FI/Writing Blog

[Spartan_Warrior]

I've always wanted to be (and have always been, albeit unpublished) a fiction writer--in fact, having time to write was my initial inspiration for retiring early. It wasn't until recently that I found the confidence to actually try it right now instead of waiting. It can only bolster my income and accelerate my date to FI.

I figured I'd start a blog to kill multiple birds with one stone: marketing for my fiction, tracking my progress toward FI, giving me accountability to force me to follow through on things, maybe generating some ad income (not that there are any ads yet), spreading the Good Gospel of frugal ERE ways, and hosting a forum for some friends and I to share writing.


FWIW: My first publication will be a set of sci-fi/horror short stories. PM me if interested.

Thanks!

(If self-promotion of this nature isn't acceptable, feel free to delete this. Don't want to step on any toes, but figured it's not all that different from a journal.)

[Chad]

Good for you! I plan on doing this myself, but I keep letting work and other things get in the way. I just ran through my yearly goals this week and I failed miserably on my writing goal. Completely my fault. The thriller I have set in India is not writing itself unfortunately.

I like the cover. I think it's rather good for your first go at it (not that I'm an expert by any means). It should show up nicely as a thumbnail with all that white.

I would be interested to hear how the rest of the process goes. Who copy edits, edits, and formats the book? You? Do you plan on using KDP? Etc.

Good luck.

[workathome]

What about a fictional novel about escaping work-prison and obtaining ERE?

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Chad: Thanks! Yeah, I've had trouble maintaining my focus on writing since I left college four years ago. I used to write a minimum of 2000 words a day, now I'm pleased if I write that much in a month. I'm hoping coming out with this whole project will give me some accountability. So far it's working--I've been busting my ass to get the story collection ready by next week.

I'm doing all the editing, copy-editing, and formatting myself--at least for now. Would like to make some money with this first before I invest anything into it by outsourcing things. I'm actually in the final stages of editing/revising now. Next will be formatting for Kindle, which I understand to be fairly easy using Word. With any spare time I have left before Monday, I might do some more interior illustrations.

And yeah, I'll be doing it via Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm thinking I'll make use of the Kindle Select program (I believe it's called that) so that the book will be available for free to Amazon Prime members, and will also be available for free for five days of my choosing as a promotional tool. I'll be sure to let you all know when one of the free days comes up so you can all grab it and become instant fans. :b

[WriterGuy]

A few words of advice, take them as you will. I write under a couple of pen names. Under my own name, I write fantasy and scifi. And then I also write erotica. I make more money with erotica and have more experience with it, so it may be that my advice does not apply to you but do consider it.

First of all, consider selling your individual stories separately, if they are at least 3000 words each, or consider bundling a couple together to get you above 3000 words. The more successful erotica authors tend to pump out 3000-3500 word stories based around a theme (or kink). Once they have three stories on the same theme, they bundle them together into another ebook, the only time spent is designing a new cover.

In Erotica, you can sell a 3000 word story and charge $2.99 and no one will blink an eye. Charge $6.99 for a bundle of three. This is what I do.

With your genre, you may find that people aren't willing to pay $2.99 for short stories, try 99 cents then I guess, though you would have to sell six times as many books to get the same royalty as $2.99 price point.

There is precedence for this in mainstream fiction and sci fi. Check out Dean Wesley Smith's blog, as well as his wife, Kathy Rusch. They do the same thing. In fact, Dean just finished up a challenge of publishing 100 short stories to Kindle and Paperback in one year.

Which brings me to point number 2...volume is your best marketing tool. Forget knocking yourself out with a blog...get busy writing and publishing more stories. The worst thing that could happen to you is that you a lot of bites on your first story collection and you have nothing else for anyone to buy. Better than you get almost no sales out of the gate and you get busy writing books, 2 -10. When book 10 hits...all of a sudden people are eating up your back catalog.

