# Keep your back list selling and relax!



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Update December 2017:

Woo, boy, the atmosphere has turned negative this year!

People complain about sales, about not hitting lists, about Amazon-led conspiracies, page flip, scammers, rank-botting, what-have-you.

Yet it seems that despite talk of "going wide" and "more backlist" many people still don't grasp how powerful backlist is and that with a few steps, you can keep it selling after the launch boom (or bust, it matters a bit, but not half as much as people think) at a level that the aggregate of your sales across all retailers and across all countries in the world gives you enough income to survive.

As benefit, you never need to worry about ranking again. Or about page flip. Never worry about scammers, or even about reviews. If you have a large enough list, it will take care of reviews for you.

So I'm rolling out this old post again, because it never goes out-of-date. I'll be at the bottom of this thread if you have any questions.


Original post:

Inspired by several posts here in the last few weeks, I had this essay (yeah, truly, the longest post ever) sitting in a Scrivener file for weeks. I had a bit of a will-I-won't-I feeling about it, and was going to post it on my blog. I probably still will do that, but as mentioned elsewhere, the comment function on my blog is broken.

What inspired me to write this? A year or so ago, I started setting up my writing through our business account, and recently my husband was commenting on how the income from my writing would now be enough for us to live off if we didn't have three cars and three children in university. 

And I thought: well, but I have have never published a book that sold really well. And I thought about that post Hugh Howey had here, called "The writers I want to hear from". Search for it. And I listened to Lindsay Buroker's interview with Data Guy this morning and I thought, what the hey. Maybe some discouraged new writer will get something from it. 

So here is the post.

First, a bit about myself. I started self-publishing in 2011 by putting up some short stories from trade pub where the rights had reverted back to me. For at least the first year and a half, I published a lot of what we shall call “random crap”, most of which is still online in one way or another, but I knew squat about series and branding and all that stuff. I didn’t really understand any of that until late 2013-ish, when I started making a decent effort towards completing and branding series.

I write Science Fiction and Fantasy, everything under one name. I have no pen names to speak of, or at least none that I’m doing anything with. That may change, but I find it annoying to have to double up on everything.

On Amazon US, my books usually hang out between 50k and 300k. I’ve never had a book in the top 1000 on Amazon US (I have in the UK and other countries. France!). I’ve never had anything that you can remotely classify as a bestseller. But I have been #1 in Fantasy at Kobo, does that count?  

I sell on all platforms and am direct where I can. My Amazon sales have varied from 5-50% of my total sales. Yes, you read that right, 5%. It was in the Kobo heydays when 80% of my income was from Kobo. I have no true dud platforms. I sell at least a few hundred dollars worth on each of: B&N, Apple, Google Play and Kobo. My current income is 3-5k per month and has doubled every year.

Enough about me.

For the purpose of the plan I’m going to make some assumptions:

- That you can produce four books a year, or an average of 1000 words of edited fiction per day, averaged over the year. Not write 1000 words of fiction, but add 1000 words of completed manuscript every day, for 365 days a year average.
- That you are willing to work pretty damn hard
- That you have done the nitty-gritty about learning to plot, write and sustain interesting stories.
- That you write in a genre that both holds your passion and that is reasonably popular.
- That you are willing to edit you ebooks properly and give them decent, genre-appropriate covers, and pay for this if necessary.

A small word on the last point. I am not one of the “OMG, you must absolutely have this done by someone who charges for it!” crowd. It *is* possible to self-edit to an acceptable standard. It is possible that you have the skills to make covers that sell (my overall best-selling books still have covers I made). It’s totally possible to format your own books. 

But. Big but. 

All of it costs time. Is it the best use of your time to force yourself to read your manuscript backwards in order to find those last few typos? At some point, the answer becomes a solid: I don’t think so.

You need to write four novels a year after all.

If you have trouble reaching the four novels a year goal even without distractions, you need to write more. I know it sounds like the ol’ squeaky wheel, but it’s true. Write more = more skill, both in writing style and in plotting a story. And finishing the book without getting side-tracked, starting over ten times or writing meandering stuff that never goes anywhere (believe me, I’ve done all those things).

TLR:

Four novels a year.
Editing, good formatting, good, genre-appropriate cover.

OK, here goes the plan.

Part 1: the product.

1. Write a series of three books in a genre you like. It’s best if the books are full-length 70-80k at least. There are people who can get away with novellas, but selling well gets harder the shorter your books are. Unless, maybe, your genre is erotica or romance. Maybe. Just make the books full-length, OK? It makes life so much easier (insert whisper that sounds like Bookbub).
2. Make the first book free.
3. Play around a bit with advertising if you feel so inclined (I mean—why the hell not?), but don’t worry about stuff that takes you away from writing too much.
4. Make sure you have the following in all your books: a link to your mailing list signup form, and, at the end, a live link to the next book in the series.
5. When you finish the series, or even while you’re writing it, start a next series. Make it a slightly different subgenre, or use a different setting and characters. Make sure that people don’t need to have read the other series in order to follow it. Write three books. Make the first book free.
6. Repeat 5. Twice, if you can. Three years @ 4 novels a year = 12 books = 4 trilogies.
7. Advertise your freebies, but don’t fall down any rabbit holes that take you away from writing for major chunks of time (insert snort that sounds like Facebook advertising).

Part 2: the marketing.

1. After a while, your mailing list will start to build up a bit (see point 4 above). Get a paid account at Mailchimp or wherever you are. If you are not at a list provider that allows automation and segmentation, and most importantly, automation *based on* automatic segmentation, move your list. Yes. Mailchimp and Aweber & co are not the cheapest. The cheapest providers suck for the purpose I’m going to show you here.
2. Set up mailing automation. When people join your list, send them an email with the freebies, even tough they’re already free. Don’t email the freebies to them, but include download links in the email. Then booby-trap those links so that you can track who downloads what. You’ll be using this later.
3. Next, send your subscribers to an automated program that sends them something at regular intervals (Amazon genre newsletters arrive every two weeks, that’s good enough for me). What do you write about? About you, about your fiction, free short stories, you ask them questions, tell them about tidbits of research you’ve done, or places you travelled for your writing. Tell them about box sets you’re in, and even plug your friends with similar books. Anything. Boobytrap any links to your books so your mailchimp/Aweber/whatever account knows who clicked what.
4. Siphon people who clicked all the links to series 1 (and downloaded the freebie!) off to a side list, and say three months later send them an email saying: hey, this is book 2 in the series. Do this will all books 2 in all your series.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4. Create new emails, use the links and who clicks them to segment your list and send them further information based on who clicked what.
5. Presto! You have now created your own marketing machine that crawls like a giant slug over your subscriber list.

Part 3: your tasks.

It’s now really clear what you need to do:

A. Keep writing new books that people want to read, continuing your most popular series, starting new series maybe (make book 1 free again). Add new emails about those books to your mailing sequence.
B. Keep feeding people into your giant mailing slug. 


Doing A is pretty simple. Stop series that sell the worst and continue the ones that sell the best. Start new series.

Do, however *finish* each series, don’t abandon it. Series planning should include having several rest points where most plot threads are resolved and where you can walk away from it for a while or forever. Also, don’t unpublish the books. And don’t stop advertising book 1 (see below).

How do you do B?

Easy:
You advertise. Any old way will do. Bookbub is pretty good for getting new people on your mailing list. So are cross-promos. The more freebies you fling into the world, the more people will sign up. ENT is pretty good as well.
Put your mailing list signup everywhere on your web page and then drive people there using interesting blog posts, and linking your blog to Facebook and Twitter.
Advertise your list directly. This does not need to remain limited to Facebook. Be creative.

There you go. That’s the plan. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme (that’s where the “three year” bit comes in). In fact, it sounds an awful lot like hard work.

No bestsellers required. I would love it if one day I published something that went into the top 1000 at Amazon and stayed there for months, but the thing is, that’s a dream. I can try for it (I will with the planned launch of my next series), but it may fall flat on its face. I’ve seen that happen often enough to know that there is no such thing as a guaranteed success.

But even if I never have a bestseller, all these steps outlined here will guarantee me a pretty darn solid and even income.


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## Amby (May 9, 2015)

Thank you for this! I've been a lurker for a long time and have followed your posts with great interest. Will be bookmarking this thread for future reference.


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## 67499 (Feb 4, 2013)

Thanks, Patty!  Your comments on KB have always been so helpful and well-considered that I'd been wondering how I might goad you into writing a grand summary post of your ideas, and here it is.  Great stuff!


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## vws (Aug 31, 2015)

Really useful post Patty, thanks for sharing it. It's so important to hear from people who are doing well in a sustainable way without requiring a breakaway title that is hard to replicate.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Great post, Patty. Persistence pays off!


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## Azalea (Mar 22, 2014)

I love reading things like this. Real motivation, which is basically, "Work Hard, Work Smart." Thanks for sharing, Patty. I really respect your work ethic and general attitude.


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## Jane Killick (Aug 29, 2014)

Amazing, Patty! Just so impressed with how you keep plugging away.

Will need to find some time to learn how do a lot of this Mailchimp stuff. It's just finding the time when I have all this writing to do. I will bookmark this thread and come back to it to study further.


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## Marilyn Peake (Aug 8, 2011)

Fantastic post, Patty! I like your attitude. It's much like mine: chill out but work hard.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Fabulous post, Patty. I always listen when you speak on Kboards and this post reminds me why. You work hard and you work smart. You deserve your bestseller!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Brilliant post, Patty - thank you! Bookmarked, so I can refer discouraged first-timers to it in future.


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## Crime fighters (Nov 27, 2013)

Great post, Patty! 

For the most part, these posts are more inspiring for me than those posted by blockbuster sellers. You've laid out a clear path to an obtainable, and sustainable level of success. You're going to keep rising with each and every release, and this is proof that hard work and dedication will pay off.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

Great info, especially the automation bit. I've been thinking I should set something up, but not sure exactly what or how.

When you say boobytrap links, do you mean record the clicks in mailchimp, or something else?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Rinelle Grey said:


> Great info, especially the automation bit. I've been thinking I should set something up, but not sure exactly what or how.
> 
> When you say boobytrap links, do you mean record the clicks in mailchimp, or something else?


Do you have mailchimp paid?

I can go into technical detail (not that what I'm doing is all that high-tech and it's probably a gaffer-tape method, but hey it works) but if you don't have that, you can't do it. Also I'm about to go out, so I'll have to do it later or tomorrow.


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## LeonardDHilleyII (May 23, 2011)

Great post! Great info! Thanks for sharing!


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## PJ_Cherubino (Oct 23, 2015)

Patty Jansen = awesome

My indie pub hero. 

I bookmarked this to study. 
Thank you, Patty!


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## Veronica Sicoe (Jun 21, 2015)

Absolutely love this. You ROCK, Patty! Hands down. Hats in the air. Awesome.


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## Aderyn Wood (Feb 2, 2013)

I'm looking forward to reading one of you novels, Patty. I love your writing style 

I'll never be able to do the self-edit thing on account of all my rogue commas, see? There's, one now!

My goal is to publish three books this year. The thing I find time-consuming is the workshopping and beta-reading process. I don't want to give them up because, well to be frank, I rely on them the way a functional alcoholic relies on coffee. I love the refining process and how I get a better book in the end. Just wondering if you account for workshopping and/or beta reading and you still manage to produce four books a year?

Thanks for the post. I like the 'real' plan you give us, and I'd be interested to see a post on your views of Facebook advertising (given the latest euphoria about it).


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Oh, this is so bookmarked! Thank you, Patty!


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Brilliant post Patty.

I'm happy to see that this is very similar to my plan! I will be releasing trilogies for the next few years to give multiple entry points and test the market.

The main difference is that although I much prefer the idea of wide, I had planned to go with select for the first few years and then think about leaving once I have a back catalogue. I know you are a proponent of going wide generally, but do you also think it is best to do so from the start in order to ensure the time needed to build an audience?


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> Do you have mailchimp paid?
> 
> I can go into technical detail (not that what I'm doing is all that high-tech and it's probably a gaffer-tape method, but hey it works) but if you don't have that, you can't do it. Also I'm about to go out, so I'll have to do it later or tomorrow.


Yep, I had to upgrade to paid based on my numbers, so I figure I should take advantage of all the features. I haven't really ventured into the automation yet. I looked at it briefly, then backed away slowly.  I think it has the potential to be very powerful though!


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## Jordan Rivet (Jan 13, 2015)

Thank you for this post, Patty! This is such a sensible approach to building a writing career.


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## Matthew Stott (Oct 22, 2014)

Great post! Very inspiring. We'd all love a Wool, or a Martian, but it's this sort of thing that shows you what's possible for all willing to put in the work. The trilogies thing ticks my own current plan. I have 3 trilogies in the works (and a kids one completed), all can then be left as they are after 3 books, or carried on if the demand is there. I think it's a wise strategy.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

From one fellow workhorse to another *high five*


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## msdobing (Dec 8, 2015)

Really helpful and insightful post, especially for a newbie like me! 

Bookmarked for a more in depth study later.


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## martyns (May 8, 2014)

Sounds like good, sensible, contemporary advice. The publishing world is changing and the methods you propose sounds bang up to date!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I really utterly do NOT want this to degenerate into yet another shitfight about KU vs. wide. I'll tell you what *my* philosophy is, and some of it is contradictory.

1. I'm Australian. It's a bit better now, but for a long time, Amazon gave us crumbs and paid us with shit conditions. They did not deserve my exclusivity. They still don't. Amazon is all about America. Bleh. America. I'm done. The world is my oyster. Amazon ignores most of the world.
2. I do happen to believe that having a few things in KU is part of being wide.


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

Awesome post, Patty! 

I have one series in KU and 1 series wide. They've had varying degrees of success'failure at different times. At the moment, my 'wide' series is kicking KU's behind. 

I love your mailing-list strategy, but I kind of shot myself in the foot by telling subscribers that I'd only email them with news of a new release. Now I'm pondering whether or not to set up a new list from scratch *sigh*.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Shalini Boland said:


> Awesome post, Patty!
> 
> I have one series in KU and 1 series wide. They've had varying degrees of success'failure at different times. At the moment, my 'wide' series is kicking KU's behind.
> 
> I love your mailing-list strategy, but I kind of shot myself in the foot by telling subscribers that I'd only email them with news of a new release. Now I'm pondering whether or not to set up a new list from scratch *sigh*.


It could be a good idea to start a fresh list, but also... how many people do you think will remember that promise? Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


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## Veronica Sicoe (Jun 21, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> 1. I'm Australian. It's a bit better now, but for a long time, Amazon gave us crumbs and paid us with [crap] conditions. They did not deserve my exclusivity. They still don't. Amazon is all about America. Bleh. America. I'm done. The world is my oyster. Amazon ignores most of the world.
> 2. I do happen to believe that having a few things in KU is part of being wide.


THIS.

And also, this:



Patty Jansen said:


> Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


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## JTriptych (Aug 23, 2015)

Thank you, Patty. How-to guides like this are always appreciated. Your strategy is simple and very easy to do. My first book went wide but after two weeks of nothing from non-Amazon sellers I panicked and put it on the Zon, which really didn't improve things that much. I'll be going back to wide soon enough.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I was at B&N and Kobo and Apple through Smashwords. Then Kobo opened up the KWL site. I registered and got in as soon as possible. My income there increased 2000% within a month. Kobo picked my title to be displayed on their in-store devices and I sold bucketloads. Then I moved my B&N titles to [email protected] and started selling better there. Then I bought a Mac and uploaded to Apple direct. My income there increased a lot. Then I raised my prices seriously on GP. Income there increased a lot, too.

It can, and usually does, take a fair amount of time to get established on another platform, but I've found that the case for only half of them (GP and B&N). Kobo was immediate. Apple was immediate. One thing people often neglect to do is to spend time on the sites where they are trying to sell and tailor the descriptions to the site.


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## anicolle (Dec 13, 2014)

Great post! I especially like the part about list segmentation. Makes sense!


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## BlinkFarm (Oct 25, 2015)

Thank you! I was about to write out my five year plan and this nails almost all the points i wanted to include, in a clear, concise manner.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

Best post I've seen in a while. Thanks Patty! I find it much more encouraging to read about success coming from steady, hard work, rather than sitting around waiting for the lottery ticket of a lucky bestseller.

