# What's the one thing that has made a difference in your author career?



## Luigi (Jan 23, 2018)

What's the one thing you did, that has made the biggest difference in sales? Or that allowed you to be a full-time writer?

We all know, that writing more getting an email list going are the best things to do. But it's my sense that readers are getting tired of email advertising, or advertising in general. And if you did not start in the early days of KDP or you don't have a big group of people to support you, it can be outright difficult, to make it, without AMS ads or some kind of promo that usually breakout even.

I've done it all, and the only thing that really seems to be working is having more books. I'll publish 3 more by the end of the year, and somehow I still think my net won't be large enough.

Therefore, it's time to think outside the box. I have been playing around with the Idea of having a podcast, where authors, get to talk about what matters most, their stories. I feel that maybe readers would be interested in that. Sorta like a preview of the book and what can they expect, the inspiration behind it. But I am not sure it seems like I would be adding more work to my already full load. 

So, if you don't mind sharing, what is the one thing you did that really has made a difference.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Learning how to write in sprints any time I had a half-hour free changed my writing life for the better. No more hemming and hawing and stalling about writing--when I know I have a half-hour, I can sit down with the Neo and blaze away on the draft for the sprint, take a break, then do it again. Developing that discipline and being able to turn on and off the flow as needed was a blessing.


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## PenNPaper (Apr 21, 2016)

Getting away from NY. Then figuring out how to write to market in a way that also made me happy.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Writing fanfic for three years and getting beta readers that way.


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## aimeeeasterling (Sep 22, 2014)

Figuring out where the tropes readers are looking for intersect with the story elements I enjoy was what let me go full-time.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Sorry. Starting an email list and working out how to use it. Nothing else comes close. Not even Bookbub.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Sorry. Starting an email list and working out how to use it. Nothing else comes close. Not even Bookbub.


Patty, you've told the story here about how you went and spoke to a professional author and he tore your book to shreds (nicely.) I think that is the most important thing you did. You and I earn similar figures. We've achieved it different ways, but those ways are interchangeable. I think the most important thing is getting feedback on your stories. It can be a meeting with a professional, it can be through a critique group, it can be through fanfic betas--or friends who are betas who you can trust to be harsh when they need to be, but everyone needs it. Too many people skip that step because, frankly, it can be painful.


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## Luigi (Jan 23, 2018)

C. Gockel said:


> I think the most important thing is getting feedback on your stories. It can be a meeting with a professional, it can be through a critique group, it can be through fanfic betas--or friends who are betas who you can trust to be harsh when they need to be, but everyone needs it. Too many people skip that step because, frankly, it can be painful.


This is great if you are ever able to get feedback on a story, true feedback write it down. The hard part about this is finding the people willing to do this for you. The first couple of books I wrote, sucked I was too quick to publish, I had no idea what I was doing. 8 Books later, now when it comes to writing, I know exactly what I am doing, but I am still learning.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

This is probably going to sound corny, but having faith that there were readers who were going to stumble over one of my books and it would catch fire from there. It did. Call it luck that a few people stumbled across my early books, and a few more, then more until every book I wrote had readers waiting for them. 

I didn't do the email list, and I still don't. Yes, I've been at this six years and things have changed, but the one thing is still true, you still only need one book to catch fire and you've found your audience. Then you just need to keep them coming back for more. so, the one thing I did, kept writing.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Atlantisatheart said:


> I didn't do the email list, and I still don't. Yes, I've been at this six years and things have changed, but the one thing is still true, you still only need one book to catch fire and you've found your audience. Then you just need to keep them coming back for more. so, the one thing I did, kept writing.


Since you don't do the email list, do you do anything instead to keep in touch with your readers? Social media, etc? Or do they just find your books on their own when you publish?


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Luigi said:


> This is great if you are ever able to get feedback on a story, true feedback write it down. The hard part about this is finding the people willing to do this for you. The first couple of books I wrote, sucked I was too quick to publish, I had no idea what I was doing. 8 Books later, now when it comes to writing, I know exactly what I am doing, but I am still learning.


