in other words.
From reading many writers forums you'd be forgiven for believing that all self-published writers are poverty-stricken, bridge dwellers who have to make daily decisions between which they need most, coffee or cigarettes.
Of course some might be one step away from the dole queue, but most aren't. Most have exactly the same amount of disposable income as anyone else, but when it comes to putting money into their books there seems to be an unnatural aversion to it.
Why?
Perhaps because it is possible to self-publish for free, many writers think that spending money on it is money wasted. Perhaps they don't feel their work is deserving of it. Or perhaps, like I did when I started out, they feel that they don't need to. They think they're good enough to carry it all by themselves.
A few days ago I got this review -
Not a bad story, shame about lack of a definitive ending to allow the sequals.
Does need a bit of proofing with a few words missing (but you can tell what is implied) and a few plurals missing their S.
Don't get me started on the comment - there's no more a cliffhanger in that book than there is in Star Wars, and I've never seen anyone complain about that. Nor that the review was posted by an indie author who managed to spell the world "sequel" wrong, but whatever. What's important is that if you cut corners in the beginning it will come back to haunt you.
I'm an English teacher by profession. I'm halfway through a MSc in Linguistics. I felt I could catch anything, felt I didn't need anyone to help me.
Wrong.
Tube Riders, the book in question, has since had a paid professional edit and I'm quite confident there are none of the errors the reviewer talks about. However, since I was stupid enough to go the Amazon KDP Select free promos route for a while (against my better judgement and something that, for novels at least, I now regret) there are some 8000 copies of Tube Riders out there in various states of repair.
Freebie hunters are notorious for not reading the books they horde, but at any point such a review could jump up and bite me. And while genuine readers rarely mention actually textual errors, indie author "reviewers", the bane of new writers everywhere, take an almost sadistic pride in pointing out the errors of their fellow writers.
It doesn't matter that Tube Riders is now in good shape. That review is up there and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not about to start adding "newly corrected version" at the top of my book listings page because there's nothing that screams "amateur!" louder.
However, if I'd been wise enough not to trust myself in the first place and got a paid edit of Tube Riders done before I first published it, I wouldn't be in this position.
So, think about it before you put your masterpiece out into the world for public criticism. You don't have to pay a fortune - the edit for Tube Riders cost me about $200 - but getting a professional pair of eyes to look over it can make all the difference. I might never know how many readers have been turned off by reading such reviews about Tube Riders, but I do know is that it would have been easy to avoid getting those reviews in the first place.
Don't cut corners.
Chris Ward
July 5th 2013
From reading many writers forums you'd be forgiven for believing that all self-published writers are poverty-stricken, bridge dwellers who have to make daily decisions between which they need most, coffee or cigarettes.
Of course some might be one step away from the dole queue, but most aren't. Most have exactly the same amount of disposable income as anyone else, but when it comes to putting money into their books there seems to be an unnatural aversion to it.
Why?
Perhaps because it is possible to self-publish for free, many writers think that spending money on it is money wasted. Perhaps they don't feel their work is deserving of it. Or perhaps, like I did when I started out, they feel that they don't need to. They think they're good enough to carry it all by themselves.
A few days ago I got this review -
Not a bad story, shame about lack of a definitive ending to allow the sequals.
Does need a bit of proofing with a few words missing (but you can tell what is implied) and a few plurals missing their S.
Don't get me started on the comment - there's no more a cliffhanger in that book than there is in Star Wars, and I've never seen anyone complain about that. Nor that the review was posted by an indie author who managed to spell the world "sequel" wrong, but whatever. What's important is that if you cut corners in the beginning it will come back to haunt you.
I'm an English teacher by profession. I'm halfway through a MSc in Linguistics. I felt I could catch anything, felt I didn't need anyone to help me.
Wrong.
Tube Riders, the book in question, has since had a paid professional edit and I'm quite confident there are none of the errors the reviewer talks about. However, since I was stupid enough to go the Amazon KDP Select free promos route for a while (against my better judgement and something that, for novels at least, I now regret) there are some 8000 copies of Tube Riders out there in various states of repair.
Freebie hunters are notorious for not reading the books they horde, but at any point such a review could jump up and bite me. And while genuine readers rarely mention actually textual errors, indie author "reviewers", the bane of new writers everywhere, take an almost sadistic pride in pointing out the errors of their fellow writers.
It doesn't matter that Tube Riders is now in good shape. That review is up there and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not about to start adding "newly corrected version" at the top of my book listings page because there's nothing that screams "amateur!" louder.
However, if I'd been wise enough not to trust myself in the first place and got a paid edit of Tube Riders done before I first published it, I wouldn't be in this position.
So, think about it before you put your masterpiece out into the world for public criticism. You don't have to pay a fortune - the edit for Tube Riders cost me about $200 - but getting a professional pair of eyes to look over it can make all the difference. I might never know how many readers have been turned off by reading such reviews about Tube Riders, but I do know is that it would have been easy to avoid getting those reviews in the first place.