I'm following a similar plan, but in slow motion. Do you think there is value in the absolute timing of 4 books a year? Or could it be 2 books a year as part of a 6-year plan?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Phronk said:


> Best post I've seen in a while. Thanks Patty! I find it much more encouraging to read about success coming from steady, hard work, rather than sitting around waiting for the lottery ticket of a lucky bestseller.
> 
> I'm following a similar plan, but in slow motion. Do you think there is value in the absolute timing of 4 books a year? Or could it be 2 books a year as part of a 6-year plan?


If you write fewer books, it's likely to take you longer. I'm basing it on a very doable 1000 finished words per day statistic.


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## 80593 (Nov 1, 2014)

Thank you for this wonderful post, Patty. A smart way to play the long game.


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## Learning by lurking (Jan 17, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> It could be a good idea to start a fresh list, but also... how many people do you think will remember that promise? Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


This. I wish I had started my list sooner, and then when I did I went gung ho building it using other companies giveaways. Ended up with a decent size list that was not very responsive. Weeded over half of them out now, and the ones that are left now do open the emails and over half click the links inside. Throwing that out there to add to your comment on not being timid. Not surprisingly most of the people left on my list were those who had subscribed organically through my website that they found from the back of my published work.

I normally do not post, preferring to lurk, but wanted to thank you for the time you share with us here at the Kboards. You are among a handful of writers I look forward to reading when you share here, and appreciate the upbeat way you present your experience with us. Snark and pompousness do not do much for me, and I thank you for your modesty.


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## GwynnEWhite (May 23, 2012)

Brilliant post. Thank you.


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## NoLongerPosting (Apr 5, 2014)

From someone who's still slogging in the trenches -- thank you, Patty!!



K.B. said:


> For the most part, these posts are more inspiring for me than those posted by blockbuster sellers.


This. So much this.


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## Gisele_1169 (Feb 16, 2016)

Great, great, post, Patty. Thank you for sharing. I will be coming back to this one often.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


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## Bbates024 (Nov 3, 2014)

Patty you're AWESOME!

That was a great read and thank you so much for sharing! I've always enjoyed your comments here but that was just over the top, good simple, easy to follow information.

I can't wait to reach that kind of milestone of 3-5k a month, my best month was about 2400 and now I'm back at around 1k. More releases of good quality is what I am going for and I am still on track to get out at leats 7 books this year!

Maybe if I can do that I'll be able to hit Patty level. To me, that would be an amazing success. I see your books and comments all of the place and have always held you in high regard.


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## jackconnerbooks (Nov 18, 2014)

Terrific post, Patty! Thank you for the motivation!


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

Patty Jansen said:


> It could be a good idea to start a fresh list, but also... how many people do you think will remember that promise? Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


Okay, yeah, I agree. 2016 is the year to be brave! So, I'm going to reword my sign-up page and hope my existing subscribers are receptive. Thanks, Patty 

Also, would you mind revealing if you use affiliate links to track sales from subscribers? Or some other magical link system?


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## J.A. Cipriano (May 27, 2014)

Patty has been one of the people here that made me keep writing when nothing seemed to be working. Her posts always seemed to come along right when I'd just failed again, and I'm not sure I'd have been able to continue without looking at her year over year numbers and success. 

Sure, fantasy numbers like Amanda or Hugh are great for cotton candy daydreams, but Patty's numbers feel attainable, especially when you look at the work and number of books she's done. 

Bravo!


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## MKK (Jun 9, 2015)

Appreciate that you took the time to post this. Thank you, Patty.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

Love it! Solid advice, as always. Bookmarked.


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## Thetis (Dec 23, 2015)

Thanks, Patty - I think you hit on a lot of frustrations of indie authors. So many of us assume we need to hit that top 100 or some "bestseller" category to make this work, and in the end, persistence, consistently putting out good products, and more persistence is what we truly need. We all have different measures of "success" and you're clearly doing a lot of things that work without the high-profile "I'm a USA Today Bestseller" kind of stuff 

I'm not sure I understood all of the mailing list/tracking stuff... but I'll go back and try to make sense of it.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with reaching for the stars, but there are only going to be so many heavy hitters. People forget midlisters can still earn good money. 5k a month is 60k a year and that's well over the average household income, at least in my neighborhood.


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## Thetis (Dec 23, 2015)

Learning by lurking said:


> This. I wish I had started my list sooner, and then when I did I went gung ho building it using other companies giveaways. Ended up with a decent size list that was not very responsive. Weeded over half of them out now, and the ones that are left now do open the emails and over half click the links inside. Throwing that out there to add to your comment on not being timid. Not surprisingly most of the people left on my list were those who had subscribed organically through my website that they found from the back of my published work.
> 
> I normally do not post, preferring to lurk, but wanted to thank you for the time you share with us here at the Kboards. You are among a handful of writers I look forward to reading when you share here, and appreciate the upbeat way you present your experience with us. Snark and pompousness do not do much for me, and I thank you for your modesty.


This is my experience with mailing lists as well. I have two - one that tracks people who are only on my mailing list because of some sort of multi-author giveaway campaign and one in which people signed up for a free copy of my book. The second one has a MUCH higher rate of opens and clicks... something like 13% v. 56% on the last email I sent out. IME, those multi-author, build-your-mailing-list campaigns don't work well for the intended purpose because people just unsubscribe or don't bother opening the emails.


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## amy_wokz (Oct 11, 2014)

Thank you, Patty. Very helpful, informative, and inspiring post. Going to click "All" and save as a Web Page so I'll always have it.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Patty, thanks so much for taking the time to share this with us! Lots of good advice. I particularly appreciated this:



Patty Jansen said:


> 1. Write a series of three books in a genre you like. It's best if the books are full-length 70-80k at least. There are people who can get away with novellas, but selling well gets harder the shorter your books are. Unless, maybe, your genre is erotica or romance. Maybe. Just make the books full-length, OK? It makes life so much easier (insert whisper that sounds like Bookbub).


This ties in nicely to my thinking that sprang from Chris Fox's and Domino's recent threads, and where I've been thinking of focusing my efforts--writing a trilogy of full-length novels and then releasing them one after another, then doing it again. I didn't even think about bookbub when I was writing my novella series, and now I know better (not that I'm pinning all hopes on a Bookbub, but why remove the option all together when writing a series?).

Again, thanks for the great advice!


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## Joseph J Bailey (Jun 28, 2013)

Wonderful advice and sentiment.

Thank you for sharing!

Best of luck on everyone's three year plan!


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Great advice. 

I also started in 2011. I had a good start with a compilation of shorts that made me good money in the UK throughout that year  (Even though the stories were set in the US). Since then, however it's been so so regards income. I just about gave up two or three years ago, and again a year ago. 

The first time I gave up was when I hired a bad editor, trusted them and published. That was a big lesson when I had a one star come in pointing out editing errors. I threw it back to the editor, and they re-edited, but it still came back with errors and the damage was done. If nothing else it destroyed me  and so I stopped writing for a good while. Then last Christmas, my income had dropped to $5 per month, and I had it in mind to hang up my keyboard.

Since then, income has started to recover. I've written two full length and published one of them. I also have another 5 WIP uploaded on write on, which I know I will complete this year.  So the sort of figures you are talking about in terms of completed books is very possible. 

I have it in mind that it will take three years to get back to earning a decent income. My problem is that I hate writing series and yet 2 of my WIP books are the 1st in separate series stories if I let them go that way. Another is the follow up to In Search of Jessica which I may just abandon. I just can't settle into writing one series book after another so I don't know if it will work out that I will end up with a series. I prefer to write stand alones.

Anyway, great post and a moral booster.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Patty, I bookmarked this before I'd even read a single post because I knew it was going to be gold. And it is. I think I want to have your literary baby. Except I'm too old and tired for that. Plus I have a lot of writing to do. 
Thank you for this really great post. 
Oh, one more thing-- do you have a link to the Bourker/DG interview?


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## Veronica Sicoe (Jun 21, 2015)

Donna White Glaser said:


> Oh, one more thing-- do you have a link to the Bourker/DG interview?






.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Thank you, Patty. A great post.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

I tried to reply with a high five last night, but Internet went down before I could post. So late chiming in with...well done, Patty! And bestwishes for that bestseller. You're one of the angels here and we appreciate it!


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## RuthNestvold (Jan 4, 2012)

Great post, Patty, thanks! I particularly liked this:



> Series planning should include having several rest points where most plot threads are resolved and where you can walk away from it for a while or forever.


I think this is excellent advice and something I really have to take to heart!


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Thanks, Veronica!


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## Guest (Feb 18, 2016)

Excellent advice. I can't write as much as suggested, but many of your tips can be adapted for the slower writer in order to maximize sales.


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## harker.roland (Sep 13, 2014)

Great post Patty. Thank you for finally letting it see the night of day.

In looking at your author and sales ranks on Amazon, I'd wonder if you could share some numbers for how many books this translates to?


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

What's considered a bestseller? Top 1000 on Amazon dot com?


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## ShariLTapscott (Sep 18, 2015)

This is great! Thank you! I definitely needed tips for this newsletter thing I have no idea what to do with


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## Sailor Stone (Feb 23, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> I was at B&N and Kobo and Apple through Smashwords. Then Kobo opened up the KWL site. I registered and got in as soon as possible. My income there increased 2000% within a month. Kobo picked my title to be displayed on their in-store devices and I sold bucketloads. Then I moved my B&N titles to [email protected] and started selling better there. Then I bought a Mac and uploaded to Apple direct. My income there increased a lot. *Then I raised my prices seriously on GP. Income there increased a lot, too.*
> 
> It can, and usually does, take a fair amount of time to get established on another platform, but I've found that the case for only half of them (GP and B&N). Kobo was immediate. Apple was immediate. One thing people often neglect to do is to spend time on the sites where they are trying to sell and tailor the descriptions to the site.


----Thanks for starting this post Patty. In regard to the above, you say that you raised your prices seriously on GP and your income took off there. Can I ask how that works and how you price your books on the various sales platforms to maximize sales and income?


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## Tommy Muncie (Dec 8, 2014)

Thanks for sharing this. I've read it twice tonight already. It's not a strategy I want to adopt right at this very moment in time, but I suppose it doesn't have to be. There's always the future. (and no I'm not someone who spends all their time dreaming and never doing. If I'm keen on an idea, I make it happen; I'm just not an overnight-epiphany kind of person. At the moment I couldn't write 4 books per year and get a series out that quickly, but I know that when I'm really on a mission with wordcount and self-editing and I know how my book is going to turn out, I could quite easily accomplish what you're suggesting. It's good to be thinking that.

I started in the self-pub business in 2014, without much of a plan apart from knowing the book I wanted to write. Once it was ready, I knew it was going to be a very hard sell. Young protagonist + adult style = difficult to market and a bit of a niche readership if it does reach people. What I've learned is that to get a wide following and to get to the kind of figures I'm eventually hoping for, I have to turn my ideas into something that attracts a wider readership while still staying true to myself (IE writing in the genre I like about things that interest me, and writing a book I would want to read.) That combination can be done, and I'm looking forward to doing it once I've got my current series and its side project out of my head and published.

I'm in a spot where I've made it tough for myself, but it's like you said: finish the series. It's not as though I hate what I've written so far by any means. I only hate my series on the days I get stuck with the writing of it!

A couple of questions concerning some of the OP:



Patty Jansen said:


> Part 1: the product.
> 
> 1. Write a series of three books in a genre you like. It's best if the books are full-length 70-80k at least. There are people who can get away with novellas, but selling well gets harder the shorter your books are. Unless, maybe, your genre is erotica or romance. Maybe. Just make the books full-length, OK? It makes life so much easier (insert whisper that sounds like Bookbub).
> 2. Make the first book free.
> ...


Regarding (1): Just out of curiosity, is 70-80K the average length of your 'Ambassador' books? Plus I'm wondering if this is generally the kind of wordount that sells well, because it's long enough to be a novel but not TOO long. I've been writing drafts that come out at 120-150K for years now, and even after editing I still get longer books. I've always told myself 'Don't worry about the length because as long as the reader likes the book you can trust in their staying power' and reminded myself that some books with truly colossal wordcounts have sold well. What are your thoughts on longer wordcounts?

I've seen this go into controversy before but I'll risk putting it out there: have you ever split one book into two to avoid a longer wordcount? I was tempted to do this with the book I'm about to publish, and thought 'Can I REALLY hope to sell 220,000 words to anyone?' but when I looked into where the split would go, it just didn't work. Even if you haven't done this, have you ever considered it?

Regarding (4): I use a distributor for everything apart from Amazon, so what's the right etiquette with regards to putting links to the next book? I could put links to every store I'm on and let the reader choose, but that doesn't seem quite right. If I'm selling on Apple for example, the right thing to do IMHO would be just to put the Apple link to the next book, but I can't do this because I can only get books on Apple through my distributor who also send that epub to every other store (for the record, I'd LIKE to get a Mac but I need a new car first...I did like that post you made a while ago where you told us to get one and in the next paragraph said 'Because you've bought a Mac now ). So is an acceptable compromise to make the live link go to a page on my author website that's dedicated to the book in question and give the reader their store options there?


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## Dom (Mar 15, 2014)

I'm a fan of this post, and I'll tell you why.

When I decided to be an author, the MAIN THING I WANTED was a fair shake at this. I didn't want a Big 5 movie deal or anything crazy. I just wanted to know that I could do a job I loved and make a steady income, even if the budget was a bit tight.

Unfortunately, we all know the average book doesn't make money. It's not just about writing and putting stuff out there, because the vast majority of books sink. This post is important because it shows determination and writing, but it ALSO displays how to build your catalog. 5, 10, 20 books into this career, you wanna look back and know that you had a plan. That you built things up as the years went on.

Thanks for sharing how you did that, Patty. Above all, it's a great example of why it's so great being an author today. (And count me in as one who wants to hear more details on the paid Mailchimp features/ "boobytrapping" setup you've got!)


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## EmmaS (Jul 15, 2014)

Domino Finn said:


> When I decided to be an author, the MAIN THING I WANTED was a fair shake at this. I didn't want a Big 5 movie deal or anything crazy. I just wanted to know that I could do a job I loved and make a steady income, even if the budget was a bit tight.


Same here. What I want, at the end of the day, is a solid, steady, long-term career telling and selling stories. Anything else is cream.

Thanks so much for this post, Patty!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I've just logged on and I want to respond to a few questions and make some comments. I have to admit I find praise terribly embarrassing. I'm just describing what I've done and what I know works.

I could quote everyone in one big post, but my husband is working at home today and he uses up a lot of bandwidth and our internet is not great at the best of times (above-ground cables).

So I'll take them one by one.



Bbates024 said:


> I can't wait to reach that kind of milestone of 3-5k a month, my best month was about 2400 and now I'm back at around 1k. More releases of good quality is what I am going for and I am still on track to get out at leats 7 books this year!


For someone like you, looking at your sig line, I think your best best efforts should probably go towards a different series with a slightly different angle. More series = greater spread.

It was my Icefire Trilogy that took off on Kobo, and it was a looooooong time before it started selling even 5 copies a month on Amazon. But I had my Aghyrians series that sold much better there.

Different series will tickle algorithms on different platforms in different ways. Also different platforms have different market penetrations in different sections of the community. Not only between countries, but within a country.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Shalini Boland said:


> Okay, yeah, I agree. 2016 is the year to be brave! So, I'm going to reword my sign-up page and hope my existing subscribers are receptive. Thanks, Patty
> 
> Also, would you mind revealing if you use affiliate links to track sales from subscribers? Or some other magical link system?


Yes, I use affiliate links, and so should everyone. It's just money you leave on the table.

At Amazon, you can easily set up different affiliate links for different streams. TBH I think this is a main sleeper reason why Amazon has been so successful: because the simple affiliate program is so easy to implement and understand. You can get into very complicated stuff, but you don't have to. Just add the code at the end of your link and Bob's yer uncle.

I could go into conniptions of rage about Rakuten Linkshare (Kobo). Seriously, I love Kobo a lot, but that affiliate linking just sucks big balls.

Apple is also easy.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Thetis said:


> This is my experience with mailing lists as well. I have two - one that tracks people who are only on my mailing list because of some sort of multi-author giveaway campaign and one in which people signed up for a free copy of my book. The second one has a MUCH higher rate of opens and clicks... something like 13% v. 56% on the last email I sent out. IME, those multi-author, build-your-mailing-list campaigns don't work well for the intended purpose because people just unsubscribe or don't bother opening the emails.


Yet, a lot of my recent subscribers are added that way. But with one distinction: I don't sign any of them up. They still have to do the subscribing themselves. If I get bulk lists, I feed them through a dummy freebie provider and send them a signup link.

