Become a Successful Indie Author

by Craig Martelle

  The real exposure comes when you get into the top 100 of your genre. Readers can then see you as Amazon shows your author rank as well as the ranks of those around you. If you aren't in the top 100 of any genre, no reader will ever know what your author rank is.

  How do you get there?

  Publish books that people are willing to pay for.

  People can see authors in the top 100 free as well as the top 100 paid. That is a marketing methodology because free books don't pay the bills, but free books could find you readers that can't put your books down. Are you writing those kinds of books? Do you hook them with that first sentence, that first page? The intro to your book is key and then you have to keep that momentum. World builders! Shine the flashlight on just what the readers need to know at that moment, draw them into the story, and then paint the world before their eyes.

  And they'll end up paying for your other books. That's how your author rank climbs. Because your marketing campaigns expose readers to books that they can't put down.

  Keep writing, keep improving, and keep doing what you have to in order to draw the readers in. If they aren't picking up book 2, then get your book to a developmental editor to see why. The feedback and what you do with it could help you become a household name.

  If you give your book away for free, a 10% read-through to book 2 is reasonable. For a paid book 1, 50% is reasonable. If you are below those numbers, then get a critical look at your writing. You may find that you are not aligned with the genre you are targeting. Or there may be something more significant impacting your book. Fix it and move on.

  Write that next book, because nothing sells the last book like the next one.

  On a technical note, for Amazon, if you are in Kindle Select—meaning your book is in the Kindle Unlimited program and exclusive to Amazon—then you will get credit for a sale and a borrow in the same way. The bad news is if someone borrows your book but doesn’t read it, you make no money. They need to borrow it, read it, and return it to get another one of your books.

  A rule of thumb is that the closer your book gets to the top of the charts, the steeper the climb. To get to a ranking of 10,000 to 20,000, you only need to sell about ten to fifteen books a day. To get from 10k to 1000, you need to sell about a hundred, maybe more. That’s your book rank. The highest that any of my books have gone is 105 and that was The Bad Company, a new military science fiction novel, first in a series, that sold nearly 1000 copies that first day. My author rank climbed to number 9 in science fiction and 280 overall.

  In order to stay consistently in the top 1000, I have one or two books in the top 1000 rank, maybe ten to fifteen ranked less than 10k, and then another twenty or thirty that are in the top 50k rank. Those aren’t eye-popping numbers, but they are the way the blue collar author approaches this business. Each new release generally jumps up to the 200 to 1000 rank and that keeps my author rank healthy.

  And that's how you build your author rank.

  The bottom line with author rank is that it is a general barometer of health. If you have a rank of less than one thousand and all your books are at full price, you are doing well. If your rank is based off a huge 99 cent promo, then maybe not so much. And rank doesn’t matter for visibility until you get into the top 100 overall.

  Although it’s nice to be in the top 20 of my category, it has been well over a year since I was out of the top 100 in science fiction authors. I like that. I’m always on the list and in good company. I know most of the authors around me on that list, whether at number fifty, or number five. And even better, they know me. I like the hell out of that and that keeps me hungry to stay at the top of my game. I can’t be putting out a book in the company of giants, can I? The readers think I am and they are buying my books and keeping me in the company of those science fiction authors whom I respect the most.

  Collaborating

  It’s been about eighteen months and nearly $300k in royalties since Michael Anderle and I published the first book in our co-written series, the Terry Henry Walton Chronicles.

  Michael built a readership that had a voracious appetite. He couldn't keep up with them, so looked to do a spin-off series. He picked Terry Henry Walton (THW) as a popular character with prime air-time in two of his books. And the stories had to fill a 150-year gap in time. He needed an author with a track record of writing post-apocalyptic novels, experience in the Marine Corps, and freakishly driven.

  The collaboration was born. I put my ego aside and learned a great deal from Michael about character development and telling a compelling story. His readers were both gracious and demanding. I learned much from them too.

  In the first six months, we published eight books with a total word count of 520,000 words, and five short stories totaling 10k words. I've paid my editor almost $3500 during that time. I do write full-time, so word count is one measure of that time. I also wrote a 90k book for one of my own series. In the year since, we’ve added almost another million words.

  Collaborating is a testament to delivering a product in a way that any small business would. We meshed and were able to deliver with a velocity that worked for our readership. I say ours, because the readers know that I'm the primary author of this series, and they are okay with that. They've grown accustomed to my style, which was a little different from Michael’s.

  I'd like to think that I'm a better version of me today because of this collaboration. The series would have died with number two had we not hooked the readers. That is what the minimally viable product is all about. We took the reader feedback and went on a journey with them. Our read-through is about 90% once we get them through Book 2. We study the numbers and do what's best to keep the series foremost for existing readers while running ads to get it in front of new readers.

  Success takes a great deal of work. Collaborating is one way to share the burden, but it still comes down to writing, learning, writing better, and then managing the business side. In the end, it's all worth it.

