# How achievable is £\€50k per year?



## ExtraT (May 20, 2017)

Hello Kboards,

Long time lurker, gleaning valuable advice from these hallowed pages, all of which has helped/continue to help me write my first 1.5 novels! 

About me: I've always loved writing, ever since I was in school. My first (controversial) short story was about a school being shot up. It was a subject that my English teacher tried to discourage me from. She succeeded and that story got binned. Thankfully. But she failed to see how much I loved describing scenes, emotions, and characters. 

Over twenty years later I picked up my laptop to write a novel which had been burning inside of me. It's now finished and with an editor. I'm halfway through book two already. However as much. As I'd like to claim my passion in the reason for picking up the pen (laptop?), sadly other external factors have played a part in my doing so. Sadly? I hear you cry? Yes. Namely, politics. Brexit. I'm a Brit living in the wilds of Austria. Brexit scares the life out of me (I really don't want this to turn into a political thread/rant, but it's part of my story). I'm worried about how difficult things will be for me over here once the U.K. Has left the EU, I'll need papers for everything.. now that in itself isn't a problem, I've been here long enough, but it's a still a worry. What I want is to develop my writing to a point where it can support my wife/child and I, so I don't have to worry about Brexit, or worry about what could happen with money in the future. An independent income which follows me around the globe, not tying me down to one office/city/country.

That's the motivation. How achievable is €\£ 50k per year? My first series will be developed into three books, and after that I'll be looking at audio/translations/etc... while writing my second series. I'm not sure what other info you need apart from series one is crime and I'm looking at a spy thriller for series two? 


TIA for your replies.

ET


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

Truthfully, the answer is: it depends.

Is it possible? Sure. Do a lot of factors you don't have exact control over matter? You bet they do.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Well, these kinds of questions aren't all that uncommon, and if you've been lurking for a while, you should have a rough idea of what people's responses will be; they'll tell you that it's impossible to know.

But, I will go a bit more specific than that. So I need some clarification; what exactly is your question? Is it possible to make 50k/year by writing books? Or is it possible that you'll be able to make 50k/year with the 3-book series that you're currently writing?

The two questions are very different, and thus would have different answers. First of all, if you're asking specifically about the 3-book series you're currently writing, forget 50k/year. You'll be extremely fortunate to make 10k from that, unless you already have a huge following elsewhere. 

If you're just asking generally, then from what I've read here, I think it is very achievable. BUT. You need to be really creative in marketing your books. You can't do exactly what everyone else does, or else you'll get the results everyone else gets; i.e minimal sales. Think long and hard about how to optimize each and every step of the process. AND you need to constantly churn out books; at least a book every couple of months. 

If you can do that, then 50k/year is very achievable after a couple of years. Can you achieve it without doing all that, without building up for a couple of years? Sure. But it's much more of a crapshoot.

Take what I say with a grain of salt though, since I'm not yet a successful author myself; but with all the great advice I've read here on kboards (especially Chris Fox, I treat everything he says like the self-publishing bible), I managed to make ~$5k with my first book with $0 dollars spent total on promo/ad/cover/editing, 0 people on my mailing list, etc.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

I'd say it's not. 

In today's market, which is massively oversaturated (ie. very difficult for new entrants to get visibility) I think two musts would have to happen to even have a shot at it:

* You'd have to have a truly excellent book that tapped into an underserved market niche and which lead to massive word-of-mouth (ie. people telling other people that they absolutely MUST read your book). 
* You'd have to land a bookbub to get you that first round of mass exposure
* caveat: this assumes you aren't a celebrity or something with an existing fan base of any sort.

People love to get hopes up and tell people it's doable. But that doesn't help you deal with reality (ie. what is likely to happen). 

The vast majority of new self-published books don't make $500 in their first year. Yes, you'll find more people on kboards who do because they are actively marketing and trying different things, but even here I'd say most don't start making money until their third book. 

If you held a lottery ticket up to me and said "Can I win a million?"... technically I'd have to say, "yes, yes you can"... but realistically, don't count on it.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

It's totally doable. That doesn't mean you will do it, though. If these are your first books, it is more of a long shot than if you were more seasoned and had some kind of platform or at least way to know that your writing is up to a level that readers will pay you money for it.

So... while totally possible, you'll need to do a lot of work to make it happen. Good luck.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

50k/year is only 4k/month. That's entirely achievable.

However, there's a number of variables. It depends on your chosen category, how much research you've done, how big the niche is (ie: can it sustain that level of income) do you know tropes &  reader expectations and whether you have the skill to pull it off.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

It's absolutely possible, even right off the bat and even if it's your first fiction. It's also unusual. It depends on the books, their production, their presentation, and your promotion. But starting and ending with the books.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

It can be done, but if that's your absolute number one priority in writing, then you're doing it all wrong. You've started with the writing, which is a big mistake. So stop writing right now, and read Chris Fox's book 'Write to Market'. It's quite short, not a huge tome. Then follow his instructions on how to pick an underserved genre that interests you. Then research that genre by reading the bestselling books in it and noting the common factors, tropes, styles, etc. Then and only then do you start writing, and every part of what you write must be focused on the objective: a bestselling series. You'll need to make sure you write fast, if you don't already, so that you can put out books on a regular schedule - one a month is ideal. You'll want to read another of Chris's books if you need to up your speed - '5000 words an Hour'. And also 'Launch to Market', since you should be planning your launch strategy well ahead of time. And if you can do all that, and maintain the pace, and have a half-decent grasp of storytelling and writing craft, you should be able to make a decent wodge of money.

I should perhaps warn you that, although I've seen a number of people do just this (including Chris himself, and he's documented his experiences on YouTube, which are fascinating to watch), in almost every case they've already released books, learned the craft, learned from their mistakes and set out to start again, doing things differently. I've never seen anyone do this right out of the gate. It's very hard to get everything right, unless you have some experience under your belt. Some people do manage to hit an underserved genre at the first attempt, either by chance or by instinct, (Rosalind James is a shining example of someone who knew just what her readers wanted) but if you want to do it reliably, it's best not to rely solely on instinct or luck to guide you.

For a similar but slightly different approach to the same strategy, look up Michael Anderle's group on Facebook '20BooksTo50K' and read some of the files there.


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## Eugene Kirk (Oct 21, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It can be done, but if that's your absolute number one priority in writing, then you're doing it all wrong. You've started with the writing, which is a big mistake. So stop writing right now, and read Chris Fox's book 'Write to Market'. It's quite short, not a huge tome. Then follow his instructions on how to pick an underserved genre that interests you. Then research that genre by reading the bestselling books in it and noting the common factors, tropes, styles, etc. Then and only then do you start writing, and every part of what you write must be focused on the objective: a bestselling series. You'll need to make sure you write fast, if you don't already, so that you can put out books on a regular schedule - one a month is ideal. You'll want to read another of Chris's books if you need to up your speed - '5000 words an Hour'. And also 'Launch to Market', since you should be planning your launch strategy well ahead of time. And if you can do all that, and maintain the pace, and have a half-decent grasp of storytelling and writing craft, you should be able to make a decent wodge of money.
> 
> I should perhaps warn you that, although I've seen a number of people do just this (including Chris himself, and he's documented his experiences on YouTube, which are fascinating to watch), in almost every case they've already released books, learned the craft, learned from their mistakes and set out to start again, doing things differently. I've never seen anyone do this right out of the gate. It's very hard to get everything right, unless you have some experience under your belt. Some people do manage to hit an underserved genre at the first attempt, either by chance or by instinct, (Rosalind James is a shining example of someone who knew just what her readers wanted) but if you want to do it reliably, it's best not to rely solely on instinct or luck to guide you.
> 
> For a similar but slightly different approach to the same strategy, look up Michael Anderle's group on Facebook '20BooksTo50K' and read some of the files there.


^^^^ This.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

The vast majority who self-publish will never earn that much. A small minority do, and a smaller minority earn a great deal more.

Here's what I'd encourage you to consider: there's virtually no chance of that without at least one series in print (one commercially viable series, mind you--take the advice about writing to a market). More series, better odds. Even if you're ready to bet on yourself, bone up, and do everything that needs to be done, you need to anticipate months or years of work before you're drawing that kind of a living.

Also worth remembering that it takes longer than most jobs to get paid for book sales/borrows, and you've got publishing expenses up front. Taxes can be weird too.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I'll just note that everybody I know who DID hit it right out of the gate first time around started with the writing. I'm far from the biggest name on that list, but everybody I know who did it, did it in romance. (Doesn't mean those people are the only ones--they're just the only ones I can think of off the bat.) They wrote fun or heart-tugging or cool or sexy books with great character development and a good hook. 

Oh--and THE MARTIAN. Duh. Forgot that one!


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> I'll just note that everybody I know who DID hit it right out of the gate first time around started with the writing. I'm far from the biggest name on that list, but everybody I know who did it, did it in romance. (Doesn't mean those people are the only ones--they're just the only ones I can think of off the bat.) They wrote fun or heart-tugging or cool or sexy books with great character development and a good hook.
> 
> Oh--and THE MARTIAN. Duh. Forgot that one!


First time writing a book, or first time publishing? And has there been any recent (say past 1.5 years or so) examples, or were they all from when self-publishing was still kind of in its infancy?


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> First time writing a book, or first time publishing? And has there been any recent (say past 1.5 years or so) examples, or were they all from when self-publishing was still kind of in its infancy?


First time writing a book in all the cases I know of (including mine). Mine was 4.5 years ago, so not recent, and not in self-publishing's infancy. The most recent one I can think of offhand (a year or so ago) was CAKE. One book, with the sequel out many months later. Sold like gangbusters. Also her first book, written from the heart, from what I know, and she was as surprised as anyone. Struck just the right chord with readers.

My first book was also a bestseller years later in audio and in German translation, by the way--in other words, with new audiences, and not self-published. Again, I'm far from the biggest name. Just somebody who found out she could sell books after she wrote her first fiction "just to see." Which some people indeed manage to do.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> First time writing a book, or first time publishing? And has there been any recent (say past 1.5 years or so) examples, or were they all from when self-publishing was still kind of in its infancy?


There's been a grip of first-publication successes, sure. I haven't noticed as many recently as we used to see. It's never been the most easily replicated path to success, at any rate.

It's been four years since the Wearmouths debuted with _First Activation_. That makes me feel impossibly old and tragic.


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## Guest (May 20, 2017)

It’s certainly possible. It’s just not likely. Not to say you shouldn’t try. But take into account how many writers there are. And of those, how many make a living as a novelist. Do not go into this with expectations of making money. 
That said, you need to first pick a genre. Literary fiction is definitely not what you want to choose as a self-published author. Mystery, romance, fantasy, action/adventure, etc.; these are the big sellers for an indie. You can try lit-fic. But your chances are severely diminished if you do. And given the already slim chance….
I suggest reading Russell Blake’s blog. He lays it out in stark, honest terms.


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## Indecisive (Jun 17, 2013)

I believe that Andy Weir built up a pretty big following by posting The Martian serially on his blog before he published it as a book, so he started out with a decent-sized, engaged, and dedicated audience that he'd built up over years of publishing things on the internet, just not books.

If you really want to make 50k/year as a writer, you're probably better off doing it in content marketing or even magazine writing. It's a whole different ballgame, but it gives you some of the same perks as fiction writing in that you can do it from anywhere in the world and more or less be your own boss. The downside is that it's not like buying lottery tickets with hundreds of hours of your time -- with fiction, there's always the dream that one book will hit it big, and/or that these assets you're building will bring in a steady income in years to come. If you want more likely money in an easier-to-forecast way, then work-for-hire may be the way to go.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

> today's market, which is massively oversaturated


I don't think this is said nearly often enough. When I first published through Amazon's platform (then called the DTP) there were 380,000 Kindle editions on the store. Now there are six million. Yes, readership has expanded, but not nearly as fast as writership. I am now earning one-third as much as I was at the high point in January 2012, though I have more books for sale, on more online stores, in more formats.



> The vast majority of new self-published books don't make $500 in their first year.


I don't know the definition of "vast," but if it's 95 percent, I'd bet the figure is closer to $50.



> everybody I know who did it, did it in romance


In January 2016 I started recording the self-published ebook best-sellers on the Wall Street Journal / Nielsen Bookscan list, 10 fiction, 10 nonfiction. Almost every week there has been a fiction best-seller from a self-pubber (usually behind the guise of a selfie publishing company), and for every week there wasn't one, another week had two. Let's say 52 books a year. I'll bet that 50 of them have been chick lit, meaning books written for women, a bit or a lot naughty, often with an eff-bomb on the first page if not the first paragraph, by women authors or perhaps men disguising their gender.

There have been just two non-fiction self-pubbed best-sellers in that time.

All the best-sellers had a print edition, and all but two or three were not enrolled in Kindle Select.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

notjohn said:


> In January 2016 I started recording the self-published ebook best-sellers on the Wall Street Journal / Nielsen Bookscan list, 10 fiction, 10 nonfiction. Almost every week there has been a fiction best-seller from a self-pubber (usually behind the guise of a selfie publishing company), and for every week there wasn't one, another week had two. Let's say 52 books a year. I'll bet that 50 of them have been chick lit, meaning books written for women, a bit or a lot naughty, often with an eff-bomb on the first page if not the first paragraph, by women authors or perhaps men disguising their gender.
> 
> There have been just two non-fiction self-pubbed best-sellers in that time.
> 
> All the best-sellers had a print edition, and all but two or three were not enrolled in Kindle Select.


Yet there are plenty of people in KU who make gobs of money without ever hitting some newspaper's bestsellers list.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

notjohn said:


> I don't know the definition of "vast," but if it's 95 percent, I'd bet the figure is closer to $50.


I don't like stats like these. People might think it's "realistic" but it really isn't. The truth is, it isn't hard being the top 10% or 5% or even 1% at pretty much *anything*. Most people simply don't try. Seriously. I'm certain that every single one of us on these forums are in the top 1% for *something* that we do; and it's not because we're extremely talented or anything. Simply that we practised a bit more than most people, or we have more interest.

I've never been interested in the humanities; growing up, I was a STEM elitist. I'm too lazy to read books, and I'm sure you can tell from my posts that my grammar is not great. I'm certain I'm in the bottom 50% in terms of actual writing ability amongst those first-time authors, if not the bottom 5%; yet I made 5k with 0 dollars spent.

The fact that we are on kboards means that we've already done more research than 50%+ of authors; and if we really take in all the amazing advice from all the amazing people here, and actually understand why something is done a certain way, we can easily be among the top 5% or top 1%. The vast majority of people are not serious, and they are not the competition. I truly believe that anyone who actually puts in the work to figure things out will be able to succeed. Now, I'm not saying anyone can make millions; that takes talent and lots of luck, along with skill and hard work; but I truly believe that anyone can become the top 1% in pretty much anything if they really want to do it and are willing to work towards it.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

notjohn said:


> I don't think this is said nearly often enough. When I first published through Amazon's platform (then called the DTP) there were 380,000 Kindle editions on the store. Now there are six million. Yes, readership has expanded, but not nearly as fast as writership. I am now earning one-third as much as I was at the high point in January 2012, though I have more books for sale, on more online stores, in more formats.
> 
> I don't know the definition of "vast," but if it's 95 percent, I'd bet the figure is closer to $50.
> 
> ...


Uh...not sure I get the point. I must be missing something.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> * You'd have to have a truly excellent book that tapped into an underserved market niche and which lead to massive word-of-mouth (ie. people telling other people that they absolutely MUST read your book).
> * You'd have to land a bookbub to get you that first round of mass exposure
> * caveat: this assumes you aren't a celebrity or something with an existing fan base of any sort.


Is 50K a year possible? Certainly. There are people who will do it with their first book. Is it possible for you? That's a good question. Is it possible this year? Yes, but...

I'm on track for that this year. I do not write in an under served market but in a crowded and competitive one. I've never got a book bub, and I'm not a celebrity. On the other hand, I published my first book five years ago and I'll make more money this year than I did in the previous five years combined. This isn't a short-term gig. Annie B once posted a chart of her yearly earnings on this board. It's my inspiration.

The secret? Write a book people enjoy. Repeat. To hit that mark, I plan on publishing 5 books in 12-months. Two are out already and the third is with my editor. Unless your book is a skyrocket, doing that on one book is very difficult.

Good luck.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Here's how I did it:

I watched, studied, and planned for a few months.

I read about building a platform, then built one. I watched successful authors, and examined their funnels (not product funnels, but _sales_ funnels). I started building my mailing lists. I gathered every promo site into a spreadsheet, and began collecting data on what worked and what didn't work for my books.

I created a launch strategy. I created a promo strategy. I created a marketing strategy. I created a publishing strategy. I created a writing strategy (not with regard to productivity, but with regard to the "flavor" of writing my audience wanted).

I then broke each strategy down to a few core tactics. For example, my marketing is focused mainly around email, AMS, and FB ads. I don't do social, blog tours, newsletter swaps, etc. I focus on my core tactics.

In other words, there's a lot of work involved.

Can you simply write a book (or series), release it, and rack up sales and get sticky? Absolutely. But the odds aren't in your favor, especially as competition for visibility continues to grow.

Whenever I've created a business, I watched, studied, and planned every step before executing. First, strategy. Then, tactics. This process has never failed me.

I'm not saying it's the right way. It's just _my_ way.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Is it possible? Yes. Plenty have done that, and better.

The more relevant point is, is it achievable for you? That's going to depend on what you write, how well you write it, how frequently you can publish, and how well you can promote. It's likely not going to happen with a first book, first series, or in the first year.

The sad reality is, most writers make very little. But it's also a reality that some make a lot. There are no guarantees, it's hard work, and it can take time. But, you've already written one book, so that's more than a lot of people can say. Good luck!


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

I don't know her exact stats but I'd expect Izzy Shows is definitely on track to hit 50k in her first year with urban fantasy. But she writes FAST and on market and had a dose of good luck as well. I started a little over a year ago (after a traditional publishing career) and made a lot of missteps at first but will probably make 24k in my first year. I'm hoping for 50k in the upcoming year because my new pen name is going very very well and my planned series for 2018 are pretty marketable ideas, I think. I think it is like lightning in a bottle to make 50k in your first year though.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

It's so hard to say. There are people here who do everything right, write to market to the best of their ability, produce ten books in a year and a half, and yet still never take off and earn only a few hundred a month. There are other people who don't follow any of the rules and knock it out of the park out the gate. And there are a lot of people between the two extremes.

Personally, if I wanted money, I'd turn to the promotion side of things. Instead of being the gold prospector I'd be the person owning the general store where all the prospectors have to buy stuff. It's my backup plan if my creative well runs dry!

But for now I'm happy writing. I hit the 48K a few years ago, and so far I've been able to steadily grow my income.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> First time writing a book, or first time publishing? And has there been any recent (say past 1.5 years or so) examples, or were they all from when self-publishing was still kind of in its infancy?


This has been mentioned on here a few times now. There are authors who have come out with one book and they have sold incredibly well. The ones I know are all in romance.

Past authors:

Laurelin Paige
Ada Scott
Darcie Chan
Colleen Hoover
Jamie Mcguire
Alessandra Torre

*
Two recent authors who have achieved success with their first book.*

Jana Aston -Wrong
J bengtsson - Cake

I know there are more out there. If you read book blogs, you can often see the reviews, backstories and interviews with some of these authors. If you read AMA's on reddit, you will discover some authors there.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

I agree that the 95% don't make it thing is silly. It may be technically true but i don't think it really means anything.

Its like with job applications for an advertised position. I (and I'm sure many others here) have gotten jobs that have had over one hundred applicants. Sounds great but in reality there were probably thirty people who were sort of qualified and maybe five of those who actually put in the effort to do a proper, tailored application.  I may have been the top one percent in that pool but I was realistically competing against five other people probably. 

The London Marathon has 50,000 people in it but if you really put in the necessary effort and want to win you're probably only really competing against a few hundred people.

Success isn't guaranteed obviously (even if you do all the "right things") but it's not purely down to chance like winning the lotto as someone suggested.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

notjohn said:


> I don't think this is said nearly often enough. When I first published through Amazon's platform (then called the DTP) there were 380,000 Kindle editions on the store. Now there are six million. Yes, readership has expanded, but not nearly as fast as writership. I am now earning one-third as much as I was at the high point in January 2012, though I have more books for sale, on more online stores, in more formats.


kboards is largely based around worshipping at the feet of a handful of authors who have hit it out of the park. So the reality of the market gets ignored here a lot. It's always something the author is doing wrong, not a massively saturated market that requires a ton of spend, talent, time and luck to generate stickiness.

Even in this thread, people are mentioning names and results ignoring the fact that that many of the examples:

* started in 2014 or before (and benefit from the base they built back then). 
* Some spend tens of thousands on marketing
* Many have 10+ books
* some have had bookbubs that launched them at some point in their career

kboards is already 1% of the self-publishing authors (if that)... and maybe 1% of folks here are banging out $50k a year.

It's just way harder and rarer than people like to make it sound.

I just think it's almost cruel to tell someone just starting out that making $50k a year is most definitely doable. It's just setting them up for disappointment.

Realistically, $5k in yoru first year would be a huge success. If you hit $50k, great, but it's like winning the lottery statistically speaking.

And the obvious caveat is if you spend $25k, okay, then yes, you can probably hit $50k. But you ain't earning $50k if you're spending half of it on marketing.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

I spent time recently trying to decipher a 2016 author's earnings report and took some notes. As per my usual, they're harder to decipher than the original report. Nonetheless, I seem to have found the following insights interesting:

9900 Amazon authors earn more than $10,000 per year
5000 earn more than $25,000
43 authors with books never reaching the Top 100 lists earn $250k or higher (the report calls these authors "invisible to the lists")
142 off-list authors earn $50,000 or more

That's a mixed bag of possibly unreliable information but generally answers your question. I was most intrigued by the off-list results. It's often hard to deconstruct a best-seller, but it's relatively easy to understand evergreen success. Foremost, it's the writing and popularity of the genre. (Bad writing/popular genre never achieves evergreen status.)