Then treat these people as potential customers. I offer free books in return for subscribing. These people know little about me. They have agreed to be educated. I send them regular stuff about my books, maybe some freebies, about me, why I started writing. I ask them questions, lots of stuff like that.

I want one of two things to happen: 1. they start reading and buying my books or, 2. they try them, they don't like them and then unsubscribe.

"They just unsubscribe" is a thing I hear a lot as cited as a bad thing about these lists. Unsubscribing is not bad. I have periodic unsubscribe binges because my mailbox is getting ridiculous. That doesn't mean that I've forgotten about a write whose newsletter I used to get. The newsletter has served its purpose, which is to educate subscribers about my fiction. When it has served its purpose, people can unsubscribe.


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

Patty Jansen said:


> Yes, I use affiliate links, and so should everyone. It's just money you leave on the table.
> 
> At Amazon, you can easily set up different affiliate links for different streams. TBH I think this is a main sleeper reason why Amazon has been so successful: because the simple affiliate program is so easy to implement and understand. You can get into very complicated stuff, but you don't have to. Just add the code at the end of your link and Bob's yer uncle.
> 
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to reply, Patty. I really appreciate it. And, OMG, Linkshare is like some kind of Crystal Maze of Doom. I seriously wanted to sleep for a week after trying to work out their system.


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

Excellent post, Patty. Bookmarked for future reference. I'm on my way to producing four book a year, so I'm good to go on that. Mailchimp automation, though? I'll have to think about that. I'm not at the 2,000 mark yet with subscribers, so I'll have to weigh and balance, as I don't have time to do half the things you're supposed to do _now_, and with only one hand working, touch-typing is but a memory.


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

Great post, Patty. So many good points.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Decon said:


> Great advice.
> 
> I also started in 2011. I had a good start with a compilation of shorts that made me good money in the UK throughout that year (Even though the stories were set in the US). Since then, however it's been so so regards income. I just about gave up two or three years ago, and again a year ago.
> 
> ...


Your story is one I often think of when I see people barge in with a sudden bestseller, strut all over the place like they own it because "you just have to write good books", not realising that there are many factors outside your control that go into making real bestsellers that shoot to a great ranking and stick there.

If you really get down to asking these people, they don't know why their book started selling either. It's comforting to think it was because they wrote a good book and worked hard, but there are many good books and a lot of people work hard and for someone who had a little added push to their books through lucky placement or timing to say that this was all it took can come across as a little denigrating to all those other people. It's not as simple as "study the market and just write good books". Anyone who says that is farting rainbows, IMO.

One of the advantages of having been around so long is that I've seen some of these people and their careers. Some lucky writers have been able to sustain good sales through working hard. Some have, like yourself, been unable to replicate the success. An unfortunate choice, a personal problem, or just a very sudden change in the market are all things that you can do nothing about.

To see people who assumed that their good luck would continue come back in here and talk about it breaks my heart. It really does.

I really wish that every writer should print out the following two things lest they get too cocky.

1. NO ONE KNOWS

2. WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

Especially 2. Even if your name is J.K. Rowling.

A third maybe should be "Make hay while the sun shines". Because it's not going to be sunny. My plan is about what to do when you're stuck in the eternal night.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Sailor Stone said:


> ----Thanks for starting this post Patty. In regard to the above, you say that you raised your prices seriously on GP and your income took off there. Can I ask how that works and how you price your books on the various sales platforms to maximize sales and income?


OK, so this is my *current* strategy. It will change:

Amazon = Bargain Bin Central. Price novels at $3.99, use permafree a lot.
B&N = Use same pricing as Amazon, but don't use permafree.
Kobo = same as B&N. Permafrees get pushed down
Google Play = use permafree, but also use trad prices, like $8.99 for a book. They'll discount, and you'll get 52% of the list price.
Apple = permafree works well

I also use high value bundles on all sites except Amazon. These are collections with more than 3 books where I charge more than $9.99. They do quite well.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Tommy Muncie said:


> Thanks for sharing this. I've read it twice tonight already. It's not a strategy I want to adopt right at this very moment in time, but I suppose it doesn't have to be. There's always the future. (and no I'm not someone who spends all their time dreaming and never doing. If I'm keen on an idea, I make it happen; I'm just not an overnight-epiphany kind of person. At the moment I couldn't write 4 books per year and get a series out that quickly, but I know that when I'm really on a mission with wordcount and self-editing and I know how my book is going to turn out, I could quite easily accomplish what you're suggesting. It's good to be thinking that.
> 
> I started in the self-pub business in 2014, without much of a plan apart from knowing the book I wanted to write. Once it was ready, I knew it was going to be a very hard sell. Young protagonist + adult style = difficult to market and a bit of a niche readership if it does reach people. What I've learned is that to get a wide following and to get to the kind of figures I'm eventually hoping for, I have to turn my ideas into something that attracts a wider readership while still staying true to myself (IE writing in the genre I like about things that interest me, and writing a book I would want to read.) That combination can be done, and I'm looking forward to doing it once I've got my current series and its side project out of my head and published.
> 
> ...


Re word count. I set an 80k minimum on most manuscripts because that's considered a full novel.

I tried to do something with shorter work with the For Queen And Country series and they're my worst sellers.

The Ambassador books are 80-90k. I think the first one might be a little longer.

If I had a book at 150k, I'd add some stuff and split it. To be honest, I'd probably chop it in three acts (since most books have acts), add some plot and turn it into a trilogy. Then again, my first drafts tend to be lean, so it's easy to add colour and a couple of events to flesh out the story.

After 24 novels, I've become quite good at not writing any words that I won't use.

About distributors:

If you're serious about writing as career, go direct where you can as soon as you can. Use a combination of D2D and Smashwords to finagle the rest. D2D can add direct links for you, but I never used them. I just uploaded two versions: one for B&N with a B&N link, and one for the rest. Then I used Smashwords for Apple (and unticked all the other stuff SW distributes to).

Use the tools they give you to your advantage. Direct links in the back of books sell better than through your site.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Domino Finn said:


> I'm a fan of this post, and I'll tell you why.
> 
> When I decided to be an author, the MAIN THING I WANTED was a fair shake at this. I didn't want a Big 5 movie deal or anything crazy. I just wanted to know that I could do a job I loved and make a steady income, even if the budget was a bit tight.
> 
> ...


Thanks for this.

I felt kinda bad when I replied in your Engineering a Bestseller thread with "you can't engineer a bestseller" and got pissed on by a buttload of people. Because we all love to dream, right? I guess it depends on how you define "bestseller". To me, a s bestseller is a book that takes off on its own or with a little push and has virtually no rate of decay for a long time afterwards. And no, I fervently believe that you can't engineer this.

About a year and a half ago, I was invited to speak for a meeting of editors about what SP writers want from editors. An attendant at the meeting was a Big Five editor. I've known this person for a while, and had a chat before the meeting. She was incredibly frank about the Big Five industry's way of marketing books and how they choose to spend their marketing budget. She also talked about how they spent big on books that barely sold 1000 copies because the books just didn't "click". "Flailing" was the word I'd use to describe their overall efforts. Not much different to what most of us are doing: trying to put the best stuff out there, make it look nice, buy some ads and hope it sticks.

I definitely believe you can push a book into a decent ranking for a while with the aid of a decent mailing list and some ads. My last Ambassador release got up to 4k which is the highest I've ever been. It's the fourth book in a series, so I didn't see any reason to go all out on the advertising although I did buy some ads for book 1. Bookbub had so far refused to take this title.

I think the difference between us and tradepub is that we can make a living while failing to sell well.


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## Dom (Mar 15, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Thanks for this.
> 
> I felt kinda bad when I replied in your Engineering a Bestseller thread with "you can't engineer a bestseller" and got p*ssed on by a buttload of people. Because we all love to dream, right?


Ha, ha - no worries. Disagreement is fine. I don't think there's anything at odds between your post and mine (in the sense that an author can follow your long-term plan but also consider my points before launching each new series). I very much believe in optimizing your book so it can fit into bestseller status, but like you said, nothing is guaranteed.


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

Great thread with lots of good advice. I especially liked the facebook advertising snort. lol. (I just took a free webinar on facebook ads--it was put on by ILVN) My take away--->great for some. But   holy *hit. there's so much to learn about it.


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## LindsayBuroker (Oct 13, 2013)

Congratulations, Patty!



Patty Jansen said:


> Your story is one I often think of when I see people barge in with a sudden bestseller, strut all over the place like they own it because "you just have to write good books", not realising that there are many factors outside your control that go into making real bestsellers that shoot to a great ranking and stick there.
> 
> If you really get down to asking these people, they don't know why their book started selling either. It's comforting to think it was because they wrote a good book and worked hard, but there are many good books and a lot of people work hard and for someone who had a little added push to their books through lucky placement or timing to say that this was all it took can come across as a little denigrating to all those other people. It's not as simple as "study the market and just write good books". Anyone who says that is farting rainbows, IMO.


Haha, I can't tell you how disappointed I get when we're interviewing someone and I realize the answer to, "So, what accounts for your success?" is essentially "I got lucky" (and you're right -- the author usually doesn't know it, especially if it's their first book/series). I immediately know it's going to be a boring interview. 

It is amazing how much money you can make, though, when you sell moderately well and have a good-sized backlist. Getting to "moderately well" isn't always easy, and neither is accumulating a "good-sized backlist," but both are more likely to come in time when you stick with it year in and year out!

Keep it going!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Domino Finn said:


> Ha, ha - no worries. Disagreement is fine. I don't think there's anything at odds between your post and mine (in the sense that an author can follow your long-term plan but also consider my points before launching each new series). I very much believe in optimizing your book so it can fit into bestseller status, but like you said, nothing is guaranteed.


I don't even think there was any disagreement, just that some people thought I was going all Eeyore on your plan. I think we pretty much have the same philosophy.

I'm going to try to do something similar with a new series. I have the covers ready. Just need to write the books *waggles eyebrows*


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## Eric T Knight (Feb 23, 2015)

Thanks so much for the tips, Patty! I will definitely be referencing this a lot!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

LindsayBuroker said:


> Congratulations, Patty!
> 
> Haha, I can't tell you how disappointed I get when we're interviewing someone and I realize the answer to, "So, what accounts for your success?" is essentially "I got lucky" (and you're right -- the author usually doesn't know it, especially if it's their first book/series). I immediately know it's going to be a boring interview.
> 
> ...


Listening to your podcast and other podcasts is what cemented this feeling for me. I'd go "wow, they're having xyz bestselling writer" and then the writer would list all the things they'd done, and I'm going "I'm doing all that, where is my bestseller?" and unfailingly I'd come away with the feeling that the story of the cause of their success was "I published something and it just started selling". In other words, they didn't have a clue either. Sometimes it was their first book. Sometimes, it was later a later book. Sometimes, they could ride on the coattails of success with the next book. Sometimes, they fell back down. There really is little rhyme or reason to it.

To me, I'm about my baseline sales, without bestseller. If ever I get a bestseller, it will take all my other books with it (because of how I've set it up) and I'll buy a beach house and buy each of my kids a unit. But I know I can't control that kind of fluke. I can just keep plugging and hopefully steadily increase my income.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Yes, I use affiliate links, and so should everyone. It's just money you leave on the table.


Great advice in this thread, Patty. But ... I just wanted to add one detail about Amazon Affiliates. From their link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement/



> In addition, if at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of Arkansas, Maine, Missouri, Rhode Island, or Vermont, you will become ineligible to participate in the Program, and this Operating Agreement will automatically terminate, on the date you establish residency in that state. In addition, you must promptly notify us in writing of your Arkansas, Maine, Missouri, Rhode Island, or Vermont residency, which you may do via the Contact Associates Customer Service form available here.


I can't help but leave money on the table since I am a Missourian.

I'm not sure about other e-vendors. Best to check out their legalese when looking into this.

Jodi


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Amazon = Bargain Bin Central. Price novels at $3.99, use permafree a lot.
> B&N = Use same pricing as Amazon, but don't use permafree.
> Kobo = same as B&N. Permafrees get pushed down
> Google Play = use permafree, but also use trad prices, like $8.99 for a book. They'll discount, and you'll get 52% of the list price.
> Apple = permafree works well


How do you do permafree at Amazon if you don't do it at B&N and Kobo? I thought Amazon price-matched?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Weirdling said:


> How do you do permafree at Amazon if you don't do it at B&N and Kobo? I thought Amazon price-matched?


Apple and Google Play


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Apple and Google Play


Cool! I'll have that try that on a series. Thanks for the fast reply, and congrats on your success. And thanks for taking time to share all this info. I have saved it for future reference. Out of curiosity, were there any threads on this forum that helped you like your thread is helping others?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Weirdling said:


> Cool! I'll have that try that on a series. Thanks for the fast reply, and congrats on your success. And thanks for taking time to share all this info. I have saved it for future reference. Out of curiosity, were there any threads on this forum that helped you like your thread is helping others?


There probably were some, but I got the most out of little tidbits in threads that weren't even related to the thread topic. The search function on this forum sucks.

But the most helpful threads are recent ones. Things change so quickly that advice six months old can be badly out of date.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Patty Jansen said:


> It could be a good idea to start a fresh list, but also... how many people do you think will remember that promise? Seriously, people are far too timid with their lists.


Thanks. I was wondering that myself.


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

Great advice.  I should probably sit down at some stage and plan properly pulling bits from this and other advice some of our more successful authors on the boards have put out there.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> Your story is one I often think of when I see people barge in with a sudden bestseller, strut all over the place like they own it because "you just have to write good books", not realising that there are many factors outside your control that go into making real bestsellers that shoot to a great ranking and stick there.
> 
> If you really get down to asking these people, they don't know why their book started selling either. It's comforting to think it was because they wrote a good book and worked hard, but there are many good books and a lot of people work hard and for someone who had a little added push to their books through lucky placement or timing to say that this was all it took can come across as a little denigrating to all those other people. It's not as simple as "study the market and just write good books". Anyone who says that is farting rainbows, IMO.
> 
> ...


Thank you for saying this, Patty, because it's what I always thought. It's just a little bit insulting to come in here and say "my first book is a bestseller because I'm just that good." By implication, all the rest of us who don't have a bestseller must be sucky. What these authors don't understand is that they got lucky. There's no other way to break out with your first book unless you lay the groundwork very carefully before you ever publish. You can be the best writer in the world, and hit all the genre tropes, but if you don't get lucky, then you're not going to be visible, which means that you will flail. No fail, but flail. It's the same thing when I see a writer who hit it out of the park say "cover, blurb and look inside." That's all great, but how do you get visible in the first place? Unless you're a marketing genius, you got lucky. That's not a popular sentiment around here, though - I'm glad you put that out there!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

anniejocoby said:


> Thank you for saying this, Patty, because it's what I always thought. It's just a little bit insulting to come in here and say "my first book is a bestseller because I'm just that good." By implication, all the rest of us who don't have a bestseller must be sucky. What these authors don't understand is that they got lucky. There's no other way to break out with your first book unless you lay the groundwork very carefully before you ever publish. You can be the best writer in the world, and hit all the genre tropes, but if you don't get lucky, then you're not going to be visible, which means that you will flail. No fail, but flail. It's the same thing when I see a writer who hit it out of the park say "cover, blurb and look inside." That's all great, but how do you get visible in the first place? Unless you're a marketing genius, you got lucky. That's not a popular sentiment around here, though - I'm glad you put that out there!


And even if you lay all the groundwork, hype up the release of a new series after having written 20 other books, and thinking you know how the wind blows, it can (and does) still fail. I mean, just watch publishers spend big on "the next Harry Potter" or "the next Twilight" and watch the market go "meh". These are publishers who have been doing this for close to 100 years.

I guess at the KB there is a very American sense of optimism, a sense almost as if saying publicly that something will happen does somehow make it happen. I guess I prefer a more realistic view (I can't pay my bills with hope after all) which often gets construed as "how dare you criticise such a positive vibe". I guess I've seen too many people, both SP and trad, hitting rock bottom after doing well.


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

This should be required reading for anyone starting out. Excellent post.

I'm at month 38 or so of this fiction odyssey and and have "quit" so many times in the past few years that it's not even funny. I would be better off if I didn't have weeks where I wanted to light my laptop on fire (and my work ethic is hardly the stuff of legend), but even so, I've grown from $900 in Jan 14 (which was my best month ever because of a BookBub) to $3k in Jan 16 (definitely some BookBub tail, but no substantial ads to speak of...and that's not my top month ever, either). BTW, I should mention I sold 14 copies of my first novel...in the entire first year it was out. 