I think there are a number of online groups you can join for this. I've heard great things about CritiqueCircle. (Sorry, wrote CreateSpace first time round.) I think there is also a group called Critters?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

C. Gockel said:


> Patty, you've told the story here about how you went and spoke to a professional author and he tore your book to shreds (nicely.) I think that is the most important thing you did. You and I earn similar figures. We've achieved it different ways, but those ways are interchangeable. I think the most important thing is getting feedback on your stories. It can be a meeting with a professional, it can be through a critique group, it can be through fanfic betas--or friends who are betas who you can trust to be harsh when they need to be, but everyone needs it. Too many people skip that step because, frankly, it can be painful.


Yes, and also no.

The OP asked about career. I associate career with money.

To me personally, I believe in learning to write before learning to publish. I advocate that people submit to trad just to kill the acute case of impatience that we all suffer. It really makes you think about your work and the current market for books, and makes you evaluate your efforts and whether or not they could be better, or not. It saves you from the embarrassment of a barrage of 1-stars or your peers telling you that your stuff is really not up to scratch (what's a point of view character, anyway? What's a tense? Yano)

But then again, I see a lot of people succeed very well (make a lot of money) with fiction that I consider (sometimes extremely) poorly written. Not talking about Dan Brown (I'm not that much a of a literati to consider his books poorly written), but people who have zero concept of the flow of text, point of view, tense control, and many other writing techniques. Those people must be doing something right, at least for that particular point in time. Maybe they write catchy stories, or maybe they target a particular audience that I don't understand. Or something else. Fiction can actually be so bad that it becomes good. Also, times change.

I consider learning to write important. I am unconvinced that it is necessarily a determining factor for success. It can be. I did it, and I started selling stories to literary SF magazines and getting really nice rejection letters from big publishing houses, but did that give me a career? Nooooooooooooope!

You can learn how to write until you're blue in the face, but it's not unless you learn how to connect with your readers and learn how to sell that there is actually a career to speak of.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

I'm happy this thread is about what worked for us personally and is not about giving out advice, because often what works for one author, in a certain genre at a certain time etc might not work well for others.

The biggest change for me was to forget series and put all my focus into writing one book a year (a standalone). After writing the first draft, I put months of time into the editing. I swapped to a genre that allows that (thrillers). I don't worry about much else - advertising or subscribers, except putting extra effort into advertising in release month. I think I have about 30 subscribers, so my list is close to 0. My goal is to produce two books a year in future now that I'm a lot more familiar with the genre than I was in 2015.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Offering the first in a series FREE is my best marketing tool ever. 

I have a 500 member email list I have no idea what to do with. I know, I should use it more, but writing about me is not what I do best. I normally just use it to announce new books or special offers. 

Instead, I have a fairly active Facebook page. I run contests to win free books, invite them to tell stories such as "funniest think your mom ever did," and share pages I find interesting, even recipes. So far, I've manage to keep them coming back that way. Some are excited to be able to talk one-on-one with an actual author. It's fun for me too and good for my ego. It takes time, but I love and recommend it. Going outside the book promotion idea is what makes my page interesting, I think, although I do plenty of promoting there. 
Marti


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Retiring early and being bored.


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## BookMagic (Jan 3, 2018)

Decon said:


> Retiring early and being bored.


Lol 

For me, it was teaching myself the discipline that writing books requires. Everything got a lot smoother when I mastered the butt-in-chair-every-single-day technique. That's what allowed me to do this full-time.


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## MaquelAJ (Aug 23, 2017)

Finding the right authors in the industry who can steer me into honing my craft. They say you should look for someone already making money as opposed to one who is at the same level or lower than you. I have three different circles of authors and it is true. There's the blind leading the blind, the well doers with not much knowledge than you, and the big cheeses who know the game. Since I want to up my game, I sought out the money makers to see what I as doing wrong. Or in my case, not doing. I even paid for a media coach and got my entrepreneur brain cracked open to endless possibilities in creating a brand. A lot of it seems little when in fact they are huge.


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## WyandVoidbringer (Jan 19, 2017)

I focused on the story and nothing else.

There's a lot of great advice here about how to boost visibility and sales through social media, community engagement, email lists, etc., and lots of people make it work for them. But when I was investigating and learning about the world of self-publishing, reading all of that advice almost made me quit before I'd tried. I'm just not built for that stuff.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

WyandVoidbringer said:


> I focused on the story and nothing else.
> 
> There's a lot of great advice here about how to boost visibility and sales through social media, community engagement, email lists, etc., and lots of people make it work for them. But when I was investigating and learning about the world of self-publishing, reading all of that advice almost made me quit before I'd tried. I'm just not built for that stuff.