I watched a Bookbub promotion take a title ranked at 1,600,000 up to 5000. Several days later that title sunk to 250,000, and within two weeks was back in the millions, rejoining the ranks of the author's five other non-evergreen titles. He/she may achieve $50k in yearly revenue, but with ad expenses of $25k to get there (or net earnings of $25k). I assume you wish for a net of $50k.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> And the obvious caveat is if you spend $25k, okay, then yes, you can probably hit $50k. But you ain't earning $50k if you're spending half of it on marketing.


That's actually the least important component--you do not need to spend anywhere near 25k to make 50k.

And it's totally doable as in POSSIBLE, but not likely to hit 50k in year one.

There are a few ways to do it.

Write an unputdownable book, right out of the gate, like CAKE. That is the perfect storm of a book, well written and timely.

Or, strategically plan for it.....think about what you like to read and write and then of those options look and see what is selling well and of those options look at what may seem to be underserved. For me a few years ago, it was sweet western historical romance.

Next step, write the best books you are capable of, get the best covers you can afford that clearly indicate the genre and release often.

Releasing often is a big part of the hitting 50k goal. If you can release every 30 days it is ideal, or if that isn't possible, then 60-90, but be consistent. Don't release a book then wait 5-6 or more months. It's hard to build momentum that way.

Get to know authors in your genre. Join reader FB groups in the genre--if you can't find any, start one. Those groups will build awareness of your author name and books with readers, it's free, and will help when you go to launch your books.

If you do this for a solid year, release 6-12 well written books in a popular genre....your chances are very good.

But you can't just write whatever moves you, skip around in genres, put up not so good covers, and release inconsistently and hope to do it....you might, if you have a book that is phenomenal that resonates....but most of us don't hit it out of the park with our early books the way CAKE did!

But you don't have to.....if you are strategic and focused and can tell a good story.....it can be done.

And regarding marketing, the best thing you can do is release more often--if you can hit every 30-60 days that will keep the books up and visible longer so that each new release lifts and markets the others and all you need to at a minimum is mail your list, post on FB, boost the post, and run some little ads or Amazon ads, which you can do cheaply. An occasional Bookbub if you can get one can give you a big boost toward the 50k as well. But even without Bookbub, you can hit this level if you work hard and release often and put out a book people want to read. The better the book, the quicker you'll hit that level.


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

Is anyone on this thread making $50,000 a year from their books?

I make more than that... from my day job. But I'm still writing because something keeps driving me--those emails from fans, new ideas, hopes and dreams, even though my body tells me to get that extra hour of sleep in the morning instead.

To paraphrase Jack London, keep writing, but if you have family to support, don't quit your day job. Writing isn't something you should go into to earn a living, unless you're going into journalism or technical writing or public relations, and even there a stable income isn't guaranteed. Learn a profession or trade and then write fiction if you feel compelled to. Maybe you'll hit it big, but it's not a realistic way to earn a living. Plus, if you actually get a real job, you'll have more life experience than some young writer who hit it big and never actually worked for a living. My favorite writers are people who lived full lives. Hemingway served in the Italian army in World War I and worked as a journalist in Paris. London was a sailor, gold prospector, cannery worker and hobo. Michael Crichton was a doctor. 

One of my favorite books is London's "Martin Eden". It's about a young sailor who decides to become a writer. He's in love with a beautiful woman who loves books but her family convinces her to dump him because he has no income. Everyone tells him his writing is crap. He gets ripped off by magazine editors. He nearly starves to death while writing in a rented room in Oakland. When he's at the end of his rope, he finally hits it big. But he's so disgusted by that point that he kills himself.

Great book.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PamelaKelley said:


> And it's totally doable as in POSSIBLE, but not likely to hit 50k in year one.


If 99% of authors don't achieve $50k in their first year... I don't see how you can tell a guy wondering what he's getting himself into that it's "totally doable" that he'll make $50k. Many of those 99% do all the things you listed yet still don't break through.

The self-pub market operates somewhat similarly to the tech start-up market back in its hayday. EVERY tech start-up thought they'd be the next billion dollar IPO. Reality was, 99% of them struggled to make a profit. But it was an industry that operated outside traditional market forces (sustaining itself off VC capital) and was fueled by "irrational exuberance".

SP is the exact same thing. The handful of success stories are what people focus on as proof points that its "doable". The gazillions of failures? People ignore. Or they find reasons to say "oh well, those people just don't know what they are doing."

I mean, this guy wants to know what he's in for. It's incredibly cruel in my view to make it sound like there's a 50%'ish chance he'll hit his 50k mark if he just does x, y and z.

There's a 1% chance he'll hit $50k and that's being kind with the odds. That's just reality.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> If 99% of authors don't achieve $50k in their first year... I don't see how you can tell a guy wondering what he's getting himself into that it's "totally doable" that he'll make $50k. Many of those 99% do all the things you listed yet still don't break through.
> 
> The self-pub market operates somewhat similarly to the tech start-up market back in its hayday. EVERY tech start-up thought they'd be the next billion dollar IPO. Reality was, 99% of them struggled to make a profit. But it was an industry that operated outside traditional market forces (sustaining itself off VC capital) and was fueled by "irrational exuberance".
> 
> ...


Read what I wrote a bit more carefully--the part you highlighted. I didn't say he WILL, I said it's totally doable as in possible--but not likely. Did you miss the not likely part?

It is absolutely doable if someone follows what I said there and has good books, there is a chance they will hit or pass 50k. Several friends that I've suggested follow this strategy have done it. I've done it, and I know many others that have as well. That said, it's not easy and it's not likely that he will do it, but it sure is possible.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> kboards is largely based around worshipping at the feet of a handful of authors who have hit it out of the park. So the reality of the market gets ignored here a lot. It's always something the author is doing wrong, not a massively saturated market that requires a ton of spend, talent, time and luck to generate stickiness.
> 
> Even in this thread, people are mentioning names and results ignoring the fact that that many of the examples:
> 
> ...


The reality is there are tons of authors making a good five figure income who are not kboards members. There are authors making enough to support themselves who are not members on any forum. You won't hear their stories because they are not talking on here or on blogs or on podcasts.

I have emailed a couple romance authors who I noticed were selling really well at the start of their careers and I asked them questions.

I have listened to interviews with authors from A.M. Madden to Shadonna Richards (have you heard of them?) They are not big household names like say Bella Andre, Colleen Hoover, H.M. Ward, Christina Lauren, Lauren Blakely and Vi Keeland but their first books sold really well and they are very successful.

Not all the authors started in 2013-2014 (the golden times), some started in 2016 and they are already making a good living.

Questions like this have no ideal answer because each author is going to tell their experience or what they have observed. Some authors on here have made $50k in their first three months, another author has been writing for 5 years and has not made $50k yet.

Genre, writing engaging books, capturing readers long term attention (growing a list of fans) is important. Maybe you break out with your first book or you gradually sell month after month and it takes a few years.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

BellaJames said:


> Genre, writing engaging books, capturing readers long term attention (growing a list of fans) is important. Maybe you break out with your first book or you gradually sell month after month and it takes a few years.


And I'm not denying this. Across the US and Canada there are probably 50+ lottery draws multiple times a week. Every week there are 50+ people who become millionaires. That doesn't mean "it's totally doable" to win the lottery.

We're talking basic statistics here. We know that 99% of SP authors will not make $50k in their lifetime.

I don't know why people so fervently want to grab the 1% or .001% and hold them saying "SEE! SEE! It can be done!"

That's not helpful to this guy who is wondering what the likelihood is he'll make 50k.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PamelaKelley said:


> Read what I wrote a bit more carefully--the part you highlighted. I didn't say he WILL, I said it's totally doable as in possible--but not likely. Did you miss the not likely part?
> 
> It is absolutely doable if someone follows what I said there and has good books, there is a chance they will hit or pass 50k. Several friends that I've suggested follow this strategy have done it. I've done it, and I know many others that have as well. That said, it's not easy and it's not likely that he will do it, but it sure is possible.


okay, I'm just saying if I'm this guy and I'm planning out my life and I'm trying to figure out whether I'll be able to sustain myself in another country (with a wife and kids)... and the big factor is whether I'll make $50k or not...

If I'm that guy, reading your response, I'm going to walk away thinking... "hmmm, okay it's going to be hard, but if I work hard and give it my all, it sounds like it's doable."

I just think it's really irresponsible to set someone up with those beliefs. Yes, you give yourself an out by saying "it's unlikely", but that's very likely NOT what he's going to hear. He's just going to hear that it's going to be hard but it's totally doable.

All I'm saying is that instead of the handful of people you can reference that have done it, acknowledge that 99% of authors out there DO NOT achieve $50k in the first year.

If a 1% success rate is your definition of doable, then at least make sure the guy knows that's how you are defining "doable". I mean, this guy seems to be making serious life-impacting decisions and needs a dose of reality... not a pat on the back as you send him to walk off a cliff.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I mean, this guy wants to know what he's in for. It's incredibly cruel in my view to make it sound like there's a 50%'ish chance he'll hit his 50k mark if he just does x, y and z.
> There's a 1% chance he'll hit $50k and that's being kind with the odds. That's just reality.


He asked if it's achievable. The answer is: yes, it is. It's possible. No one can put statistical probabilities on it because there are so many variables, and no one knows whether this particular person can do it, but yes, it can be done, because any number of people have actually done it, and not by lightning-in-a-bottle luck but by sitting down and working out what needed to be done, and then working their butts off doing it. But everyone who said it was possible also gave lists of conditions that must be met, and pointed out the hard work involved and the determination required. It's not easy. If it was, we'd all be doing it.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> okay, I'm just saying if I'm this guy and I'm planning out my life and I'm trying to figure out whether I'll be able to sustain myself in another country (with a wife and kids)... and the big factor is whether I'll make $50k or not...
> 
> If I'm that guy, reading your response, I'm going to walk away thinking... "hmmm, okay it's going to be hard, but if I work hard and give it my all, it sounds like it's doable."
> 
> ...


Saying it's not likely isn't 'an out', it's realistic. That is where we agree. It is not likely. As you pointed out a small percentage do this, most do not. To plan for it as your sole income would not be advisable. That would be setting yourself up for failure. You cannot count on it when you are starting out because you don't know if you'll hit the mark or how well your stuff will be received.

But if you read what the OP wrote, that's not what he's saying he's going to do. He is asking if it's possible to build his writing income up to the 50k yearly level so that then he can move at some point and support his family with his writing.

And I still say it's totally doable. I've seen too many people do it for me to not be optimistic that it's quite possible. Can you count on it happening? Of course not? But can you do everything possible, give it your best shot and maybe get there? Sure!

With all the caveats....good writing, covers, genre, etc. It can be done. The OP might very well be able to do it. And just to be even more optimistic, I know quite a few writers who are not only solidly earning 50k but who are in the six and seven figure levels. If you can solidly hit the 50k level, it doesn't take that much more to get to six figures.


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's not easy. If it was, we'd all be doing it.


lol.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> And I'm not denying this. Across the US and Canada there are probably 50+ lottery draws multiple times a week. Every week there are 50+ people who become millionaires. That doesn't mean "it's totally doable" to win the lottery.
> 
> We're talking basic statistics here. We know that 99% of SP authors will not make $50k in their lifetime.
> 
> ...


Comparing success in book writing with the lottery is as disingenuous as saying that luck does not play a factor and failure must be the authors' fault, if not moreso.

By simple economics, it simply doesn't make sense that it's so much more difficult to make a living from book-writing than any other job. If that was the case, then the amount of writers would significantly diminish, until it reaches an equilibrium.

I am probably in the top 0.001% of the population in terms of swimming ability. But so what? That's not saying much. Half the people in the world can't even float in the water with their face outside. 90% of the other half barely knows how to move forward. Just having taken some swimming lessons would get you into the top 1% of the population in swimming, and if you kept it up for a few years, you'll be like me, in the top 0.001%, if not higher. That doesn't mean I have a huge amount of talent or luck in swimming; comparing with the whole population is simply meaningless.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's not easy. If it was, we'd all be doing it.


So regular people not exposed to this industry yet will not understand what people are saying when they say "it's not easy". They'll think that phrase is being used the way it is in everyday life.

Losing 30 pounds isn't easy. Writing a novel isn't easy. Getting a PhD isn't easy.

Making $50k in your *first year* of publishing is a hell of a lot more than "it's not easy". It's statistically *extremely* rare.

Anyway, I'm going to exit this thread now. People need to consider what they could be doing to this guy though and the potential negative effects that could occur when he spends a year believing it's "doable" and then doesn't achieve it.

But he'll come back here and say he didn't make the $50k and his life is ruined and people will look at his books and say "Ohhh, it's cuz your blurb wasn't catchy enough and I'd have used a different font on the cover. So it's not that we were wrong, you just didn't do what we said you had to do. Oh well, too bad so sad."

Actually, the advice he'll get is "You should redo your covers, relaunch your books, write 10 more books. It will work out if you do what we said. Trust us."

Simple basic truth: 99% will NOT make $50k in their first year. There should be nothing controversial about that statement. Nor should people be trying to shade reality by making a 1% success rate seem like it's not really as much of a longshot as it sounds.


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

Seneca42 said:


> Simple basic truth: 99% will NOT make $50k in their first year. There should be nothing controversial about that statement. Nor should people be trying to shade reality by making a 1% success rate seem like it's not really as much of a longshot as it sounds.


And for those who make $50,000 from their books, there's no guarantee their good fortune will be repeated the following year. Swing for the fences, but if you have a family to support, don't quit your day job.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> Simple basic truth: 99% will NOT make $50k in their first year. There should be nothing controversial about that statement. Nor should people be trying to shade reality by making a 1% success rate seem like it's not really as much of a longshot as it sounds.


Here's another simple basic truth: Average earnings per person per year in the world is about 10k USD. Earning 30-40k+ USD per year is extremely rare, regardless of what you do.

Here's another simple basic truth: 100% of people who don't give me $500 will die.

There should be nothing controversial about either of those statements.

But anyone with half a brain can see how statistics that don't account for all the relevant variables can be misleading.



Gus Flory said:


> And for those who make $50,000 from their books, there's no guarantee their good fortune will be repeated the following year. Swing for the fences, but if you have a family to support, don't quit your day job.


There's no guarantee your good fortune of not being fired from your job will be repeated the following year either, so if you have a family to support, don't quit your book writing


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

AsianInspiration said:


> There's no guarantee your good fortune of not being fired from your job will be repeated the following year either, so if you have a family to support, don't quit your book writing


Good point.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's not easy. If it was, we'd all be doing it.


I think it's also true that some people don't really care if they're selling much at all. They just like calling themselves "authors" and hanging around the writing communities. They might have an unread blog, or enjoy socializing on FB and have earnest opinions about writing, but they don't really write well enough to succeed. There are maybe three million invisible books on Amazon, but they have their own URLs and linked author central pages. Writing a book is a lot of people's dream and look, they've done it. It's there on Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. Composing a novel _is_ an achievement, and good for them. But many don't seem to care about bestsellerdom. Maybe they just care about belonging somewhere.

It makes the statistics unreliable. The percentage of _serious_ writers enjoying success is probably much higher than 1%. That number gets dragged down by the sheer number of people who just want to write a book without much concern for its success.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Dpock said:


> I think it's also true that some people don't really care if they're selling much at all. They just like calling themselves "authors" and hanging around the writing communities. They might have an unread blog, or enjoy socializing on FB and have earnest opinions about writing, but they don't really write well enough to succeed. There are maybe three million invisible books on Amazon, but they have their own URLs and linked author central pages. Writing a book is a lot of people's dream and look, they've done it. It's there on Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. Composing a novel _is_ an achievement, and good for them. But many don't seem to care about bestsellerdom. Maybe they just care about belonging somewhere.
> 
> It makes the statistics unreliable. The percentage of _serious_ writers enjoying success is probably much higher than 1%. That number gets dragged down by the sheer number of people who just want to write a book without much concern for its success.


I'll go one step further. Without the context you noted, the statistics are *useless*.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Dpock said:


> I think it's also true that some people don't really care if they're selling much at all. They just like calling themselves "authors" and hanging around the writing communities. They might have an unread blog, or enjoy socializing on FB and have earnest opinions about writing, but they don't really write well enough to succeed. There are maybe three million invisible books on Amazon, but they have their own URLs and linked author central pages. Writing a book is a lot of people's dream and look, they've done it. It's there on Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. Composing a novel _is_ an achievement, and good for them. But many don't seem to care about bestsellerdom. Maybe they just care about belonging somewhere.
> 
> It makes the statistics unreliable. The percentage of _serious_ writers enjoying success is probably much higher than 1%. That number gets dragged down by the sheer number of people who just want to write a book without much concern for its success.


That's a good point! It's also worth considering that it used to be almost impossible to make a living writing fiction. I've been writing now for over 30 years, though just published for over three. For a long time, I assumed I would want to go the traditional route, get an agent, try to sell to a big trad publisher. I've always worked in marketing and sales and over 15 years ago, I spent a year as an agent and that year was eye-opening in that I saw how few really good books actually were chosen. Unless you were one of the big breakout authors, it was difficult to support yourself as a writer.

But it's much more doable now. Yes, doable. Compared to how it was, that is. It is now easier to make a full-time living writing fiction. But there's more to it than just writing the books. You have to approach it like a business, and put on your marketing hat and invest in your products--to think like a businessperson when you decide on what to write--if your goal is to earn a certain income. You can get there sometimes just by writing what calls to you--but that's riskier. It's still a perfectly fine approach, letting your art be what it wants to be, but if you take that approach, you cannot expect to hit desired income levels--unless you get lucky and what calls to you also falls into the sweet spot of what readers want to read.

But to encourage someone that it's possible is not irresponsible. I highly doubt the OP is basing his decision on a single post here on Kboards. Personally, I think it's better to encourage than to discourage someone from reaching for their dreams.


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## BeMyBookBaby (Apr 18, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> I am probably in the top 0.001% of the population in terms of swimming ability. But so what? That's not saying much. Half the people in the world can't even float in the water with their face outside. 90% of the other half barely knows how to move forward. Just having taken some swimming lessons would get you into the top 1% of the population in swimming, and if you kept it up for a few years, you'll be like me, in the top 0.001%, if not higher. That doesn't mean I have a huge amount of talent or luck in swimming; comparing with the whole population is simply meaningless.


I am now oddly interested in your swimming ability... How good are you?

To the OP, what I have noticed, as a scared prawn afraid to commit but loving the endless procrastination opportunities of kboards, is that people swing into two camps.

1) Give it their all: plan, research, market and scheme like they're pulling off a bank heist, instead of posting some fan fiction.

2) People who think they've done enough, but haven't really.

Both of these groups have successes and failures. 
Outliers reside in both. From what I've briefly read, Andy Weir did little more than post to his blog, and then take it to Amazon so he could let his blog followers download it to read without internet. (Feel free to correct me if he is secretly a machine.) Mark Cooper rarely publishes, but markets and maintains excellent sales. They both pull in a living income, and then some, as members of group 2 and 1, respectively.

Amanda Lee is an absolute robot, who has a meticulous schedule that allows her to publish multiple times a month, with the quality of professional edits, etc, and the occasional brief relaxation period provided by a personal pool and, I believe, a maid/cleaner. She pretty much invented Category 1, and her success is well earned, through actual sweat and intelligence.

HOWEVER. Search through these forums long enough and you'll see the people who do everything right, allegedly, and never make back their investments. It could be bad timing, lack of luck, picking the wrong genre trope, or publishing an anti-golfing satire/comic on the memorial of a golfing massacre. Nobody really knows why some people do it all right, and get no algorithm love.

Some people, in their cold and dreary loveless caves, refuse to change and decide that the issue is something they have no control over. They come on kboards and beg for advice and then refuse it, because reasons. Other people, like our Annie B, realise that they're sick of the darkness and start looking for a way out. She found it the first time, I believe, but she had many years of slog under her belt. Others don't strike iron until their third or fourth series/book. *I say iron because we're talking about 50k. Its a hefty sum, no doubt, but we still ain't getting a rare Indonesian monkey as a pet, for the giggles. Our bills get paid though.

Is it possible? Sure. I didn't get the impression you expected it tomorrow, or after one book. I hope you don't. However, were you to bop out 4 books a year, of decent quality and hooky premise and get a following? Yeah. If we're being super critical, thats $12,500 per book, per year. Still a very steep sum to pin your dreams on. Get 10 books out and you only need to make 5k from each... that's easier...

The only thing that stops you from achieving this is not doing it at all, so there's no harm trying. But know that most likely that sort of income is maybe 2 years down the line, if not longer. Luckily, Brexit doesn't kick in for quite a while, so you have time to start cranking out words, maybe build up a following and some savings and a backlog of material, so you can publish in succession without unnecessary panic.

My fingers are crossed for you.
Unless you're writing magical realism chic-lit. In which case, there aint enough room for us both.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Dpock said:


> 142 off-list authors earn $50,000 or more


This seems a very low number to me. I can think of several authors I know personally who are earning this kind of money, and I hardly know anybody. Surely there must be more than that?


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

if you take some time at it, it's doable. Don't expect it inside one or two years.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Lydniz said:


> This seems a very low number to me. I can think of several authors I know personally who are earning this kind of money, and I hardly know anybody. Surely there must be more than that?


They mean authors who almost? never have a book in the top 100 overall. (Can't remember exactly.) I don't do it that often myself, and I'm in I think the top? group at this point. You don't need to be a big name in your genre (if it's a big genre) to make silly money. But you probably either have to publish fast (I don't) or write books that stick well (that one I do).

Edited to add: I tell my story in threads like these not to say it's normal, but to say it's possible. I almost didn't publish at all when I first started because of (accurate) things I read online about how almost no authors make any money. (I'm not the most confident of humans.) I only published, in fact, because I'd had a major health issue, I'd been turned down by agents for three months, and I wasn't sure I'd have three more months. It was sort of "now or never."