The progress has been so slow that it's almost imperceptible. Negligible. And it's not a straight line. Sometimes it looks negative. Yay, I made $1000 last month. Shit, that dropped to $500 this month. Sick, I finally have 50 email subscribers. WTF, why did 15 people unsubscribe? And two of them hated me so much they reported it as spam?

Let's not mince words: Releasing books into a vacuum sucks, getting bad reviews sucks and seeing other people mega-hit it with book one while you write ten and wonder if you're crazy/dumb/inept also sucks. But it's part of the process. And there's an interesting thing that psychologists have found: grit is the #1 predictor of success in life. And it also happens to be entirely under your control. 

Make a plan that you can stick to (there are plenty to choose from on the boards; by the way, "write one novel a month" probably isn't a realistic plan for most people -and that's okay), stick to the plan, and see where it can take you. 

I'd like to stress one other thing to the newbs (or anyone pondering the age old question "why am I not selling?") that might be the most important point in Patty's post: write consistently, write a series, and write in a genre that sells. I run a small press, so I've put out 40+ SKUs at this point. Just writing more books - even "good" books - willy-nilly is not the answer. There are titles I literally cannot give away - and the stories are plenty good (not my own work, btw). It's crazy. Study what works and what sells, put your own spin on it, market the hell out of it (seriously, great point about "tip toeing" with the list - and applicable to everything marketing-wise, from ad submissions to review requests) and then do it again. 

Nick


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## Adair Hart (Jun 12, 2015)

Excellent post, Patty! I know you don't like praise, but seriously, you deserve it. It takes effort and time to share your wisdom, and although you don't have to, you do. 

I like your four books a year approach and am glad to see it is viable. This will be my first year attempting four books, although one is a prequel novella   As my process for getting a book out continues to become more efficient, it's not as daunting as I once thought it was. 1000 words a day is doable, and I find I can now do upwards of 10k a week with minimal self editing. That number will continue to climb as I write more and flex that muscle. 

Warning: more praise. For a newbie like me, I appreciate your involvement in the community , reading your blog and posts, and participating in your awesome promos!


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Your story is one I often think of when I see people barge in with a sudden bestseller, strut all over the place like they own it because "you just have to write good books", not realising that there are many factors outside your control that go into making real bestsellers that shoot to a great ranking and stick there.
> 
> If you really get down to asking these people, they don't know why their book started selling either. It's comforting to think it was because they wrote a good book and worked hard, but there are many good books and a lot of people work hard and for someone who had a little added push to their books through lucky placement or timing to say that this was all it took can come across as a little denigrating to all those other people. It's not as simple as "study the market and just write good books". Anyone who says that is farting rainbows, IMO.
> 
> ...


Well, that wasn't the point I was making about people being cocky with their success, but yes, I've seen that happen, but very rarely, and thank goodness I don't count me as one of them. The point I was really trying to make that, even if you fail to create traction that provides a decent income for a considerable period, it is possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have a plan, and that is what you have which is great. It also takes hard work as you say. However, writing a series is not the only way to go. It is your plan and it won't suit everyone to write a series, me included.

The other thing is that what works today, may not work tomorrow. We are indeed at the mercy of outside factors when it comes to sales/borrows. Short stories and KU comes to mind, but there are many others changing factors and circumstances that have stopped people in their tracks from making even modest sales. These factors can be given a little push through various marketing tools, I agree. There is no doubt that it works when giving away free the first in a series help to promote series sales. At Amazon's whim, or other distributors changing policy, that could stop tomorrow. In fact from time to time that has happened, when Amazon have reverted a free price matched book back to paid. The UK are the worst for that.


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## ancaiovita (Feb 13, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> For the purpose of the plan I'm going to make some assumptions:
> 
> - That you can produce four books a year, or an average of 1000 words of edited fiction per day, averaged over the year. Not write 1000 words of fiction, but add 1000 words of completed manuscript every day, for 365 days a year average.


What if fiction is not your thing? Could this work in non-fiction as well?


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## Paul B (Jan 11, 2016)

Patty, I think your plan is very practical and motivating. Good luck to you!
--Paul


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

I'm in the process of going direct with Kobo for all my books, instead of through D2D - I can't complain about D2D as I managed to get a couple of my books in the Top 5 of a fantasy sub-genre on Kobo via them. But I want to see what going direct can do for me.

Thanks again, Patty!


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## LivingInALiteraryWorld (Feb 19, 2016)

Hi, I just found this forum and this was one of the first boards I read. I think it's great advice so thank you! I've heard of a few people now who make a decent living this way so I think that it is hard, but possible for those willing to work at it and who have the motivation to do so.


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## writemore (Feb 3, 2016)

Inspiring that a living can be made by ranking 50-300k.  And that it can be done without hiring out if a person chooses not to.  AND with only 4 novels a year.  I thought I was going to have to keep knocking out ranks of 5k or less and a book of month.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

writemore said:


> Inspiring that a living can be made by ranking 50-300k. And that it can be done without hiring out if a person chooses not to. AND with only 4 novels a year. I thought I was going to have to keep knocking out ranks of 5k or less and a book of month.


It's the power of math. If we use this (from the latest Author Earnings report):










Let's assume those numbers are accurate enough to use for an example, and let's go with a super-modest income. To maintain a rank of 50k, you need to sell 2 copies a day. Maybe you're selling the copies at $2.99, so you're making about $2.00 per copy. That's $4/day on one book.

Year one (write 4 books; 4 book backlist):

Sell 2x copies of 1 book per day for a year = 730 copies sold = $ 1,460 income
Sell 2x copies each of 4 books per day for a year = 2,920 copies = $5,840 income

Year two (write 4 more books; 8 book backlist):

Sell 2x copies each of 8 books per day for a year = 5,840 copies sold = $11,680 income

Year three (write 4 more books; 12 book backlist):

Sell 2x copies each of 12 books per day for a year = 8,760 copies sold = $17,520 income

And so on. More titles, bigger backlist, more income trickles coming in. And this is just ebooks. Add in print sales, affiliate code income, audiobook sales, omnibuses, etc. Slow, steady growth. And remember I way low-balled this. Going with a higher consistent ranking will up the income accordingly.


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## The_Empress (Jan 8, 2016)

Another still-getting-my-head-around-this poster who's bookmarked this topic. Thank you for the specific advice, but also the firm but encouraging tone.


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## eswrite (Sep 12, 2014)

Thanks! Doing a lot of this already, but you've given me some new ideas. You've also confirmed my suspicion that I need to stop series at 3-4 books. Learned that the hard way. Your words about allowing time are also very encouraging. Three years... yeah, hoping for that.


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## writemore (Feb 3, 2016)

Jim Johnson said:


> It's the power of math.


Thanks for doing the math and putting things into perspective. Maybe now I can stop stressing so much... but, I probably won't.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

Thanks for the inspiring post, Patty!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

ancaiovita said:


> What if fiction is not your thing? Could this work in non-fiction as well?


It totally could. There is an author here who writes series of Bible studies, whose books are really nicely branded with flowers in the cover. Every time she replies on the forum, I think wow those covers are nice, you'd almost pick up one of the books (seriously, I can't believe I'm writing this, I have to be the biggest atheist on the planet).

It could work for series of recipe books, or writing books or any subject, really.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Jim Johnson said:


> It's the power of math. If we use this (from the latest Author Earnings report):
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The thing is also that the more books, and the more series, you have, the more you can hit the same advertisers, and the more placement you get, and the more you will sell and the more than will flow through to your other books.

But stop advertising and stop writing, and it will all fall in a heap.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

writemore said:


> Inspiring that a living can be made by ranking 50-300k. And that it can be done without hiring out if a person chooses not to. AND with only 4 novels a year. I thought I was going to have to keep knocking out ranks of 5k or less and a book of month.
> 
> Thanks for sharing your experiences.


Caution about "without hiring help". I believe that many of the people most fervently adhere to this mantra, in fact SHOULD hire help. Because the not hiring help is an obstacle to their books. Mostly to the presentation.

But it should be viewed as business decision, mostly with regards to time.

I don't believe you *have* to spend a cool grand or two before you even get started. But the work (editing and presentation) should still be done. Editing your own work takes MUCH longer than it takes someone with fresh eyes. If you have 4 books per year to write, you don't have the time.

I used to edit a magazine and have many editor friends. We used to swap edits for each other. After a while, I found I just didn't have the time to return favours. It became much more sensible to pay someone for the work.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> At Amazon, you can easily set up different affiliate links for different streams. TBH I think this is a main sleeper reason why Amazon has been so successful: because the simple affiliate program is so easy to implement and understand. You can get into very complicated stuff, but you don't have to. Just add the code at the end of your link and Bob's yer uncle.
> 
> I could go into conniptions of rage about Rakuten Linkshare (Kobo). Seriously, I love Kobo a lot, but that affiliate linking just sucks big balls.


Agreed. So much. I was going to put Kobo links on all the book reviews on my blog, but the difficulty of linking to individual books with their Linkshare system had me wringing my hands.

Smashwords affiliate links are also dead easy, it's on the bottom of every sales page and one click for authors to sign up to take part. The main reason I don't use Smashwords links is their limited coverage, but their system is excellent.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Ros_Jackson said:


> Agreed. So much. I was going to put Kobo links on all the book reviews on my blog, but the difficulty of linking to individual books with their Linkshare system had me wringing my hands.
> 
> Smashwords affiliate links are also dead easy, it's on the bottom of every sales page and one click for authors to sign up to take part. The main reason I don't use Smashwords links is their limited coverage, but their system is excellent.


Sheesh!

I even totally forgot that I even had a Smashwords affiliate account. OK, I should start using those as well.


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

Great post!  It's great to hear your methods.  I was trying to figure out a plan of how to go about writing and promoting, so this helps to remind me to stay focused on writing the series.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

Well said, Patty. I agree with pretty much everything. I'm also a fan of consistent slog and viewing it from a liveable income in the mid-list   (Not that I wouldn't appreciate a big hitter). Great post.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

I was just wondering why you use Smashwords instead of D2D for Apple. What's the advantage of that?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

kathrynoh said:


> I was just wondering why you use Smashwords instead of D2D for Apple. What's the advantage of that?


I don't. I'm direct at Apple.

I was just explaining how you can use a combination of D2D and Smashwords to get files with different content out to different platforms, even if you're not direct.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

Patty Jansen said:


> I don't. I'm direct at Apple.
> 
> I was just explaining how you can use a combination of D2D and Smashwords to get files with different content out to different platforms, even if you're not direct.


Ah, I get you


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

I super love this post. Thanks for sharing, Patty. 


Patty Jansen said:


> And even if you lay all the groundwork, hype up the release of a new series after having written 20 other books, and thinking you know how the wind blows, it can (and does) still fail. I mean, just watch publishers spend big on "the next Harry Potter" or "the next Twilight" and watch the market go "meh". These are publishers who have been doing this for close to 100 years.
> 
> I guess at the KB there is a very American sense of optimism, a sense almost as if saying publicly that something will happen does somehow make it happen. I guess I prefer a more realistic view (I can't pay my bills with hope after all) which often gets construed as "how dare you criticise such a positive vibe". I guess I've seen too many people, both SP and trad, hitting rock bottom after doing well.


Optimism surely needs to be balanced with realism in this biz.


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## steffmetal (May 8, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Yet, a lot of my recent subscribers are added that way. But with one distinction: I don't sign any of them up. They still have to do the subscribing themselves. If I get bulk lists, I feed them through a dummy freebie provider and send them a signup link.
> 
> Then treat these people as potential customers. I offer free books in return for subscribing. These people know little about me. They have agreed to be educated. I send them regular stuff about my books, maybe some freebies, about me, why I started writing. I ask them questions, lots of stuff like that.
> 
> ...


Hi Patty. First of all, thank you so much for this thread! It's been insanely useful to me. I'm in the process of setting up quite a sophisticated automation (for one email list split into groups for pen-names, and different automations depending on which pen names you're interested in). I am looking forward to having that machine ticking away for me!

I have just received a list from one of these freebie-list-a-thon makers. I'd very much like to do what you're describing here, and feed them all into my automation by having them sign up. But I've never done this before, and I was wondering if you might be able to suggest a "dummy freebie provider" that I could use to encourage them all to sign up?

Cheers!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Set up your main service at a paid provider with good automation. Mailchimp and Aweber are not the only ones.

For the front-line filtering, feed mass-lists through a freebie provider. No I can't tell you what I use, because it's not open to the public.

But you might try some of these options: http://www.theworkathomewoman.com/free-email-marketing/


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## JustinBell1974 (Feb 20, 2016)

This is truly terrific information.  It can be daunting to see all the success stories and knowing how unattainable that can be.  However, your outline of a pragmatic way to do things makes a lot of sense and doesn't contain any real "secret sauce" which is refreshing!  It seems imminently doable, which is great.  I'm not afraid of working hard, I think I work really hard, but it makes a huge difference to be working hard towards a specific goal rather than just spinning wheels on something that you HOPE is going to work.

This was great, thank you.


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## JBoyett (Nov 10, 2015)

Thanks for this realistic and inspiring post.


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## JE_Owen (Feb 22, 2015)

Bookmarking! Thanks for taking the time to write out the steps


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks for the comments, all.

Next I want to start talking about how to plan for the release of my upcoming trilogy. Not sure whether to do that here or start yet another "Watch me write a bestselling series" thread  Maybe I might phrase it a little differently. LOL


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Dear Patty, thank you for this wonderful post. I've also bookmarked this thread for future reference. The mailing list part terrifies me...which is probably why it's nonexistent in my case. However, I like the groundwork you propose for a sustainable career which is my goal. Thanks again and much luck to you in your writing endeavors as well.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Vintage Mari said:


> Dear Patty, thank you for this wonderful post. I've also bookmarked this thread for future reference. The mailing list part terrifies me...which is probably why it's nonexistent in my case. However, I like the groundwork you propose for a sustainable career which is my goal. Thanks again and much luck to you in your writing endeavors as well.


The thing about a mailing list is that it takes a long time to build up. There are some shortcuts, but they're never as good as (semi) organic signups.


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## steffmetal (May 8, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Set up your main service at a paid provider with good automation. Mailchimp and Aweber are not the only ones.
> 
> For the front-line filtering, feed mass-lists through a freebie provider. No I can't tell you what I use, because it's not open to the public.
> 
> But you might try some of these options: http://www.theworkathomewoman.com/free-email-marketing/


Awesome, thank you! That's all I need


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## Jane Killick (Aug 29, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Next I want to start talking about how to plan for the release of my upcoming trilogy. Not sure whether to do that here or start yet another thread


I vote: new thread


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## Veronica Sicoe (Jun 21, 2015)

Jane Killick said:


> I vote: new thread


Me too. Give it a clickbaity title, too.


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## UnicornEmily (Jul 2, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Set up your main service at a paid provider with good automation. Mailchimp and Aweber are not the only ones.
> 
> For the front-line filtering, feed mass-lists through a freebie provider. No I can't tell you what I use, because it's not open to the public.
> 
> But you might try some of these options: http://www.theworkathomewoman.com/free-email-marketing/


Thank you, Patty! That's exactly what I needed, too.


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## 67499 (Feb 4, 2013)

From million-seller Joe Konrath, further confirmation of what Patty and Lindsay said above: Joe, speaking of Lee Childs' huge success, says in his blog today, "I think you [Childs] sell more because you're everywhere. And you're everywhere because you got lucky and won the Big Pub Lottery and could plug into a gigantic distribution network that allows casual readers to find you." Ie, success in writing is like success in anything else in life - hard work + doing things smart + luck = success.  Joe's full post is here - http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2016/02/fisking-lee-child.html


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I don't think Lee Child's first book was a huge success, as I recall. I think he got "lucky" because he writes D*MN hooky thrillers. I've read a lot of thrillers, and there are none that grab me as much as his yet still satisfy because of the underlying decency of the main character. Jack Reacher is larger than life, but he feeds into the fantasies most of us have about wanting to right the wrongs and fix the broken. Child's first book still sells great because he has a talent for writing a great story. 

I made a thread a while back about writing hooky. I honestly think that, and writing appealing characters, is the source of a lot of authors' success. (As well as marketing of course.) Just because an author can't pinpoint the reason for his success, or it comes more easily to him than to another author, doesn't mean there's no reason or that it's random. There are many, many authors who sell better than I do, but I do think there are real reasons--partly just that maybe they write more to specific expectations and desires of more readers than I do. That isn't good or bad--I write what I like because I like it--it just IS. They didn't won the lottery. They did some things better. Some of those things I can learn to do myself, and some I can't or am unwilling to do. (Making max money isn't my primary goal.) But I do acknowledge that those things are there. 