Ditto.


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## 69959 (May 14, 2013)

I treated it like a business long before it ever was one. I was determined to make enough to close my business, so I worked hard and smart until I was able to go full time just over three years ago.


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

Instagram.

It's single-handedly the reason why I'm able to make seven figures a month. When it comes to marketing, you're essentially left with two options. One: pay to access someone's platform (i.e. Bookbub). Two: build your own. I'm not really a fan of emails even though I have over eight million on my mailing list (from my app). Open rates and what not. Plus, push notifications > newsletter.

Anyways, back to Instagram. It has more users than twitter. More than double, last time I checked. The signal-to-noise is crystal clear on Instagram. Instagram is also rolling out this new feature called shoppable posts where you can link to purchase items without ever having to leave the app. It's currently in beta and only the bigger companies and influencers have access. But that feature alone, nearly doubled my income, it's insane. If you choose one social network to go all in on, make it Instagram. If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be to focus solely on that and ditch the rest. Trust me, I've built up all my social networks to have six and seven figure followers and nothing comes close to the ROI than instagram. Even before the shoppable posts beta, emails and newsletters never came close to matching instagrams reach.

It looks like this:




























_*"But Holden, isn't Instagram that app where people post selfies? I can't even take a selfie without my phone shattering."*_

Have no fear. What if I told you that you could build an instagram profile without ever having to post a picture of yourself? We're writers. There's power in our words. Unlike twitter, where it feels like you're screaming into the ether, instagram's algorithms has your back. Your novels should be a quote land mine. Romance is primed for the taking. Because, feels. Everyone loves quotes. It helps them say exactly what their feeling, without having to think of it themselves.

If you paid attention to kindle store in the past three months, especially in December, and paid attention to the top 100, then you'll recognize this name. Rupi Kaur. Her instagram: instagram.com/rupikaur_

What's the advice that's regurgitated here ad nauseam? Litfic and poetry doesn't sell? Her poetry book, clocking in at 7k words, spent the entire Christmas week at number 1 in the overall store and that book has been out for over two years. Not only that, it was given KU privileges without the exclusivity clause. She's not the only one. Look at top ranking in poetry, I guarantee you that most of them have instagram where they post everything in its entirety. You don't even have to buy Milk and Honey, it's all on her instagram and then some. But people still buy.

I have 15.5 million followers on instagram. Instagram is no joke. Bookbub couldn't even come close to producing the numbers that instagram does for me. It's also one of the reasons why Amazon gave me KU full royalties per borrow without having to be exclusive.

If that's not enough, here's another plus. You can monetize your instagram. Once you have a decent following, have your email accessible, and companies will start coming to you. It started happening when I had 25k followers and only grew from there.

As it stands, I make 60k per timed sponsored instagram post. Let that sink in. 60k for a picture that is only up for 24 hours. Do this for yourself. It's a long uphill battle but it beats cultivating emails. But you should still cultivate emails. It's always good to have a back up.

So, start using instagram. Start building. And when the shoppable posts comes out of beta and is available to the whole network, you'll be in a primed position to take advantage.

Shopify https://www.shopify.com/instagram if you want to start selling direct in conjunction with your instagram, facebook, whatever.

Oh, and also, love the process. I can't say that enough. I'm at a point in my career where I don't even have to write another word and yet, if you check the thousand words a day post, I'm still writing like my life depends on it. I could literally just sell one sponsored post and call it a year. But I don't. Why? Because I love the process. Learning to monetize free has helped exponentially. I write a lot but I don't publish a lot. In fact I have less than seven titles in my catalog and make seven figures a month. Because ads > royalties.

If you want to publish serially, but don't know how to build an app, you could always start a blogger or wordpress and use an 'app wrapper' that turns your blog into an app. When you update your blog, your app updates. Naturally, those services incur a monthly fee. But if you build a sizeable fan base, you can start running ads. And readers are more likely to give you a try if they can read your stuff for free. Now imagine giving them everything for free and still being able to make a living. That's how I did it and continue to do it.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Paranormal Kitty said:


> Since you don't do the email list, do you do anything instead to keep in touch with your readers? Social media, etc? Or do they just find your books on their own when you publish?