Well, I published. My first fiction, the first book written at age 50+. I started writing down one of my daydreams on a whim or perhaps a moment of clarity or rare confidence. Within a week, I told my husband that I wanted to quit my job. He said OK. I did. My background for fiction was a lifetime of reading it and a talent for writing clearly, including some marketing copy. I was a good writer, but I'm definitely a better one 22 books later.

About ten months after I started, I published my first three books together. About 95K apiece, in contemporary romance. In the months that followed, I published three more books, two in that first series and one in a new series. The only real stats I have are some I wrote down. In 11 months, with those six books out, I'd sold over 110,000 books, at 99 cents to $3.99. I made more than day-job money from Month 1 on those first three books, and in Month 5, I made day-job YEAR money in 30 days.

I believe I spent less than $5,000 total that first year on all expenses, once you subtract the two months in New Zealand for research. I still don't spend that much. A big ad spend in a month for me is about $1K, and a huge spend is $2K. I do have an assistant now, plus various other people to do various other things.

I don't publish fast. I write about 500-600K a year of publishable material, but I write long. In five and a half years of writing, I've produced 22.5 books. So it's also not true that you have to put out a book a month. (Though it's certainly a more common path to good sales.)

I'm not the biggest fish in the pond by any means in my genre. Far from it. Many in my genre have barely heard of me, or haven't heard of me at all. Right now, I'm selling about 1,500 books a day, a figure that is more like 600-700 books/day in normal non-release months. I haven't had a book out for almost three months. My next one is due on July 1, so still a while to go. I've been in the overall Top 100 authors on Amazon for most of this month because of an Amazon push on one series that has spread, to one extent or other, to my other four series.

Again--this isn't to say, "Follow my path!", because it's a rather idiosyncratic one. I write in too many different series and subgenres, write too long, release too slowly, don't cross-promo, and--oh, heavens, I could write a whole post on the stuff I do wrong. I don't read writing or marketing books (in fact, I don't read much fiction anymore either), I don't study the market, and I don't have any 99 cent books or permafrees.

*I am writing this to say that yes, it is POSSIBLE to discover that you somehow know how to write good-selling books, which you won't discover until you actually publish. (None of the 38 agents who turned me down thought so.) And it's possible, if you keep working hard (I worked 7 days a week, nearly 365 days a year, for four straight years. Of course, I enjoy what I do, but still. I work a lot)--it's possible to keep on selling well, and indeed to sell better. *

Or it's possible, and requires a lot more mental fortitude, to do what Annie B did. Start out, have a lot of talent, but not have it pay off in the way you want, because you're perhaps listening to the wrong advice. It's possible to reboot based on your new wisdom and THEN do great.

Writing and publishing, trad or indie, is made up of a bajillion decisions, from major to infinitesimal. I think one of the biggest success factors, besides the talent for writing an engaging book (and don't underestimate that one) is judgment. I have good business and creative judgment. That was the one thing I DID know going in, after a long career doing various judgment-requiring things. Another requirement is the ability to work steadily. The judgment part comes in when you use the 80/20 rule and do the 20% of the possible things that bring you 80% of the resuts.

Long post. But there you go. Possibilities. You don't know until you try whether you will hit well out of the gate, whether you will succeed modestly, rejigger, try again, and hit, or whether you will never hit. There aren't any job interviews. You just kind of have to go out in the wide world and try.


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

Lydniz said:


> This seems a very low number to me. I can think of several authors I know personally who are earning this kind of money, and I hardly know anybody. Surely there must be more than that?


check author earnings


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Ellie Keating said:


> I am now oddly interested in your swimming ability... How good are you?


Well, I'm pretty good. I took swimming lessons from when I was like 4 til around 14-15. Swam for 1.5 hrs per session, 3 times per week (and more in the summer) during 4-5 of those years. At the time, as long as I'm not sprinting, I could swim as long as I want without getting tired; I never understood why I hear some people say they were able to swim 1000m and look really proud.

At your point about people who do everything correctly, plan out meticulously and still fail, do you have any examples? I've been reading kboards a lot (because I love procrastinating as well), and I honestly haven't seen a single case where I really would agree that they did everything correctly.

I'm not saying they don't exist, because the fact is, luck is a very real factor, and frankly quite a big factor. But let's say a well-planned series has a 50% chance of decent success, and they fail with the first and fail with the second... but if the keep at it, it becomes less and less likely that they'll continue to fail.



Rosalind J said:


> They mean authors who almost? never have a book in the top 100 overall. (Can't remember exactly.) I don't do it that often myself, and I'm in I think the top? group at this point. You don't need to be a big name in your genre (if it's a big genre) to make silly money. But you probably either have to publish fast (I don't) or write books that stick well (that one I do).


Yup. And quite honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot more than authorearnings found. I'm not really proud of this, but it is what it is. In 2013-2014ish (can't remember exactly), when I first discovered self-publishing and making money online, I managed to find a way to easily "scam". In 2 days' worth of work or so, I created almost 200 titles, and was earning over $100/day. To make sure I don't get caught, the titles were spread over a bunch of different names, so that none of them ever get big enough to catch amazon's attention. I wasn't the only one doing this. There were potentially 10s of thousands of titles doing the exact same thing I was doing, and probably a lot more with other scams.

In the end, I stopped after a month because it was really eating on my conscience, and I stopped having anything to do with amazon/self-publishing for years, until I realized that perhaps, just perhaps, I could actually write legit books, and there would still be people interested, and I could have a free conscience.

So that also relates to the number of "failure" titles in the store; you don't know how many scams there are. A lot of them are purposely created to rank low so as to not catch attention.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

AsianInspiration said:


> Well, I'm pretty good. I took swimming lessons from when I was like 4 til around 14-15. Swam for 1.5 hrs per session, 3 times per week (and more in the summer) during 4-5 of those years. At the time, as long as I'm not sprinting, I could swim as long as I want without getting tired; I never understood why I hear some people say they were able to swim 1000m and look really proud.


That's not enough data to say that you're in the top .001%, but it sounds unlikely. That would mean that there are only 3,250 people better than you in the U.S. Google says there are nearly 300,000 kids on high school swim teams, and roughly 1100 college level teams (mens + womens). With ~12 scholarships per, you'd have to be in the top 25% of college athletes or the top 1% of high school athletes to be in the top .001%, and that doesn't count anyone like you, who still maintains their skills.

_ETA: I just saw that there were 24,753 swimmers on college teams in 2015. So you'd have to be nearly in the top 10% among college swimmers alone._

From what you said above, it doesn't sound like you currently swim. Tell me you're in the top 10% and I'd believe it. That's about the percentage of kids who were on my community level swim team.

It's a long way from there to the final heat of the Olympics 100M Freestyle.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

If the OP has a good job with decent benefits - he should consider writing as a possibly lucrative side-hustle. 

So instead of replacing his entire income, he's supplementing it. This allows him to set a more achievable goal - that's still life changing. Imagine what could be done with an additional 10k a year (on top of salary)? That's a nice vacation, extra money to pay bills, or money to put into a retirement fund.  There's more than one way to live the dream of being a professional author.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

MonkishScribe said:


> That's not enough data to say that you're in the top .001%, but it sounds unlikely. That would mean that there are only 3,250 people better than you in the U.S. Google says there are nearly 300,000 kids on high school swim teams, and roughly 1100 college level teams (mens + womens). With ~12 scholarships per, you'd have to be in the top 25% of college athletes or the top 1% of high school athletes to be in the top .001%, and that doesn't count anyone like you, who still maintains their skills.
> 
> _ETA: I just saw that there were 24,753 swimmers on college teams in 2015. So you'd have to be nearly in the top 10% among college swimmers alone._
> 
> ...


I simply used a small % to make a point in regards to how statistics don't always show the whole picture. I don't know how well I actually rank in the world, since there aren't rankings for people who are not in the very top. 3000+ people is far more than those who can qualify for the olympics, let alone the finals. Plus, how are we even measuring "goodness"? Purely by speed? Of which stroke? There are a lot more ways you can be "good" at swimming than being fast at 100m free.

That said, I am DEFINITELY far above the top 10% of the general population; I very much doubt that 10% of the population has taken any amount of lessons at all, let alone joined a swim team.

I have never participated in any competitions myself, but I know people who have, and based on their results, I know that had I participated when I was ~13, I would've been top 10-20 in my province for my age.

*For freestyle. My breaststroke would probably be a bit higher, while back and fly would be a bit lower.

EDIT: Also, I just realized, there are probably more than 3000 people in the US who meet that criteria, probably a lot more. Why? Well, if we look at the distribution of American medalists in the olympics and other international swimming events, it is obvious that the US is way overrepresented compared to its population. The US is a rich country with lots of opportunities, naturally it attracts talent, and also is fertile ground to develop talent. I wouldn't be surprised if the US had 10000+ people who would be in the top 0.001% of the world population.


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## Diamond Eyes (Feb 11, 2017)

Dpock said:


> It makes the statistics unreliable. The percentage of _serious_ writers enjoying success is probably much higher than 1%. That number gets dragged down by the sheer number of people who just want to write a book without much concern for its success.


exactly


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## Guest (May 20, 2017)

In the entire world, combining traditional publishing and indie, there are roughly 10k writers making a living as a novelist. I use the word novelist because there are ways to write for a living aside from books. How many people have written a book and are trying to make it? 100k? A million? So what are the odds? Even if you dispute my number  - I used multiple sources which all gave the same estimate, give or take a few thousand - and triple that. The odds are still greatly stacked against you.
To put it into perspective, there were 13700 pro athletes in the US in 2014.


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## wingsandwords (Nov 1, 2016)

JaclynDolamore said:


> I don't know her exact stats but I'd expect Izzy Shows is definitely on track to hit 50k in her first year with urban fantasy. But she writes FAST and on market and had a dose of good luck as well. I started a little over a year ago (after a traditional publishing career) and made a lot of missteps at first but will probably make 24k in my first year. I'm hoping for 50k in the upcoming year because my new pen name is going very very well and my planned series for 2018 are pretty marketable ideas, I think. I think it is like lightning in a bottle to make 50k in your first year though.


Since my name was brought up, I might as well chime in here  I am, in fact, on track to hit 50k next month. I do write fast, and now that I've quit my day job I'm on track to write two books a month--although I don't think I'll be putting OUT 2 books a month just yet. Maybe next year, heh. Although actually, I want to put two books out in September-ish. Maybe October.

My desire to put out books so quickly is _slightly_ financially related, but _mostly_ because I have so many ideas that I want to get out into the world. I can't imagine just sitting on them.

Some facts that others might find relevant:


I did absolutely no genre research oriented towards figuring out tropes in the Urban Fantasy genre before writing. I just wrote the book. To be fair, though. I am an avid Urban Fantasy reader, so that probably helped me to subconsciously hit the right tropes.
This was not my first book ever written, although it was my first book ever finished? But I've been writing short stories and collab efforts and fanfiction since I was nine years old. I got all of my crap writing done early 
I started this year, in January. With no established base whatsoever.
I refuse to spend more than $500 on marketing per book.
I have three books out, and the fourth is being released on Monday.
I have never had a bookbub. Not for lack of trying!

So yeah. It happened to me. BUT I went into this with the expectation that I wouldn't even turn a profit until book five came out. You NEED to have low expectations and be willing to keep pushing in this business. If you expect to be a one hit wonder, you're more likely to abandon the whole thing, because your heart is set on finance. My heart is set on sharing my books with the world and maybe, just maybe, helping someone get through a rough day with a fictional escape from reality.  That's really the dream--touching someone's heart with my writing.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> This seems a very low number to me. I can think of several authors I know personally who are earning this kind of money, and I hardly know anybody. Surely there must be more than that?


Yeah ... that seems impossibly low, as I probably know 50 authors in sci-fi / fantasy that make that amount ... and those are niches. Romance, thrillers, and mystery authors make a lot more.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

C. Gockel said:


> Yeah ... that seems impossibly low, as I probably know 50 authors in sci-fi / fantasy that make that amount ... and those are niches. Romance, thrillers, and mystery authors make a lot more.


There are certainly hungry niches out there where a decent writer can clean up without ever troubling the top 100.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

The AE report is Amazon only. I know dozens of authors who make around half of their income at other retailers and would easily be in the 50k+ bracket. 

It's entirely possible to make 50k/year. I've done it in Regency romance and I'm a nobody, without any bestsellers, I've never been top 100 and I certainly don't spend 25k on advertising! I only spend around $200/month in ads. I've only been in this game for just over 18 months, and my income should keep climbing as I build my backlist. Again it comes back to the quality of the product and knowing your niche.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I always love the way people throw statistics around on this forum, especially made-up statistics. If I say that over 75% of all statistics here are made up, how do you disprove it?

AE is a valuable resource, and is probably the best source for indie authors as a general guideline. It's scientific accuracy is nonexistent. Read the disclaimers. They pull data from ONE DAY, analyze it, and project from the specific to the general. If they choose the day when I hit #1,000 in the whole Amazon store, their projection will put me in six figures for the year. If they choose the lousy day I had last week, I project at less than a tenth of that.

I also fail to find the part where the OP asked if he could make 50K in his first year, which some people are jumping up and down swearing is almost impossible. He asked if it was possible to make 50K a year as a self publisher.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> If the OP has a good job with decent benefits - he should consider writing as a possibly lucrative side-hustle.
> 
> So instead of replacing his entire income, he's supplementing it. This allows him to set a more achievable goal - that's still life changing. Imagine what could be done with an additional 10k a year (on top of salary)? That's a nice vacation, extra money to pay bills, or money to put into a retirement fund. There's more than one way to live the dream of being a professional author.


This is what I have to aim for in the coming years. I'd like to dump my soul-draining, mundane, aggravating job, but I've been doing it for 13 years and the pay is OK. But that's 9-11 hours a day gone, and by the time I get home, my will to do anything is nil. After dinner, chores, showers, etc., there's maybe an hour or 2 to write, but I'm so wiped out, the creativity is gone. Weekends I feel like I need to recharge, but there's a few hours to write after the work around the house is completed. But I'm sure those are problems most writers face. Maybe I'm just lazy.


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## It&#039;s A Mystery (Mar 14, 2017)

SMays said:


> This is what I have to aim for in the coming years. I'd like to dump my soul-draining, mundane, aggravating job, but I've been doing it for 13 years and the pay is OK. But that's 9-11 hours a day gone, and by the time I get home, my will to do anything is nil. After dinner, chores, showers, etc., there's maybe an hour or 2 to write, but I'm so wiped out, the creativity is gone. Weekends I feel like I need to recharge, but there's a few hours to write after the work around the house is completed. But I'm sure those are problems most writers face. Maybe I'm just lazy.


I had this and two things solved it.
Getting up early, and writing sprints.

Get up an hour earlier than normal, sit at your computer and set a timer for twenty five minutes and write as much as you can

After a few months you'll be getting 700 odd words from those sprints, meaning you can be less hard on yourself in the evenings.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> AE is a valuable resource, and is probably the best source for indie authors as a general guideline. It's scientific accuracy is nonexistent. Read the disclaimers. They pull data from ONE DAY, analyze it, and project from the specific to the general. If they choose the day when I hit #1,000 in the whole Amazon store, their projection will put me in six figures for the year. If they choose the lousy day I had last week, I project at less than a tenth of that.


Not to get too far offtrack, but the whole point of large-scale statistics is that those kind of anomalies even out. On the day that you're #1000 in the store, I'll be #100,000 in the store, so we balance out. On another day, we might be the other way round (ha! I should be so lucky!), but that would make no difference to the AE numbers. Statistics is about large populations, not individuals.



> I also fail to find the part where the OP asked if he could make 50K in his first year, which some people are jumping up and down swearing is almost impossible. He asked if it was possible to make 50K a year as a self publisher.


Indeed. He mentioned Brexit, in fact, which is still two years away.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Author earnings report from Feb. 2017 covering wide + English-language international sales: 
http://authorearnings.com/report/february-2017/

So no, AE doesn't only include Amazon. (Although the report that had the percentage of indie authors at each level WAS an Amazon-only report.) But you can see from the above report the overall share Amazon holds in the ebook market, in terms of units and dollars.

When I tried wide, my wide earnings did indeed reach, I think, 40% of my total. But that was because my Amazon earnings dropped so much. 

Not intending to get into a whole Select-vs-wide debate, as everybody has heard enough arguments by now to make up their own mind. Just saying--yeah, you can probably extrapolate some of the figures from the Feb. 2017 AE report. The mega sellers will of course throw off the averages wildly, though.

Oh: and my mistake on what AE's "invisible" authors referred to. These were authors who didn't have any books in the Top 100 of their genre during the snapshot time. Which could definitely be me, for example, MOST of the time in Contemporary Romance, even though I'm Amazon-only so all my sales/borrows/earnings come from there. I could even be that "top earner" one they were referring to. And then you have all the romance authors who are wide and are earning six figures plus while having perhaps one or two books in the top 100 in their categories on Amazon--that's probably a bunch. That's how it works with a huge genre--lots of books/authors AND lots of books sold. You get a lot of authors below the Top 100 line.

**From Author Earnings Report**
The ones we keep anecdotally hearing about (and hearing from), who don't show up on any Amazon category best seller lists?

Well, we found them. They were hiding in plain sight, in our million-title May data set.

Turns out there were 43 of them lurking unseen in the dark spaces between Amazon's bestseller lists, including one author invisibly earning more than $250,000 a year. Unsurprisingly, 30 of the 43 invisible six-figure earners - including the top earner - were self-published indie authors. Most were writing in the Romance Fiction genres, but there was also an indie author of editor's-choice Cozy Mystery Fiction, and even more surprising, a traditional-award-winning indie writer of Literary Fiction. We happen to think that's pretty cool.

When we lowered the author earnings bar to $50,000 a year, we found 142 invisible authors that were earning that much or more on Amazon.com, without any of their titles appearing on any category best-seller lists. 105 of those 142 were self-published indies.

(Above from the May 2017 report: http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/)


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Rosalind J said:


> Oh: and my mistake on what AE's "invisible" authors referred to. These were authors who didn't have any books in the Top 100 of their genre during the snapshot time. Which could definitely be me, for example, MOST of the time in Contemporary Romance, even though I'm Amazon-only so all my sales/borrows/earnings come from there. I could even be that "top earner" one they were referring to. And then you have all the romance authors who are wide and are earning six figures plus without having any books in the top 100--that's probably a bunch.
> 
> **From Author Earnings Report**
> The ones we keep anecdotally hearing about (and hearing from), who don't show up on any Amazon category best seller lists?
> ...


Oh, I thought we were talking about top 100 overall. That makes more sense, then.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Enough with all the speculation. This is how I actually did it: https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,231169.0.html

On track for 6 figures this year. Took me about 4 years.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I published a single title last year and pulled in over 300k (almost all of that on 7 books including the new one, none of which were published prior to Aug of 2014, none of which are in KU).  I spent about 1550 in advertising.

People will always say the golden age was X number of years ago (it was 2010/2011 when I was taking my last shot in mid/late 2014, now it appears that no, wait! 2014 was the golden time, lol). 

It's never going to get easier, so why not get going now? Things will always be changing in this biz. Those who change with them and keep satisfying their customer base will likely do well. Those who wish they could have started X number of years earlier and use the tactics that worked X years ago might find only disappointment.

What the OP wants is achievable. It won't be easy, but tell me an easy, low-effort way to make 50k a year in any high-skill industry (or any industry at all, heh).


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## Cheryl Douglas (Dec 7, 2011)

I hate to say this because I know if I were you, starting out today, I wouldn't want to hear it. And I don't like to be the person who discourages anyone. That being said, I honestly think it was easier to achieve that $50k goal in your first year when sp was in it's infancy. I earned six figures my first year in 2011/12. How? Mostly dumb luck. I gave away lots of books and got sticky at B&N and iBooks. Could I replicate that success today? No, I don't think I could. It's really hard to gain visibility today, especially if you're in a saturated genre (like romance). Those of us who were lucky enough to build a platform and loyal fan base in the early days are still able to make a good living as long as we continue to release the books our readers want to read.

That being said, I have seen several authors over the last couple of years in a variety of genres have breakout success with their first novel, so it's definitely possible. It's just harder. If I were starting out today, I'd do exactly what I did back then: write the best book I could (with an interesting hook), choose a popular genre, good cover, professionally edited, professional website and social media platforms, and hope for the best! Good luck.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

Q: Which month has 28 days?

A: All of them

I don't know why that seemed relevant, it just did 

I've been publishing since 2013, I have 20 something books now (though many of them are novellas) and I've never made 50k a year.
I think I only made about 5k in my first year.
Knowledge of the industry and hard work aren't enough. So much of it is about the book and the market place at the time of release.

I still feel like I'm learning all the time. So no, I don't personally think it is _easily_ achievable. I think it's bloody hard. But you should definitely try


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

SMays said:


> This is what I have to aim for in the coming years. I'd like to dump my soul-draining, mundane, aggravating job, but I've been doing it for 13 years and the pay is OK. But that's 9-11 hours a day gone, and by the time I get home, my will to do anything is nil. After dinner, chores, showers, etc., there's maybe an hour or 2 to write, but I'm so wiped out, the creativity is gone. Weekends I feel like I need to recharge, but there's a few hours to write after the work around the house is completed. But I'm sure those are problems most writers face. Maybe I'm just lazy.


You're obviously not lazy, or you wouldn't be putting in those long hours at another job, but you have to ask yourself if you want to spend your life at a "soul-draining, mundane, aggravating job," because that's what you're doing right now. That's your life. That's what you'll have to look back on at the end of everything.