The reason I stick my neck out to say this is that I think if I (we) don't acknowledge that, we perhaps fail to look realistically at WHAT those better-selling-than-us authors are doing that we perhaps could emulate--or that we will decide we don't want to emulate; whichever.  I mean, that's the point of this thread. Patty's telling folks some specific steps that CAN lead to making a livable income. Same thing can apply to studying the books and the career of a bestseller. If you think Patty's own success is luck--well, nice for her, but doesn't help you much. It's clear though that her success isn't luck. There are reasons, and one of them is how she writes, and another is her strategies and tactics. Same for Child or any other bestselling author.


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## spellscribe (Nov 5, 2015)

Rosalind James said:


> I don't think Lee Child's first book was s huge success. I think he got "lucky" because he writes D*MN hooky thrillers. I've read a lot of thrillers, and there are none that grab me as much as his yet still satisfy because of the underlying decency of the main character. Jack Reacher is larger than life, but he feeds into the fantasies most of us have about wanting to right the wrongs and fix the broken. His first book still sells great because he has a talent for writing a great story.
> 
> I made a thread a while back about writing hooky. I honestly think that, and writing appealing characters, is the source of a lot of authors' success. (As well as marketing of course.) Just because an author can't pinpoint the reason for his success, or it comes more easily to him than to another author, doesn't mean there's no reason or that it's random. There are many, many authors who sell better than I do, but I do think there are real reasons--partly just that maybe they write more to specific expectations and desires of more readers than I do. That isn't good or bad--I write what I like because I like it--it just IS. They didn't won the lottery. They did some things better. Some of those things I can learn to do myself, and some I can't or am unwilling to do. (Making max money isn't my primary goal.) But I do acknowledge that those things are there.
> 
> The reason I stick my neck out to say this is that I think if I (we) don't acknowledge that, we perhaps fail to look realistically at WHAT those better-selling-than-us authors are doing that we perhaps could emulate--or that we will decide we don't want to emulate; whichever. I mean, that's the point of this thread. Patty's telling folks some specific steps that CAN lead to making a livable income. Same thing can apply to studying the books and the career of a bestseller. If you think Patty's own success is luck--well, nice for her, but doesn't help you much. It's clear though that her success isn't luck. There are reasons, and one of them is how she writes, and another is her strategies and tactics. Same for Child or any other bestselling author.


This. I *dont* read thrillers, it's not my genre, like crime fix isn't my genre. Yet I live a good Reacher tale as much as I do a Tempe Brennan or Kathryn Dance. I've tried other books in both genres and they just don't grab me, but these do.

(And seriously... Tom Cruise? That was NEVER gonna work.)

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Thank you, Patty.

I have a few questions about the Queen and Country line, which seems to clock in at 50-60K words. You mentioned, I think, that they were your worst sellers and attributed it to low page count. I notice that you've written 6 so far. Is that because you just like writing them, or did you plan this as a 6 parter? Will you continue with the series?

Also, have you experimented with lower price point to offset the lower page count? Obviously, lower page count books= more books per year, but if they don't sell then it becomes a pointless exercise.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Donna White Glaser said:


> Patty, I bookmarked this before I'd even read a single post because I knew it was going to be gold. And it is. I think I want to have your literary baby. Except I'm too old and tired for that. Plus I have a lot of writing to do.
> Thank you for this really great post.
> Oh, one more thing-- do you have a link to the Bourker/DG interview?


Donna, I just love your covers!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

GUTMAN said:


> Thank you, Patty.
> 
> I have a few questions about the Queen and Country line, which seems to clock in at 50-60K words. You mentioned, I think, that they were your worst sellers and attributed it to low page count. I notice that you've written 6 so far. Is that because you just like writing them, or did you plan this as a 6 parter? Will you continue with the series?
> 
> Also, have you experimented with lower price point to offset the lower page count? Obviously, lower page count books= more books per year, but if they don't sell then it becomes a pointless exercise.


I've done 6 and now the story is finished. There won't be any more. There could be a follow-up series, but the sales really don't justify it, and I don't yet have any clear ideas where this series would go, but I'm sure I could think of something if it suddenly started selling.

I had been sitting on the series for a while and wanted to write it, but wasn't sure what format to use. The story is a very long one and would be told in a series, rather than a single book. I read some shorter epic fantasy that seemed similarly episodic and I copied the format. It is the closest I have come to "writing for market". Why it didn't work as well as I'd hoped? You tell me. I have no idea.

I probably would have written the story anyway. I like to swap between Fantasy and Science Fiction to keep my ideas fresh, but I might have made the books longer.

Still... ghosts + demons + possessed people + a world based on 16th century Amsterdam + a commoner woman married to the last heir of a royal family who has serious mental issues... I dunno.

Maybe I started with the wrong covers, maybe I need to advertise more (I will), maybe... I dunno. Whatever. I'm starting on another series. I don't want to waste any more time trying to second-guess what people want to read.


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

Patty, I'm late to the party, but wanted to add my thanks for this thread. I came up with a similar plan last summer after KU2 was released and am attempting to follow it, only with two novels a year (at least to start, maybe next year I can shoot for four).

One question: I can't go direct to B&N, so use D2D for them and Apple. Is there a way to keep the books paid at B&N while making them free at Apple? I've since put my books back to paid on Kobo (where I go direct) after reading this thread.

Thanks!

Rue


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> Is there a way to keep the books paid at B&N while making them free at Apple?


Use Smashwords for Apple and D2D for B&N (or the other way around, but in my experience, Smashwords sells better at Apple while D2D is better at B&N).

Or buy or rent a Mac and go direct at Apple.


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

Patty Jansen said:


> Use Smashwords for Apple and D2D for B&N (or the other way around, but in my experience, Smashwords sells better at Apple while D2D is better at B&N).


Oh, duh. That makes sense. 

Another question: if I switch to Smashwords, even though I've got the same ISBN, will I lose any reviews, etc. I've currently got over on Apple?



> Or buy or rent a Mac and go direct at Apple.


Not sure I'm ready for that level of frustration yet. LOL

Thanks!

Rue


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

GUTMAN said:


> Donna, I just love your covers!


Well, in that case, I'll have *your* literary babies.  YolyM from these boards did my Letty Whittaker 12-Step Mystery covers. Thank you so much!


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Donna White Glaser said:


> Well, in that case, I'll have *your* literary babies.  YolyM from these boards did my Letty Whittaker 12-Step Mystery covers. Thank you so much!


Ah! I've used Yoly myself.Love her work. Best wishes to you!


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

And to you as well, Gutman!  I should also mention the cover for A Scrying Shame was done via a 99design contest by KM Writing and Design. I love that one too!


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## rgasperson (Feb 21, 2016)

This is a great post. I have been trying something similar with my short nonfiction. The trick is to keep writing, editing and publishing. When you stop, your followers will not have anything to consume

Author Central Page: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-T-Gasperson/e/B00TCL9BP8
Blog: http://roberttgasperson.blogspot.com


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

I've been coming over here and reading all the comments on this thread for a couple of days now. Figured it was my time to add my big Thank You!

You've laid out a lot of very actionable advice and it was really refreshing to see someone say you can make a living without being constantly in the lists.

Seriously, thank you so much!


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## W.W. (Jun 27, 2011)

I always appreciate your posts, Patty. Thanks for this thread!

Do you go free on all venues for big ads such as Bookbub, then switch back to paid on Kobo?


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## Maia Sepp Ross (May 10, 2013)

Fantastic post, Patty. Thank you!


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## Bbates024 (Nov 3, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> So I'll take them one by one.
> 
> For someone like you, looking at your sig line, I think your best best efforts should probably go towards a different series with a slightly different angle. More series = greater spread.
> 
> ...


Patty you have been a rock star in this post and I love your advice. I have a couple more series in the works one under a pen name and one planned for my name. I wanted to make sure I got three books out in my Legacy Series before I put the new one out there. The origin series just kind of happened to me (Dang writing) and it wasn't initially planned out at all.

Good news is I should have the third book Origins out by April 1st and Have the third book in legacy out by June 1st In between I have two pen name project and my new series to get started. I've outlined the first book in my Pen name series and dumped about 2k words into my news series on days where I'm not feeling the flow of the stuff I'm working on currently.

I can't wait to get more stuff out there. I'm still aiming for eight books this year, By April I should have three done, and hopefully by June five. If it keeps going like that maybe I can shoot for more but who knows.

I'm excited to get a few new things brewing!


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## RBradyFrost (Mar 20, 2015)

I have to add my thanks as well. This was a great post and I've really enjoyed reading all the replies. It was just the kick in the pants I needed and the perfect motivation to get back to the grindstone. Thanks for sharing your perspective with us, Patty. You rock!


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## Bradley Verdell (Feb 21, 2016)

Thank you for your insights. I was looking for posts about which mailing list service is best.

Seems like a paid account with MailChimp is the way to go. You made the search easy.


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## RG Long (Jan 8, 2014)

Thanks for this awesome post!
Now to write more...


Ronald


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## Lauren P. (Jul 3, 2014)

Great post, Patty. Thanks for taking the time to compile it, and thanks for your generosity in sharing your hard-earned knowledge.


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## Lia Cooper (Jan 28, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> 5. When you finish the series, or even while you're writing it, start a next series. Make it a slightly different subgenre, or use a different setting and characters. Make sure that people don't need to have read the other series in order to follow it. Write three books. Make the first book free.


Lots of great advice in this and I wanted to say thanks for posting it--I'm especially going to be looking closer at how you break down your mailing list into different groups for targeting, i think that's genius and something i'm not utilizing enough. But I also wanted to say i LOVE the way you put #5 "Make it a slightly different subgenre" has got to be the best advice i could give myself or others talking about their new series ideas. i wish i'd started planning my series this way sooner.


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## M T McGuire (Dec 6, 2010)

Patti, that's a cracking post. I have my own mailing slug which is crawling over the lettuce of my subscribers. I have automatic mailouts and lists at mail chimp. It is definitely working for me. My books are wide and I now earn 50% of my monthly income from sites other than amazon. Sadly it's still the same amount because my income at Amazon has dropped but it's a start. 

The embarrassing truth is, I can't write 4 books a year. I write in what I laughing call my spare time. I'm a full time mum and I also have elderly parents with varying stages of dementia - which is like being a full time mum to two people from a distance of 150 miles away. The glass of stress is usually near the top which can hinder the creative mojo. On the other hand, I can get really excited about finding disability aids in a skip and nicking them. That's a few hours I won't have to spend on the phone to social services! Mwah hahahahrgh. 

So, I average about 1 hour a day on writing-related things and only in the school term time. Some days that is 1,000 finished words, but usually it's more like 100 and about 20 minutes' marketing. But the way I see it, that's 100 words - and 20 minutes on the marketing side - that I hadn't done yesterday. I'm determined to succeed at this thing. If I was sensible, I'd admit that a person in my circumstances simply cannot make a go of it. In reality, I carry on writing because I have to, and because I'm too damn pig headed to stop. I can't give up. I'm an authorholic. But I've only written 5 books since 2010 and my output is unlikely to rise for the foreseeable future. 

If you want to see what your strategy looks like in slow motion, come on down! BTW I used to read your blog but as you say, comments are broken, and then it stopped sending me updates and still refuses to and I'm bad at remembering to swing by and check. But now I'm in your facebook group and I am delighted to have my strategem endorsed - well, all of it except producing a meaningful number of books bit I just have to pretend I haven't seen that bit - by someone who knows what they're doing. I've been working on my mailing list this last year. It has about 700 members now, which means it's actually beginning to be worth swapping mailings with folks - I can finally give them something back. And that's leading to a lot more sign ups, and a lot more sales from the slug.

So yeh listen to Patti people, she's bang on the money and Patti, thanks.

Cheers

MTM


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## CeeJay (Mar 1, 2016)

Wow!  This entire thread has been so helpful, thank you   Now I just need to crack on and actually, you know, write stuff... :-


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

And! This thread has been podcastified by the Self-publishing Roundtable team!


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> And! This thread has been podcastified by the Self-publishing Roundtable team!


Great news! I'll keep my eye out for it.


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## batmansero (Oct 10, 2014)

We'll post the link tomorrow to the page that has the show notes, the audio and the video on it. Watch this space!


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## batmansero (Oct 10, 2014)

Here's the link to the podcast where we talked with Patty about her three-year plan, her writing/publishing in general and multi-author cross promos!

http://selfpublishingroundtable.com/sprt-134-earn-a-living-with-a-long-term-plan-running-multi-author-cross-promos-with-patty-jansen/


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks so much SPRT team!

I always feel that this non-bestseller thing makes me sound kinda lame, like I don't want a bestseller. I would love to, but I'm not willing to stress out over it or try to ride on a popular author's coat-tails. It's not "selling my soul" but I'm just not interested in doing things that don't excite me. I did that in an office job. I'm finished with it. I'd like to show that it's 100% possible to make a livable income by writing whatever the hell I please and releasing frequently in a popular genre.

The non-bestseller livable income secret ingredient: get your butt out of KU and go wide. My March sales revenue rankings so far: 1 B&N, 2. Google Play, 3. Apple, 4. Amazon US, 5. Amazon UK


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Tulonsae said:


> Since Google Play is closed to new authors, is it possible to distribute to them via D2D or Smashwords?


No, but there are place that upload to them. Someone mentioned a gig called Streetlib and apparently XinXii upload to GP as well.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Quiet said:


> There is so much here that resonates with my own writing and publishing philosophy.
> 
> My one major goal has been to see if I can make a living writing what I want, when I want, and doing only what I want (I don't like marketing my books outside my own email list and website - MY choice). So far it has worked for me and as long as it keeps working, I'm not chasing bestseller status. I would love it if it happened, for sure, but I'm only interested in it on my terms. I'm a bit stubborn.


Pretty much.

I'm also reasonably certain it will happen at some point, at which time one bestseller takes all my other books with it. At least that has so far been my experience when I have a good ad run. The more books, the more sales you get from a massive freebie run, even in series not related to your advertised book.


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

This thread has really helped shape what I was already thinking into a solid plan. Thank you so much for posting Patty.


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## RBK (Nov 28, 2014)

This is a really good post, Patty. I like how adaptable it is for people targeting higher word counts, too. Good job.


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## sugarhit (Feb 9, 2015)

Congrats, Patty. This is a great post. Continued success


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## George Saoulidis (Feb 2, 2016)

I was planning to post weeks ago but somehow forgot. 
My plan of action is actually somehow similar to this. I don't know if I can keep up 4 novels a year, I just finished my first full one and it took me 3x the time I thought it would.
But the plan is solid. I'm beginning to see a trickle of sales and email signups.


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## Chinese Writer (Mar 25, 2014)

George Saoulidis said:


> I was planning to post weeks ago but somehow forgot.
> My plan of action is actually somehow similar to this. I don't know if I can keep up 4 novels a year, I just finished my first full one and it took me 3x the time I thought it would.
> But the plan is solid. I'm beginning to see a trickle of sales and email signups.


I'm with you. Instead of 4 books a year, mine is more like 2. It took me 6 years to turn a profit, so sloooow progress for me.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I used the four books a year as example, because it keeps you within the 90-day cliffs (not that I care overly much about cliffs, but I definitely think releasing regularly is important).

In reality I've been writing 5-7 books a year, but I set 1000 words a day as attainable goal. I believe in breaking processes into goals that are easy to achieve. In reality I also often write much more than 1000 words a day, almost every day in fact. But that's me. I'm not showing off how much I can write, or pushing people into setting unattainable goals. Plenty of people will be discouraged by the process of writing and selling. They do not need my help to lose heart.


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## amy_wokz (Oct 11, 2014)

Great stuff, Patty. Plus, your recent podcast interview was great, too.


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## Chinese Writer (Mar 25, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> I used the four books a year as example, because it keeps you within the 90-day cliffs (not that I care overly much about cliffs, but I definitely think releasing regularly is important).


I used to think writing more than 4 books a year to be crazy prolific when I first started writing. But interestingly, I noticed the more books I write, the faster I get. There's less second guessing involved for me. And I'm also starting to trust the monkeys upstairs. There are less "wasted" words. Once the kids are older and I have more free time again, I can see myself hitting 4 books a year.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

I'm coming late to this thread, but I just wanted to say thank you for starting such an insightful thread, Patty. It gives other people hope for sure when they're despairing (like me, haha). Hope you get your bestseller soon


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## George Saoulidis (Feb 2, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> I used the four books a year as example...