I have a website that I ... sometimes get around to updating with my email address for them to contact me with questions, and I claimed my author page on bookbub, but that's it. Apparently, they stalk my amazon page to see if I've released anything, bless them


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

Lorri Moulton said:


> I remember signing up for Instagram, but I haven't looked at my account in a while. I live in a dead zone and I don't get cell phone reception. Our small valley is pretty remote, so I hadn't really followed through with Instagram. Imagine my shock when I saw I have 500 followers!
> 
> Any suggestions for adding these quotes? It says no desktop photos...can I use a tablet? Or do I have to wait until I drive to town to post something? Thanks for any tips you can give me!


Do you have wifi on your tablet? If so, https://www.canva.com/templates/social-graphics/instagram-post/ is a good option. It lets you choose background images and has really good typography. There's always photoshop (or other apps like it). Don't underestimate the power of bold text on a plain white background. It's all you really need. Another alternative: download a note taking app (your phone or tablet should already have one), type a quote and screenshot it. Upload and crop it in instagram.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Writing more books is the answer. The more you write, the more you improve, and the more chance one of them will take off.

Amazon is flooded with authors who've only written and published one novel. As a reader, I avoid them because there's no track record. So, I'd be looking for two or more novels by someone I've never heard of, with moderately professional covers, and an average of around 4 stars. Overwhelmingly positive reviews give me that 'too good to be true' vibe.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

For me, it was a combination of permafree, and my first series that I wrote with a specific genre in mind.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

Jim Johnson said:


> Learning how to write in sprints any time I had a half-hour free changed my writing life for the better. No more hemming and hawing and stalling about writing--when I know I have a half-hour, I can sit down with the Neo and blaze away on the draft for the sprint, take a break, then do it again. Developing that discipline and being able to turn on and off the flow as needed was a blessing.


Bingo! After reading Chris Fox's book about 5000 words an hour, I started doing sprints at mywriteclub.com and found it was easy to bang out a couple thousand words an hour. I did three sprints this afternoon, totaling an hour and fifteen minutes and wrote 2450 words. It's all a matter of habit. Becoming a published author isn't about inspiration or coming up with great ideas. It's about parking your butt in your chair and banging away on a keyboard and getting those words down.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

kw3000 said:


> Pure laziness. I couldn't have reached these heights of non-success without it, so I'm grateful.


Hey, I resemble that remark!


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

The one thing that has made the biggest impact is making the decision to stop treating writing as a hobby and approach it in every way with the mindset to make it a sustainable career. That entails sticking to a regular writing & publishing schedule, and constantly re-evaluating everything else in regards to ROI. Anything besides writing (promotion, social media, collaboration) needs to somehow advance my goals; the plan is always changing, since what works in this industry is never a stagnant thing, but my constant is that writing/publishing needs to be the priority and bulk of my efforts. 

Of course, things that were important when I started as an author are not so important now. I think the ability to recognize when you need to re-assess priorities is an important ingredient of success. At one point, growing my social media presence was a huge deal to me, and I soaked up everything I could on that subject. Now, not so much. Focusing on SM was fun, but when sales faltered, I had to take a hard look at what I was doing; was spending hours on SM selling me books, or was it just inflating my ego? Isn't the ultimate goal to get people to read my books? So yeah, the decision to dedicate less resources to SM was a good one as far as the overall goal (write books/publish books). Same goes with learning about how to micro-manage my mailing list, or becoming an expert in Facebook Ads. Sure, spending hours twerking my mailing list, trying all the techniques, becoming super-awesome at running FB ads can be a great thing, but when I look back on a week's worth of work time and see that my actual writing productivity was only 10% of my time, that's when I know I need to come up with a new direction. Even another example, sometimes I'll get tied up making covers, looking at images, working on new concepts for graphics & stuff...not so much anymore. In the past, I made my covers because I had to. Now, as things have evolved, that is just another task that I can likely farm out in order to focus 100% on what I have found is my best chance at success-- regular writing/publishing.

For me, there are a LOT of things in this industry that can take up your time as an author. Plenty of them can help you sell books. Plenty of them are just a time suck. The constant that remains (for me) is write good books/publish good books, as frequently as possible. Decide what YOUR ultimate goal is, and be honest with yourself and ask if something you're spending a lot of time on is actually propelling you towards it.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The biggest change for me was to throw away all the terrible advice I'd been given and look at what was actually working for the people provably making a living. (details are in this old thread: https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,219663.msg3067751.html#msg3067751 )


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

Annie B said:


> The biggest change for me was to throw away all the terrible advice I'd been given and look at what was actually working for the people provably making a living. (details are in this old thread: https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,219663.msg3067751.html#msg3067751 )


That's one of my all-time favorite KBoards posts.