If that's _not_ what you want, then I would suggest making some changes, no matter how scary or difficult they might be.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> I don't like stats like these. People might think it's "realistic" but it really isn't. The truth is, it isn't hard being the top 10% or 5% or even 1% at pretty much *anything*. Most people simply don't try. Seriously. I'm certain that every single one of us on these forums are in the top 1% for *something* that we do; and it's not because we're extremely talented or anything. Simply that we practised a bit more than most people, or we have more interest.
> 
> I've never been interested in the humanities; growing up, I was a STEM elitist. I'm too lazy to read books, and I'm sure you can tell from my posts that my grammar is not great. I'm certain I'm in the bottom 50% in terms of actual writing ability amongst those first-time authors, if not the bottom 5%; yet I made 5k with 0 dollars spent.
> 
> The fact that we are on kboards means that we've already done more research than 50%+ of authors; and if we really take in all the amazing advice from all the amazing people here, and actually understand why something is done a certain way, we can easily be among the top 5% or top 1%. The vast majority of people are not serious, and they are not the competition. I truly believe that anyone who actually puts in the work to figure things out will be able to succeed. Now, I'm not saying anyone can make millions; that takes talent and lots of luck, along with skill and hard work; but I truly believe that anyone can become the top 1% in pretty much anything if they really want to do it and are willing to work towards it.


I absolutely agree with this. The reality is that most writers I've met/know aren't willing to do what it takes to:

a) improve their craft by any means necessary
b) learn about the publishing business, be it trad or indie
c) devote time to actually writing on a regular basis (they write when inspired)
d) make excuses as to why they aren't selling, or aren't writing enough, or aren't improving in their craft
e) have spent 10+ years trying to get traditionally published in order to be validated, when they could just learn the indie business and make money this way. Instead, they moan and whine that indie isn't the real way to get published but the trad houses won't take them
f) try and try and try to get an agent that doesn't represent their genre
g) are lazy

Full stop: if someone really wants something, they'll do what they have to and never quit. My grandfather was a traditionally published author back in the 80s in Panama. When our family immigrated to the States, he couldn't find a trad deal (or a job, for that matter) for ages. I recall dropping lunch off to him stocking toy shelves on the AF base in order to put food on the table. He continued writing. Eventually, he found work (he was a univ professor) and things improved in that right, but he never did get a traditional deal again. He wrote until he got too old, and I recall him staying up late at night typing away. His example taught me something valuable: always give it your best and never quit.

Many people who say they are writers don't write. Many writers who say they want to be published don't want to do what it takes in order to achieve that dream. Sure, not everyone is cut out for indie publishing, and not everyone is cut out for trad. But the fact remains that if we don't at least TRY to work towards what we want, then we'll never get there. All I hear from other writers (newbies, especially) are excuses as to why they write this or that in a certain way, why they will NEVER indie publish or NEVER learn tropes and genre because their work is different, and on it goes.

I've been at this, technically, for a little over a year. I published a bunch of shitty shorts last year and unpublished them when they weren't selling. I threw my hands up in despair and promised to learn what I needed to in order to at least head in the right direction. I saved money for good covers, a website, and other expenses related to publishing. Even with responsibilities like everyone else, I write a chunk of time throughout the day, every single day, and work/learn what I need to in order to continue improving my craft. I realized that, for me, pulp publishing is the way to go. I had to quickly forget anything about me or what I wanted, instead focusing on what readers wanted, hooky stories, writing clean and fast, and other skills. I'm just now starting to gain traction but I'm in this for the long haul. Patience is big in this business, because not everyone breaks out right away.

Sorry for the long post, but OP, you CAN make money doing this. However, it's not about the money, necessarily. It's about the readers, about growing as an artist and business person. Certainly 50k can be your main goal, but take it in little chunks along the way. Focus on learning the business, improving your craft, read read read, study study study. Get involved in the indie community, and most of all, build a relationship with your readers. They will come. The money will come, but self-publishing isn't a get rick quick scheme. It's a career. Business. No one walks into a hospital expecting to be a doctor making bank, or waltzes into a law office expecting to roll in the dough. As with any career, it takes time to build knowledge. You can do it, but detach from the money and focus on the craft and readers. Best of luck to you.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Annie B said:


> What the OP wants is achievable. It won't be easy, but tell me an easy, low-effort way to make 50k a year in any high-skill industry (or any industry at all, heh).


Sometimes I think the bar for success is weirdly high here. The OP asked if 50,000 pounds was achievable in one year. That is _double_ the average salary in Britain. _Double_. For writing _fiction_.

And the tripped out thing is yes, it is totally possible. Many people here manage. But the way some people talk, it's like if you only scrape low five or four figures then you've got to go back to the drawing board.

There was an author survey not too long ago (I forget who did it) and it concluded that the median income for indie authors was "sadly" $17k.

Sadly?! If an author can bolster their income by $17k through doing something they love... well that money can be life changing. It would be sad if the median was $5. Right now, $17K USD would increase my day job salary by 50%. Like hell $17k is a sad number. I honestly think it goes to show how lucky writers have got it at the moment, compared to other creative types.


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## David Thompson (Apr 26, 2017)

Construction industry? I hear you ask. What's that got to do with it? Bear with me....

To earn 50K in the construction industry in the UK, you have to work really hard, in all weathers and regardless of how you feel on any given day. Get up at 0700, start on site at 0800. Take a 15 minute coffee break at 1000, take a 30 minute lunch break at 1230, finish at 1630. The work is tough. You have to work quickly to hit bonuses and deadlines. To make 50K you'd have to do some overtime. You need to supply your own tools and most of the equipment necessary to get the job done. If you're sick, or don't work for some reason, you don't get paid. I know because I was in the industry for twenty-five years.

Now I'm a writer. I start work at 0800, write a minimum of 5000 words per day. Take minimal breaks and finish at 1750. Every day. The ethos is exactly the same...hard work, come what may. There will be days you don't feel like writing...tough it out. It's a job. More effort = more reward. Discipline and a clear vision of your goal. Oh, and perhaps a little talent (I'm still working on that!). 

I haven't achieved my goal yet BTW


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

I'll be the first to say that I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to marketing. Incredibly lazy. And I'm very distractible, so distractible that it takes me forever to read a book. I'm kinda a disaster when it comes to focusing on marketing, in other words. I tried to learn Facebook ads. I put some out, had a PPC of over a dollar, and pulled them right back out. I never even tried to learn AMS - way too complicated for me. 

So, yeah, I hate marketing. 

How do people like me make $50,000+ a year? 

I'll tell you how I did it my first two years - two BookBubs per year + two good series that had permafree lead-ins. That formula gave me two six figure years in a row. 

What happens when BookBub stops taking you? First, you cry. A lot. Then you panic. Then you curse BookBub. 

Then you formulate a way back. Which is what I did. 

At the beginning of the year, I was barely clearing $2,000 a month. I was on the sugar-high of running various Freebooksy promos and some combination thereof, which would give me a boost for a couple of weeks, then it would crash down to oblivion again.

So, I started over, essentially. Brand-new pen name, brand-new genre. And I've clawed my way back up to $150-$200 per day on Amazon. My new formula is simply produce one novel a month in an underserved genre. I don't have to rely on sugar-high ads. I don't have to rely on permafrees. I don't have to rely on Facebook ads or AMS or cross-promos or anything else that is beyond my patience or capability of organizing or doing. I don't have to pray for BookBub to take me, and then cry when they don't. I just have to rely on myself producing book after book after book. 

That formula can work for one reason - you have something new for readers to grab every month, so your earlier works don't hit the cliffs. That's how it has worked for me, anyhow. 

This advice is controversial, because many people think that if you write that much, you must be writing crap. I'd like to put out a book every three or four months, but if you want to get momentum as a new writer (which I kinda am because I have a brand-new pen name and a brand-new genre), you either have to get on the promo treadmill or the writing one. Pick your poison. 

Unless, of course, you can get a few Bookbubs a year. Then you might be able to make six figures while publishing slower and not spending a ton on other ads. They're that powerful.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> Here's another simple basic truth: 100% of people who don't give me $500 will die.


I like the cut of your jib. You've got moxie, kid.



David Thompson said:


> To earn 50K in the construction industry in the UK, you have to work really hard, in all weathers and regardless of how you feel on any given day. Get up at 0700, start on site at 0800. Take a 15 minute coffee break at 1000, take a 30 minute lunch break at 1230, finish at 1630. The work is tough. You have to work quickly to hit bonuses and deadlines. To make 50K you'd have to do some overtime. You need to supply your own tools and most of the equipment necessary to get the job done. If you're sick, or don't work for some reason, you don't get paid. I know because I was in the industry for twenty-five years.
> 
> Now I'm a writer. I start work at 0800, write a minimum of 5000 words per day. Take minimal breaks and finish at 1750. Every day. The ethos is exactly the same...hard work, come what may. There will be days you don't feel like writing...tough it out. It's a job. More effort = more reward. Discipline and a clear vision of your goal. Oh, and perhaps a little talent (I'm still working on that!).


Annie B and others have made the same argument, and I think it's worth noting. It's very hard to assess how hard it is to make it as a self-published writer, because everybody's bringing different talents, experience, and resources to the table, and everybody's expending time, effort, and resources differently. Still weirder is that some folks _do_ exert a tremendous amount of effort and still don't wind up making a living. It happens-but it happens in every field. People generally don't tell you to give up on becoming a doctor just because it'll take years of full-time effort to earn a living at it, and you may wash out halfway through your year with the cadaver.

Here's the thing about this gig: you're on your own. There's no security, there's very little accountability that you don't engineer for yourself. You don't get any benefits unless you're successful enough that you could buy them anyway. Even if you're working diligently, you won't know whether it's enough, or whether you're doing the _right_ work the _right_ way. Nobody's going to sit you down and say, "Stop with the research and write the damn book already." Nobody's going to pay you until months after finishing months of work. It's unlike most $50k jobs in these ways and others, and you should seriously question whether it suits you (and possibly your family as well).

That said, nobody's going to make you swing a hammer in the rain. There's a real--if remote--chance that you could wind up earning money in your sleep. _Good_ money. For telling stories in your pajamas.

If you're willing to take the good with the bad, if you're realistic about your chances, if you get something other than money out of it, then it's your call. None of us can tell you from the outset whether or not you'll make it to some arbitrary level of success.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

I often see the same advice given. Look at your cover, blurb, keywords, do facebook ads and (holy grail) book a bookbub promo, then you'll see your sales rise. Yet I see authors all over the internet saying they are not selling more books with facebook ads, a few odd authors have not benefited from booking a bookbub promo or sales dropped off very quickly.

What I don't see enough people saying is 'write entertaining, engaging, can't-put-down books and find your readers'. Oh I see _Rosalind J_ saying it all the time.

I see so many people thinking if they just write a book and put it out there, it's going to sell and they are going to make xxx amount a year but just because someone has written a book, directed a movie, produced a song that does not mean that people are going to automatically buy it, read it, watch it or listen to it.

$50K a year is achievable but there are lots of steps you have to take to make that possible. As many members on here have said. Genre, engaging books, how you package the book, how you promote the book, how quickly you write another book, growing a fanbase of readers, luck etc...these matter, some are more important than others like Genre and engaging books.

Speaking to some of these newish successful authors, I don't think you have to write a book a month or spend thousands on facebook and promos. That's what some authors are doing but many other authors are not.

I listen to marketing coaches and entrepreneurs all the time and many of them say the same thing, 'give people more of what they want.' Really that means 'give people what they like'. 
That's why there are dozens of superhero movies right now. That's why there were so many books like 'Fifty shades of Grey' after it became a massive success.

What I see many romance authors doing that I think is great, is they reach out to their readers and listen when their readers say 'I loved that about your last book', then they give the readers another story that contains that thing they loved. Example: A twist at the end, a tear jerker, a slow burn romance etc..... and then you see readers saying '_This author never lets me down, she's always giving me another book that makes me cry' _ 
That's what Nicholas Sparks does with his love stories.

That's why I think Goodreads and book blogs are great to hang out on because you get to see what many readers like in a sub-genre. I have two book blogs I visit now to see what's being released, to check out the review and to see the feedback from readers. Often you see the same things mentioned over and over again.


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## EllieKeaton (Apr 12, 2014)

ExtraT said:


> Hello Kboards,
> 
> Long time lurker, gleaning valuable advice from these hallowed pages, all of which has helped/continue to help me write my first 1.5 novels!
> 
> ...


You have already had lots of advice. I think it is doable and I would totally ignore all of the stats. You have to believe you can do it and you have to put everything and the kitchen sink into achieving that goal. I am Irish living in the UK and Brexit scares me senseless but I dont have time to watch politicians as I am writing. EVERY DAY. I never watch TV - apart form Britains got Talent with my 7 year old (painful but has to be done.)

Read posts on here with an eye for who is talking. I love reading posts from Rosalind, Patty Jensen, Lyndiz, etc as they all speak common sense. There are loads more who speak common sense too but they are the names that spring to mind.

Read the Chris Fox books mentioned before and do everything Pamela Kelley suggested a couple of posts back. Why? Because I followed her advice last year. Set up a new pen name - no backlist or anything and in my first year with that new pen name I achieved over 50k . It wasnt my first year in Indie publishing as this pen name will show so I had learnt a lot about doing it the wrong way!!

This year I am set to make even more. But it comes at a cost. I write every day without fail. I speak to my readers and I apply for bookbubs which more often than not get rejected. I dont do any other form of advertising. I should but I would have to learn how.

As a reader, I wont buy a book in a series that doesnt have at least three books. I want to get into the characters. As a writer, I had heard that a series often doesnt take off until book four or five. I am on book ten of my series from last year. I am bored to death of it but people like it and want more.

PS and my English teacher told me I couldn't write an address on an envelope. 

PPS good luck and give it a try and whatever you earn it will be better than earning nothing


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

BellaJames said:


> I often see the same advice given. Look at your cover, blurb, keywords, do facebook ads and (holy grail) book a bookbub promo, then you'll see your sales rise. Yet I see authors all over the internet saying they are not selling more books with facebook ads, a few odd authors have not benefited from booking a bookbub promo or sales dropped off very quickly.
> 
> What I don't see enough people saying is 'write entertaining, engaging, can't-put-down books and find your readers'. Oh I see _Rosalind J_ saying it all the time.


There are a couple reasons for this, or at least why I personally would never mention it:

1. Having an entertaining and engaging story is meaningless if no one can find it in the first place. Even if a couple of people find it and really enjoy it, chances are, nothing is going to happen. The problem for the vast majority of people trying to enter into this self-publishing gig has problems way before their writing, and there's no point spending time on that if you're not going to solve the other problems.

2. This could be a sub-point of 1, but I really believe that the writing itself is not the bottleneck for the vast majority of people.

3. "Writing a good story" is a lot more obvious and intuitive than "creating a mailing list". Everyone would be able to come up with the idea that writing good books would help you become more successful, but many people (like me) have never even heard of mailing lists before coming here.

4. And finally, the most important point is that, I think, some things just can't really be developed. Some people just have that magical pixie dust that makes their stories interesting. They can't help but come up with good stories. Other people just can't, no matter what. If you don't understand what makes a story interesting, how are you going to train yourself to understand how to write an interesting story? This is IMO, by far the most difficult part to learn, and also probably gives the least amount of benefit. Of course, it gives you a much higher chance of becoming a highly successful author like Rosalind. But it probably won't help you go from $5/month to $500/month.


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

EllieKeaton said:


> I love reading posts from Rosalind, Patty Jensen, Lyndiz, etc as they all speak common sense. There are loads more who speak common sense too but they are the names that spring to mind.


These are the posts I enjoy too. I also devour everything written by Chris Fox and Libby Hawker. They helped me really focus my writing and marketing.

I started out as a YA author and did pretty well after I released two series in tandem back in 2011 - enough to quit my day job for three years. But fast forward to 2015 and both series were dying in the water and I couldn't write fast enough to compete with the other authors who were putting out three or four books per year (forget about a book a month).

By 2016, things were terrible moneywise in our household and we thought we were going to lose our house. I started reading Wayne Stinnett's posts about how he transitioned from truck driver to full-time author - it was inspiring stuff. I decided to come up with a do-or-die plan. To really focus my mind and put everything I could into a brand new writing schedule and a new genre. I had a vague idea for a psychological thriller based around a rowing club. I did my homework. Checked out the categories, the readership, all the high-performing covers, blurbs, their reviews. I basically studied my potential market in micro-detail.

Then I wrote three killer blurbs that I thought would make me want to go and make me buy those books - I didn't worry about getting all the plot points in or making the blurbs as 'accurate' as possible. I needed them to hook the reader. To make the premises so compelling that they would sell those books. Once I was happy with the blurbs, I plotted out all three novels and designed their covers, focusing on a strong brand.

I wrote and released with a 5-6 months gap between each book. My fourth is due out in 6 months, my 5th is due 6 months after that. They are all standalone psych thrillers and I have tried to make them as good as they can possibly be - tight plots, strong characters and settings, twists, high suspense. Thoroughly edited. I needed to make them shine. I wanted to be proud of those books and have rabid readers who were excited to read the next one. Who were prepared to wait (gasp) six months between releases.

Less than one year later my new books are selling better than I could ever have planned for and we're still in our house. Was it luck? Experience? Planning? Perhaps a little of all three. I worked my arse off. The stress was phenomenal (I also have 2 young boys and a small business to run), but it's paid off (for now). So, I would say, yes, $50k and beyond is doable if you focus your mind, have good judgement (like Rosalind ) and work bloody hard.

Everyone's story is different, but the fact that the OP is here, on this board, shows they're serious about this business and not just angling to put a book out and hope for the best. Good luck!


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

AsianInspiration, you will notice I did mention that there are other steps to take. See here:



BellaJames said:


> $50K a year is achievable but there are lots of steps you have to take to make that possible. As many members on here have said. Genre, engaging books, how you package the book, how you promote the book, how quickly you write another book, growing a fanbase of readers, luck etc...these matter, some are more important than others like Genre and engaging books.


What I'm saying is that I don't see enough authors saying "Go and write more entertaining, engaging, can't-put-down, fun, addictive, heart breaking, tearjerking, laughed-till-i-cried books". They often talk about the quick things you can fix after the book is out there like covers and blurbs but some authors have a book which is not fun or interesting to read.

When I see people saying 'Colleen Hoovers books are so addictive', I think that author has done her job to write something interesting and highly engaging. She has people discussing her books on blogs, goodreads and youtube.

I just think it is not helpful to tell someone, yes you can make $$$ like me if you write something every month and do everything you can to get a bookbub spot, spend money on facebook ads and voila you can make that kind of money. 
Then you see these people on here, on other forums or on youtube and blogs saying 'But I've got 10 books out and I work hard but I'm not selling more than 10 books a week'.

The guys making bank are writing addictive engaging entertaining books. They build a fanbase of readers that enjoy their books.

On the odd occasion someone will come out with a standalone book or a book they eventually turn into a series later like Jana Aston or J. Bengtsson or Darcie Chan and that book becomes a word of mouth success. But how? Because it's engaging, addictive, entertaining, thought provoking, a tearjerker, controversial or fun to read etc.....


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

I think people do advise newcomers to write great books quite often. It doesn't go much further than that, for reasons including 1) it's very difficult to describe how to do that in complete detail, 2) its subjectivity defies description entirely in some ways, 3) it's genre-specific, and 4) we haven't read the prawn's writing.

Hitting your word count, building a mailing list, finding a ripe subgenre, and lining up a BookBub are all concrete, actionable steps that can be easily described. You know if you've done it, and you know if you haven't. That's the best kind of advice because it's so easily actionable. It may not be the _entire_ story, but it's the low-hanging fruit that we can easily communicate and routinize.

Once we get into craft, everything gets a lot more subjective and a lot...bigger. You can tell me how many words you've written today, but can you tell me how good they were? Can you tell me whether they appeal to your readers? Can you tell me whether they're the start of an addictive reading experience? Beginning writers can't.

What're we supposed to tell them? Write good? _I tried that, and I'm still not seeing the success I'd like._ Okay, write gooder. Did you addict them? Was it unputdownable? Did your words coax a precious truth from the reader's soul?

I dunno, man.

Unless we give every prawn a beta read, it's damned hard to give any detailed, actionable advice in this arena (and not for nothing, but there's already purpose-built sites for people who to have their craft read and critiqued).

Anyway, I'd agree with AsianInspiration that there's a danger of overstating the importance of craft. You need to capture a reader's imagination, but that doesn't mean technical perfection. History's littered with examples of books that were released in dire need of editing and proofing at every level, yet succeeded anyway. It's also littered with beautifully written books that still haven't found a readership. High-level craft isn't a necessary or sufficient condition for success any more than writing in series or automating your mailing list.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Shalini Boland said:


> These are the posts I enjoy too. I also devour everything written by Chris Fox and Libby Hawker. They helped me really focus my writing and marketing.
> 
> I started out as a YA author and did pretty well after I released two series in tandem back in 2011 - enough to quit my day job for three years. But fast forward to 2015 and both series were dying in the water and I couldn't write fast enough to compete with the other authors who were putting out three or four books per year (forget about a book a month).
> 
> ...


I read a lot of books in this space and have noticed your thrillers on the best selling list! I think this post is a great one that shows how to effectively study the market and write a story that fits it.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Multiple people in this very thread (myself included) specifically said "the books must be good" pretty much... so I don't understand the complaint there.

Also... yes, I fully believe that where most people who don't sell well fall down is in craft first and foremost. Even those of us who do sell well are constantly seeking improvement


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> I think people do advise newcomers to write great books quite often. It doesn't go much further than that, for reasons including 1) it's very difficult to describe how to do that in complete detail, 2) its subjectivity defies description entirely in some ways, 3) it's genre-specific, and 4) we haven't read the prawn's writing.
> 
> Hitting your word count, building a mailing list, finding a ripe subgenre, and lining up a BookBub are all concrete, actionable steps that can be easily described. You know if you've done it, and you know if you haven't. That's the best kind of advice because it's so easily actionable. It may not be the _entire_ story, but it's the low-hanging fruit that we can easily communicate and routinize.
> 
> ...