No, it's fine. I'm picking up speed as I get more experienced actually. The others say the same thing basically. I'm just noting how we underestimate the work involved in a novel.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> The non-bestseller livable income secret ingredient: get your butt out of KU and go wide. My March sales revenue rankings so far: 1 B&N, 2. Google Play, 3. Apple, 4. Amazon US, 5. Amazon UK


And if I remember right, you went direct to those five places, right? Rather than go through Smashwords or D2D? Do you still use those two services to hit the other markets?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Jim Johnson said:


> And if I remember right, you went direct to those five places, right? Rather than go through Smashwords or D2D? Do you still use those two services to hit the other markets?


As non-Us, non-UK person, I can't use B&N direct, so I access them through D2D. I also use Smashwords and let them distribute to all those weird and wonderful places that I've never heard of, and where I never sell--wait. Apparently I sold $35 through Scribd this month.

But yes, I'm direct everywhere else. Aggregators charge 10% of RRP, which is a lot when you start getting sales to the account of four figures on all sites combined. Like $100 per month, just for them to list on Apple.

My Mac cost $1800 pre-tax, less 50% tax through the company we set up. $900, that's 9 months of aggregator income. It really adds up.

Besides, I'm totally in love with my new Mac.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Good to know, thanks, Patty. My PC bricked on me a couple months ago and I started experimenting with my wife's barely-used Mac and have largely made the conversion over to it. I've been Select/KU exclusive so far, but I'm tempted to just go wide with the new UF series and see how it goes. Good to hear that the Mac is handy for going direct to Apple. May be a good thing my PC went belly-up.


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## amy_wokz (Oct 11, 2014)

artan said:


> And I'm also starting to trust the monkeys upstairs.


Amen to that! I learned to trust them a long time ago when I was writing songs I couldn't finish. Instead of thinking the words were impossible to come by, I somehow began thinking they were there and would appear when THEY were ready; and I began noticing the less I thought/obsessed about them, the more readily they appeared. Now I do the same with fiction, pantsing to the beats and trusting those funky monkeys.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Patty, I listened to the SP Roundtable podcast last night while playing some Fallout and it was golden. I dig your laid back and patient approach to all of this. It's easy to get discouraged when no one is buying your books (me!) but it's important to remember that we get into this business for the writing and audience. We get audience by writing more. I felt so rejuvenated that I wrote up a business plan for this year. I just wanted to say thank you again for being not only encouraging, but realistic. 

And to the podcast team, you guys have a new fan. I binged on 4 episodes lol. Gaming wil never be the same.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Just finished the podcast as well. Loved listening to your insights, Patty. You're like the DWS and Kris Rusch mindset personified--steady work, don't worry a lot about advertising, keep writing and publishing. Happy to see someone making a nice career out of it.


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## Kelly Clayton (Mar 5, 2016)

Patty,

This is a fabulous post, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I think I need to increase my output considerably! My first book comes in at just over 82,000 words and I know I need to motor on with the second book in the series. Thanks for the motivation and for taking the time to share your experience and insights. 

Kelly


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## RG Long (Jan 8, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> 2. Set up mailing automation. When people join your list, send them an email with the freebies, even tough they're already free. Don't email the freebies to them, but include download links in the email. Then booby-trap those links so that you can track who downloads what. You'll be using this later.


Question for you Patty, and please forgive me if you've addressed this in the thread. I may have missed it.

At what point do you suggest moving to automation? A certain number of subscribers? Or after two series are complete?

My current list has 75 (yay me!) and I only gain the sporadic follower every now any then. Should I focus more on content creation right now and wait for the automation until a later stage?

Or, in your original thread, are you saying we should wait until those four series are complete before setting up our own "beast?"

Thanks in advance!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Ronald Long said:


> Question for you Patty, and please forgive me if you've addressed this in the thread. I may have missed it.
> 
> At what point do you suggest moving to automation? A certain number of subscribers? Or after two series are complete?
> 
> ...


This is a question everyone should answer for themselves and I can only speak for myself.

I'm extremely averse to recurring costs, so I would not do this until two things are true:

1. You get at least 1-2 new signups a day
2. Your sales are such that you can carry the cost of the list, on top of regular publishing expenses, in your worst months.

I would say wait until you have at least 1500 subscribers.


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## RG Long (Jan 8, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> This is a question everyone should answer for themselves and I can only speak for myself.
> 
> I'm extremely averse to recurring costs, so I would not do this until two things are true:
> 
> ...


Thanks very much for your answer!

Now to get... 1425 or so more subscribers!

And write a ton. :-D


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## MaggieWay (Jul 15, 2016)

Rinelle Grey said:


> Yep, I had to upgrade to paid based on my numbers, so I figure I should take advantage of all the features. I haven't really ventured into the automation yet. I looked at it briefly, then backed away slowly.  I think it has the potential to be very powerful though!


Wonderful post Patty, I love the methodical business no-nonsense approach you took. You're right, it's a business and you need to be professional and consistent as with any other business.

Rinelle and to anyone wondering, I'm currently using Active Campaign as the automation options were pretty great and it's a lot cheaper than Mailchimp. In terms of automation, I've only setup three emails for subscribers once they sign up - the first is the magnet link (a free short), second one is a teaser from the first book in my series, third one is a teaser from the second book, fourth is teaser from the third. Think I'll do something a bit more personal like either ask them what their favorite books are so a survey or something fun! I'm also a little confused as to how the automation would differ from real time promotional emails, I don't want to overload them with emails. But at this rate, my automated emails go out every 10 days.


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## SarahHope (Dec 26, 2014)

Great post Patty!
As a relative newbie it's great to hear how well others are doing and how you got there. It tells us there's hope  
Thanks


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I've come to realise that there were two things happening with my list that didn't mix particularly well.

My giant auto-responder sends on 11pm Friday night. People who click stuff in there will get odd emails on Sunday and Wednesday. All this is a fairly full program about me and my fiction that I don't want to mess too much with. I mail them if there is a new book out. Only ever on a Monday. That's it.

Which leaves me in a bit of a spot if I need to promote something to the list for a cross promo, especially because I did not get the mailing list people's mandate to spam entice them with multi-author promos.

So I had another brainwave last week: why not start a second mailing list for people who want to get freebies and bargains (mine or cross-promo)? This is specifically for giant promos and new releases and other author-run activities. So the ebookaroo was born (http://pattyjansen.com/pages/ebookaroo/). I cross-promote it in the AR for the main list, so people can be part of both.

Lesson: keep your lists targeted.


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## Scout (Jun 2, 2014)

Great information. Thank you so much. Not sure how I missed this one.

Bumping it.


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## Dragon (May 9, 2016)

Forgive me if this answer is buried somewhere inside the thread, and I've missed it...
What SP roundtable podcast?



Vintage Mari said:


> Patty, I listened to the SP Roundtable podcast last night while playing some Fallout and it was golden. I dig your laid back and patient approach to all of this. It's easy to get discouraged when no one is buying your books (me!) but it's important to remember that we get into this business for the writing and audience. We get audience by writing more. I felt so rejuvenated that I wrote up a business plan for this year. I just wanted to say thank you again for being not only encouraging, but realistic.
> 
> And to the podcast team, you guys have a new fan. I binged on 4 episodes lol. Gaming wil never be the same.


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## George Donnelly (Mar 5, 2012)

Dragon said:


> What SP roundtable podcast?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGquF0vaX9I


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## Dragon (May 9, 2016)

Thank you!



GeorgeDonnelly said:


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGquF0vaX9I


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

GeorgeDonnelly said:


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGquF0vaX9I


Thanks George. I try to listen to all the SP Roundtable Podcasts, however, I missed this one.
Thanks Patty for a fun interview and the great information.


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## KL_Phelps (Nov 7, 2013)

always great to see these post, can't believe I've missed this one all this time


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## Scout (Jun 2, 2014)

Great interview as well. Cheers.


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## EllieKeaton (Apr 12, 2014)

Fantastic post Patty, cant believe I missed it first time around.  I lurk but read a lot of posts and love your no nonsense approach. Thank you. (off to work out how to do that automation thingy.)


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Update time!

I've been thinking about writing an update in this thread. People around me, in my Facebook group and in the SFF promo site know that I've had a bit of a good run recently, and while I expect things to quieten down a bit until I can secure a Bookbub for my next box set, I am still doing significantly better than before. Like, six figures kind of better.

I was taken back to my original philosophy by something I heard on Joanna Penn's podcast this morning. Joanna often interviews people who apply some lateral thinking and are interested in working smarter, not harder. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2017/02/06/art-business-tara-gentile/

Tara says that to jump from 4 to 5 figure, 5 to 6 figure or 6 to 7 figure business, you need to jump sideways and not extrapolate what you're already doing into something that is going to eat up a corresponding extra amount of time.

Think about it.

The mantra that is repeated ad nauseam on this forum is "write more". That is true when you have few books, but once you have a bunch of series, you should have thought about how to position those series to best capture your audience with covers and blurbs and matching genres, and then your focus should be 100% at *yeah now we get to make actual money with these puppies!*

There is zero point in killing yourself trying to write yourself to death when your sales are not crash hot. Concentrate on how to make the books you already have sell better.

Work smarter, not harder.

Exhibit 1:

The Icefire Trilogy. I published these three books in 2012/2013. I made an omnibus version and rebranded the covers later. Book 1 used to be permafree and was featured on Bookbub twice (always did about 50k free downloads there). Then I got accepted for a Bookbub for the trilogy.

It was awesome. I sold more than 3000 copies in a day, but after the ad, the book sank, and then a few days later, it started climbing again. Over the next two months I sold more than 25k copies. Twenty. Five. Thousand. Books. Of a book that was more than five years old.

What does this have to do with the thread title?

Well, when you keep writing 4 books a year, you will come to a point that you can do this kind of stuff with your books. Bundle them and put them on special. You will notice I've written a sequel trilogy. I've sold buttloads of those.

Think smart and put your ducks in a row. Then when one book gets a kick up its butt, it takes all the rest of the catalogue with it. Big. Bucks. Seriously big bucks.

Think smarter. Connect your books in branding and theme even if, like mine, they're not all in the same genre.

So, what else am I doing or not doing?

1. Expand on successes.

My Icefire world and Ambassador series are my main earners. I keep writing new books and new spin-off series.

If you have a choice of writing something entirely new or writing something related to older work, pick your best-selling project and do more of that. It can be a new series, but keep it related. In this way, you create a body of work and readers will be loyal to all your work, because it shares themes and voice.

Flop-flopping all over the place is death.

2. FFS pick KU or non-KU and stick with it.

Find whatever suits you, and do it. I've withdrawn everything I still had in KU and won't be going back under this name. I keep threatening to write a series under a pen name and put it in KU, but I very much doubt it will happen because of point 1.

- build a body of work
- follow your bestsellers and do more of that
- don't flip-flop

3. Mailing lists

I'm still running my autoresponders but I've simplified them a lot. Why? Because the providers change thing and all of a sudden your elaborate sequence is all effed up and you don't even know where to begin to fix it.

On that note, I took all my lists (author list and Ebookaroo) off Mailchimp when the chimp was starting to charge me $140 per month. I moved them to Sendy for my initial vetting and Mailerlite for the "keepers".

If your model is to use a sales list (a list that sells stuff for you to a relatively "cold" audience through autoresponders) rather than a back-end support list (only new releases to people who have signed up from the back of your books) then services like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and Convertkit are way too expensive. You also pay for a lot of stuff that you can never use, based on sales data that Amazon won't give you. So you're paying for other people's whizzbangery.

The model I use is that I use competitions and cross-promotions and Instafreebie and I shovel literally thousands of subscribers into my lists every month, and I weed out the good ones. I'm happy in particular with the Ebookaroo, a list I use for advertising cross-promos. These people have signed up in a competition. What do I send them? More competitions! The open rate of this list is really high.

Give people what they want.

If you don't know what they want, give them more of the thing that brought them to you.

4. Dare to be yourself

This is a bit of an addendum, but also related to what i heard Joanna say on the podcast this morning. She started to get more engagement when she started to share more of her personal process.

Yet, a lot of advice says to keep it impersonal.

Well, here is my thought about it: it's better to amuse 50% of people and thoroughly p*ss off the other 50% than to have 100% of the people say "meh".

So I went on a political tweet-rampage a few times in the past few weeks. You know how goodie-two-shoes tell you not to do this because O.M.G You. Will. Ruin. Your. Writing. Career?

They're wrong.

Not only doesn't it harm sales. It actually helps sales.

Seriously, dare to be yourself.

My books are all highly political (mostly made-up or alien) so if people don't like politics they shouldn't be reading my books. I'm purely defining my audience.

There is probably stuff I'm forgetting but this is a monster reply and I'm going to post it before a forum time-out eats it.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Awesome.


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

So crucial to double down on successes and so easy not to.

Glad to hear things have accelerated for you, Patty. Smart advice.

Nick


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## Nancy Warren (May 5, 2014)

It's great to see an update and hear that you are really killing it. Well done!


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## BlinkFarm (Oct 25, 2015)

Congrats on the continued success and thanks for the update. Useful info, yet again.


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## Dax (Oct 20, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> 4. Dare to be yourself
> 
> This is a bit of an addendum, but also related to what i heard Joanna say on the podcast this morning. She started to get more engagement when she started to share more of her personal process.
> 
> ...


Great advice, Patty, all around - thanks. And this one really stuck out at me. I don't think we as humans will ever get away from that desire for a genuine social bond with other people - and that involves being yourself.


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## Writer&#039;s Block (Oct 29, 2014)

Great post Patty, thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's posts like these that make kboards such a valuable resource. Pretty much everything I ever learned about self publishing I found it here, from posts like yours. I'm reminded of a line from the Shawshank Redemption 'time and pressure'. It takes time to build a body of work and marketing pressure to get the best return.


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

Thanks Patty.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Fabulous update, thank you!!


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## Jerry S. (Mar 31, 2014)

Fantastic update Patty, thank you. I'm taking all of this in as I write my first book.


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## KeenToWrite (Oct 30, 2015)

Patty - first of all, thanks for the great info in this post.

I was lucky enough to sign up on Google Play before they stopped taking new authors, but my sales on that platform are a pittance compared to Amazon US. I just checked out your stuff, and I notice you've got a snazzy author profile page with a bio and everything. I've scoured my GP partner dashboard looking for a place to add mine, but there doesn't seem to be one. Would you mind sharing how you went about it? Not that it'll make a difference with my sales (seems hard to get discovered there) but it would be nice to have.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Thanks, Patty! So good to hear of all the successes. You have consistently been an author with a clear business vision, which you articulate beautifully for those of us who struggle with that side of things. (Of course, it helps that you write great books!)


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## VanessaC (Jan 14, 2017)

Love your posts, thank you, Patty.

On a slight tangent, I was watching a TED talk earlier about how business often fail because they get fixed on either exploring (doing lots of new stuff) or exploiting (selling what they already do well) - terms used in the talk, not mine. My takeaway from the talk was that its important to do both.  I think this ties in with what you're saying above - new writers like me need to explore a lot - write new stuff - but as we grow our backlist perhaps we should remember to "exploit " as well as explore i.e. don't forget to look after the backlist.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

KeenToWrite said:


> Patty - first of all, thanks for the great info in this post.
> 
> I was lucky enough to sign up on Google Play before they stopped taking new authors, but my sales on that platform are a pittance compared to Amazon US. I just checked out your stuff, and I notice you've got a snazzy author profile page with a bio and everything. I've scoured my GP partner dashboard looking for a place to add mine, but there doesn't seem to be one. Would you mind sharing how you went about it? Not that it'll make a difference with my sales (seems hard to get discovered there) but it would be nice to have.


I have no idea! I assumed they did this for all authors. One thing I did was fill out the author bio section at the end of each book description. Or at least most of them.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

VanessaC said:


> Love your posts, thank you, Patty.
> 
> On a slight tangent, I was watching a TED talk earlier about how business often fail because they get fixed on either exploring (doing lots of new stuff) or exploiting (selling what they already do well) - terms used in the talk, not mine. My takeaway from the talk was that its important to do both. I think this ties in with what you're saying above - new writers like me need to explore a lot - write new stuff - but as we grow our backlist perhaps we should remember to "exploit " as well as explore i.e. don't forget to look after the backlist.


Agree.

Writing yourself to death because you believe that you have to write a book a month in order to succeed is exploring only. It can work, but oh, boy, do you put in the hours, and does it crash when you can't write, like when you or a family member gets sick, when your real life is under stress or when you've just plain burnt out.