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

Holden said:


> Instagram.
> . . .
> If that's not enough, here's another plus. You can monetize your instagram. Once you have a decent following, have your email accessible, and companies will start coming to you. It started happening when I had 25k followers and only grew from there.
> 
> ...


I know what Instagram is but I've never used it, yet everything you say is so impressive, even the parts I don't understand, that I'm going to ask a few questions. Hope that's okay.

(1) Do you have a business Instagram account? Or a personal one? I ask because my Googling turned up the fact that one can be on Instagram w/o FB, unless it's a biz account. Then you need a FB account (a FB business account?).

(2) What is a "timed sponsored Instagram post"? That entire section just lost me. When you say you make 60K per timed sponsored Instagram post are you referring to a dollar amount? a number of viewers? Yes, I know this little about Instagram. But I'm trying to catch up a bit here.

(3) What is publishing "serially"? On Instagram? Your books? The "app wrapper" info completely lost me. Is this something that turns your blog posts into Instagram posts?

I've learned so much from kboards but, obviously, I have loads more to learn. If you have the time to enlighten me a bit, I'd appreciate it. If not, I understand. All these things have probably been talked about in depth on kboards and elsewhere. It's just that this is the first time I've seen any of this, and in fact the first time I've seen a successful author talking about Instagram's benefits.

Thanks.


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

RTW said:


> I know what Instagram is but I've never used it, yet everything you say is so impressive, even the parts I don't understand, that I'm going to ask a few questions. Hope that's okay.
> 
> (1) Do you have a business Instagram account? Or a personal one? I ask because my Googling turned up the fact that one can be on Instagram w/o FB, unless it's a biz account. Then you need a FB account (a FB business account?).
> 
> ...


(1) You only need a business instagram account if you plan on utilizing the shoppable posts feature (which is currently invite only and in beta). But no, you don't need one to use it as a personal account. You also shouldn't wait until it comes out of beta to start building your following. Just start a personal one for now and when shoppable posts comes out of beta, link your facebook page (the business "page," not the personal one) to your instagram account and it will automatically turn it into an instagram business account.

(2) A timed sponsored instagram post is when businesses "rent" an instagram post from you. Instagram doesn't facilitate this. Businesses will come to you with a promotional image (more than likely, they'll send you the product to take a picture of, with or without you), and you keep that promotional image up for apporximately twenty-four hours. Then delete it. The more followers you have, the higher the price you command. With 15.5 million followers, I average about 2.2 million "likes" (that's when someone sees your picture and double taps the screen to give it a "heart"). That's 2.2 million people who are guaranteed to see and like that image. 2.2 million people who didn't know something existed, now know exists. Makes sense? When I say 60k, that's how much I charge and businesses pay that for me to promote their product. I turn down a lot of stuff I don't believe in, but as it stands, I can essentially promote a product every single day throughout the year and get paid 60k per post. But I don't. I turn a lot of companies away. A lot of influencers do. If you start doing it for the money to the point where it gets spammy, it means less and your "reach" becomes less effective. I do about one per week.

(3) The publishing serially thing has nothing to do with instagram. It was an addendum of sorts. It was my way of explaining how I write a lot but don't publish a lot. Most of my writing is uploaded to my app where it can be read for free. My series is currently just a little over 14 million words. I could break it up and publish it, but I don't feel like inundating my author catalog with that amount of titles. So I don't bother. People always tell me I leave so much money on the table, blah blah blah, but it's because I leave so much money on the table, that I'm able to have the time and make as much money as I do now. When people hear free, they think free. A loss leader. But what if free didn't mean you couldn't earn a living? That's what I meant when I talked about publishing serially via a blog. And if you don't know how to build apps, then you can apply an "app wrapper" that takes your blog and turns it into an app where you could upload to the ios and play store (apple and google). When you update your blog, the app wrapper will then update your app. Imagine writing a blog post that contains chapters of your next book. Now imagine having unobtrusive ads that slide in before and after the chapter is done and getting paid for it. That's how I was able to monetize "free." No one ever believes me when I tell them I release every single thing I ever wrote for free. Every single word. Free.