And finally, consider not doing KDP Select. Go hang out on kboards.com (the official Kindle boards). In the Book Bazaar there is a sub-forum called the Writer's Cafe. Most of the working writers report that the KDP free days have almost no impact on their sales when they free days end. Better to sign up for Barnes and Noble PUBIT, and either Smashwords or Draft2Digital as they will publish your book to the other platforms like Kobo, Itunes, etc.

Jacob only has one book, and it sells moderately well because he had an established platform first. You have no platform and one book. I reiterate that your best plan would be to start writing and publishing as many stories as fast as you possibly can, while still maintaining a good level of quality.

Good luck to you.

[riparian]

^ All good advice, tho I'm not sure I agree with the KDP part. Amazon has definitely been changing their algorithm and making KDP harder to benefit from tho. I wouldn't be suprised if it was not helpful at all within a few months.

WriterGuy, any tips on places to promote books with adult content?

Spartan Warrior, my advice is to get a copy editor. I can recommend a good one if you'd like. Your books are going to be ranked and amazon promoted based partly on your reviews, and people will leave bad reviews for bad editing. I'll check out your blog tomorrow when I get to faster Internet.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Thanks Riparian. Yes, I'd appreciate that recommendation. As I ramp up production, having a copy editor available could be very beneficial. For this book, I just read it until my eyes bled, then read it again in reverse. I actually worked as a "copy editor" (quality assurance) for two years, so in all honesty I probably need less help in this regard than a lot of people. If I start outsourcing anything, it might be the cover art just because I have less experience with illustrating. Of course, if the book starts getting dinged on reviews for editing mistakes, I'll change my tune pretty quickly!


Re: KDP Select, I used two of the free days over the weekend (sorry, forgot to mention it here) and got something like 460 downloads total, most of them from the UK, due to a random deal site picking it up. The story made it to #1 in the UK and #6 in the US in the top 100 Free in Sci-Fi Anthologies.

As of yesterday (one day after the promo) I had registered one additional sale, and I'm pretty sure that was someone I know. So, yeah. Whatever momentum may have been built from the promo doesn't seem to translate into sales. I'm just hoping for some (good) reviews out of it.


@WriterGuy, thanks for the excellent tips. Most of what you said is consistent with what I'm hearing elsewhere. I definitely understand that volume is the key, and I've already started on my next project, a suspense/thriller novella.

The blog is more of a hobby that happens to support the writing project. For instance, by publicly announcing the aforementioned release date, I'm far more likely to follow through with it.

I may put out the individual stories separately at some point--doesn't really cost me anything except the trouble of coming up with cover art. I just honestly didn't think they'd sell individually, even at $.99. To me $3 for 8 stories puts each one at a reasonable price.


How difficult is erotica to write and publish, honestly? I never thought it was something I could seriously write, but every place I look describes erotica (or its soft-core cousin, "romance") as the best-selling genre for ebooks (or any books?). And if it's more or less as simple as I envision it--writing down and directing my own little porn movies--it might even be pretty damn fun (and not very taxing). I'd be somewhat concerned about having my name attached to it though. How do you copywrite something under a pen-name? Or do you even bother?


Also, anyone have experience with the whole ISBN process? I'm looking into creating a physical paperback version of my first ebook using Amazon's print-on-demand publishing service CreateSpace, and I'm faced with essentially three choices: using their free ISBN (and being stuck with CreateSpace as the publisher of record), using their $10 "custom imprint" ISBN (which I understand to be more or less the same thing except I can come up with a fancy name like "Spartan Publishing" instead of "CreateSpace" to show up on the book bindings and product listings), or buying a block of 10 ISBNs from Bowker for $250 (and having the ability to publish the story through non-CreateSpace avenues without republishing under a new ISBN). I feel like the whole ISBN thing is a giant scam--and whenever I see a scam, my default reaction is to spend as little as possible. Is it really that big a deal to use the CreateSpace ISBN? I'm trying to invest as little money into this project as possible at first until/unless it starts generating some income. If it's only ever a hobby and not a successful side income, I'm relatively fine with that, but I'd rather it not cost me anything substantial in the process.