Don't cut corners.
Chris Ward
July 5th 2013
Sunday, 23 June 2013
How to set up a Facebook author page
It is absolutely essential for all indie authors to have some kind of an online media presence. The easiest place to start, of course, is Facebook. If you're like me, pretty much everyone you know will have a Facebook page, and it is on Facebook that you'll be able to find a lot of new fans. It's also a good, user-friendly place for them to find and interact with you.
However, unless your current Facebook friends have the patience of saints (my don't - drunken confessions have informed me that I'm on quite a few blocked lists ...!) then you'll want to set up a separate page for your author name, your series, or even a major character. While your friends and family might be a good place to start in the hunt for fans and sales, they'll quickly get bored of hearing about it ... All. The. Time. Creating a separate Facebook page allows real fans to come to you without you resorting to annoying those close to you with endless posts about your books.
And it's easy as pie to do. Here I'll demonstrate while setting up a Facebook page for my latest alter-ego, village cricket short story writer, Michael White.
First of all, log in to Facebook and then go to this link to select the type of page you want to set up.
You can choose whatever type you want but for an author it's probably best to go with public figure.
Click on Choose a Category and you'll see Author in the drop down menu.
Now, give your page a name (I went with the wonderfully clunky Michael White Cricket Fiction Writer, check the terms box and then click Get Started.
Next you come to the screen below which asks for a few details.
Here you also have the option to add a external blog, website or Twitter account if you have one. For the question at the bottom I check "no" because Michael White is a pen name. I think this box is for fan sites for celebrities, but if you are the person in question then it's perfectly okay to check "yes".
When you're done, click Save Info.
You'll come to this page.
You can choose whether to add a profile picture now or later. I added a stock photo of a cricket pitch which I bought for the covers of Michael White's short stories. You can change your profile pic anytime, though. When you're done, click Save Photo or Skip to go to the next page.
The next screen gives you the option to choose the Facebook address for your page. This is the link you can use in your books to send people to your Facebook page.
I went with the one they suggested. When you're happy with it, click Set Address.
You'll be taken to your completed page.
Facebook will automatically highlight the Like button so you can be the first person to like your page, and then the area where you can invite your friends to like it.
You're finished! Now all you have to do is add stuff to your page, share it to get Likes and start posting. If you're ready for something a little more complicated, you can set up an Amazon Store for your books in the toolbar. Click here for my guide to doing it.
See, told you it was easy. Enjoy!
Any questions or comments are welcome in the comments section below. And if anyone wants to give Michael White's brand new page some love, here's the link.
Chris Ward
June 23rd 2013
However, unless your current Facebook friends have the patience of saints (my don't - drunken confessions have informed me that I'm on quite a few blocked lists ...!) then you'll want to set up a separate page for your author name, your series, or even a major character. While your friends and family might be a good place to start in the hunt for fans and sales, they'll quickly get bored of hearing about it ... All. The. Time. Creating a separate Facebook page allows real fans to come to you without you resorting to annoying those close to you with endless posts about your books.
And it's easy as pie to do. Here I'll demonstrate while setting up a Facebook page for my latest alter-ego, village cricket short story writer, Michael White.
First of all, log in to Facebook and then go to this link to select the type of page you want to set up.
You can choose whatever type you want but for an author it's probably best to go with public figure.
When you're done, click Save Info.
You'll come to this page.
You can choose whether to add a profile picture now or later. I added a stock photo of a cricket pitch which I bought for the covers of Michael White's short stories. You can change your profile pic anytime, though. When you're done, click Save Photo or Skip to go to the next page.
The next screen gives you the option to choose the Facebook address for your page. This is the link you can use in your books to send people to your Facebook page.
You'll be taken to your completed page.
Facebook will automatically highlight the Like button so you can be the first person to like your page, and then the area where you can invite your friends to like it.
You're finished! Now all you have to do is add stuff to your page, share it to get Likes and start posting. If you're ready for something a little more complicated, you can set up an Amazon Store for your books in the toolbar. Click here for my guide to doing it.
See, told you it was easy. Enjoy!
Any questions or comments are welcome in the comments section below. And if anyone wants to give Michael White's brand new page some love, here's the link.
Chris Ward
June 23rd 2013
Saturday, 22 June 2013
On maintaining discipline
One year ago, on June 20th to be precise, I took the decision to take my potential career by the horns and pull my writing finger out and use it for what it's for - writing.
From the age of 18 to the age of 33 (as I was then) I had written eight manuscripts, about 80 short stories, and dozens of half-finished novels in a variety of genres. Some of the canned pieces were 100,000 words in length.
When I started self-publishing in January 2012 I immediately saw it as a potential career, providing I took it seriously and did what needed to be done to make my dream a reality.