_I did not mention craft or technical perfection._ Every author has their own style and voice. I can tell you about 10 authors that I love to read but I can spot the errors in their books and I can see some of the cheese coming out of their books but it's high quality expensive cheese and readers talk about it on goodreads. 'It's so cheesy but so good...'. Many of those books get 3 star reviews, some get 4.

I can point you to a bestselling indie author today who still has multiple errors in her romance books but her books are good fun reads.

I think you know when you are writing entertaining engaging books when readers tell other readers in the reviews, when Beta readers tell you, when people are signing up to your mailing list, when people are following you on social media to learn more about your books and your characters, when you are selling every book in your series.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Annie B said:


> Multiple people in this very thread (myself included) specifically said "the books must be good" pretty much... so I don't understand the complaint there.
> 
> Also... yes, I fully believe that where most people who don't sell well fall down is in craft first and foremost. Even those of us who do sell well are constantly seeking improvement


 I said I don't see it said enough, not just on kboards but all over the internet when people talk about writing and self-publishing.


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

PamelaKelley said:


> I read a lot of books in this space and have noticed your thrillers on the best selling list! I think this post is a great one that shows how to effectively study the market and write a story that fits it.


Thanks Pamela!

I also agree with what you said upthread about joining Facebook groups for readers in your genre. The readers and bloggers I've met in these groups are so supportive, and also give invaluable insight into what they love and hate in the genre.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Dolphin made some great points. 

Telling people to "write engaging books" is not actionable advice. It's like telling people to buy the winning lottery ticket. Okay, but how do you do that? No one really knows. So there's really no point in bringing it up.

Actually, in my opinion, it's brought up too often, rather than not enough, lol. It's a similar mentality that many entrepreneurs have; if you build a good product, they will find you. Most of the time, it doesn't work that way. 

With really good marketing skills, and an amazing cover/blurb, you're going to make some sales, possibly a lot of sales. So let's say 5000 people bought your book, and they all hated it so much they swear to never buy your books ever again. Great. But all you need to do is start another pen name, get an amazing cover, amazing blurb, good marketing etc, and sell another 5000 copies. 

Now I'm sure that's not what most writers dream of doing, but the point is, having good marketing skills will almost guarantee that you can sell. Having good writing won't.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

AsianInspiration said:


> Dolphin made some great points.
> 
> Telling people to "write engaging books" is not actionable advice. It's like telling people to buy the winning lottery ticket. Okay, but how do you do that? No one really knows. So there's really no point in bringing it up.
> 
> ...


A good story is the most important thing. Not necessarily the highest quality writing, although that is good too, but the story itself. If you have a compelling story, that is the most important thing. Great marketing can only do so much if the story doesn't engage the readers.


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## Shalini Boland (Nov 29, 2010)

AsianInspiration said:


> Dolphin made some great points.
> 
> So let's say 5000 people bought your book, and they all hated it so much they swear to never buy your books ever again. Great. But all you need to do is start another pen name, get an amazing cover, amazing blurb, good marketing etc, and sell another 5000 copies.
> 
> Now I'm sure that's not what most writers dream of doing, but the point is, having good marketing skills will almost guarantee that you can sell. Having good writing won't.


I don't think you'd reach anywhere near 5000 sales with a horribly written book that everyone hated. Once the first few 1 and 2-star reviews started coming in, sales would stall.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

PamelaKelley said:


> A good story is the most important thing. Not necessarily the highest quality writing, although that is good too, but the story itself. If you have a compelling story, that is the most important thing. Great marketing can only do so much if the story doesn't engage the readers.


I think it depends on one's goals. If one aspires to be like Rosalind, Monkscribe, Amanda, Chris Fox, or any other of the great authors we have here on kboards, then yes, a great story is important. But a great story alone won't do anything, whereas a great marketing strategy will at least get you *some* sales. I've experienced this first hand. My writing is horrible; my story unoriginal. But I managed to sell more books than "95%" of first time authors, many of which probably had better stories and writing skills than mine did.


Shalini Boland said:


> I don't think you'd reach anywhere near 5000 sales with a horribly written book that everyone hated. Once the first few 1 and 2-star reviews started coming in, sales would stall.


5000 might be a bit tough if the book was really THAT bad, but 1000 is certainly doable. My book sold a few thousand despite being poorly written, unedited, etc. AND my cover/blurb were not even good (found a free stock img from pixabay and used Canva for cover). I'm sure it could've done better if I had a great cover and great blurb.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

AsianInspiration said:


> I think it depends on one's goals. If one aspires to be like Rosalind, Monkscribe, Amanda, Chris Fox, or any other of the great authors we have here on kboards, then yes, a great story is important. But a great story alone won't do anything, whereas a great marketing strategy will at least get you *some* sales. I've experienced this first hand. My writing is horrible; my story unoriginal. But I managed to sell more books than "95%" of first time authors, many of which probably had better stories and writing skills than mine did.
> 5000 might be a bit tough if the book was really THAT bad, but 1000 is certainly doable. My book sold a few thousand despite being poorly written, unedited, etc. AND my cover/blurb were not even good (found a free stock img from pixabay and used Canva for cover). I'm sure it could've done better if I had a great cover and great blurb.


I agree, it totally depends on your goals. You can make sales happen of a crappy book, but it's a lot harder to build a career with one. If the goal is to quickly get to the 50k a year level,you will get there faster and build a more solid career if you produce compelling stories as these are the ones that will be more evergreen, giving you a backlist that will sell and sell and create demand for new books, with less marketing than you'd need for a crappy one.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

PamelaKelley said:


> I agree, it totally depends on your goals. You can make sales happen of a crappy book, but it's a lot harder to build a career with one. If the goal is to quickly get to the 50k a year level,you will get there faster and build a more solid career if you produce compelling stories as these are the ones that will be more evergreen, giving you a backlist that will sell and sell and create demand for new books, with less marketing than you'd need for a crappy one.


I feel bad for spamming so much, hopefully I don't annoy you guys too much. But I really want to clarify what I'm really trying to say.

I always try to use extreme examples to clearly show the logic in my argument, but sometimes, it seems to have the opposite effect.

What I'm really trying to say is this. I think that almost anyone can write a story that is somewhat compelling, and not too crappy. I talk about my own book and how poorly written it is, but still, I personally enjoyed writing and then reading the story myself, and a lot of readers seemed to have enjoyed it as well.

Coming up with a really engaging story takes a lot of effort and talent, and it's extremely difficult to learn. However, coming up with a somewhat interesting story is much easier.

Given that the story is at least somewhat interesting, then having good marketing skills, good covers and good blurbs can help your books reach a wider audience, and you'll probably be able to build a fan base like that.

I mean, not everyone eats at 3-star michelin restaurants everyday, right? Sometimes we're just satisfied with a bowl of instant ramen.

If you want to be a really successful/famous author, you need to have a great story. But as long as you're not too crappy, you can build your own tribe. Maybe it won't be a huge tribe, maybe you won't ever be a best seller, but there will be people who are willing to read your stories.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> What I'm really trying to say is this. I think that almost anyone can write a story that is somewhat compelling, and not too crappy. I talk about my own book and how poorly written it is, but still, I personally enjoyed writing and then reading the story myself, and a lot of readers seemed to have enjoyed it as well.
> 
> Coming up with a really engaging story takes a lot of effort and talent, and it's extremely difficult to learn. However, coming up with a somewhat interesting story is much easier.
> 
> ...


I'm not sure your food analogy really works here. Yes, sometimes we are satisfied with a bowl of instant ramen rather than a Michelin-starred restaurant, but the point of that bowl of instant ramen is that it hits the spot perfectly and satisfies you at that moment, so to that extent it's a high-quality product. But if it's particularly crappy ramen from a substandard producer that makes you wish you hadn't bothered, then it is not doing what it's supposed to. In the case of fiction, you might produce books that are "just OK," and which will well sell quite well for a while, but there's a good chance you'll lose readers along the way when a better ramen producer - sorry, writer  - comes along who writes a more satisfying read that's slightly closer to that Michelin experience.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> I think that almost *anyone* can write a story that is somewhat compelling, and not too crappy.


Oh Lord no. Very few people, maybe five percent on a good day, have that ability. Needless to say, this is my opinion, but it is reasonably well informed. I'm wrapping up the seventh month of studying self-publishing on Amazon and I've reviewed possibly three thousand authors across all genres. How many have I bookmarked due to their writing/story-telling ability? Three. Admittedly, I represent a small sample of the reading public.

Writing talent is not widely distributed. Your skills are special, not common.



> Given that the story is at least somewhat interesting, then having good marketing skills, good covers and good blurbs can help your books reach a wider audience, and you'll probably be able to build a fan base like that.


Initially, this is true (Grammarly insisted on that comma). But if sales only occur during launch and promptly fall off a cliff, the writer's only choices are to either launch another book or begin a cycle of promotions. If a back catalog quickly falls into the nether regions of the rankings soon after launch and without promotion (following a good round of visibility), it may be time to have a rethink. There's no real fan base, but there may be a baseline response to marketing regardless of the story's quality. It's probably easy to mistake a marketing blip for something else.

Marketing is very useful for a good writer building evergreen success. To a poor writer, it's a treadmill.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

AsianInspiration said:


> Telling people to "write engaging books" is not actionable advice. Okay, but how do you do that? No one really knows.


I think plenty of people know exactly how to do it. It's not something that easily transfers from mind to mind, however, but the guidelines do transfer pretty well.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Dpock said:


> Oh Lord no. Very few people, maybe five percent on a good day, have that ability. Needless to say, this is my opinion, but it is reasonably well informed. I'm wrapping up the seventh month of studying self-publishing on Amazon and I've reviewed possibly three thousand authors across all genres. How many have I bookmarked due to their writing/story-telling ability? Three. Admittedly, I represent a small sample of the reading public.


Yeah, that doesn't say anything about the stories themselves, it says a lot more about your standards. I can understand. To me, 99% of modern music sounds like noise pollution. I can't understand why in the world anyone would actually want to make their ears suffer with that stuff... especially the really loud ones. Argh, I feel sorry for their ears...

90%+ of anime/drama that I watch have plot holes. There are parts that don't make sense, parts that are not so well executed, parts that are simply just not that interesting. Even still, on the whole, I enjoy watching them. The vast majority of consumers of entertainment are not that picky.

Take a look at the reviews of those 3000 books that you've evaluated. How are their reviews? Are they consistently getting 1-2 star reviews, or are they getting 4-5 stars, with people saying they liked the story?


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## kenbritz (Oct 24, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> Okay, write gooder.


Pretty much sums it up for me.


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

AsianInspiration said:


> But a great story alone won't do anything, whereas a great marketing strategy will at least get you *some* sales. I've experienced this first hand. My writing is horrible; my story unoriginal. But I managed to sell more books than "95%" of first time authors, many of which probably had better stories and writing skills than mine did.


I appreciate your candor. I've seen what you're saying here not just in publishing but in many areas of my life--people who achieve success not through producing quality work but from being skilled at selling themselves. I've bought books with tons of five-star reviews and good rankings and tons of hype behind them and then thought the books were piles of crap. But then quality is subjective and my opinions may be incorrect. My hope is that writing and story are more important than marketing.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> Take a look at the reviews of those 3000 books that you've evaluated. How are their reviews? Are they consistently getting 1-2 star reviews, or are they getting 4-5 stars, with people saying they liked the story?


They range all over. I quickly learned that Amazon reviews often reflect little about the books and more on the size of an author's ARC team, or FB posse, or the number of their friends with multiple Zon accounts using cafe wifi to disguise IPs -- not in all cases, but more than a few.

But I get your point. There's a huge market for less than stellar writing, and it's much larger than the one for good writing/story-telling.

If the OP had asked, "How do I make a killing self-publishing?" this thread may have gone a different direction. There are many very decent writers making this choice (perhaps deciding their great novel will come later).

In a few distinct subgenres (not Erotica), they're dropping 35-50k (word) books at least once a month, but more likely every other week*. They have fairly ludicrous/improbable plotlines but are written well enough and consistently rank below 1000. Some pens have three or four books ranking in that ballpark at any one time. I guesstimate their revenues $20 - 60k a month. What's consistent in these books is that, reliably, someone is thrusting at someone else every third page.

This isn't news by any means.

*Some pens are probably writing teams (probably the ones publishing every week).


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> Dolphin made some great points.
> 
> Telling people to "write engaging books" is not actionable advice. It's like telling people to buy the winning lottery ticket. Okay, but how do you do that? No one really knows. So there's really no point in bringing it up.


I think it is actionable. You can talk to your readers, communicate with readers in your sub-genre, check out book blogs or goodreads to see what books are getting good reviews and why, you can read books in your sub-genre that are selling and pick them apart. 
You can pay attention to tropes and beats. You can work with Beta readers or passionate readers in that genre.

Authors like Jasinda Wilder studied books in the sub-genre she wanted to write in and wrote a bunch of books that had lots of the traits of the bestsellers in her sub-genre.

I don't think you can compare this to buying a lottery ticket. You can apply this to other forms of entertainment. There are people who watch what is selling in Hollywood, scripts and the final cut of the movie. Then they write similar movies within that genre. There are tons of similar movies and similar songs, people sample the same beats over and over again.

Hollywood is churning out superhero movies right now because they are raking in big bucks. If those movies started flopping and people became disinterested, they would stop making them for now.

*
Similar twin movies* - http://uk.businessinsider.com/twin-movies-2013-7/?r=US&IR=T/#1998-antz-and-a-bugs-life-both-follow-life-from-an-ants-point-of-view-4


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Dpock said:


> They range all over. I quickly learned that Amazon reviews often reflect little about the books and more on the size of an author's ARC team, or FB posse, or the number of their friends with multiple Zon accounts using cafe wifi to disguise IPs -- not in all cases, but more than a few.
> 
> But I get your point. There's a huge market for less than stellar writing, and it's much larger than the one for good writing/story-telling.
> 
> ...


That's one way to do this job, but not the only way. It can be very lucrative, but from what I know, it's a treadmill, because the books don't tend to stay sticky. I have a pretty big audience, and I like to think I'm a pretty good storyteller and writer, but you might not agree. I do know that the long-lasting bestsellers I admire most in my genre are absolutely superior storytellers and writers by most people's measure.

I prefer trails to treadmills, so I run that way. The real difference I see is whether somebody can keep selling well over 5, 10, 15 years. Like in a trail race, you start getting real separation after a few miles.  Again, hard to know whether you're in that group until you are. I'll hit the five-year mark ok, but after that, who knows? I do know that I'll continue to seek out new trails rather than running the same ones, as that's a lot more interesting to me. Other people do it the way they like, and the way it works for them. Their life and career and choices aren't mine, and that is fine.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

ParkerAvrile said:


> In the United States, $17K is below the federal poverty line for a family of four. Souce: https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines Souce, US Dept. Health & Human Services, numbers published Jan. 2017. I think "sad" is a pretty good adjective for any career with a median pay so low you can't provide for your family.


I doubt there's ever been a time when most authors can live on their earnings from books alone. More can do it now than ever before thanks to indie publishing, but it's never going to be a sure ticket from everything I know. Making 20k a year would probably make a lot of long term tradpub authors very happy, though.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> In the United States, $17K is below the federal poverty line for a family of four. Souce: https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines Souce, US Dept. Health & Human Services, numbers published Jan. 2017. I think "sad" is a pretty good adjective for any career with a median pay so low you can't provide for your family.


But how many are doing it full-time?


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## noirhvy (Dec 29, 2015)

I once met a small-town young lady who said she was going to Hollywood and become a big film star. Okay, why not give it a shot? But then she said she was going to do it within two years. (The average superstar takes 15 years to hit big time status).
I believe you are asking if it is probable YOU will make a living out of writing. I would suggest the prospect of that is pretty low. I believe the odds are against you. Of course we can't know how much grit and determination you have, how well you roll with the punches and react well to new challenges. And we don't know if you can really write the kind of things people want to read, and to get your work noticed.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

ParkerAvrile said:


> I think "sad" is a pretty good adjective for any career with a median pay so low you can't provide for your family.


Before you could know how sad it is, you'd have to know what percentage of "writers" are putting out commercially viable material. That would mean evaluating not just quality, but subject matter, format, and other factors. Someone determined to make a living writing poetry and someone who writes thrillers are in totally different positions.

After that, to evaluate sadness, you'd need to know how many who are the sole support of a family of four are trying to make it on that amount. I bet not many. Singles, couples without children, couples with one child, couples where both work. My own assumption is that anyone who can write a coherent sentence is not sitting around bewailing the fact two children and a spouse are starving because writing doesn't pay enough.

My further assumption is those who are earning more than the median from writing don't spend much time bewailing and never expected any guaranteed income level. Any endeavor like writing is a gamble that if you put in the effort you'll be rewarded. If you want an income guarantee, you take a job that pays $xx for a given time or amount of work.


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## jmb3 (Aug 2, 2016)

I wish I could pinpoint some magic formula to explain how Cake took off. Certainly, it wasn't superior writing skills (Cake is probably written at a 3rd-grade level) or marketing (The book was released with no following and no fanfare) or pre-planning (didn't know anything about indie publishing-or any publishing-before releasing Cake). Yet, despite that, the book took off almost immediately (within hours on KU it was getting pages read). I have no idea why. My cover was handmade, the story was self-edited, and I was an unknown, first-time author. All I can think is the blurb, riddled with grammar errors, caught people's attention. Well, that and the fact that KU gave readers a chance to preview the story of a first-time author without risk. 
Within weeks Cake had fully taken off by word of mouth and at the end of the first full month in publication (June), it had earned its first of seven KU All-Star book title awards (three months in the 1-10 top spot) for pages read. 
In preparation of an August 2016 Bookbub ad, I reached out to Rosalind J (thanks again ☺), who pointed me in the direction of an excellent, top-notch editor and together we fixed some, but certainly not all, of the issues plaguing Cake's child-like writing style. 
The Bookbub ad was the game-changer, for sure. It took a good selling book to a bestselling book overnight and it stayed high for months. It was exciting and shocking all the same especially since I'd written Cake for fun after reading a really bad rock star story and only released it to get a little feedback on the story. I had no grand illusions and never expected it to actually sell. Since it's release a year ago it has sold over 100,000 books in three platforms- ebook, Createspace paperback, and an independently produced audiobook.
I don't expect this to last forever. In fact, I fully embrace the idea that I may be a one-hit wonder and I'm okay with that because the experience alone has been incredible for this grateful stay-at-home-mom. I'd like to think that I had a little to do with Cake's success because, despite everything I did wrong, I wrote the story from my heart, laughing and crying along with the characters as I described their growing relationship. When it comes down to it, most readers don't care about perfect writing or clean grammar or showing not telling. They just want a story that makes them feel.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Dpock said:


> Writing talent is not widely distributed. Your skills are special, not common.


I do think you go a _bit_ too far in discounting writing as a skill, AsianInspiration. Even people who you or I might discount as incompetent writers are probably in the top half of the population (I think the folks who turn to self-publishing are probably a cross-section of societal writing talent--there's a ton of erudite lawyers, clerical workers, and underemployed lit majors out there who aren't publishing anything). Anybody who writes on a regular basis is bound to be, sooner or later--remember that few people do. You should give yourself more credit than this balderdash about being a bottom-half writer.



BellaJames said:


> _I did not mention craft or technical perfection._


Writing a "good fun read" or an "entertaining engaging book" is unquestionably craft. What else could it be? Everything between the front and back matter, save formatting, is a question of craft. Even if you're a writer whose characters stride into the room one day, kick up their heels on your desk, and say, "Okay listen up, here's how it all began..." it doesn't flow straight from the Muses to the page. You intermediate that process with your skill as a writer--your craft.



BellaJames said:


> I think it is actionable. You can talk to your readers, communicate with readers in your sub-genre, check out book blogs or goodreads to see what books are getting good reviews and why, you can read books in your sub-genre that are selling and pick them apart.
> You can pay attention to tropes and beats. You can work with Beta readers or passionate readers in that genre.


OP hasn't published yet. You can't talk to your readers or comb through your beta reader feedback at this point.

I think it's hard for some folks to put themselves back in a position where your work hadn't yet seen the light of day. It's very isolating. The whole thing seems like a black box. Even if you find a handful of beta readers at that stage, how much can you glean from that? How much should you weight the opinions of 10 people? How are you going to find 100? A lot of first-time authors will take months to find their first 100 readers, and they'll never hear from any of them except a vanishingly small minority.

During that time, it's practically impossible to judge whether you're writing rightly. Your mom says she loves it, but she's your mom. Your friend said a bunch of vague, complimentary things, but she doesn't read your subgenre anyway. Your other friend seemed like maybe he didn't want to hurt your feelings. You found five readers on Critique Circle, all of whom gave diametrically opposed feedback. What do you make of it?

Even if they tell you concrete things they didn't like, and even if you hear enough of that feedback to be persuaded that it's an issue, how do you fix it? It's not always obvious. Readers certainly can't be assumed to have the expertise to correct an error, even if they know it when they see it.

Refining your craft is a very long, subjective process. It's not that I don't believe it's ever actionable, or ever describable, but it takes a lot of time and process to understand where you need to improve, and how. I don't think it's fair to tell prawns that their #1 priority is to write a book that readers love. They just can't do very much with that information, absent a slew of readers to guide them.

They should already be trying to write better today than they did yesterday. What are you adding to their perspective?


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## Guest (May 21, 2017)

Okay....10,000 to 1. That's the odds. Sweet Zombie Jesus! Stop trying to make it something it's not. You have very little chance. Period.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> In the United States, $17K is below the federal poverty line for a family of four. Souce: https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines Souce, US Dept. Health & Human Services, numbers published Jan. 2017. I think "sad" is a pretty good adjective for any career with a median pay so low you can't provide for your family.


Well, sure. But I honestly think it would be pretty irresponsible for me to say "I'm going to provide for my family of four with my capricious indie publishing income that could vanish at any point" (where is the other salary in this situation?).