People go like I hate marketing so I'm going to write a book a month, thereby putting their heads in the sand to simple changes they could be making to their entire process that would not require them to write as much, or feel pressured to do so.

Many people think marketing is going to Twitter and shout BUY MY BOOK every fifteen minutes. I can't remember I last advertised a book of mine on my author feed. If you think that's what marketing is, you're doing it wrong.


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## Robert Fluegel (Nov 8, 2012)

Great information as always Patty. I've participated in your group promos as well. They are terrific!


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## AllyD (Feb 3, 2017)

Great thread and lots to think about! Thanks for sharing and updating.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

Many thanks for sharing, Patty. Very inspiring!


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## MattGodbey (Jul 8, 2016)

Great info and thanks for posting. And congrats on your continuing success.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

> 4. Dare to be yourself
> 
> This is a bit of an addendum, but also related to what i heard Joanna say on the podcast this morning. She started to get more engagement when she started to share more of her personal process.
> 
> ...


Amen, Patty. My books focus on social issues, and I think tweeting about politics has increased my sales, too.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Congrats on your success, Patty!  Thanks for the advice.


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## M T McGuire (Dec 6, 2010)

Love the update, especially the be yourself bit. My personality is my biggest marketing tool, tool being the operative word, I suspect. But the way I see it, I write funny books, but terribly, terribly slowly. So if I'm going to send emails, etc, I need them to be interesting, deliver value and over and above those, be amusing. So I do jokes and stories about my son, that kind of stuff, because at least then they get something funny to read, while they are waiting the two years it takes me to produce each book. ;-) And I'm writing slightly shorter books, these days, as well to see if I can cut the 18 months down to say, a year. ;-) 

And this is my first post on here for ages! ;-)

Cheers

MTM


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## A. N. Other Author (Oct 11, 2014)

KeenToWrite said:


> Patty - first of all, thanks for the great info in this post.
> 
> I was lucky enough to sign up on Google Play before they stopped taking new authors, but my sales on that platform are a pittance compared to Amazon US. I just checked out your stuff, and I notice you've got a snazzy author profile page with a bio and everything. I've scoured my GP partner dashboard looking for a place to add mine, but there doesn't seem to be one. Would you mind sharing how you went about it? Not that it'll make a difference with my sales (seems hard to get discovered there) but it would be nice to have.


You can get into Google Play via Pronoun now. Pronoun says GP won't randomly discount books in their US and CA stores but they don't have a deal for international sites, meaning GP may discount them in the UK and other big markets like the EU and Oz/NZ.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Great post, Patty! And congrats on your success. It's heartening to read about and especially that you didn't have to write 20 books in a year to do it.

I agree that you don't have to write a book a month to be successful, although some authors do so and are happy. For probably most of us, writing a book a month might be doable but exhausting in terms of creative juices. I find I need some mental space after finishing a manuscript to get into a new story enough to plan and write it so I get at most 3 - 4 books a year out, although I am planning to double that this year. Last year, it was two. I still managed $250K in revenue based on my backlist of 12 novels and several short stories. Now, for me to hit 7 figures would be a big deal and would mean I would either have to write a huge hit series, or write a lot more of what is currently selling in my catalogue. 

So, great advice. Maybe a good strategy for the new author just starting out is to write a lot to find something that you enjoy writing and that sticks. Write material with series potential, whether it's in romance, thrillers, mystery, SF. Those authors who do that seem to do the best. 

Once you have something that is selling organically well, and has some "legs" then iterate. Optimize the series, using the best covers and really hot product descriptions, etc. Write more of the same. Feed that audience and keep them fed. Rinse. Repeat. 

To that end, I would advise people read Write Publish Repeat and Iterate and Optimize by Sean Platt, Dave Wright  and Johnny B Truant. GREAT INDIE PUBLISHING BOOKS!


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## Helen_Christian (Jan 17, 2017)

Patty

Is there a way to sign up for the ebook promotion you do in ebookaroo?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Write, Publish, Repeat is an awesome book for people who don't like pushy marketing, or who think marketing is pushy. Hint: the best marketing is pretty much invisible.

Regarding the Ebookaroo:

This is a newsletter I started to advertise my own books and cross-promotions that I'm in, and if I don't have any of my own books to advertise--which is most of the time--I ask for books from others. I write SF/F so I limit it to those genres. There is a submission form, mainly because I've automated spreadsheets so that I can copy & paste the page's HTML with a click of a button wherever in the world I am from Google Sheets, and you can find it if you're in the SFF cross-promo Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1163390753699773/

The newsletter is purely non-commercial. You don't pay, I don't give any customer service either. It's purely finding something interesting to send to about 10,000 peeps who are on the list.

A little while back I made a very conscious decision to never ask money from fellow writers, because I think you cross a line once you start taking money for promotions or services (or courses). I don't want to teach in that way, and I'm not a promoter. I run the promotions because I want to sell my own books, and I have no desire to make money by asking writers to pay to be featured.


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## Goulburn (May 21, 2014)

Thank you for the update, Patty Jansen. You always give great advice. Congratulations for reaping the benefits of your effort, marketing smarts, and talent.


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## Julie Morrigan (Jun 29, 2011)

Thanks, Patty, great information and advice. Much appreciated!


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## A J Sika (Apr 22, 2016)

Great advice, Patty. Thanks for taking the time to give it.

Bookmarking this for future reference.


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## Eric T Knight (Feb 23, 2015)

Congratulations on your success, Patty and thanks for the useful and helpful information. I really appreciate all you do, not just here on the Boards but in your FB group.


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## DmGuay (Aug 17, 2016)

I love this post. Seriously. 

I'm in transition right now. I'm trying to chart a path to making a reasonable middle class income as a writer, without working in journalism. 

This is incredibly helpful. 

Thank you for being honest and frank.


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## KeenToWrite (Oct 30, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> I have no idea! I assumed they did this for all authors. One thing I did was fill out the author bio section at the end of each book description. Or at least most of them.


Weird! I do that too. Anyone else on Google Play who does/doesn't have an author profile page like Patty's?


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## NoLongerPosting (Apr 5, 2014)

There's a ton of fabulous advice on this board, and many, many generous authors.
But _this_ is the thread I read over and over. It's kept me from giving up!

Thanks, Patty.


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

OMG. Thankyou so much Patty. I've been listening to downloaded self-pub podcasts every day in the work van out on the road, mostly the SfiFi/Fantasy podcasts by Lindsey Buroker and Co., along with the Creative Penn, and lurking through a bazillion threads here on KB. There's so much information going through my head, it feels like everything is qualified by a "it depends" haha so your summation is much appreciated. 

My first novel is being edited and I've already started on the second in the series, and probably won't release the first until the second is ready to go, and the third in it's rough draft, to try and avoid the 90-day cliffs everyone keeps talking about.

Thanks again!!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

People are asking if I'm going to be turning this into a book. I said no for most of the time, but maybe one day I'll do a "newbies guide to not killing yourself while self-publishing" or something else equally snarky. Dunno yet.

It doesn't look like I'll be publishing that much this year because of trips, so maybe I could write some non-fiction to fill the gaps.

Would people read it? No idea.


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## Longtime Lurker (Sep 14, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> People are asking if I'm going to be turning this into a book. I said no for most of the time, but maybe one day I'll do a "newbies guide to not killing yourself while self-publishing" or something else equally snarky. Dunno yet.
> 
> It doesn't look like I'll be publishing that much this year because of trips, so maybe I could write some non-fiction to fill the gaps.
> 
> Would people read it? No idea.


I would  I enjoy reading all the self-pub advice I can get.


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> People are asking if I'm going to be turning this into a book. I said no for most of the time, but maybe one day I'll do a "newbies guide to not killing yourself while self-publishing" or something else equally snarky. Dunno yet.
> 
> It doesn't look like I'll be publishing that much this year because of trips, so maybe I could write some non-fiction to fill the gaps.
> 
> Would people read it? No idea.


Didn't you just write 5,000 words on the loo? Haha


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## L.B (Apr 15, 2015)

Aeryn Leigh said:


> Didn't you just write 5,000 words on the loo? Haha


If she did, she needs more fibre in her diet...


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Aeryn Leigh said:


> Didn't you just write 5,000 words on the loo? Haha


LOL someone reads my blog!

I have ignored it for months, and decided it's probably still a good place to say things that will remain visible, as opposed to, say, Facebook, where everything becomes irretrievably lost after a few weeks.


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## Catherine Lea (Jul 16, 2013)

Patty, thank you so much for this thread. I've bookmarked it and read it over a few times now. I've got a few books out that tick over quite nicely (not fabulously, but nicely) but I got stuck down that rabbit hole that sounds like FB advertising. Then got stuck with other crap trying to get my books selling and now my inbox is jammed with new courses on how to blah, blah. Then I jumped from one book to another trying to find whatever's going to work (all in the thriller/mystery genre, fortunately). Now I've got four books half written that I've decided to get out there, plus I'm planning on crowd-funding a second audiobook in my Elizabeth McClaine series because, well, you know what the exchange rates do for us at this end of the world.

Thank you so much for all your advice and your wisdom. You've given me the shot in the arm I needed.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Catherine Lea said:


> Patty, thank you so much for this thread. I've bookmarked it and read it over a few times now. I've got a few books out that tick over quite nicely (not fabulously, but nicely) but I got stuck down that rabbit hole that sounds like FB advertising. Then got stuck with other crap trying to get my books selling and now my inbox is jammed with new courses on how to blah, blah. Then I jumped from one book to another trying to find whatever's going to work (all in the thriller/mystery genre, fortunately). Now I've got four books half written that I've decided to get out there, plus I'm planning on crowd-funding a second audiobook in my Elizabeth McClaine series because, well, you know what the exchange rates do for us at this end of the world.
> 
> Thank you so much for all your advice and your wisdom. You've given me the shot in the arm I needed.


It is so easy to get lost in the Facebook advertising rabbithole, because we all believe, or rather, want to believe, that there is one fix. I've written two blog posts about it in the last few days, and there will be a few more.

I'm seeing people getting into all sorts of unhelpful rabbitholes that suck up vast amounts of time and energy and are not the thing they should be doing: writing regularly, improving their craft and setting up a few things for mostly passive marketing. Writing should come first, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Setting up sales structures, like optimising back matter and keeping links up to date is extremely important, and so is advertising in some way, but there is no point in doing it unless you're also producing new books.


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## DmGuay (Aug 17, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> LOL someone reads my blog!
> 
> I have ignored it for months, and decided it's probably still a good place to say things that will remain visible, as opposed to, say, Facebook, where everything becomes irretrievably lost after a few weeks.


I read it. It's great. We don't get any Kangaroos on our lawns here in the U.S.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

DmGuay said:


> I read it. It's great. We don't get any Kangaroos on our lawns here in the U.S.


 We do get alligators in my neck of the woods.


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## joyfuldesigns (Feb 24, 2017)

Thanks for your transparency, SO encouraging!  I was quite surprised how Amazon ranked in your overall sales.


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## DmGuay (Aug 17, 2016)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> We do get alligators in my neck of the woods.


I used to, when I lived in Louisiana!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks for all the responses.

In the next few months I will have some travel commitments. I have a couple of 24-hour plane flights to look forward to, and while I'm kinda nervous writing while someone could see the screen and read over my shoulder (a weird quirk of mine), I thought, Hey! I could use this time to pull together all the stuff about career-building and branding and mailing lists in a book. Some is in this post, a lot is on my blog, other bits are in Facebook posts.

I easily have 20-30k words worth of material for new writers about:

- what to worry about and what is just a timesuck
- making a career vs chasing sales
- building an audience that's yours
- not killing yourself while doing all that
- not getting ripped off while doing all that
- keeping it fun

I might call it:

Self-publishing: learn how to swim and avoid the nets and the sharks.

The first sentence of the blurb will be:

If you're looking to make a quick buck selling ebooks, if you believe there is a secret fix, if you think someone or something is conspiring against you, if you're afraid of hard work, do not buy this book.

LOL. I'll probably go with something more staid.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> I might call it:
> 
> Self-publishing: learn how to swim and avoid the nets and the sharks.
> 
> ...


I think you should embrace your Australian identity and call the book:

*Self Publishing: We're Not Here to F*ck Spiders*


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I own whatauthorsneedtoknow.com we could team up and make a weirdos guide to self publishing.


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

RightHoJeeves said:


> I think you should embrace your Australian identity and call the book:
> 
> *Self Publishing: We're Not Here to F*ck Spiders*


I'm Aussie and never heard of that one. I'd personally prefer Patty call it _Self Publishing: Calling a spade a f*cking shovel._

Although I don't think Amazon's keywords fit into that title...


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> Thanks for all the responses.
> 
> In the next few months I will have some travel commitments. I have a couple of 24-hour plane flights to look forward to, and while I'm kinda nervous writing while someone could see the screen and read over my shoulder (a weird quirk of mine), I thought, Hey! I could use this time to pull together all the stuff about career-building and branding and mailing lists in a book. Some is in this post, a lot is on my blog, other bits are in Facebook posts.
> 
> ...


I'd buy it in a flash. Everyone else is putting out how-to help books, some with no success as authors at all, and you have the experience, posts and wisdom to back it up. Besides, everyone knows everyone it seems, you have the network already. Woo!


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I own whatauthorsneedtoknow.com we could team up and make a weirdos guide to self publishing.


Please!


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Aeryn Leigh said:


> I'm Aussie and never heard of that one. I'd personally prefer Patty call it _Self Publishing: Calling a spade a f*cking shovel._
> 
> Although I don't think Amazon's keywords fit into that title...


I'll admit it's not one of our most common phrases...

But it is one of the prettiest.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

KeenToWrite said:


> Weird! I do that too. Anyone else on Google Play who does/doesn't have an author profile page like Patty's?


I do. It happens when you fill out the bio section of each book I think. I assume it does.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I do. It happens when you fill out the bio section of each book I think. I assume it does.


I haven't filled out the bio for my recent books, because it's just too annoying.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> I haven't filled out the bio for my recent books, because it's just too annoying.


I have an older book open in the GP dashboard on the second monitor, and copy paste every darn thing to make sure series, bio, keywords in the blurb, etc match.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> It is so easy to get lost in the Facebook advertising rabbithole, because we all believe, or rather, want to believe, that there is one fix. I've written two blog posts about it in the last few days, and there will be a few more.
> 
> I'm seeing people getting into all sorts of unhelpful rabbitholes that suck up vast amounts of time and energy and are not the thing they should be doing: writing regularly, improving their craft and setting up a few things for mostly passive marketing. Writing should come first, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Setting up sales structures, like optimising back matter and keeping links up to date is extremely important, and so is advertising in some way, but there is no point in doing it unless you're also producing new books.


I think this may be the best post - and advice - on all of kboards.


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## M T McGuire (Dec 6, 2010)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I do. It happens when you fill out the bio section of each book I think. I assume it does.


Why bio section?

Oh dear ... Patty, I need your book.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

M T McGuire said:


> Why bio section?
> 
> Oh dear ... Patty, I need your book.


Well, didn't the airlines just put the kybosh on that!

"No laptops on flights from these six countries"

Me: FFS, you do realise that almost ALL fights to Europe from Australia go through either Dubai or UAE? GRRR. They *say* it' not going affect those flights. We'll see. Whatever security risk is posed by a laptop that's not posed by a mobile phone is beyond me. Does Scrivener for iOS work on a phone? I know for sure it won't work on an iPhone 4. *needs to upgrade phone* *but it still works* *SIGH*


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## M T McGuire (Dec 6, 2010)

Patty Jansen said:


> Well, didn't the airlines just put the kybosh on that!
> 
> "No laptops on flights from these six countries"
> 
> Me: FFS, you do realise that almost ALL fights to Europe from Australia go through either Dubai or UAE? GRRR. They *say* it' not going affect those flights. We'll see. Whatever security risk is posed by a laptop that's not posed by a mobile phone is beyond me. Does Scrivener for iOS work on a phone? I know for sure it won't work on an iPhone 4. *needs to upgrade phone* *but it still works* *SIGH*


Yikes .... Looks as if you'll be buying a big notebook and writing longhand.

Seriously though, I read somewhere that you can link Scrivener with Evernote, so though you can't see the marvellousness of the interface you can work on Scrivener files with an iPad or some such so long as you have them loaded and ready and access to occasional wifi afterwards to update them. I haven't had time to look into it yet. I'm just learning to use scrivener to write, although I think ypthere might be a short vid on u tube by Joseph Michel which iexplains it.