[prosaic]

How difficult is erotica to write and publish, honestly? I never thought it was something I could seriously write, but every place I look describes erotica (or its soft-core cousin, "romance") as the best-selling genre for ebooks (or any books?). And if it's more or less as simple as I envision it--writing down and directing my own little porn movies--it might even be pretty damn fun (and not very taxing). I'd be somewhat concerned about having my name attached to it though. How do you copywrite something under a pen-name? Or do you even bother?

I suspect I might "know" writerguy from one or more writing forums, because his advice is dead on and part of at least one community I'm in. I experimented with erotica (geez, that sounds worse than it is LOL) but found my niche in romance.

Some people will disparage erotica and claim it's "easy" to spit out 3K for a one-handed audience and make piles of money, and if it really were that easy, more people would do it. I topped out around $1800/month writing shorts (3-5K stories) and Amazon started applying what is called the "Adult" filter to LOADS of erotica stories, removing them from general search.

This killed a lot of erotica writers' incomes.

Is it fun to write a few and give it a try? Sure. Most people find that when they establish themselves in a niche (and this is true of ALL genre writing), they do better moneywise. So, instead of writing scattershot stories, pick one niche (hetero, alien, tentacle, threesomes, M/M gay, F/F gay, etc.). Connected stories can help -- build one world and write about different characters in that world in each separate story.

Same concept applies, btw, to all genre fiction: then a customer who buys 1 book and likes it is more likely to buy all your books. I'm on my 8th book and frequently get reader emails telling me they found X book and went and bought the other 7.

And you own the copyright now matter what, but registering a copyright for a short is $35 and not really worth it.

[riparian]

For covers: fiverr.com.

For your promo: it can take 24+ hrs to see results. Did you make hot new releases for your category? You need to give away more books to see good results usually. Do you have an email list yet? Set one up and get people to subscribe to hear about your next book. When you're emailing a couple thousand people free promos they'll do better. If KDP is still around.

[fips]

Spartan_Warrior,
Out of curiousity, how many words is your first publication of "Spoiled Lunch and Other Creepy Tales"?
And what's the price structure if you are publishing on Amazon? Did you set the price at $3.56? What share do you get, what percentage does Amazon keep?
Sorry, I'm very new to this ... but still like the idea of writing and publishing ...

[Chad]

I may put out the individual stories separately at some point--doesn't really cost me anything except the trouble of coming up with cover art. I just honestly didn't think they'd sell individually, even at $.99. To me $3 for 8 stories puts each one at a reasonable price.

The $3 price on Amazon gets you the 70% cut instead of the 30% cut the $.99 would get you. If I remember correctly. That's enough of a reason for me to go the bundled short-story route.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@prosaic: Thanks for the tips! I've heard before that it's best to establish a niche, but that's one thing I've always found difficult personally. I enjoy writing a lot of different stuff, from schlocky horror to speculative science fiction to mystery/detective fiction and on and on. My personal favorite genre is probably Game of Thrones-style "high/epic fantasy", but I'm not sure I'd be happy writing that forever. Could I just use a million different pen names?

I was going to say, I haven't even seen any erotica on Amazon and just assumed it wasn't permitted. So it's behind some sort of search filter? Now I'm going to have to hunt it down. You know. To examine the competition.

Definitely agree about keeping stories in the same "world". That's one of the things I like about Stephen King's body of work. A lot of them are in the same mythology.


@riparian: Thanks. You are right, I may have jumped the gun in declaring the promotion a failure. I've since registered 4 more sales in the UK, which I doubt would have happened without the free promotion and subsequent advertising by the hotUKdeals site. It also seems about consistent with what I've heard about the success rate of the free promo days--about 1% conversion rate from downloads into sales.

I'm not sure if it made the hot new releases category (how do I tell?) but it was #1 in the UK and seemed to top out around #6 in the US in the Top Free Sci-Fi Anthologies. (It's also in the Horror category, but Amazon, much to my frustration, evidently does not allow you to select any of the subcategories for Horror--such as Horror Anthologies--leaving me pitted against the likes of Stephen King novels and everything else in general Horror. )

I was thinking about doing an email list. Is that something you would advise starting before I have a fanbase? Cuz right now I wouldn't be emailing a "couple thousand" people anything... more like four or five people.