And I don't think it's sad. It is what it is. There aren't a lot of people out there who are down on their luck who think "well I've got nothing else, now I'm reducing to independently publishing novels." It's like saying "I've got to move to Hollywood and become an actor so my family of four don't have to live in poverty."


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

What J. Bengtsson has said on kboards, that is a similar story to a few authors I have communicated with via PM on a couple forums or by directly emailing them with questions and by listening or reading interviews with these authors.

What I notice these (romance) authors mention is:

1. They either read a book they enjoyed or a book they did not like and took a chance to sit and write their own story. 

2. Writing a book was a lifelong ambition or something they choose to do one day to challenge themselves. Sometimes to fill hours of boredom

3. Some did not pay for an editor at the beginning. As far as I see it, romance readers want a good emotional story and will not complain about every grammatical error. 

4. Something many of these authors do before they write, is research their sub-genre to see what is selling. If they hang out on any kind of forum, goodreads or blogs they will find out about popular tropes and the things many romance readers in that sub-genre like and don't like.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

This_Way_Down said:


> Okay....10,000 to 1. That's the odds. Sweet Zombie Jesus! Stop trying to make it something it's not. You have very little chance. Period.


Agreed. It's possible with work and _time_. I'm American and ignorant of how long the OP has before Brexit affects his income but I wouldn't count on my books to earn me 50k as an unknown author. Out of all the authors responding in this thread, I've counted 5 that have made that much in their first year. Maybe 6 with Annie B. yet she published long before her success, if I recall her story correctly. So, a handful? Those aren't numbers I'd take to Vegas, especially if I had a family to support. I don't make full time money though I write full time. I also had money in savings (several thousand) before quitting my job...due to injury so I left sooner than expected yet still stacked. Indie publishing can be such a gamble. If I were the OP, I'd cut costs down and start saving+ writing a crap ton so by the time Brexit comes around you have a safety net. I can't tell you how many times that savings account saved our hinies even though my husband works full time.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

RightHoJeeves said:


> It's like saying "I've got to move to Hollywood and become an actor so my family of four don't have to live in poverty."


I think you've nailed it.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Y'all are taking things way too far. Most people in what you'd consider straightened circumstances. I'll tell you right now that I'd rather be a starving artist than a starving grocery clerk (I been that). It's not as if everybody considering this question will be forgoing a $50k job offer or voluntarily leaving a $50k job--OP included.

Prawny reader, my takeaway is this: if all of this talk dissuades you, your risk tolerance is probably too low. Like any new business, writing will require a tremendous investment of time and possibly even money before you see a return. You may never see a return. If you feel confident that you will, perhaps it's because you're naive, perhaps you're arrogant, perhaps you're simply comfortable with betting it all on black.

Perhaps you're right. Don't afraid to be great.

Making it past this gut check is the first test, and it has defeated many good authors. Everything else will depend on your acumen and effort.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> Writing a "good fun read" or an "entertaining engaging book" is unquestionably craft. What else could it be? Everything between the front and back matter, save formatting, is a question of craft. Even if you're a writer whose characters stride into the room one day, kick up their heels on your desk, and say, "Okay listen up, here's how it all began..." it doesn't flow straight from the Muses to the page. You intermediate that process with your skill as a writer--your craft.
> 
> OP hasn't published yet. You can't talk to your readers or comb through your beta reader feedback at this point.
> 
> ...


There are actionable steps any person can take before they write and before they publish. I see authors doing it all the time.

1. Research the sub-genre you want to write in. Read the books that are selling in your genre, look at the reviews for those books, what are readers saying over and over again.

2. Test your writing on some passionate readers in your genre. Post a story on wattpad or offer a test story to readers who can give you some honest constructive feedback.

3. Work with an author in the same sub-genre. There are a few successful authors who have mentored another writer who has not published yet

There will always be some friends, family or Beta readers who think your story is so good or so bad. You take a chance when you publish. No one can tell the OP, yes you are going to make x amount of money in your first year and you are going to get mostly good reviews. They just have to do some research, test their work on some avid readers and take a chance and hit publish. Look at reviews, talk to readers along the way.



This_Way_Down said:


> Okay....10,000 to 1. That's the odds. Sweet Zombie Jesus! Stop trying to make it something it's not. You have very little chance. Period.


There is no real and right answer for the OP's question. There are authors on here and all over the internet who made $50k in their first year and some that have not made that much in 5 years. 
There are so many personal stories of success and struggle from many different authors.

No one has the definitive answer on here or any other forum, course, youtube video..... You just have to do the research and do the work. Hope you have some luck along the way

I always look at the whole entertainment industry because I know people who are succeeding and some are struggling in their chosen field.

One of my second cousins is a dancer and she has had some great jobs working in commercials and with some bands. She has been approached by so many people who want to be a successful dancer and asked '_how do you get to the stage where bands are picking you to be their backing dancer_?' and '_how do you get into commercials?_' and '_how long will it take for me to earn enough to be able to pay my rent?'_

These are questions she can only answer by sharing her story and giving some advice she followed. The rest is down to the person doing research, making contacts, networking, practising, finding their own unique style as a dancer, going to a hundred auditions, accepting feedback, some luck and making some mistakes along the way.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Rosalind J said:


> I doubt there's ever been a time when most authors can live on their earnings from books alone. More can do it now than ever before thanks to indie publishing, but it's never going to be a sure ticket from everything I know. Making 20k a year would probably make a lot of long term tradpub authors very happy, though.


Agreed. I look at it this way. A fairly average writer can expect to make around 17k - 20k a year from their writing. That's not bad at all when coupled with a day-job salary. The glass looks half-full to me!!! So if the OP got started right away, he could possibly have 40k+ earned & saved in two years. That's a better return than investing in stocks or playing the lottery!!!


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> Agreed. I look at it this way. A fairly average writer can expect to make around 17k - 20k a year from their writing. That's not bad at all when coupled with a day-job salary. The glass looks half-full to me!!! So if the OP got started right away, he could possibly have 40k+ earned & saved in two years. That's a better return than investing in stocks or playing the lottery!!!


Right?! It's not millions or enjoy to buy a house in Positano, but it's a far swag to knock off a mortgage every year.


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## Pacman (Dec 18, 2016)

anniejocoby said:


> I'll be the first to say that I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to marketing. Incredibly lazy. And I'm very distractible, so distractible that it takes me forever to read a book. I'm kinda a disaster when it comes to focusing on marketing, in other words. I tried to learn Facebook ads. I put some out, had a PPC of over a dollar, and pulled them right back out. I never even tried to learn AMS - way too complicated for me.
> 
> So, yeah, I hate marketing.
> 
> ...


thanks Annie, this validates my approach, much like Patty J, it's a slow, organic path, but doable.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Bella, what you're describing sounds to me more like writing to market, rather than writing an engaging story. And while I agree writing to market is extremely important, we also have a lot of people talking about it, like Chris Fox. 


Because the thing is, even if you know exactly what tropes and expectations have readers of a certain genre have, what kinds of stories they like, that doesn't mean you will be able to churn out one that they enjoy. For example, a lot of popular stories have characters with catchphrases or characters always doing weird poses. I tried to add that in to my story, but all it did was make my story lame, and probably turned off a lot of readers. 

BTW, I've seen you here since I started on kboards, and I know you've done a lot of research, and you're reasonably intelligent. Have you published your first book yet?


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Luck is not a career strategy.

Can you get lucky? Sure.

Is it likely? No.

There are a few dozen authors in romance who wrote a first book from their heart and saw it take off. Some wrote totally off trope stuff that would never work for someone else. Some wrote super on trope stuff because they happened to love the trope. Some actually didn't write from the heart; they wrote something to market and told everyone it was from the heart.

There are thousands more who wrote a first book from their heart and saw nothing. That's most people's experience, but it's not flashy or impressive, so you don't see a kid of forum posts about it. 

Writing a great book is not enough unless you get lucky. Especially not in crowded genres in 2017. Saying Book A was successful because it's "unputdownable" or "filled with passion" or whatever else suggests that other books are unsuccessful because their lack of those traits, and that's not true. Most great books aren't hits. Only so many books can be hits.

A great book is a great starting point, but unless you get lucky, it's but nearly enough. You need a marketing plan.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Crystal_ said:


> Luck is not a career strategy.
> 
> Can you get lucky? Sure.
> 
> ...


Thank you! I always thought the same thing. To say that luck plays no factor in success is implying that, if you're book doesn't take off, there's something wrong with the book. When really, Book A might be a book might be unputdownable and resonant and emotional and all of that, but it didn't take off because it didn't get pixie dust, while Book B does get the pixie dust. You simply cannot control for how visible your book ends up being, which is why more or less constant promotion is a must for most people to succeed. Or you can just write a ton of books in a hungry and not-saturated genre and do it that way. Some people do get the pixie dust. Most don't, so most have to have strategies to succeed.


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## ExtraT (May 20, 2017)

wow! thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply. I have read every single post over the weekend while taking time to digest the information.

Just to clarify, Brexit is a motivating factor, but it is NOT a time scale i.e, I don't have to be 'up and running' within a year. Sorry for any confusion! Im pretty sure the great country of Austria won't kick me out if negotiations fail, but like I said it is a motivating factor to generate an independent income _as quickly as possible, but if it takes longer than the E.U's two years of negotiating, that's ok!_

To everyone who has mentioned 'write to market', thank you. I have already done a lot of research and reading, but there were some good titles mentioned which I now have.

My first manuscript is with the editor, the second is sat in a state on my laptop. That will be finished (I hope) within two months. After its edited, I'll push the button on both to go live.

My next question will be how to build an audience as early as possible without any publications...


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> Luck is not a career strategy.
> 
> Can you get lucky? Sure.
> 
> ...


Holy cow I love your post. Thank you.


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## JDMatheny (May 7, 2017)

My next question will be how to build an audience as early as possible without any publications... 
[/quote]

This is also one of my big questions, lol. Building a mailing list seems to be such and important factor but building one without any published works already seems like a tall task indeed!


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## Magnus (May 1, 2016)

JDMatheny said:


> My next question will be how to build an audience as early as possible without any publications...
> 
> This is also one of my big questions, lol. Building a mailing list seems to be such and important factor but building one without any published works already seems like a tall task indeed!


Loss-leaders is the strategy I'm working towards. Write a 20k novella just for mailing-list subscribers. Write a collection of short stories, go wide with it, and make it free. Chase down people on the street, naked, screaming, hurling business cards with signup links on them. Alternatively; a writing craft blog.

Whatever works.


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## Guest (May 22, 2017)

BellaJames said:


> One of my second cousins is a dancer and she has had some great jobs working in commercials and with some bands. She has been approached by so many people who want to be a successful dancer and asked '_how do you get to the stage where bands are picking you to be their backing dancer_?' and '_how do you get into commercials?_' and '_how long will it take for me to earn enough to be able to pay my rent?'_
> 
> These are questions she can only answer by sharing her story and giving some advice she followed. The rest is down to the person doing research, making contacts, networking, practising, finding their own unique style as a dancer, going to a hundred auditions, accepting feedback, some luck and making some mistakes along the way.


I've found that there are two types of people who ask this question. One who wants to hear that if you work hard and write a good book, it is a certainty. That there is a sure fire method that when applied, will springboard them to success. They usually don't mind being told that it's hard work, so long as there are guarantees of achieving their goals. 
The second types wants the truth. They want to know that becoming a professional novelist is one of the most difficult things in the world to achieve. They are open to hearing that it is not only possible, but in fact likely, that they will never sell more than a handful of books. They listen when they are told that regardless of whether you take the traditional route or go indie, the odds are the same - slim to none. They hear all this, understand it; believe it. And push forward anyway.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

This_Way_Down said:


> I've found that there are two types of people who ask this question. One who wants to hear that if you work hard and write a good book, it a certainty. That there is a sure fire method that when applied, will springboard them to success. They usually don't mind being told that it's hard work, so long as there are guarantees of achieving their goals.
> The second types wants the truth. They want to know that becoming a professional novelist is one of the most difficult things in the world to achieve. They are open to hearing that it is not only possible, but in fact likely, that they will never sell more than a handful of books. They listen when they are told that regardless of whether you take the traditional route or go indie, the odds are the same - slim to none. They hear all this, understand it; believe it. And push forward anyway.


I thought the 2nd type was the type of people who want a silver bullet, some magical list of steps that will allow them to sell billions and billions of copies and make JK Rowling look like an amateur.


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## Guest (May 22, 2017)

AsianInspiration said:


> I thought the 2nd type was the type of people who want a silver bullet, some magical list of steps that will allow them to sell billions and billions of copies and make JK Rowling look like an amateur.


Yeah. I ignore that type and pretend they are a figment of my imagination. Otherwise, they give me gas


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

JDMatheny said:


> My next question will be how to build an audience as early as possible without any publications...
> 
> This is also one of my big questions, lol. Building a mailing list seems to be such and important factor but building one without any published works already seems like a tall task indeed!


This you can do. There are a few ways. I've done both and both work well. First time around, Instafreebie didn't exist so I made a simple landing page (it's an added easy feature of Getresponse). On that page put my cover which was gorgeous and a blurb about the series and the first book. I had a signup link so those interested could get an email when the book released. I ran FB ads to that page and got a few hundred signups that I was able to email when the book released and it did well.

But now, even easier, you can use Instafreebie and put up an excerpt of your book along with the cover. You can participate in group promos for your genre--there are loads of FB groups for that, either InstaFreebie or Bookfunnel or both. The advantage of Instafreebie is they will mail out and suggest your book too, especially if the cover is great. Doing this, I generated over 1600 subs for a new book. It gives you a start.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

This_Way_Down said:


> I've found that there are two types of people who ask this question. One who wants to hear that if you work hard and write a good book, it a certainty.
> 
> ...
> 
> The second types wants the truth.


There is a third type.

He understands that books are products and readers are customers. To that end, he realizes that successful publishing means identifying a commercially-viable audience, figuring out what that audience wants to buy, and delivering products that meet that audience's expectations.

Over and over and over.

Moreover, he realizes that products need visibility. So he becomes adept at marketing and promotion.

He also realizes that readers can be fickle. So he builds a tribe around his brand - one that looks forward to each new book.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Anarchist said:


> There is a third type.
> 
> He understands that books are products and readers are customers. To that end, he realizes that successful publishing means identifying a commercially-viable audience, figuring out what that audience wants to buy, and delivering products that meet that audience's expectations.
> 
> ...


I'd add that this writer also knows that most writing careers take time to build. A few writers can knock the home run out of the park with their first book, but most are writing because they love to write and the career is built slowly, book by book and reader by reader. Stephen King and James Patterson and Hugh Howey and Rosalind and etc. etc. didn't get their careers overnight. They took time to build, and [crap]ton of hard work and constant learning. But as near as I can tell, they all love to write and will probably be writing for as long as they're able to.

If a writer wants to be a flash in a pan and make fast money, there are ways to do it. If you want a long-term career, there's ways to do that. They both require hard work in one form or another.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Anarchist said:


> There is a third type.
> 
> He understands that books are products and readers are customers. To that end, he realizes that successful publishing means identifying a commercially-viable audience, figuring out what that audience wants to buy, and delivering products that meet that audience's expectations.
> 
> ...


Yes! It's hard for many writers to also wear the business hat, but if you can objectively look at things--changing a cover even when you personally like it, for one that will better sell the book, that kind of thing, you'll get to that 50k level much faster.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Jim Johnson said:


> If a writer wants to be a flash in a pan and make fast money, there are ways to do it.


Would you be so kind as to offer some pointers? I am very interested in those ways


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

AsianInspiration said:


> Would you be so kind as to offer some pointers? I am very interested in those ways


Like most things in life, the best way to make a small fortune at something is to start with a large fortune.


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## Guest (May 22, 2017)

Anarchist said:


> There is a third type.
> 
> He understands that books are products and readers are customers. To that end, he realizes that successful publishing means identifying a commercially-viable audience, figuring out what that audience wants to buy, and delivering products that meet that audience's expectations.
> 
> ...


I see the second type very likely to be the person you are describing. Someone will to hear the truth about the odds and accept it will usually be smart enough to listen to the advice of experienced, successful authors, rather than rail against everything they are told that doesn't fit into their pre-existing mindset.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Jim Johnson said:


> I'd add that this writer also knows that most writing careers take time to build. A few writers can knock the home run out of the park with their first book, but most are writing because they love to write and the career is built slowly, book by book and reader by reader. Stephen King and James Patterson and Hugh Howey and Rosalind and Annie and etc. etc. didn't get their careers overnight. They took time to build, and [crap]ton of hard work and constant learning. But as near as I can tell, they all love to write and will probably be writing for as long as they're able to.
> 
> If a writer wants to be a flash in a pan and make fast money, there are ways to do it. If you want a long-term career, there's ways to do that. They both require hard work in one form or another.


Nope not me. I got my career overnight. Decided to try it, did, and it worked right away. Plenty of people would say I just got lucky. I had skill and practice in writing nonfiction sorts of things, but that's all. The only building has been just continuing to write books and writing different types of stories to try to get better.

I did have a lifetime of good work habits and a fair amount of skill developed from reading, probably, at knowing what was a viable story. But yes, it can happen this way. Not something to count on though.

I do enjoy writing, but I'm not sure I have to do it. I didn't write any fiction ever until I was over 50. It makes me super anxious to write for publication.

Per discussion of types above: I almost didn't publish because of all the "almost no books succeed" stuff. I somehow knew, though, in a way totally unlike me, that I could at least make a tiny living at it. That is why I quit the day job a month or so after starting the first book. It took ten months to write and edit three books, but I did make day-job money as soon as I published. I have lots of admiration for people who push and learn and try again when it doesn't work out. I wouldn't have had the confidence.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> Would you be so kind as to offer some pointers? I am very interested in those ways


I noted a "book" this morning ranked at #41 in the Kindle Store (selling about 1700 copies a day). It's *triple* spaced (on my iPhone 6 that's three lines per page). The title ends at 22% in my Kindle PC reader, followed by five more "novels" which are also sold separately as standalones _and_ "stuffed" into multiple box sets.

The storefront page-count is 2110.

It has *264* reviews. It was published just over a week ago.

The writing is competent. I managed to read twenty pages and didn't encounter any typos or grammatical errors (like I would know).

In the year this author has been publishing on this pen, he/she has put up 108 titles (about 7.2 per month). About thirty of those are box sets.

If the title held its current rank for a year it would earn about $214,200. It won't, but maybe the next title from this author will take its place. The back catalog rankings sit between 10,000 and 200,000.

This is one way among multiple similar ways to go, and I'm not judging this author one way or the other (though the triple spacing is a bit much).

Is pandering to a readership (market) something to be ashamed of? I don't think so, and I'm sure editors from Harlequin to Scribner will agree, though they would use a different word (catering?).

For some, self-publishing is a license to print money.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> Would you be so kind as to offer some pointers? I am very interested in those ways


You said you used to scam, so I'm guessing you already know lots of the ways. There's a locked thread back a page or two where people discuss some possible ways. There are also incentivized buy/review circles and any number of somewhat-to-very shady services that will push a book and get it clicks and/or buys without actually having to be read. Legal things like plot buying and hiring cheap ghostwriters. And then of course there's piracy, which still goes on all the time.

I wouldn't say any of that's a great bet for a long-term career. Everyone I've seen with a long-term career actually writes books that lots of people like to read, and figures out legit ways to build a following around that and to gain visibility. For some people that's hybrid deals. Mailing lists. Paid ads. But mainly: genre, hooky premise (high-concept is best in my own experience, not just more-of-the-same), title (not mentioned nearly enough), cover that works for genre and reinforces title, blurb that sells author's voice and the premise, formatting, editing, and writing.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> You said you used to scam, so I'm guessing you already know lots of the ways. There's a locked thread back a page or two where people discuss some possible ways. There are also incentivized buy/review circles and any number of somewhat-to-very shady services that will push a book and get it clicks and/or buys without actually having to be read. Legal things like plot buying and hiring cheap ghostwriters. And then of course there's piracy, which still goes on all the time.
> 
> I wouldn't say any of that's a great bet for a long-term career. Everyone I've seen with a long-term career actually writes books that lots of people like to read, and figures out legit ways to build a following around that and to gain visibility. For some people that's hybrid deals. Mailing lists. Paid ads. But mainly: genre, hooky premise (high-concept is best in my own experience, not just more-of-the-same), title (not mentioned nearly enough), cover that works for genre and reinforces title, blurb that sells author's voice and the premise, formatting, editing, and writing.


I do have a lot of ideas in mind. But I was hoping for some innovative and creative ideas I haven't thought of, things that are not morally questionable. However, even sketchy methods are not worthless.

I no longer want to do something that goes against my conscience. But even with scams or shady things, there's a certain amount of thought and creativity put into it, and sometimes the thought process itself is quite clever, and could be applied to processes that are completely legal and morally acceptable.

I strongly believe that applying knowledge learned elsewhere, knowledge that most people in the field don't know is a great way to find success. From what I see, a lot of successful authors like yourself or Chris Fox or A.G Riddle etc, have a very strong background before writing; and I'm sure that it helped immensely. I've read more than a few authors who came from a start-up or marketing background, and brought that kind of mentality into book writing.

I think by learning about all the tips and tricks people use, actually understand how and why they work, and then optimizing and tweaking the processes to suit your own situation will maximize the probability for success.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

AsianInspiration said:


> I do have a lot of ideas in mind. But I was hoping for some innovative and creative ideas I haven't thought of, things that are not morally questionable. However, even sketchy methods are not worthless.


Yeah, don't have to be scammy. Just have to be willing to put the work in. Write a series of books in a genre with a huge, hungry readerbase right now. Various flavors of romance, mil-sf, maybe some erotica. Write great stories that are genre-hitting and evoke emotional responses in readers. Get it well-edited, put a great cover on it, great blurbs, and then invest in FB and AMZ ads. Push for a bookbub as often as you can.