Indie publishing is wild. When they say there are so many ways to go about it, they weren't lying. I just so happened to take the road less traveled. Less traffic that way.


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## Whatever Writer (Jun 20, 2017)

Wow, I'm pretty speechless on what a beacon of hope your post has been. I've been struggling to figure out how to write well and be a good "publisher". Your posts are the most uplifting thing that I've seen in a long time (lurker for years), and I can't wait to know more. The whole machine of indie-publishing to make ends meet has been disheartening 

Any chance you'd let us know a recommended app (that wraps the blog like you mentioned in other posts) or book that shares more about what to do? Thank you very much for your time!


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

Holden said:


> (1) You only need a business instagram account if you plan on utilizing the shoppable posts feature (which is currently invite only and in beta). But no, you don't need one to use it as a personal account. You also shouldn't wait until it comes out of beta to start building your following. Just start a personal one for now and when shoppable posts comes out of beta, link your facebook page (the business "page," not the personal one) to your instagram account and it will automatically turn it into an instagram business account.
> 
> (2) A timed sponsored instagram post is when businesses "rent" an instagram post from you. Instagram doesn't facilitate this. Businesses will come to you with a promotional image (more than likely, they'll send you the product to take a picture of, with or without you), and you keep that promotional image up for apporximately twenty-four hours. Then delete it. The more followers you have, the higher the price you command. With 15.5 million followers, I average about 2.2 million "likes" (that's when someone sees your picture and double taps the screen to give it a "heart"). That's 2.2 million people who are guaranteed to see and like that image. 2.2 million people who didn't know something existed, now know exists. Makes sense? When I say 60k, that's how much I charge and businesses pay that for me to promote their product. I turn down a lot of stuff I don't believe in, but as it stands, I can essentially promote a product every single day throughout the year and get paid 60k per post. But I don't. I turn a lot of companies away. A lot of influencers do. If you start doing it for the money to the point where it gets spammy, it means less and your "reach" becomes less effective. I do about one per week.
> 
> ...


Holden--Thank you, thank you, thank you. Incredibly generous of you to share all of this. I appreciate it immensely. I have a banquet of food for thought here.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

I can't pick a One Thing. *A* thing is that I looked for advice that fit the way I write, rather than trying to write in a way that fit the advice.


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

KD Ritchie said:


> Wow, I'm pretty speechless on what a beacon of hope your post has been. I've been struggling to figure out how to write well and be a good "publisher". Your posts are the most uplifting thing that I've seen in a long time (lurker for years), and I can't wait to know more. The whole machine of indie-publishing to make ends meet has been disheartening
> 
> Any chance you'd let us know a recommended app (that wraps the blog like you mentioned in other posts) or book that shares more about what to do? Thank you very much for your time!


It's been a while since I first looked into it, but if I remember correctly, PhoneGap was one of the major ones: https://phonegap.com/

Appypie is one of the major ones, too.

If you have a blogger blog: https://www.appypie.com/convert-blogger-blog-into-app

If you have a wordpress blog: https://www.appypie.com/convert-wordpress-blog-into-app


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

If you can build your Instagram following up to 15 million, you likely don't need to be on Kboards looking for advice, ha. It's tougher than it sounds


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

Annie B said:


> If you can build your Instagram following up to 15 million, you likely don't need to be on Kboards looking for advice, ha.












I've been on kboards, off and on, since 2009. I like it. It's the equivalent of keeping your ear to the streets of indie publishing. I neither look down nor up to anyone. You can learn something new, from anyone, regardless of their earnings and/or social media following.



Annie B said:


> It's tougher than it sounds


It's not easy, but it's easier than you think.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Finding the cross section of what I'm passionate about and what readers want.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

Annie B said:


> The biggest change for me was to throw away all the terrible advice I'd been given and look at what was actually working for the people provably making a living. (details are in this old thread: https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,219663.msg3067751.html#msg3067751 )


Thank you so much for linking that, I'd missed it, and it's a great thread. Super helpful information there, and I appreciate that you supported it with your own real life example. I agree that it's always a little suspicious when someone claims to have the secret to great success, but doesn't seem to have followed their own plan.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

The thing that has made the biggest difference in my career as an *entrepreneur* is sticking to the Pareto principle.