  What other ways can you collaborate? How many varieties of friendships are there? You can both write together, all the words, using an online environment like Google Docs. You could write one chapter back and forth. You write one, a partner writes one, then you dive back in and write one, and so on until the book is done. One person writes and the other punches it up, adding flavor and more.

  You can build a world and others can write within that world.

  You can create a world together. I know of one group that publishes under one pen name, but there are a bunch of them and they each write a book within their created universe. They release rapidly without any one person carrying an unequal burden.

  And always use a contract in all collaborative efforts. Look at including the following things:

  Names of collaborators

  Time frame of inclusion, including publishing dates, where, and for how long

  Derivative rights (what if someone wants to make a movie or line of toys?)

  What happens if one of the collaborators passes away?

  Royalties and payments

  Who owns the IP, such as the work in progress?

  What about cutting ties? How can you walk away from the contract?

  Remedies – what happens if one party defaults on the contract (and go to court is not a valid statement, because you don’t need a clause to challenge a contract in court. I’m talking automatic conversion of collaborative IP if payment isn’t made or something like that)

  Editorial revisions and moral rights (can the publisher edit your work to such an extent that it is no longer your work?)

  I’m not going to show a sample of one because once again, liability. Get a lawyer to review any contract to make sure you aren’t signing your life away. You need to account for a number of things in the contract. Make sure you know what you’re getting into.

  Bestseller Lists

  If you hit number one overall on Amazon’s free list or number one in any category during a free promotion, it doesn’t rate
any banners. The key word in bestseller is “sell.” If you hit number one in a category (one of over a thousand on Amazon), they may give you an orange tag that says “Bestseller.” Take a screen shot of that, because you are now an Amazon Bestseller. I put those in my folder with that book and move on. I have folders for each separate book as a sub-folder of each series.

  USA Today and Wall Street Journal use gross sales as their gauge of bestsellers and they list a bunch of books each week. They count the numbers from Monday through Sunday, retailers report on Monday or Tuesday, and the list posts Tuesday or Wednesday. If you hit one of those, congratulations!

  NY Times is an editorial effort. There was a lawsuit about that from a person who sold some 30,000 copies of his book in a single week. He didn’t make the list and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. NY Times won under the argument that the list is considered to be editorial in nature. Actual sales was irrelevant to what they posted. If you want to hit the NY Times list, you have that hurdle to cross in addition to a mass quantity of sales.

  Conventions & Professional Organizations

  There are a bunch out there and most have an annual fee attached, but it goes to a good cause.

  I was surprised to find that there was no single resource for conventions online. The best thing to do is search for those who hold some sort of annual or regional event. Try these groups.

  Professional Organizations / Groups NINC (Novelists Inc)

  RWA (Romance Writers’ Association)

  SFWA Nebula Conference (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America)

  MWA (Mystery Writers of America)

  HWA (Horror Writers of America)

  SoA (Society of Authors)

  NWU (National Writers Union)

  SCBWI (Society of Children’s Bookwriters and Illustrators)

  ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors)

  20Books (Vegas, Bali, Edinburgh – not for profit self-published author shows)

  MileHiCon (Denver)

  Norwescon (Seattle)

  DragonCon (Atlanta)

  Does this list seem anemic? It is, because it’s only a sample. Comic book conventions are huge, but how good do indies do at those shows? Not so well, I’ve heard, but your experience may be different. Make sure you are aligned with your readership and then find the conferences, conventions, and shows that fit.

  Craft shows where you practice writing or work on the craft specific to your genre are also completely different. Most of these are paid services and I don’t have firsthand knowledge from any of them, so I’m not going to post them here as I don’t want it perceived that I support one over another, because I simply don’t know. If you are looking at a paid service, do your due diligence. Research with past students and find out who has taken what they’ve learned and become successful. What are they teaching and to what extent?

  Yes, here I am charging you for this eBook and talking about what others are doing by charging you. I only put this book together because a number of new authors wanted a reference of my general conversations. They said they would pick out what would help them the best. That fits with my mantra that no one can tell you how to take your journey. It is yours alone to power through the climb, but you can find things to help you and pitfalls to avoid. The challenge is to keep climbing until you reach your personal goal, then define a new one and head for that.

  That’s what this book is all about. It’s not a step-by-step guide, even though I put “A Guide” on the cover. No one but you can determine which signposts will lead you to your destination.

  Random Rants from the 20Booksto50k Facebook Group

  When you have a gazillion authors in one place, sometimes they get a little rambunctious. As General George S. Patton, Jr. said, if you want them to remember it, give it to them dirty.

  LANGUAGE WARNING! The last bit of this chapter is salted with a few F-bombs and other things that you may not want to read. Skip past if you need to. The bibliography is a nice piece of gear for research and further professional development.

  I try not to go overboard and try not to swear too much in my daily life, but there are times when it gushes forth like water over the dam. Damn! Get that shit under control! Go outside, unfuck yourself, and then get back in here! What the hell?