I think that's about the best option for anyone wanting to make money fast at indie publishing, and even then, there's no guarantee it'll work out.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Dpock said:


> I noted a "book" this morning ranked at #41 in the Kindle Store (selling about 1700 copies a day). It's *triple* spaced (on my iPhone 6 that's three lines per page). The title ends at 22% in my Kindle PC reader, followed by five more "novels" which are also sold separately as standalones _and_ "stuffed" into multiple box sets.
> 
> The storefront page-count is 2110.
> 
> ...


I'd say that deceptive packaging practices (calling something a novel when it's truly a box set) are something to be ashamed of. "Bonus content" is out of control in romance right now, but that's another conversation.

For most people, building a career takes time, marketing, and multiple books. Doing stuff that cheapens your brand or turns off your readers only going to hurt you long term.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I don't have tips and tricks. Just what I said. 
Genre
High concept premise (fun, appealing)
Distinctive Voice 
Characterization: relatable and individual, including secondary characters.
Hooky prose
Title and series title
Book cover that works for genre and title, professionally done
Understanding of your target reader (not just overall genre) and delivering the experience she wants
Blurb that expresses your voice and the hooky premise. 
Editing
Formatting
Ability to write at above average pace. For me that is four long books a year. 
Some way to get eyeballs on book even if it's just Select free days and a few small ads (how I started)
Someplace for readers to go and talk to you. Website, Facebook, newsletter
Mailing list (I didn't do this until a couple years in). Quality over quantity. 

Others do cross promo and lots of ads and so forth. I don't so can't speak to that. The above is what worked for me. For me, its humor, relatable and well developed characters, realistic dialogue, effective love scenes, sense of place, and the ability to elicit emotion. Other authors will have different strengths. I'm pretty good at mystery and suspenseful scenes, for example, but generally not fabulous at clever plots. People who like what I do are probably not reading for plot.


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

What a fantastic thread. All kinds of great advice that I find very heartening. Those of you who took time to answer this with advice on how to earn money from writing, thank you so much.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Jim Johnson said:


> Yeah, don't have to be scammy. Just have to be willing to put the work in. Write a series of books in a genre with a huge, hungry readerbase right now. Various flavors of romance, mil-sf, maybe some erotica. Write great stories that are genre-hitting and evoke emotional responses in readers. Get it well-edited, put a great cover on it, great blurbs, and then invest in FB and AMZ ads. Push for a bookbub as often as you can.
> 
> I think that's about the best option for anyone wanting to make money fast at indie publishing, and even then, there's no guarantee it'll work out.


Here's the thing. There's a first person who started using facebook ads. Before that person, no one thought to use facebook ads, or thought of it but didn't know how to do it, or didn't want to take the risk. But then, eventually, a few brave souls tried, and it worked very well for them. Because of that, more and more people followed, and now it is common knowledge. But at the same time, the effectiveness also decreased significantly.

There was also the first person who decided to make their first book in a series free. The first person to think of optimizing for Amazon's search and suggestion algorithms. The first person who used freebies as a way to build their mailing list. The first person who thought of using a mailing list at all. Etc.

Now, these things are common knowledge among kboard authors. But I'm sure there is a lot more innovation to be made.

Probably 70%+ (random number) of people who want to publish a book never finish one. Probably 70% of the ones who do finish writing the book never do enough research to find basic advice about blurbs, covers, facebook/AMS ads, mailing lists, etc. Of the rest, probably 70% of them never end up doing those things for whatever reason.

We're left with the very small remaining percentage of writers who do everything. I'm sure the success rate among these writers is much higher than the 1% or 5% or whatever small percentage that is often quoted.

But then, of those writers, there is an even smaller percentage, the real innovators, who came up with those methods in the first place, the ones leading the pack, and changing the game year after year. Becoming one of these innovators will significantly increase your chances for success.

Take Tim Ferriss for example. A few years back, when he wrote his Four Hour Chef, he created hours of extra content, and put it up for free through bittorrent. As a result, it gained a huge amount of visibility from the hundreds of thousands of downloads from the torrent. That's the kind of creative innovation I am striving for.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> I'd say that deceptive packaging practices (calling something a novel when it's truly a box set) are something to be ashamed of. "Bonus content" is out of control in romance right now, but that's another conversation.


They usually mention the bonus content in their blurbs and front matter. The deception bit is that the "bonus" content generally follows a novella instead of a full novel, so I'd agree with you there, except I don't know their average readers well enough to know if they'd notice or mind.

It is another conversation but why bother? Amazon allows it. It doesn't matter what we think about it. (I do wonder if most readers read beyond the title on the cover. If they did in the example I used, that would earn the author $9.00 per KU download. Good for the author. For Amazon, pages read are pages read. They won't care which pages are read.)



> For most people, building a career takes time, marketing, and multiple books. Doing stuff that cheapens your brand or turns off your readers only going to hurt you long term.


It's to each their own according to their most urgent need (as long as they play the rules). I think the author's book I mentioned earlier (now at #30) is optimizing rather than cheapening his/her brand while maximizing their revenue. Maybe, after there are a million dollars in the bank, they'll write the next great American novel under a different pen.

Anyway, this same author doesn't appear to be scamming anyone.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> Here's the thing. There's a first person who started using facebook ads. Before that person, no one thought to use facebook ads, or thought of it but didn't know how to do it, or didn't want to take the risk. But then, eventually, a few brave souls tried, and it worked very well for them. Because of that, more and more people followed, and now it is common knowledge. But at the same time, the effectiveness also decreased significantly.
> 
> There was also the first person who decided to make their first book in a series free. The first person to think of optimizing for Amazon's search and suggestion algorithms. The first person who used freebies as a way to build their mailing list. The first person who thought of using a mailing list at all. Etc.
> 
> ...


In my experience, the most successful indie authors aren't in any way leading the pack or changing the game in marketing stuff, and never have. That's more something that happens at the mid level, people who are earning some money but not tons.

Exceptions abound I am sure. (Mark Dawson comes to mind, and Chris Fox.)

People who have long-term success tend to put out a steady stream of books that satisfy their audience to a high degree, frequently enough that their readers don't forget about them. They may diversify their line to appeal to different types of readers and create some overlapping Venn diagrams, or they may focus much more tightly on a single niche.

There's also a McDonalds vs. specialty restaurant divergence. Some authors write tightly to a popular trend in a popular genre and go very fast. Do lots of coauthor stuff and so forth. Can be lucrative but requires a lot of shifting and a lot of advertising, since you're not breaking any new ground. Sounds like you're more in that camp. You want an easier way to do it, more of a formula, and then a focus on the marketing. Less creativity in the writing, perhaps, and more in the marketing. That's a path I'm sure. Just one that would make personal-me think, "Why not just get a day job?" Doesn't sound very satisfying to me, but some people love it, the "game" aspect of it.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

I totally agree. I think the vast majority of really big successes are not meticulously engineered. They just have that magical touch that makes people want to spread the word. 

At the same time, I think it is extremely difficult to understand how to develop such a magical touch; you either have it or... you don't. I don't know, maybe there is a way to help other people develop it, but it's far beyond me at this point in time.

Growing up in the computer/internet generation, I played a lot of MMO games as a child. I also happened to have grown up in a poor family, where I never spent a single cent on games. As a result, I spent a lot of time trying to optimize every little process that will help me catch up to, or even surpass paid players. 

For me, my interest isn't necessarily in building a sustainable writing career. My interest is in testing and finding out exactly how to optimize things, and make slight improvements to the current ways of doing things.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> People who have long-term success tend to put out a steady stream of books that satisfy their audience to a high degree, frequently enough that their readers don't forget about them. They may diversify their line to appeal to different types of readers and create some overlapping Venn diagrams, or they may focus much more tightly on a single niche.


I've been steadily successful. Not huge. I write in a variety of genres, but I keep the same "style." My readers like deep emotional connections to my characters, whether it is sci-fi or urban fantasy. They also like humor and witty banter. I hope that it will hold true in PNR / adventure.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

> At the same time, I think it is extremely difficult to understand how to develop such a magical touch; you either have it or... you don't. I don't know, maybe there is a way to help other people develop it, but it's far beyond me at this point in time.


I know you're speaking of marketing, but of course the same is true of writing. I have always flattered myself that I have a gift for putting words together, that as Thelonious Monk once said: "All I know is that for every note, there's another note that melts it, and I try to catch it with my hands." Now I see that my granddaughter has the same gift. It's just awesome what she can do, despite or perhaps because of dyslexia.

This by no means guarantees success as a writer, of course. Writing well is only part of the mix. There's the ability to create convincing characters, and the ability to pace a story, and perhaps other abilities that I just can't see.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Sorry if I didn't express myself properly. That comment was talking about writing ability. Because I don't believe I have that magical touch, I have to try to make it up with marketing. I hate marketing. I really, really hate it (although I do like seeing results/progress; kind of like grinding levels in an RPG game. Grinding itself is really boring, but seeing level ups is rewarding). If I didn't need marketing, I would stay as far away from it as possible.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

This_Way_Down said:


> The second types wants the truth. They want to know that becoming a professional novelist is one of the most difficult things in the world to achieve.


That's not the truth. It's really, really not. Y'all need a damn reality check.

Didn't any of you dream of becoming an astronaut? A U.S. Navy SEAL? Head of state/government of your local nation state? A princess? A monster truck? Did you grow up impoverished in a war-torn, third-world nation and dream of emigrating elsewhere? How about becoming a bestselling poet instead of a novelist? A professional surfer? Are you a 6' 4", 160 lbs. ectomorph whose secret desire is to become a world-class powerlifter?

Turning independent storytelling into a lucrative career is tough. It is _*by no means*_ one of the toughest things for a human to do.

Stop flattering yourself and/or your idols. Practically anybody who is literate has a shot at this dream. It is not that hard in the scheme of things.

Put on your big girl pants and cowboy up.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> That comment was talking about writing ability.


I'm going to skew your comment to mean writing "skills" and mention you can do some informal skill testing on your own. Google "Test my writing ability". Most of the sites are bogus but you'll feel that going in and move on. I've used quite a few but long ago. I do remember this one and it's still atop the rankings:

Writing Skills Test - http://evc-cit.info/wst/ - takes 45 minutes. If you whiz through in twenty minutes with a perfect score your writing skills are probably pretty good. As a slow reader, I took the full time allotted and scored 69/75. If you need editing, call someone else.

They're just for fun, but also not void of insight depending on how well you score.



> Because I don't believe I have that magical touch


That's a little tougher to pin down but again, Google can offer insights. Try "Is my creative writing any good?" or similar.

I've been tempted to ask some newbies, "What makes you think you can write?" It's not a great way to make friends so I haven't yet. But there are sites like - http://writetodone.com/is-your-writing-any-good/ - asking useful questions and many other sites like it. Most read like a Sunday features quiz but can be worth five minutes of your (or anybody's) time.



Dolphin said:


> Practically anybody who is literate has a shot at this dream. It is not that hard in the scheme of things.


Loads of people who wanted to be Navy Seals didn't make the cut. It's the same with astronauts. It's definitely the case in publishing. I think these points are relative to your statements.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Dpock said:


> Loads of people who wanted to be Navy Seals didn't make the cut. It's the same with astronauts. It's definitely the case in publishing. I think these points are relative to your statements.


A few thousand American males have become SEALs. 0 non-male humans have done so.

Less than 600 humans have ever been to space.

The criteria are not comparable to publishing or self-publishing.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Dolphin said:


> A few thousand American males have become SEALs. 0 non-male humans have done so.
> 
> Less than 600 humans have ever been to space.
> 
> The criteria are not comparable to publishing or self-publishing.


http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/10/first-female-navy-seals-could-get-assignments-in-2017-plans-show.html

The first three women also became Army Rangers last year. Hooah.

But I agree with you.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> A few thousand American males have become SEALs. 0 non-male humans have done so.
> 
> Less than 600 humans have ever been to space.
> 
> The criteria are not comparable to publishing or self-publishing.


So, self-publishing must be easy by comparison? Good to know.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Dpock said:


> They usually mention the bonus content in their blurbs and front matter. The deception bit is that the "bonus" content generally follows a novella instead of a full novel, so I'd agree with you there, except I don't know their average readers well enough to know if they'd notice or mind.
> 
> It is another conversation but why bother? Amazon allows it. It doesn't matter what we think about it. (I do wonder if most readers read beyond the title on the cover. If they did in the example I used, that would earn the author $9.00 per KU download. Good for the author. For Amazon, pages read are pages read. They won't care which pages are read.)
> 
> ...


This is directly affecting everyone in KU (by lowering the page rate and raising the All Star bonus threshold). It's really skewing the sexy romance market towards .99, which is bad for people who don't wish to price at .99.

There isn't much we can do about it, besides writing to ECR as customers or authors. I have written in to ask if bonus content is allowed/if Amazon is planning to make it against the rules and got a non-answer. I can't imagine that Amazon won't ban it at some point, as it's going to start driving higher-priced authors out of KU (it already has), but then I don't always understand Amazon's decisions.

Sometimes bonus content is mentioned in blurbs, sometimes not. Because of the way Amazon starts books at Chapter One, most readers miss the front matter, and many feel confused and upset when the book they're reading stops at 10% or 30% or 50%. It's a poor customer experience. I see a lot of reviews complaining about "bonus books" (and a few that are pro bonus book).

I don't know what author you are talking about, but I could guess, and they have a cheap brand. This kind of thing creates a cheap brand. There are lots of people with cheap brands, and that's fine if that's their goal, but it boxes you into KU + .99. You can't go from .99 to 3.99 like _that_. Personally, I don't see the point in putting out books unless you're building brand equity at the same time. But I do have a friend who made half a million dollars profit last year with one of these fast and trendy bonus book using pen names, so it can work.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Rosalind J said:


> http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/10/first-female-navy-seals-could-get-assignments-in-2017-plans-show.html
> 
> The first three women also became Army Rangers last year. Hooah.
> 
> But I agree with you.


Yeah! I'm excited to see how it develops. The first lady SEAL is going to be an impressive, impressive human. It's a totally different ball of wax from Ranger School.

Army nerd note: to my knowledge, the first three female soldiers who completed Ranger School and earned their tabs did not become Rangers in the sense of membership in the 75th Ranger Regiment--which is what we commonly mean when we say that "The President sent in the Rangers," or "Pat Tillman was a Ranger." They're Ranger _qualified_. All you have to do is spend 61 days straight doing things like climbing up and down mountains with 80 pounds on your back, eating 2,500 calories and sleeping 2-3 hours a day. A trifle, really.

However, Jaster, Greist, and Haver actually graduated in 2015 and there's been many other women who've gotten their tabs since! Some of them have been among the first female infantry officers in the U.S. Army, and at least one has indeed gone on to a billet as an officer in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

One Blue-Corded Queen of Battle to another, I say drive on, ladies.



Dpock said:


> So, self-publishing must be easy by comparison? Good to know.


It's a damn sight easier than all of this self-pitying lamentation would have you believe!

Show me your war face! Sound off like you've got a manuscript! Publish it, and if it fails, sing your death song and die like a hero going home! Then publish something else! I've had and done with all of this whinging!


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Dolphin said:


> Show me your war face!


I would, but Murder She Wrote is about to begin and I've just made a cup of chamomile tea, so...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> This is directly affecting everyone in KU (by lowering the page rate and raising the All Star bonus threshold). It's really skewing the sexy romance market towards .99, which is bad for people who don't wish to price at .99.
> 
> There isn't much we can do about it, besides writing to ECR as customers or authors. I have written in to ask if bonus content is allowed/if Amazon is planning to make it against the rules and got a non-answer. I can't imagine that Amazon won't ban it at some point, as it's going to start driving higher-priced authors out of KU (it already has), but then I don't always understand Amazon's decisions.
> 
> Sometimes bonus content is mentioned in blurbs, sometimes not. Because of the way Amazon starts books at Chapter One, most readers miss the front matter, and many feel confused and upset when the book they're reading stops at 10% or 30% or 50%. It's a poor customer experience. I see a lot of reviews complaining about "bonus books" (and a few that are pro bonus book).


If we're speaking of Romance, prices start to climb by page two of the rankings, and by page three, ninety-nine cents no longer dominates (as of moments ago). Some people even say $2.99 is a form of branding. It telegraphs the message that "It's not that other stuff you saw on page one".

I'm not sure how bonus stuffing affects KU reads unless you mean it hoards eyeballs. I doubt most of the bonus stuff is actually read or counted toward the author's actual page reads. This may be erroneous thinking. I'd like to understand this better.

If authors stuffing their books give their readers a poor experience, I don't think those readers will generalize that experience to other authors. It's also not like they can go down the street and shop elsewhere.



> I don't know what author you are talking about, but I could guess...


In a couple subcategories, speaking of this type of author "strategy", there's no need to guess. Just throw a dart at page one of its Top 100. There's a 30-40% chance you'll score.



> ...and they have a cheap brand.


I'm sure those authors feel they have a great brand for their readership. Anyway, there's a chance their readers are not your or my readers anyway.



> But I do have a friend who made half a million dollars profit last year with one of these fast and trendy bonus book using pen names, so it can work.


It's doable (obviously), and according to Amazon, it's a legitimate way to go.


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## Thame (Apr 18, 2017)

Dolphin said:


> It's a damn sight easier than all of this self-pitying lamentation would have you believe!
> 
> Show me your war face! Sound off like you've got a manuscript! Publish it, and if it fails, sing your death song and die like a hero going home! Then publish something else! I've had and done with all of this whinging!


Love your attitude! No wonder you support military sci-fi!


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## Gus Flory (Oct 13, 2009)

Dolphin said:


> It's a damn sight easier than all of this self-pitying lamentation would have you believe!
> 
> Show me your war face! Sound off like you've got a manuscript! Publish it, and if it fails, sing your death song and die like a hero going home! Then publish something else! I've had and done with all of this whinging!


Damn straight. Motivated.

Hail O' Hail O' Infantry! Queen of Battle follow me!


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

One thing I've noticed (and this is in no way an across the board thing), but a lot of really successful indies seemed to have backgrounds that beget success. I think Rosalind mentioned that she had had a fairly successful corporate career. Mark Dawson was a lawyer. Adam Croft ran a marketing company. I think Rachel Abbott ran a business? And Hugh Howey... well if he's the sort of person who sails a boat around the world (and has the discipline to have his ass) then it's pretty clear he's got gumption. 

To me, that doesn't mean you need to run a marketing company or whatever to have success. But people who run successful businesses generally aren't people who think "what's the likelihood of a business succeeding?". They're people who say "this is going to be hard work, but I want it to succeed so I'll do what it takes". One attitude is fairly passive, and the other attitude is active.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Crystal_ said:


> It's really skewing the sexy romance market towards .99, which is bad for people who don't wish to price at .99.


You don't have to price at 99 cents to succeed in romance. Elizabeth Hunter prices her PNR new releases at $5.99. I'll pay that for one of her books and she obviously has a large following who likewise don't blink at paying higher prices for a quality read.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Dolphin said:


> That's not the truth. It's really, really not. Y'all need a damn reality check.
> 
> Didn't any of you dream of becoming an astronaut? A U.S. Navy SEAL? Head of state/government of your local nation state? A princess? A monster truck? Did you grow up impoverished in a war-torn, third-world nation and dream of emigrating elsewhere? How about becoming a bestselling poet instead of a novelist? A professional surfer? Are you a 6' 4", 160 lbs. ectomorph whose secret desire is to become a world-class powerlifter?
> 
> ...


If you are 6'4 and 160lbs and you want to be a world-class powerlifter, you need to gain about 200lbs


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

RightHoJeeves said:


> One thing I've noticed (and this is in no way an across the board thing), but a lot of really successful indies seemed to have backgrounds that beget success. I think Rosalind mentioned that she had had a fairly successful corporate career. Mark Dawson was a lawyer. Adam Croft ran a marketing company. I think Rachel Abbott ran a business? And Hugh Howey... well if he's the sort of person who sails a boat around the world (and has the discipline to have his ass) then it's pretty clear he's got gumption.
> 
> To me, that doesn't mean you need to run a marketing company or whatever to have success. But people who run successful businesses generally aren't people who think "what's the likelihood of a business succeeding?". They're people who say "this is going to be hard work, but I want it to succeed so I'll do what it takes". One attitude is fairly passive, and the other attitude is active.


I think this is very true. Mindset and belief that you can do something can make it possible more than anything else. I've worked in sales for over 20 years and you learn to make things happen, to make your own luck instead of waiting to get lucky. Assuming that you are a decent storyteller, if you have this kind of drive, it does help. Believe you can achieve.....and just do it.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

PamelaKelley said:


> I think this is very true. Mindset and belief that you can do something can make it possible more than anything else. I've worked in sales for over 20 years and you learn to make things happen, to make your own luck instead of waiting to get lucky. Assuming that you are a decent storyteller, if you have this kind of drive, it does help. Believe you can achieve.....and just do it.


Not me. I'm scared all the friggin' time. ALL the time. Weepy scared. Always have been. The first time I bought the GMAT (MBA test prep) book, opened it up, and looked at the practice test, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I had to take THREE math classes before I even qualified to take the test, and before the first one (Beginning Algebra, which is 9th grade. I was 35 and had a very good college degree), I had to sit in the car in the community college parking lot and talk myself into the room. I finished first in my MBA class, and I was the grad school speaker at commencement. Thousands of people filling up the Thomas & Mack Arena. I had to take a Xanax to do it, and boy, did I wear a lot of makeup to cover the breakouts.

I get freaky scared. Bad scared. Nothing's changed since, either. I just do it anyway because I'm too stubborn not to, I guess, and I want to do it more than I want to quit. But I have a case of Imposter Syndrome that could fill a room.

All sorts of people can do this job, not just can-do types with positive attitudes. Weepy insecure folks make it too.  That's why you work at home.


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> All sorts of people can do this job, not just can-do types with positive attitudes. Weepy insecure folks make it too.  That's why you work at home.


