Become a Successful Indie Author
By Craig Martelle
Copyright © 2018 Craig Martelle
All rights reserved.
Editing services provided by Mia Darien – miadarien.com
Cover by James Osiris Baldwin - http://jamesosiris.com/
Formatting (both eBook and paperback) by James Osiris Baldwin
Illustrations done in Canva.
This is a book on writing books. If that wasn't your desire in buying this eBook, then please return it within seven days for a full refund from Amazon.
Table of Contents
Overview
Foreword by Michael Anderle
Foreword by Kevin McLaughlin
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Bibliography
Appendix A – Acronyms used in Become a Successful Indie Author
Appendix B – Synonyms for Said, Yell, & Move
Appendix C – Notes on Conference Planning
Author Notes
Overview
1. Writing your book – aka, telling the story
Great first line, first paragraph, first page
Testing a Minimum Viable Product
Preparing to Write
Writing the Story
Getting Feedback
Discipline
Finish It
Detail tracking (story dictionary)
2. Creating your Brand (your persona)
What is your brand?
Building Your Email List
Newsletter
Other ways to have people follow you
Selling Books at a Convention
Pen Name
3. The business-side of being an author
Defining Success
Where does the data come from?
Expenses and Revenue
Organizing your business so you have a place to put that revenue and deduct those expenses
Tracking Data
Organizing your business is about managing risk
SWOT Analysis of Your Business
Sphere of Control - Sphere of Influence
Representative Business Structure by Joe Solari
Managing Your Taxes
Taxes
Copyright & Keeping Your Books Safe
4. Publishing on Amazon
Launch Checklist
Cover Art
Title
Keywords
Blurb
Categories
Age & Grade
Digital Rights Management
Upload your eBook
Other Upload Issues
Launch Pricing
Resources for going wide (on all platforms, versus Amazon exclusive)
Release Schedule
Serials and an 18-Day Release Schedule
5. Building a following
Biggest Bang for the Buck
Snippets, Blogs, and Social Media – Oh my!
How do you build a following?
Newsletter Cross Promotion
New Release Notification
Getting Feedback
Trolls
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
7. Marketing
Return on Investment
Margin
Amazon Ads
Facebook Ads
BookBub Ads
8. Random Stuff, Other Words and Definitions
Author Rank
Collaborating
Bestseller Lists
Conventions & Professional Organizations
Random Rants
Bibliography
Appendix A – Acronyms Used in this Book
Appendix B – Synonyms for Said, Yell, & Move
Appendix C – Notes on Conference Planning
Author Notes
Foreword by Michael Anderle
A long time ago, I was a computer programmer. In the late 90’s there were a set of books (I want) to say were called “1001 Tips for …”.
I loved these books! Why? Because they were laid out in such a way that I could quickly find out if my questions were answered inside the books themselves. Mind you, this was before the internet when you could just Google an answer.
The books, unfortunately, didn’t make it much longer once the Internet became common place and I really regret that.
Not that I regret not having a huge book of paper, but rather I regret losing them because the layout was so important to my early work success and I can point to those books, those questions, and the answers.
Did I have a printing problem? Go to chapter 10 on Printing. A GUI question? That was chapter 3 and so on.
It didn’t matter that ten minutes before, I didn’t know how to handle the printing problem. What mattered was I knew how to find out the answer and how to get the answer fast.
All of the information inside of the book can be found ‘out there’ somewhere. However, it is Craig’s experience in bringing together the right information, organized in the right way, with personal clarity and examples from his experience that makes this book worth picking up.
Whether you are a new Indie Publisher or have published a few books, there is good information inside these pages.
Items we all forget, from time to time.
Mistakes made you will want to skip, so learn from those of us who have made them in the first place.
I’ve been blessed to have benefited from Craig’s business acumen (which he spent decades learning) inside my company LMBPN Publishing for free.
(Because I can be a cheap bastard like that. All I owe him is a beer, and since we see each other so infrequently, he rarely remembers and even if he does, a few beers is WAY cheaper than his consulting rate so I come out ahead anyway.)
Take a few minutes to review the questions he answers in the front of this book. See if any of them look like a question you already have, or believe you might want to know. If you, like me, appreciate someone collating the knowledge and save you time and energy looking it up then next time you see him, buy him a beer for me, would you?
It will take another beer off the tab I owe him.