I feel like my efforts are best spent on producing as much content as possible at this stage. I've been almost deliberately ignoring the blog/website/internet marketing aspects. Trying to follow the Pareto rule so I don't get totally bogged down.


@fipsfrugal: Amazon lets you set the price at anything above $.99 USD (I think), but as Chad correctly points out, it's structured so that the royalties are paid out differently depending on the price: if you set it between 2.99 to 9.99, you receive a 70% royalty. Any other price, you receive 35%. It's Amazon's way of controlling the price.

I set the price at $2.99 USD. Since you're seeing a different price ($3.56?) I'm guessing you're using Amazon in a non-US country? Amazon apparently converts the price from USD into local currency. So, no, I didn't exactly set it at $3.56 myself, but that should be about equal to what I did set it at.

@Chad: Yeah, that was definitely a consideration. I'm reluctant to price anything outside the 70% royalty zone but that may be irrational on my part. If something sells like hotcakes in the lower price range but wouldn't sell at all in the 70% zone, you still come out ahead. Also, selling the individual stories at $.99 could lead to conversion sales of the full collection. (Assuming they like what they read. If not, I still got $.30 I wouldn't have gotten if the person would not have considered the higher priced collection!)

So, I'm becoming pretty convinced that publishing at least some of the stories individually is not a bad idea at all. I will have to look into the whole "Kindle Singles" thing. Not sure if it's different from the regular Kindle Publishing or not, but supposedly that's their venue for "single" short stories or novellas.

[prosaic]

YES YES YES on the mailing list. Biggest mistake I made was not starting one BEFORE my books really started to hit. All those missed readers...

My mailing list is now large enough that my new books are instantly pushed into the top 300 or so on Amazon when subscribers buy them. I plan to get to the point where I hit the top 100 automatically (which means doubling/tripling my subscriber level).

Mailchimp is easy and free until you have 2,000 subscribers.

Even if you start with 5, that's 5!

I, like you, enjoy writing across genres. I fumbled for 18 months and made a few hundred here and there doing that. When I got laser-focused and picked ONE niche and began producing a lot in that niche, building a mailing list, the big bucks rolled in.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Believe me, I know what you guys are saying. I am still juggling my desire to have fun/esteem* and my desire to make money.

*I'm realizing now that my dream in writing is not just about sales but about critical reception. I'd like to write things that are widely regarded as high quality. Preferably, things that have a shot at being remembered (favorably) long after I die. 50 Shades of Gray has made a lot of money, but would anyone legitimately argue for its literary merit?

I guess it's just that as long as I have a full-time job and a plan to retire in 8 years with that alone, the writing is still more of a fun hobby that happens to make some money than my main venue for retirement. So I'm not taking it as seriously as I might be if I had the "starting my own business" outlook. Maybe that's a psychological barrier I have to overcome.

My long-term plan is actually to focus on serialized novels of 100-150 pages a pop, in both the medieval high fantasy and post-apocalyptic/dystopian genres. In all seriousness, I envision these easily becoming 10, 15, even 20-book series if I stick to shorter books. One of them I have about 75% planned out already, the other about 25%, and they're long, detailed stories of the sort that's popular in these genres. (These are my "dream novels" I've been writing and rewriting and dreaming of publishing since forever.)

I'll then publish some one-off short stories, novellas, and even smaller series in between, where I will explore other genres. But mostly I plan to focus on those two genres with very long series of short novels.

I feel like this is a good compromise between following my dreams and following a sound, niche-friendly marketing strategy. What do you all think?

[prosaic]

I didn't realize you still have the f/t job. BIG difference in strategy, then. I think your plan is sound, with one bit of advice: if you're going for 150 pages, aim for 50K word count. When it comes time to promote, lots of places won't promote anything under that.

Though if you later bundle a bunch of 100-page/25K serials, you'll be fine.