I don't mean the only people who succeed are gung-ho, yeehaw, super confident captains of industry. I just mean that people are more likely to succeed if they approach the writing as less of a "whats the chance of me succeeding?" attitude and more of a proactive "lets work hard and do what we need to do" attitude.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

RightHoJeeves said:


> I don't mean the only people who succeed are gung-ho, yeehaw, super confident captains of industry. I just mean that people are more likely to succeed if they approach the writing as less of a "whats the chance of me succeeding?" attitude and more of a proactive "lets work hard and do what we need to do" attitude.


Nah, I know. Just wanted to offer a little encouragement to other folks who have to be scared first and then try anyway. I can't be the only one. Having too thin a skin, feeling too vulnerable can actually be a huge bonus in romance, if you can access those feelings and put them into a character. Lots of readers can identify, I find. (Others can't. They only want their heroines "kickass." I call those readers "not my readers.")


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## RightHoJeeves (Jun 30, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> Nah, I know. Just wanted to offer a little encouragement to other folks who have to be scared first and then try anyway. I can't be the only one.


I wouldn't be surprised if those people had more success than the more gung ho people who are running on confidence alone. As long as one's fear doesn't stop them from actually going for it, it can be a great motivator to do a really good job.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

RightHoJeeves said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if those people had more success than the more gung ho people who are running on confidence alone. As long as one's fear doesn't stop them from actually going for it, it can be a great motivator to do a really good job.


I think a lot of us have more fear and less confidence early on in our writing careers. With practice and experience comes maturity and rising confidence. Not necessarily gung-ho super confidence, but just confidence in yourself as a writer and confidence that your work is at least a minimally viable product and that some people have bought it and will continue to do so. The worries that plagued you early on are replaced with different leveled worries.

For instance, something you don't see from a lot of experienced writers with some level of confidence are the threads asking for blurb doctoring, cover art tweak requests, whether to write in first or third person, etc. They're more worried about higher level craft questions, marketing issues, etc. And that's scary stuff too. It think there's fear at all levels of the game, and the writers who can manage that fear, and keep learning, and stay the course on confidence will find success.


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## Magnus (May 1, 2016)

I don't think you can even call yourself a writer without a constant battle with Imposter Syndrome


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Jim Johnson said:


> I think a lot of us have more fear and less confidence early on in our writing careers. With practice and experience comes maturity and rising confidence. Not necessarily gung-ho super confidence, but just confidence in yourself as a writer and confidence that your work is at least a minimally viable product and that some people have bought it and will continue to do so. The worries that plagued you early on are replaced with different leveled worries.


Not everyone falls into this category, as Rosalind said. Personally, I chucked my first few books up there without a thought, but the more I sell the more I feel the weight of expectation to pull something wonderful out of my arse each time, and it can be pretty crushing.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Believing you can do something doesn't mean you can do it. Positive thinking is great, but it isn't the key to anything. I've taken a lot of money from people who thought very positive thoughts about their poker skills 

There's no cure for having to work hard.


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## dirtiestdevil (Aug 20, 2014)

Knowing how to do it myself, and doing it, I'd say 50k a year is very doable! 

All it comes down to is a profitable genre and the marketing know-how. You honestly don't even need that decent of books. You may not get many repeat customers, but that wasn't the question (brand name/platform building etc.). 

But like Rosalind, what I do happened to align with the stars... our insights may not be all that useful to most, since they seem so natural to us, yet are very atypical and foreign to most. Regardless of the genres and all that. It comes down to, if you're one of those people who it just happens to snap with -- then 50k is a breeze! So basically, for those with the magic touch (and they'll think it was rather easy or surprisingly so), the $$ just comes rolling in! Not to say you don't have to keep abreast with the changing trends and promotions/marketing etc. which is very challenging in itself. Like a prize fighter, it doesn't matter too much if you get the belt -- you've got to hold onto it to prove your worth!


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## Guest (May 23, 2017)

It's one thing to achieve your goals. It's something entirely different to maintain them. I remember thinking that if I could only write a certain number of books, I could ease off and relax. I didn't realize that with each new release came renewed pressure to keep producing at an ever increasing rate. And it wasn't like I could just put any old content out there. It had to be as good or better than the last. 
When I think about it, commercial success is in away limiting. Occasionally the subject of changing genres will arise. A writer who has yet to gain a significant audience will ask if they should change, or remain faithful to what they have been writing. Most of the successful authors will tell them that changing is a risk. They won't say not to do it. Well...usually they won't. But from their perspective success has bound them to what made their career. When you are forced to produce four or more books per year, the time it left over to write something outside your comfort zone it minuscule. And if you throw caution to the wind, you risk long spans of time between releases of what you are known by your fans for writing. That alone can hurt you. When you have no "career" to speak of, you can do whatever you want. You have no audience with expectations. Your life isn't tied to your income as an author yet. If you want to write in a new genre, you can do so without risk.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I love what I do. And I don't mind the work, although it is hard to keep myself from becoming burned out at times.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Annie B said:


> Believing you can do something doesn't mean you can do it. Positive thinking is great, but it isn't the key to anything. I've taken a lot of money from people who thought very positive thoughts about their poker skills
> 
> There's no cure for having to work hard.


No, it doesn't. But it does help. Not false confidence. I'm as insecure as the next writer about my work. But having a positive attitude and a strong work ethic is very helpful in this field, where you can get back up when you get knocked down, and keep moving forward.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> When I think about it, commercial success is in away limiting. Occasionally the subject of changing genres will arise. A writer who has yet to gain a significant audience will ask if they should change, or remain faithful to what they have been writing. Most of the successful authors will tell them that changing is a risk. They won't say not to do it. Well...usually they won't. But from their perspective success has bound them to what made their career. When you are forced to produce four or more books per year, the time it left over to write something outside your comfort zone it minuscule.


This makes me really happy to be a midlister.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

This_Way_Down said:


> When you have no "career" to speak of, you can do whatever you want. You have no audience with expectations.


That's where you are when you start a new pen name: Ground Zero, or AKA "Fresh Start".

If someone wants that pen to make $50,000 a year, it'll need to sell about 28,571 books, or 78 a day. If they publish a single title that sticks all year at #2800, they've made their goal. If they write two books that stick at #6000, they've made their goal. It's the same with six books sticking at #19,000, and so on.

None of those rankings put a title in the Top 100 of the more popular genres.

As the OP for the thread has no real history publishing, all he can do at this point is become familiar with the numbers associated with his desired income level. They're achievable, but can he achieve them? No one can answer that.

I highlighted the quote above to emphasize no one is locked into failure. Some here have said ditching non-performing pens turned their careers around.


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Feb 10, 2015)

Annie B said:


> Believing you can do something doesn't mean you can do it. Positive thinking is great, but it isn't the key to anything. I've taken a lot of money from people who thought very positive thoughts about their poker skills
> 
> There's no cure for having to work hard.


Dunning-Krueger Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Absolutely, the pressure of expectations. I'm always terrified I'll disappoint people. 

Very much agree with This_Way_Down (and dirtiestdevil) that the real test, however easy your start is or isn't, is maintaining your position over years and series and books. That's not easy, and I honestly don't think you can game or market your way to that kind of steady success. 

Personally, I write in three or four subgenres with the same name. Despite my fears, I've taken quite a few big departures. It's always felt very important to me not to be stuck in a box, and there are some things that just seem fun to try. I wrote an almost-billionaire, almost-erotic trilogy in first person, for heaven's sake. (I've still never read one other than mine, LOL.) I LOVED writing it. Those have sold the least of my books, but they've sold all right. They sure were interesting and fun to do, writing in first person helped me deepen my third-person writing, and some readers really enjoyed it. I'd write more books that way, but it's definitely not my readers' preferred point of view. Maybe if I ever write that shifter story from Yellowstone . . . I also wrote a real-deal romantic suspense series about Big Issues. And so forth. Five series in four subgenres. I sure do have some readers who wish I'd stick with my first series, but I don't think I'd be able to maintain quality that way. The books would start to feel all the same, and that's the kiss of death IMHO. I can have a year or more between releases in the same series. Not ideal but there you go. 

Not every series has done equally well--this is the first month my heavier-duty romantic suspense has really sold well--but I've learned so much. It was a deliberate decision early on though. Four months in I took a major turn with my next book. It was right when I was selling big. But that second series has actually done very well despite being a bit oddball, and I'm proud of the books, especially the first one (my western reality show book).

I do know authors who stick much more closely to the series and style that worked for them, and I certainly understand that choice. I'm a bit hampered since I can really only write the book that shows up next. One of the many downsides of not getting book ideas. But I've written some interesting books that way and learned a lot.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I can have a year or more between releases in the same series. Not ideal but there you go.


I'm in the same boat.

I do constantly advertise ... but gotta say, I Bring the Fire is doing about the same as it's always done. The *rank* is lower--I think there are simply so many more books in the store--but the earnings are pretty consistent.

I hope I can maintain the same sort of modest stickiness with my sci-fi and paranormal romance.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:

If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Magnus said:


> I don't think you can even call yourself a writer without a constant battle with Imposter Syndrome





Lydniz said:


> Not everyone falls into this category, as Rosalind said. Personally, I chucked my first few books up there without a thought, but the more I sell the more I feel the weight of expectation to pull something wonderful out of my arse each time, and it can be pretty crushing.


Great comments. I'm sure most artistic endeavors include some element of imposter syndrome. I guess the trick is to not let it be a constant battle. If a writer is constantly learning and doing their best on each new release, a reader expecting more than that probably has unrealistic expectations.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Jim Johnson said:


> Great comments. I'm sure most artistic endeavors include some element of imposter syndrome. I guess the trick is to not let it be a constant battle. If a writer is constantly learning and doing their best on each new release, a reader expecting more than that probably has unrealistic expectations.


Mine's a constant battle.  Especially as I do constantly try new things that do disappoint some readers. The thing is--I set the bar high and the risk scares me to death, BUT I DO IT ANYWAY. I think that's the key.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

AsianInspiration said:


> Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:
> 
> If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


Assuming time to develop and grow it, pretty confident. I already did it once with a new pen name and have seen others do it. I'm getting ready to do it again, though I will be leveraging my existing names, as it would be silly not to.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> Assuming time to develop and grow it, pretty confident. I already did it once with a new pen name and have seen others do it. I'm getting ready to do it again, though I will be leveraging my existing names, as it would be silly not to.


I agree. To create a pen name that would be a million dollar earner ... that would be hard. But a 50k pen name seems pretty modest. If you gave me another four years I think I could do it!


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## PatriciaDreas (Mar 30, 2017)

AsianInspiration said:


> Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:
> 
> If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


Do you mean at a rate of $50k within a year (rather than $50k total)? How many books will you publish?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> Not me. I'm scared all the friggin' time. ALL the time. Weepy scared. Always have been. The first time I bought the GMAT (MBA test prep) book, opened it up, and looked at the practice test, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I had to take THREE math classes before I even qualified to take the test, and before the first one (Beginning Algebra, which is 9th grade. I was 35 and had a very good college degree), I had to sit in the car in the community college parking lot and talk myself into the room. I finished first in my MBA class, and I was the grad school speaker at commencement. Thousands of people filling up the Thomas & Mack Arena. I had to take a Xanax to do it, and boy, did I wear a lot of makeup to cover the breakouts.
> 
> I get freaky scared. Bad scared. Nothing's changed since, either. I just do it anyway because I'm too stubborn not to, I guess, and I want to do it more than I want to quit. But I have a case of Imposter Syndrome that could fill a room.
> 
> All sorts of people can do this job, not just can-do types with positive attitudes. Weepy insecure folks make it too.  That's why you work at home.


Dang, Rosalind ... reading this makes me proud to know you.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> Dang, Rosalind ... reading this makes me proud to know you.


Aw thanks.  Yeah, I kinda put it out there last night, didn't I? Ha. Oh, well.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Rosalind J said:


> Aw thanks.  Yeah, I kinda put it out there last night, didn't I? Ha. Oh, well.


Don't be embarrassed! Seriously inspirational. I'm not so good at challenging myself to do the stuff I find scary.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

PamelaKelley said:


> Assuming time to develop and grow it, pretty confident. I already did it once with a new pen name and have seen others do it. I'm getting ready to do it again, though I will be leveraging my existing names, as it would be silly not to.


I've done it - my first legal thriller written under my new pen name was published in early March. No promotion and no fan base, although a friend generously notified his email list about it, and it's still hanging around the 7,000-10,000 range. All the subsequent books are as well. I'm kinda astounded at how well they've stuck.

All that I've done is write a book every 30 or so days, put the next one up for pre-order at .99 so that it can be on the HNR at launch, and that's it. So it can be done!


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> Dang, Rosalind ... reading this makes me proud to know you.


Me too!


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

anniejocoby said:


> I've done it - my first legal thriller written under my new pen name was published in early March. No promotion and no fan base, although a friend generously notified his email list about it, and it's still hanging around the 7,000-10,000 range. All the subsequent books are as well. I'm kinda astounded at how well they've stuck.
> 
> All that I've done is write a book every 30 or so days, put the next one up for pre-order at .99 so that it can be on the HNR at launch, and that's it. So it can be done!


Having a few books sticking around #7000 - 10,000 throughout the year means revenues of $50k yearly.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

AsianInspiration said:


> Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:
> 
> If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


On a scale of 1 to 10 with "1" meaning "not confident at all" and "10" meaning "victory is assured"...

... 10.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Dpock said:


> I'm not sure how bonus stuffing affects KU reads unless you mean it hoards eyeballs. I doubt most of the bonus stuff is actually read or counted toward the author's actual page reads. This may be erroneous thinking. I'd like to understand this better.


I've seen numbers. These books are taking a lot of pages, 2-3x their "fair share" at times (assuming fair = one full read of the new release). A friend of mine estimates that 50% of her readers read the bonus books. If she has two bonus books (she usually does), that's 2x the pages she'd normally get per read. Which allows her to spend more on ads, which allows her to drive her rank higher, etc. It's a system that disadvantages people who aren't using bonus books.



AsianInspiration said:


> Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:
> 
> If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


I'm 100% sure I could do that. (I make low-mid six-figures now). I'm not sure why I'd want to, but I could make it happen within a year. I have plenty of money to launch a new pen, I know what readers in various subgenres want, and I know the business. I absolutely could not have done it when I started in 2014. My whole first year I was in the red. I did hit 50k/year my second year, probably on the back of about 5k in cover, editing, and advertising expenses. Now, I spend more on advertising than most people make. But I don't think you need to do that to hit 50k.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I don't know how I'd do with a new pen name, but I launched two very different series with no mailing list and little advertising, and both did very well. Six monte ago, I wrote a book 1 in a new series. I haven't advertised it, it isn't related to the other series, and I don't have a big mailing list, but it's still hanging out at a rank of 2500-4000 six months later, and the audio paid off pretty fast.  So if the new series were in KU, I imagine it would do reasonably well. 

I get that some people want shortcuts or xyz steps. I don't think there's a shortcut way to build long term success unless you start out discovering you've somehow hit the easy button, and then you keep on working hard and then making reasonably good decisions.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

AsianInspiration said:


> Completely unscientific, but getting back to the original topic, which we've strayed off quite far from, I would like to ask a question from the successful authors here who are making good money already:
> 
> If you were to start a new pen name today without using any of your previous connections, mailing lists, fan base etc and completely start from scratch, how confident are you in reaching 50k/year on this new pen name (assuming you had the time to develop and grow it)?


Well, so far, my pen name is doing way better than my "real self"... LOL. I recently started a pen name basically because I read a book that I enjoyed, and I noticed there wasn't much else like it out there but the title was ranked in the top 1000. I decided to just write one like it myself. It's an easy formula genre that likes short novels so it only took me 10 days to write. In 3 weeks I've made over 1k on it already and I'm about to drop book 2. I don't know how long this ride will last since it is a currently hot niche that I just happen to enjoy, which is why I'm trying to really hustle those titles out there. Meanwhile somehow I've also been keeping up with my schedule with my regular name too...! I hope I start making enough money to get massages, LOL...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Well, so far, my pen name is doing way better than my "real self"... LOL. I recently started a pen name basically because I read a book that I enjoyed, and I noticed there wasn't much else like it out there but the title was ranked in the top 1000. I decided to just write one like it myself. It's an easy formula genre that likes short novels so it only took me 10 days to write. In 3 weeks I've made over 1k on it already and I'm about to drop book 2. I don't know how long this ride will last since it is a currently hot niche that I just happen to enjoy, which is why I'm trying to really hustle those titles out there. Meanwhile, somehow I've also been keeping up with my schedule with my regular name too...! I hope I start making enough money to get massages, LOL...


That's great for you and encouraging to me. Was your new pen a "cold" launch (no mailing list, promotion)?


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Dpock said:


> That's great for you and encouraging to me. Was your new pen a "cold" launch (no mailing list, promotion)?


I have one AMS ad running, that's the only thing I've done. It probably would've done even better...except the first review was a 3* and sales dropped immediately (so much for my theory that having ANY reviews matters more than having bad ones, dangit) and didn't recover for several long days until a few 5* came in. *shakes fist at critical people who just have to leave the first review*


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

AsianInspiration said:


> I don't like stats like these. People might think it's "realistic" but it really isn't. The truth is, it isn't hard being the top 10% or 5% or even 1% at pretty much *anything*. Most people simply don't try. Seriously. I'm certain that every single one of us on these forums are in the top 1% for *something* that we do; and it's not because we're extremely talented or anything. Simply that we practised a bit more than most people, or we have more interest.
> 
> I've never been interested in the humanities; growing up, I was a STEM elitist. I'm too lazy to read books, and I'm sure you can tell from my posts that my grammar is not great. I'm certain I'm in the bottom 50% in terms of actual writing ability amongst those first-time authors, if not the bottom 5%; yet I made 5k with 0 dollars spent.
> 
> The fact that we are on kboards means that we've already done more research than 50%+ of authors; and if we really take in all the amazing advice from all the amazing people here, and actually understand why something is done a certain way, we can easily be among the top 5% or top 1%. The vast majority of people are not serious, and they are not the competition. I truly believe that anyone who actually puts in the work to figure things out will be able to succeed. Now, I'm not saying anyone can make millions; that takes talent and lots of luck, along with skill and hard work; but I truly believe that anyone can become the top 1% in pretty much anything if they really want to do it and are willing to work towards it.


Thank you for saying all this so I didn't have.

The truth of the matter is 95-97 percent of all that "competition" on amazon is utter mind-numbing garbage. Seriously. Even when I actively try to find something decent to read among authors I am not familiar with--you know picking ones from the high rankings, or highly star-rated, good covers, interesting blurb--I still end up disappointed well over half the time.

I swear, if I see another post about x-millions of books or y-thousands of books per day...why I'll post a scathing message or something....

Work hard at your craft, learn from the k-boards, study your mistakes when they happen and you will have a great chance.


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## Benjamin Douglas (Aug 1, 2015)

EllieKeaton said:


> I am writing. EVERY DAY. I never watch TV...


*winces with guilt*
*definitely sat down to write scifi this afternoon and binge-watched the new Anne of Green Gables on Netflix instead*
*sleep in the bed you make*
*but man that's a good show*


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

It just depends on whether you can write books that lots of people want to read. I think that is the deal breaker. Some people can do that right away or learn to do it, at least to some extent. Some people can't. But it's hard to know which you are until you try. Do it as best you can, polish it, present it well, do some promo. And see. Do more of what works. Tweak things that don't. And see.

I have no idea what the odds are. I believe the stats are that something like 10,000 people make 50k plus a year writing. ***CORRECTION: Author Earnings says 2,500 authors make 50K a year on Amazon. Of course, that doesn't count other platforms, but it also doesn't count the same individual writing under pen names. I'm going to take a wild guess and say maybe 4,000 individuals make 50K+ a year.

Probably fewer make that year over year for five years plus. Maybe half of them, 5k. 2k. Maybe 100k or however many people are making a serious attempt at being amongst those 10k 5k or whatever it is. But all their chances aren't weighted equally. It isn't a lottery ticket. Some of them are more entertaining writers, can write more, can write in a popular genre, have a good nose for what's a salable product, can figure out how to get pro covers and blurbs etc that work, and all the other pieces of this business.

It can be as easy as putting your books up on Amazon and collecting your money. It can be impossible. Or anywhere in between. It's a little like being a pro athlete I guess. Relatively few people can do it. Lots of them will make smaller money in lesser paid sports. Very few are in the millionaire club. And you need some abilities to have a good shot. But you can still really enjoy playing basketball even if you're not on the Warriors.

Author Earnings report on number of authors in different brackets (on Amazon alone):
http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/
$10K+: about 10,000 authors (where I got the erroneous 10K figure above)
$50K+: about 2,500 authors
$100K+: about 1,340 authors
$250K+: about 500 authors
$500K+: about 170 authors
$1 million+: about 65 authors

Again, those are Amazon only figures. But they also don't combine the pen names of single individuals. I don't know how to give hard numbers, but even if you got super generous and said the number of authors making that figure including ALL platforms was double that on Amazon alone, you'd still come up with about 5,000 authors making $50K+.

For what it's worth.


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## juliannwhicker (Aug 1, 2015)

I read through that entire thread instead of writing. I love reading about the different success stories and how people get there. 

After publishing on and off since 2011, I tried to do the professional thing last year and published six works. That was a lot for me because I write long. I did not make 50K. I did learn how to set goals, schedule, outline, streamline my process and how to do a little bit of marketing. This year I decided that I'm going to settle down to 2-3 books a year and call it my hobby. I don't need the money and I really should be doing other things. Writing is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Last year my life was chaos, but oh so fun!

At any rate, I gave it a shot and failed, but clearly didn't keep going at it over five years or so.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

juliannwhicker said:


> At any rate, I gave it a shot and failed, but clearly didn't keep going at it over five years or so.


I realize failure is subjective and to each his own, etc., but some people might view your rankings with envy.


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