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Foreword by Kevin McLaughlin
Step 1: Imagine a Venn diagram, with two circles. One circle is the things that people like to read. The other circle is the things you like to write. Where they overlap? Write that.
Step 2: When picking your genre, be prepared to write at LEAST six books in that specific sub-genre before moving on. If you move on that early, move to a closely related genre. For example, writing six space opera books and moving to military SF is fine. Moving from SO to epic fantasy is likely going to damage your brand and slow your growth. There are tons of exceptions to this, authors who have crossed genres and killed it anyway. They did that in spite of the cross-genre work. You maximize your success by building a brand within a single type of book. Expand later, after you have a dozen or more books out.
Step 3: Write a great story that people want to read. To do this, you need a deep understanding of plot structure—or you need to get very lucky. Study structure and form. Understand the Hero's Journey. Read McKee and "Save the Cat" and Libbie Hawker and every other major type of plotting an
d structure tool. Study them, especially the renowned ones that have stood the test of time. YES, even if you are a "pantser." In fact, it's even MORE crucial that pantsers grok plot and structure, since they're flying by the seat of their pants and need an intuitive understanding of those things.
Step 4: Get a great, GENRE-SPECIFIC cover for the book. The primary thing every cover must do is tell any prospective reader precisely what sort of book this is. Ideally, it should look a lot like bestselling books in your sub-sub-sub-genre. You want a cover that tells the readers immediately what they are getting, with no questions or doubts.
Step 5: Publish. Then market. Your job as publisher is to first put out a top quality product: well-edited, however you make that happen, with a great cover and good blurb. Then it's to get eyes on that product. That's all the book is, once you upload it. It is a product that you must show to potential consumers to get them to buy it. Facebook ads, AMS ads, Twitter ads, Adsense, and anything else you can think of. Drive readers to that book page in enough numbers, with good enough targeting, and you will move copies.
Step 6: While you're marketing, be writing. Same genre. Same series. Get more books out. What I am seeing today is four books a year is the bare minimum to have a decent shot at financial/career success. Less than that and you're losing momentum too fast. The good news? Four books at 75k words each is only about 800 words per day. You can pound that out on lunch breaks, if you want this badly enough. If you don't want it badly enough, you won't do the work and it won't happen.
The question will usually come down to this one: how hungry are you?
The people who work the hardest are generally the ones who are succeeding the most. They're not always the best writers. Nor are they always the best marketers or publishers. But over time, the simple application of effort has a multiplicative impact on one's march toward success.
More insight here from Hugh Howey - http://www.hughhowey.com/writing-insights-part-one-becoming-a-writer/
Introduction
Who am I to give advice on being a successful independently-published author (indie)? I have more than two million words in publication. Here are the covers of some of my books. I write every day. I publish. I market. I run my business, and I make good money at it. Hopefully, this book will put some of your fears to rest and get you on track toward the next level as a professional author.
Why publish your books yourself? For the same reason most small businesses start—you have an idea and are the best one to make it a reality. That idea is a story, and you have to write it, then publish it, and then sell it. And then write another one.
Daunting? Maybe.
Easy? Definitely not.
Doable? Eminently.
We publish independently because we get a much higher royalty share, we have complete control over our work, we interact directly with our readership, and so much more. The drawback is that you have to do it all yourself—creativity, production, marketing, and accounting. But indies are betting on themselves, just like any other small business. We stand up and shout, “I got this!” Then we knuckle down and do the hard work where we and we alone are responsible for our success.
Will this book guarantee that you’ll be the next seven-figure author? Absolutely not. But it will show you that if you work hard at the right things, it may not be as far away as you think. Make your hard work work for you.
This book is meant to show you what’s possible, and that you’re not alone on this journey. Arming yourself with information is the best way to win the battle known as “Indie Publishing.”
You can do it. It takes work, but the mountain is not insurmountable.
JK Rowling made over one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) in book sales alone and estimates suggest that she reached only nine percent of the book reading public. Only nine percent is worth a billion dollars. She didn't get there because she was trying to get rich. She got there because she wrote great stories and then handled the business side of it.
What if you were able to tap 1/10,000th of what JK Rowling tapped?
Then you would be a $100,000 author. The average author makes less than $10,000 a year. But we refuse to be average, because we learn from others with readily available information that will help us get to that next level.
No matter where you are on your author journey, there’s always a new level you can reach.