18 months down the line I'm still not a professional writer but I sell almost every day and have made 100 plus sales a month for six months in a row, a far cry from the 20 sales (if I was lucky) I was making per month this time last year.
Part of that was due to understanding that I needed to increase my output. You can't sell books that you haven't written.
So I pulled my finger out. I deleted the internet connection from the computer I was using to write on, and set up a spreadsheet to keep a tab of my progress.
The result -
370,150 new words, at an average of 1014 per day, or 1234 pages (what a lovely number) in twelve months. At 80,000 words for an average thriller novel that's the equivalent of four and a half novels, or more than one every quarter.
Most traditionally published novelists put out a book every year or so. In the ebook world you are quickly forgotten if you don't keep up the production schedule and continue to build and grow your audience. As a good writing friend of mine says, you're either shrinking or growing.
Just to put things in perspective, I'm not a full time writer. I have a day job, and I also work part time. Some days I leave the house at 7.30 a.m. and get home at 10 p.m. I'm also married, play in a rock band and take part in various community events. I'm not exactly overburdened with free time.
Yet I still managed to write more than four novels in a year. How?
Sacrifices.
I don't watch TV. TV is rot for the soul. I hate it and the fact that it exists purely to fill bored, tired minds with junk between work and sleep. So that was easy to give up.
The other thing I cut back on was my social life. I still go out on occasion, but I used to go out every weekend. The fact was, that time I was sitting in a pub shooting the shit was time I could spend writing. I also cut back on a lot of hobbies. I used to do loads of stuff - climbing mountains, snowboarding, playing cricket. I still do some (because what is writing without life?) but I cut back so I could spend more time on something that I hope will be my career. In ideal circumstances, in a couple of years I'll be able to quit my day job and take up all my hobbies again. That would certainly be worth the sacrifice.
So, in short, what I'm trying to say with this, is that if you have genuine aspirations to be a writer, then you have to get disciplined. Stop expecting to sell tons and tons within a few days of release. It DOES happen, but it HARDLY EVER happens. Ideally, don't expect to sell a single copy for the first three years, then bust your gut getting as many high quality books out as possible. In the long run it'll be worth it.
That's all for now. More instructional stuff coming soon!
Chris Ward
June 22nd 2013
From the age of 18 to the age of 33 (as I was then) I had written eight manuscripts, about 80 short stories, and dozens of half-finished novels in a variety of genres. Some of the canned pieces were 100,000 words in length.
When I started self-publishing in January 2012 I immediately saw it as a potential career, providing I took it seriously and did what needed to be done to make my dream a reality.
18 months down the line I'm still not a professional writer but I sell almost every day and have made 100 plus sales a month for six months in a row, a far cry from the 20 sales (if I was lucky) I was making per month this time last year.
Part of that was due to understanding that I needed to increase my output. You can't sell books that you haven't written.
So I pulled my finger out. I deleted the internet connection from the computer I was using to write on, and set up a spreadsheet to keep a tab of my progress.
The result -
370,150 new words, at an average of 1014 per day, or 1234 pages (what a lovely number) in twelve months. At 80,000 words for an average thriller novel that's the equivalent of four and a half novels, or more than one every quarter.
Most traditionally published novelists put out a book every year or so. In the ebook world you are quickly forgotten if you don't keep up the production schedule and continue to build and grow your audience. As a good writing friend of mine says, you're either shrinking or growing.
Just to put things in perspective, I'm not a full time writer. I have a day job, and I also work part time. Some days I leave the house at 7.30 a.m. and get home at 10 p.m. I'm also married, play in a rock band and take part in various community events. I'm not exactly overburdened with free time.
Yet I still managed to write more than four novels in a year. How?
Sacrifices.
I don't watch TV. TV is rot for the soul. I hate it and the fact that it exists purely to fill bored, tired minds with junk between work and sleep. So that was easy to give up.
The other thing I cut back on was my social life. I still go out on occasion, but I used to go out every weekend. The fact was, that time I was sitting in a pub shooting the shit was time I could spend writing. I also cut back on a lot of hobbies. I used to do loads of stuff - climbing mountains, snowboarding, playing cricket. I still do some (because what is writing without life?) but I cut back so I could spend more time on something that I hope will be my career. In ideal circumstances, in a couple of years I'll be able to quit my day job and take up all my hobbies again. That would certainly be worth the sacrifice.
So, in short, what I'm trying to say with this, is that if you have genuine aspirations to be a writer, then you have to get disciplined. Stop expecting to sell tons and tons within a few days of release. It DOES happen, but it HARDLY EVER happens. Ideally, don't expect to sell a single copy for the first three years, then bust your gut getting as many high quality books out as possible. In the long run it'll be worth it.
That's all for now. More instructional stuff coming soon!
Chris Ward
June 22nd 2013
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