Cheers

MTM


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## Katherine Roberts (Apr 4, 2013)

RobCornell said:


> While I"m not a "new" writer, I'd still pick up a copy, because most days I *feel *like a new writer...over and over and over...


Same here! Just come across this helpful post. Thanks, Patty.

I have a silly question... how do you make an ebook (like your first in the series) free at amazon? The only way I can see to do this is by having the book in Select and using the 5 days free promotion time. I once tried putting a book free at Apple etc. in the hope amazon would price match, but they never did and it stayed stubbornly at 99c.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Katherine Roberts said:


> Same here! Just come across this helpful post. Thanks, Patty.
> 
> I have a silly question... how do you make an ebook (like your first in the series) free at amazon? The only way I can see to do this is by having the book in Select and using the 5 days free promotion time. I once tried putting a book free at Apple etc. in the hope amazon would price match, but they never did and it stayed stubbornly at 99c.


Price matching, but it doesn't always happen.


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## Renard (Jun 21, 2016)

M T McGuire said:


> I read somewhere that you can link Scrivener with Evernote, so though you can't see the marvellousness of the interface you can work on Scrivener files with an iPad or some such so long as you have them loaded and ready and access to occasional wifi afterwards to update them. I haven't had time to look into it yet.


Or you could just use Scrivener for iOS


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## Robert Fluegel (Nov 8, 2012)

Katherine Roberts said:


> Same here! Just come across this helpful post. Thanks, Patty.
> 
> I have a silly question... how do you make an ebook (like your first in the series) free at amazon? The only way I can see to do this is by having the book in Select and using the 5 days free promotion time. I once tried putting a book free at Apple etc. in the hope amazon would price match, but they never did and it stayed stubbornly at 99c.


You have to report the lower price to Amazon and get your friends to do likewise. When they get enough requests they'll move on it.


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## Regendroppel (Oct 31, 2016)

Thanks for the wake up call, Patty. I fell down the advertising rabbit hole. It was full of myxomatosis.
Off to write my socks off!


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## EBWriter (Jan 26, 2017)

Thanks for the update, Patty. Love the bit about if you don't know what your audience wants just give them more of what they signed up for in the first place. Brilliant.


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## Dragon (May 9, 2016)

I absolutely would! Between you, Lindsay Buroker, Joanna Penn and Hugh Howey, I feel like I can be an author without losing my mind. You have no idea what your guidance means to the rest of us.
Thank you for everything you do.



Patty Jansen said:


> People are asking if I'm going to be turning this into a book. I said no for most of the time, but maybe one day I'll do a "newbies guide to not killing yourself while self-publishing" or something else equally snarky. Dunno yet.
> 
> It doesn't look like I'll be publishing that much this year because of trips, so maybe I could write some non-fiction to fill the gaps.
> 
> Would people read it? No idea.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Katherine Roberts said:


> Same here! Just come across this helpful post. Thanks, Patty.
> 
> I have a silly question... how do you make an ebook (like your first in the series) free at amazon? The only way I can see to do this is by having the book in Select and using the 5 days free promotion time. I once tried putting a book free at Apple etc. in the hope amazon would price match, but they never did and it stayed stubbornly at 99c.


You need to have it up for free on at least iTunes and Barnes and Noble. Google Play is better. Once it is available for free on all of those sites email [email protected] and send them the links to show that the book is available for free on those sites and ask them please-pretty-please to price match. Normally they'll do so within 72 hours, although price matching is always at their discretion and sometimes they refuse just to be ornery. Kobo and the smaller sites don't matter. They don't care about those. iTunes and Google Play are the main ones, and B&N secondary.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

With all the negativity going on this month, I thought I'd roll this one out again to show you how to make decent money off your backlist.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> With all the negativity going on this month, I thought I'd roll this one out again to show you how to make decent money off your backlist.


Cheers for that...meanwhile I'll just do my FRONTlist dance for the release of my first full-length novel--Piercing the Veil


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

This was, and still is, one of the best threads around. It's so darn doable if you have even a modicum of storytelling and writing talent.

Thanks for bumping it!


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## Van Argan (Nov 10, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> With all the negativity going on this month, I thought I'd roll this one out again to show you how to make decent money off your backlist.


Patty, thank you. I have been looking for a detailed and straight-forward post like this with realistic guidance and goals. I appreciate that you shared so much about your success and bumped the thread to benefit the rest of us.


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## Vale (Jul 19, 2017)

Thank you, Patty =] It was a good (re)read.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Thank you, Patty! This is one of those perennially important threads that deserves to be brought up front on a regular basis.

I recently finished your 3 "No Bestseller" books as my boot-in-the-butt for the new year.  I already "knew" most everything there , but I also knew I really needed an "intervention" on my attitude about the whole business process for today's markets, and your books did it. Great stuff!  (Knowing's one thing; taking positive action with what you know is something else altogether, especially when it's NOT what you really want to do!)

May the new year bring you even more successes!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I've been thinking a lot about goals vs journeys.

If you're not enjoying the journey, you may need to revisit your goal and your path to reach it. You need to work with people who share your philosophy and jettison practices that you hate, especially if they don't bring you huge results. There is more than one path.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Lorri Moulton said:


> Thank you! And why does it seem like that should end with...my young apprentice.


It has a kind of Yoda feel to it LOL


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Great post! It was great the first time round and it's great advice now.

I made six figures this year. My back list earned six figures and my front list earned close to six figures. My backlist is 13 novels, 2 novellas and 3 short stories. My front list (2017 releases) is 4 novels and 4 novellas and a collection. Right now, the books rank rather poorly on Amazon because they aren't in KU. I have no top 1000 at the moment (except my permafree series starters) and some rank as high as 150K. But my books are mostly wide, with 3 permafrees and 3 collections. I have 3 - 4 books in the iBooks top 100 Romance novels right now due to an Apple promo. I have 7 books in KU with a collection. It will probably stay in KU simply because it doesn't do all that well wide. It's Paranormal Romance. I will try to get a Bookbub for the collection and permafree, but if not, it will stay in KU.

You can tend your backlist like a garden, watering it and weeding it (promos, changing up keywords, new covers, regular advertising, etc). You can even relaunch it, following Chris Fox's advice. I'm going to try that for my big series this year. New covers, new blurbs and we'll see how long it keeps selling enough to keep me from worrying about getting a job at Walmart as a greeter. 

My goal when I started out indie publishing was to build a backlist of first 12 and then 24 novels and hope to use those to fund my retirement.  If I can keep it earning high five and six figures, I will be happy.

This coming year, I'm branching out into Psychological thrillers, SF and Epic Fantasy, which has always been my long-term goal. Luckily, I have a well-performing backlist and hope to be able to take the risk and try new genres.


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## Andie (Jan 24, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> I've been thinking a lot about goals vs journeys.
> 
> If you're not enjoying the journey, you may need to revisit your goal and your path to reach it. You need to work with people who share your philosophy and jettison practices that you hate, especially if they don't bring you huge results. There is more than one path.


I need to print this and tape it to my forehead. Thank you.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Mare (Nov 3, 2015)

Andie said:


> I need to print this and tape it to my forehead. Thank you.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


My thoughts exactly! Thank you Patty for sharing-I needed this information this morning!!!


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Bookmarked. I'll be following through with this. Thank you, Patty!


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## DebDougall (Jun 18, 2015)

Oh my! Thanks so much for this, Patty.


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## CBB (Nov 14, 2017)

Oh wow, thank you for this! It is incredibly helpful. 

On a side-note, I just realized I have your 3 books (The three-year plan) on my wishlist on amazon that I sent my other(better?) half for "What I want for Christmas." Fingers crossed that he paid attention to that, because now I want them even more after reading this thread. 



ETA: Grammar is hard y'all, when at work and not supposed to be on kboards.


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## Secret Pen Pal (Dec 27, 2013)

I've been meaning to set up automation. Thanks for sharing your method.
BTW, MailerLite has automation. I moved there from Mailchimp to reduce the overhead. 
I was beginning to consider FB ads. I loathe FB. Thanks for making my day.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Secret Pen Pal said:


> I've been meaning to set up automation. Thanks for sharing your method.
> BTW, MailerLite has automation. I moved there from Mailchimp to reduce the overhead.
> I was beginning to consider FB ads. I loathe FB. Thanks for making my day.


I moved to Mailerlite a year ago.

I now also advertise on Facebook, but it is really not something I advise beginning writers to do. It gets vastly more interesting if you have a decent stable of books to sell.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

Patty Jansen said:


> I moved to Mailerlite a year ago.
> 
> I now also advertise on Facebook, but it is really not something I advise beginning writers to do. It gets vastly more interesting if you have a decent stable of books to sell.


I, on the other hand, advise spending $10-$20 every month or so, if you can afford that, and play around with Facebook. It is very enlightening learning how the marketing audiences work and there are a ton of metrics you get to study. Plus even if you're not selling books, you can use it to grow your email list by learning how to get people to your landing page. You can build pure website traffic if you have a blog, you can build Facebook likes for your author page. Then by the time you have a backlist, you'll be a pro and grow right into smoothly awesome FB advertising.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> You can build pure website traffic if you have a blog, you can build Facebook likes for your author page.


Paying for likes seems like a waste of money. With Facebook no longer showing your posts to a decent proportion of your likes, you have to pay again for people to actually see your stuff. You're much better off getting those people off Facebook and on your list.

The trouble with Facebook ads is that it may take a significant amount of time and money before you see any consistent statistically measurable results. The lower your monthly budget, the longer it takes to get those results. At least that's my experience while I've done this since 2014.

So really, you want to be able to set aside a decent amount of money, like $150-$500 per month that you can play around with, and the entire premise of this thread is that the beginning writer does not need to fund their writing career from their other job. When you're starting out, there are a lot more important areas to spend that amount of money than Facebook ads.

Advertising for any books or mailing list signups becomes vasty more profitable the more books you have out. Facebook is extremely good at eating your money for nothing in return.

If someone is really keen at learning this type of advertising, I tell them to go to AMS, because they won't burn through your money ate a crazy rate if you make a daft keyword choice.


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## Joy Cote (Oct 25, 2017)

Thank you so much! I have just entered into editing on my first book. From the beginning I had planned on a three book series with the first one to be a free download.  I have just started looking into Mailchimp as a way to get a reader list together to promote the other two books and your post just help to solidify what I thought needed to be done in order to succeed. Moving from writing for the plain joy  of writing into writing for publication is intimidating your post help to connect the dots better. Made me feel as though I was doing something right!


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## danpadavona (Sep 25, 2014)

Patty,

Thank you for bumping this post back into prominence. Though I lurk more than I post, I really enjoy your opinions and the clear sensibility you bring to these discussions.

I've shied away from the series idea due to genre. I write horror, much of it rather dark, and I don't feel fans of dark horror wish to see the story segmented into multiple novels. My Dark Vanishings series is a horror / fantasy mashup, but much of what I write doesn't fit the series mold.

But I'm never averse to trying new things, I just don't have any clever ideas for turning dark horror novels into a series (without succumbing to the Halloween / Friday the 13th cliche in which the killer is never dead, even though we all saw his head chopped off in Part 3, eh-hem).


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

danpadavona said:


> Patty,
> 
> Thank you for bumping this post back into prominence. Though I lurk more than I post, I really enjoy your opinions and the clear sensibility you bring to these discussions.
> 
> ...


You could try setting books in the same location. Set it up in the first book that the town/house/whatever has had multiple gruesome events in the past so that the series potential is shown from the start rather than the later books being tacked on. That could work.


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## danpadavona (Sep 25, 2014)

Very good suggestions. Thank you!


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

> I sell at least a few hundred dollars worth on each of: B&N, Apple, Google Play and Kobo


That is truly amazing, and worthy of congratulation, so -- congratulations!

I've long been fascinated by people's radically different experiences on online bookstores. A professional formatter whom I like and admire (I have an alert against her name on the KDP community forum, so I will never miss one of her posts), swears that of hundreds of clients, not one has had any decent return from Apple. I was astonished by this, so I went back over the four or five years I've been distributing books through Draft2Digital, and sure enough, Apple has been my best earner. There are months when B&N earns more money, but in ever year Apple has been the winner.

My guess is that Apple does a better job of servicing the wide world. B&N is US-only, while Kobo is strongest in Canada. I have no sense of where Google is strong, if anywhere.

Last year, Overdrive was my fourth-biggest earner on D2D. (I price all my ebooks at $9.95 for Overdrive. Perhaps I should have made it $15.95! My local librarian told me that paying $70 was not that unusual for an ebook from a popular author.)

That said, never does D2D account for as much as 20 percent of my sales, with Amazon accounting for 80 percent. Google is separate but I don't pay much attention because I don't find its reports very friendly. I doubt it's more than 1 percent -- worth uploading the books, but not much more than that.


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## MattGodbey (Jul 8, 2016)

danpadavona said:


> Patty,
> 
> Thank you for bumping this post back into prominence. Though I lurk more than I post, I really enjoy your opinions and the clear sensibility you bring to these discussions.
> 
> ...


Or you could do the Michael McDowell route (his Blackwater series) and set 6 novels over the course of 3/4 of a century, all in the same town, dealing with different generations of the same family, manipulated by the same entity. It was very effective.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

notjohn said:


> That is truly amazing, and worthy of congratulation, so -- congratulations!
> 
> I've long been fascinated by people's radically different experiences on online bookstores. A professional formatter whom I like and admire (I have an alert against her name on the KDP community forum, so I will never miss one of her posts), swears that of hundreds of clients, not one has had any decent return from Apple. I was astonished by this, so I went back over the four or five years I've been distributing books through Draft2Digital, and sure enough, Apple has been my best earner. There are months when B&N earns more money, but in ever year Apple has been the winner.
> 
> ...


Google Play has done really well for me recently.

Some illumination into the reason why:

I ventured into a shopping centre the week before Christmas (dumb idea, yeah, I know) and at every checkout at ever major store, they sold gift cards. Some of these were for store content, some for shopping centre physical content, but also digital content.

Some stores sold a lot of variety (the post office!), some less. But even the stores that sold only three types of cards, they usually sold: iTunes gift card, Google Play gift card, their own store gift card. This was pretty consistent. Nary an Amazon gift card to be seen.

Now this will be hugely different each year for each country, but in order to sell at a retailer it's a good idea to check what that retailer is doing marketing-wise in which countries. Kobo, for example, has started doing a lot of off-site direct marketing targeted to particular countries. You get into these promos by using the promo tab on your KWL dashboard. And seriously, there is ZERO reason not to go direct with Kobo. When I did, my sales there increased 2000% (not a typo), and Kobo was the sole retailer that helped me get over the $1000 per month barrier. At times, more than 80% of my sales were from Kobo.

Apple and Google seem to be in the same game of marketing digital content as a way to augment people's enjoyment of devices. So you have a deep device/OS-based divide.

So if, on your list, you know who has an iPhone and who has an Android phone, you can pretty much split off those sections of your audience.

Now places like Bookfunnel only tell you what percentage of people have these devices, not who they are, but it's a prime question for a reader survey.

Instead of asking them offensive questions like their gender and age, ask them if they're an iPerson or an Android person. I do this backwards by offering them free books that are on all retailers and tracking what site they go to download.


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## Vale (Jul 19, 2017)

danpadavona said:


> I've shied away from the series idea due to genre. I write horror, much of it rather dark, and I don't feel fans of dark horror wish to see the story segmented into multiple novels. My Dark Vanishings series is a horror / fantasy mashup, but much of what I write doesn't fit the series mold.
> 
> But I'm never averse to trying new things, I just don't have any clever ideas for turning dark horror novels into a series (without succumbing to the Halloween / Friday the 13th cliche in which the killer is never dead, even though we all saw his head chopped off in Part 3, eh-hem).


I'm a little curious about this. I have a horror novel written/revised by not edited just kinda sitting around from before I started my self-publishing journey. It's probably been so long that if I went back to it, I'd just rewrite it, but it was a fun premise and I know what I'd cover for sequel and I think there could be a third book. I don't know if I could make a series out of the idea, but I could get a trilogy from it. I'm happily mired in fantasy for the moment, but I've heard that it can be good (mentally) to take breaks every few books in a series. It might be fun to release one every October for three years (or just wait and put all of them out one October). I don't know if this is on topic for Patty's thread. Is this discussion happening somewhere else?


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## Dragon (May 9, 2016)

How does one set that up?
TIA,
Dragon



notjohn said:


> A professional formatter whom I like and admire (I have an alert against her name on the KDP community forum, so I will never miss one of her posts),


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