Is this a how-to book? Kind of. As an indie, don’t trust anyone who speaks in absolutes. There are a lot of things that you should do, and inside this book, I’ll highlight those very clearly. This book is more like a smorgasbord—pick and choose what may work best for you. Tweak as you need and take it for a test drive. Remember—one size does not fit all.
The more you know about your business, the more time you can devote to what brought you here in the first place—your writing. I love to write. It’s my escape from everything else, but I also love the business side of things.
You’ll find that no early mistake can’t be overcome through adjustment and reengagement. Your first book doesn’t sell well. So what? Learn why, fix it, and get better for next time.
There are many different ways up the mountain, so do what works best for your business. I write pulp, but I take my craft seriously. Doing what keeps your readers most engaged is what you must to do to make money at your craft. You. This is your story and your business. Read as many success stories as you can, see what works for others, and build your plan on the details, not the results. Control what you can control and then do what you need to do. The results can only come from that.
Roll up your sleeves, because it’s time to get to work.
Chapter 1
Writing your book – aka, telling the story
Great First Line
Testing a Minimum Viable Product
Preparing to Write
Writing the Story
Getting Feedback
Discipline
Finish It
Detail Tracking (story dictionary)
Great First Line
Where do we start? With the first word.
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” The first two sentences of Dickens’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities.
It grips. It creates a dichotomy. You have to read on.
Everything you write is to get the reader to keep reading. From the first sentence to the next, they need to keep reading to find out what happens.
I bought a book on how to write better-converting emails. That should have been an author’s best friend, but what it was was seventy pages of “can’t believe that’s true? Read on!” It was a complete book of clickbait. That’s not what I’m talking about. Don’t try to put a cliffhanger at the end of each sentence, unless you do and it works. You want them to keep turning the page.
What you want to do is create characters that readers can relate to and a storyline that flows.
Scenery, spelling, good grammar. All those take a backseat to the story. Of course you should try to produce a completely error-free book, but you should ask the question: whose definition of error? That’s why they’re called typos, a minor miscue that is easily remedied once you know where it is. But when you have a story that pulls the reader in, they’ll keep reading, right through any typos.
Testing a Minimum Viable Product
When Michael Anderle—author of the mega-bestselling Kurtherian Gambit series—talks about a minimum viable product, he's talking about a story that keep readers turning the page. Getting beta readers on board early in the process is important to optimize your writing time. If three people who are mostly in your genre unanimously agree that they want to keep reading after they’ve seen the first three thousand (3000) words, then keep writing, and continue to write.
If they say that they wouldn't keep reading, then you have an issue that needs to be fixed. Your product may not be viable.
At that point, nothing can help you except fixing your product (your story). Rapid release, Facebook Ads, news
letter (NL) swaps—nothing will save your book. You need to write a good story, one that people want to keep reading. It can be in need of editing—that's okay, because you can get that done later before you hit publish—but rewriting a book in entirety that readers have panned is not just time-consuming, it's soul-crushing.
Getting out of the gates with your first book will almost always take longer than when you're more experienced, and it's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough. If you're paralyzed by fear and self-doubt, write those first words and make them killer. Then share. I think you'll find that there's a storyteller inside of you. Listen to the feedback, hit some singles, doubles, and then swing for the fence.
How do you find test readers? Ask other new authors struggling with their first book, swap and read. Ask readers in your genre. For me, Facebook was great to connect with fellow fans of Andre Norton, but be aware that their standard is Andre Norton. Striking up a conversation with these folks can lead to finding a few new test readers, but be patient. Cultivate that over time by finding other authors you like, favorite stories and the like.
Look at the book from a reader's perspective. Me personally? I care what readers in my genre think first and foremost because they are the ones paying for my books. That is the one hard and fast rule—you must find readers willing to buy your books. Otherwise, it's just a hobby, which is okay. But if you want to make money at this thing called self-publishing, then you need to find people who like what they see well enough to part with some of their cash.
Minimum viable product—a story that people want to keep reading. Period.
Preparing to Write
What do you do with a three-hour block of writing time? I suggest you read something from your genre for the first hour, a bunch of different passages from your genre. Get on the mailing lists—FreeBooksy, BookBub, ReadCheaply, BargainBooksy, and others. They send a daily email. You can get frontline, top-notch authors in your genre for free or $0.99. If you don’t read in your genre, how can you write in it? That’s my opinion. It helps to see what others are doing, if nothing else, to see what you can do better. If you are doing a mash-up between genres, read both. First and foremost, I believe authors are readers.
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