I get the critical acclaim -- I have been nominated for Pushcarts and got into Breadloaf under my real name. My work now is, um...considerably more cotton candy than creme brulee, shall we say.

OTOH, I get daily emails from readers who share how much they love my books, and there's something to be said for that!

I write under a pen name, saving my real name for my future, more literary works.

[Chad]

So, how does one develop a mailing list before they are popular?

[Spartan_Warrior]

@prosaic: Yeah, ~50k was my word count aim per book, actually. I'll make that the minimum, then. I arrived at the 100-150 page range only because 108 pages seems to be the optimum page count for physical copies based on the royalty structure at CreateSpace. I generally like the sound of CreateSpace (and certainly prefer physical books over e-books myself) and would like to include it in my business model, if only I could solve the ISBN problem.

And yeah, the small serialized novels could then eventually be packaged together into a larger mega-novel of the typical 700-pages popular in fantasy, telling one (thematically and plot-linked) overarching story. The whole series would probably consist of three or four of these mega-novels. That's how I'm planning it, anyway.

Congrats on the fan and critical acclaim. I'm jealous.

[jacob]

Ahh, the ISBN problem.

It's not really a problem. My strategy was to use createspace's free ISBN for my first book(s). Then if I ever want to get serious and publish more I would get the ten-pack from Bowker ($300+) and republish the books with the new ISBN. It would probably require refiling for copyright (at copyright.gov) for each of them ($35+).

A few years back, the argument for getting your own ISBN was that it somewhat hid the fact that a book was selfpublished as that carried a stigma. Not so sure that the stigma is still as strong.

If you're publishing on kindle only, I don't think you need an ISBN. Amazon's ASIN will suffice. At least KDP doesn't(didn't?) require an ISBN.

[prosaic]

@chad -- you create the account and links to sign up. Then you publish your first book with a link in it, encouraging readers to sign up to find out about new releases, sales, etc.

The list should grow with each new book if your audience likes your work.

Before you're published, though, it's hard to grow an audience.

@jacob -- yes, the Createspace ISBN is fine for print. And now you can do a $10 option and instead of having Createspace listed as your publisher, you can use your own publishing company's name.

You don't need an ISBN for eBooks (though you *can* use them). On Amazon, you get an ASIN. You don't need an ISBN for Apple now, either, nor for Kobo. And hitting the USA Today, WSJ or NYT lists doesn't require an ISBN anymore.

[Spartan_Warrior]

The other issue with the CreateSpace ISBN is that you'll have a harder time getting it in bookstores and other venues. Bookstores are boycotting CreateSpace books--not only to spite Amazon, which is busily crushing their business model, but because CreateSpace doesn't offer returns or big enough wholesale discounts.

The alternative is to publish the book with a different print-on-demand publisher, such as Lightning Press, that offers returns (at your expense) and apparently allows greater wholesale discounts (I'm guessing at your expense). This is much more enticing to bookstores, libraries, etc.

But Lightning Press is also more expensive, with lower royalties, and CreateSpace is far easier to get on Amazon, which is a substantial part of the total book market (something like 20%?). Okay, so just publish at both, right?

The problem is you can't use the CreateSpace ISBN anywhere but CreateSpace. I don't know the exact legal mumbo jumbo, but long story short, the ISBN is registered to CreateSpace and as far as Bowker is concerned, it belongs to them and only them.

You might say to simply use the CreateSpace ISBN for CreateSpace and then register a new ISBN only if and when you choose to distribute outside CreateSpace. This is currently my plan. But I understand even this to be somewhat problematic. For instance, sales figures and other information are attached to the ISBN, so registering a new one resets that. Also, having multiple ISBNs attached to a single book can be confusing to consumers and distributors.

The bullet proof solution seems to be buying your own ISBN, which you can use with any publisher, but even when bought in a bulk set that means $$$.

I'm still planning on sticking with the $10 CreateSpace ISBN for now, partly after the advice in this thread, and because of my effort to keep my up-front investments in this to a minimum.