  In any case, because people asked for these, here they are. Random rants…

  How do you maintain high quality and still publish quickly?

  Writing a book takes time. You have to get the words down, they need to be good words with pace and flow, good characters, a compelling plot. I can do roughly 1000 words an hour of that. A 60k word book takes 60 focused hours. I spend 70-80 hours a week in front of my computer, so getting 20 focused hours per week is eminently doable because I do this full-time.

  I can get 1500 words per hour during certain scenes, but I am best budgeting for 1000. With my new high-speed, low-drag, long-range, high-intensity, low-profile outlining technique I show below, I can get up to 1500 words per hour for almost any scene. I see my production increasing to crazy numbers.

  I write a lot and just like anything, I have gotten better with practice. Just like you can't run a marathon the first time you strap on the sneakers, you probably won't knock out a high-quality book a month when you first start out. My goal initially was 1000 WPD and I didn't always hit it. Now, it is a sorry day if I can't get 2500 words. And I write every single day. You can't edit a blank page and that big bucket of nothing gets deep quickly if you don't write.

  I listen to my editors. (I have a few.) I send partially completed manuscripts to my insiders for a sanity check. None of that happened overnight. It took a good year and a half of constant production and listening to the people who were trying to help (and who understood me). I also read my reviews looking for trends to help me address plot issues, although thanks to early checking by my editors, the general stories were sound and the characters were three-dimensional.

  I have an editor on salary, another two on standby, developmental editors ready to help, and a small team of insider beta readers. I thank them all profusely every chance I get, even if I don't agree with their input. They took the time to give me their opinions and I listen. They have the perspective of readers, so my assumption is if they have to ask, then I wrote it wrong.

  When I get edits back, I stop what I'm doing and address them—first editor, second editor, developmental editors, and finally, beta readers. Usually, that intervention takes from 15 minutes to an hour. Deal with it and move on.

  I do all this in a continuous cycle. After nearly 2.5 million words, I send my first draft to my editor as soon as I type the end. Then I start the next book. While writing one book, if I have a moment of exceptional clarity, I will put everything aside and outline the whole new story—this is my new thing—even if it is only a 1000 words of outline. A good story starts with a great hook and wraps up with an awesome (and happy, for my readers) ending. I make sure to capture those. I'll add some dialogue tidbits, some scenes, some interactions, a general flow, some people use the term beats, but those only happen in my head. And there you go. Imagine. Write. Repeat.

  The Danger of Moral Relativism - A Rant

  If you are trying to be someone other than yourself, I recommend you stop.

  Seriously. Fucking stop. How many words I write in a day is immaterial to how many you write in a day, which has no relation to whether they are good words or not. Only you can put the right number of good words on the paper each day.

  What other people do doesn't matter to what you can do.

  I post numbers and such, but only to show what's possible. You don't want to be me. I can't freaking breathe. Last night, I slept a few hours, got up for a couple, then grabbed another hour and a half of sleep. No one wants to live like that. I surely don't. I make the most of my time with what I have.

  Which is all anyone can do. How do you plan your work? How do you prepare your story? How do you grind out the words, even when it's only background stuff between
the good scenes? When it's done, how do you find people who will pay for it, like it, and then buy more of your stuff?

  That's what this group is about. It is a smorgasbord, not a horse race where you have to become a thoroughbred. None of us are thoroughbreds here. We're all mutts, scrappy and refusing to leave the track when someone else tells us that we're not good enough.

  It is your business. That doesn't mean someone won't tell you that your baby's ugly. We've all heard those words. Are they right? Many times they are, sometimes they aren't. No matter what, listen, and then adjust as only you can. Don't try to be someone else. If someone tells you to write more like James Patterson, then you'll be set.

  Bullshit. Write like you, taking good lessons in craft from those who are dominating your genre, but always write in your voice. It could change over time. That's okay. We evolve as writers. I thank the stars that after two million words published, I don't write like I used to. My average sentence length was eight words. Holy crap! I think I do much better now, but that was on me to change and determine if I wanted to change.

  No one else. Whether you publish one book a year or thirty, there are tips, hints, hacks, and best practices that can help you. It's a smorgasbord. Choose what's best for you and understand that sometimes, there are business consequences. You may hit it big with one book of poetry published once a year, but the odds are against it. By publishing often in a big market, I hedge my bet. If I wrote only one book a year, I doubt that I would make even $5k a year. That's the reality of my publishing business. But that's my business and the pressure to get out the next story is on me and me alone, but not because someone else is doing it, but because the fans want it.

  We all want fans and when you get them, you cradle them in a fleece-lined basket. I write for me and I write for my fans. My last book, published on Christmas Day, has been my best-received book, highest consistent ranking, and best-reviewed. I took six weeks to write it and get it out, because that worked for my situation. The fans waited for me, because I stayed in touch with them, shared that I had the flu.