Most things matter little. A few things move the needle.


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## KinkyCat (Dec 27, 2017)

I wanted to add a word of warning about using Appy Pie.  I signed up for their Premium membership (non-refundable, by the way), and find it atrocious.  Slow responses, indifferent staff, poor tutorials, the whole works.  Go with someone else.


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## LindsayBuroker (Oct 13, 2013)

For me, joining an online writing workshop and getting tons of my stuff critiqued--and critiquing even more tons of other people's stuff. I've never been one for taking classes or reading books on craft. This is really how I learned. The kindle didn't exist yet then, so there was no hurry to publish, and I'm glad. I'm sure I would have been tempted to skip those years of learning if I were starting today, but they taught me to be a better writer and to find my own voice. It's funny how it sometimes takes a lot of people telling you a lot of different (and sometimes contradictory!) things to really solidify who you are and what you believe, but I guess it's being hardened in the fire or something like that.  

The first series I published wasn't perfect by any means, but it inspired fan fiction, fan art, and the creation of a fan forum, even though I wasn't selling gazillions of copies. Getting that kind of feedback from readers and seeing how invested they were in my characters was huge. It inspired me just as much as the money did. 

I've certainly seen poorly written books do well, but the marketing and everything is just so much easier if you're selling stories that suck people in and get them invested in the characters. If you're emailing a list of fans about a new release in a world they love, there's absolutely nothing more effective than a newsletter. Your subscribers are super excited to get your email and will write you back to let you know about it. 

But Step 1 is writing a story that people love about characters that they want to spend time with. And with prose that doesn't get in the way of the story. The basics get overlooked. A lot. I can't tell you how often someone's told me they can't sell any books, and their story opens with awkward prose and infodumps. We're too close to our own work to accurately assess it. That's why I like critique groups. Getting your stuff shredded is good for bringing your ego down to where it should be, and if you can turn fellow writers into fans of your work, that's just about the hardest group to please. 

The short answer to the question... Learning to write stories that people enjoy.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

There have been tons of things that have made a difference since I started out.

That said, never discount dumb luck either.  I happened to change categories at a time when Amazon was having a system glitch. Somehow my book - which was a year and a half old - ended up on the hot new releases list for the new category. 

It was a well-needed push and, happily, snowballed from there.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

Well, I was a full-time writer long before this happened, but the single greatest thing was when I paid $4000 for an Olympia electronic typewriter with a CPM computer extension, two 5.25-inch disk drives, and WordStar 3. (The typewriter was also the printer.)

That was in 1982. I've since gone from CPM to DOS to Windows 3 to Win 98 to XP to Win 7 to Win 10. But I'm still running DOS WordStar. There's nothing like it.


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## KevinH (Jun 29, 2013)

Simply maintaining my faith in a higher power and myself.


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## G.L. Snodgrass (Aug 12, 2014)

Getting turned down by every agent I queried. It turned out to be the luckiest thing ever. It forced me to change my plan. I honestly believe I make more money and enjoy writing more without a gatekeeper telling me what to do.


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## ThirdWish (Sep 30, 2017)

Bumping this because I found an answer to a question someone asked upthread about uploading to Instagram from a desktop. (Mac only answer, but I'm guessing there's a way you can do something similar with Chrome or Firefox).

1.  In Safari Preferences > Advanced > hit the tick box for "Show Develop menu in menu bar"  (at the bottom of the screen)

2.  Then go to Instagram and load your page.

3.  Safari > Click Develop tab in menu bar > User Agent >  Safari -- iOS 11.0 -- iPhone

4.  Reload the page. Now you will see the mobile version as if you were on your phone instead of your desktop/laptop browser.


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## Skip Knox (May 12, 2013)

>But I'm still running DOS WordStar. 
Ctrl-K, Ctrl-D brother!

But WordPerfect 4.2 holds pride of place in my heart.


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## Talbot (Jul 14, 2015)

The one thing? I'll have to say _person._ Sherry Soule, may she live forever, gave me invaluable advice on blurbs, genres, and covers right when I truly needed a helping hand. The generosity of people who will help you if you just ASK was a huge lesson.


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## TellNotShow (Sep 15, 2014)

Holden said:


> Instagram.
> 
> It's single-handedly the reason why I'm able to make seven figures a month. When it comes to marketing, you're essentially left with two options. One: pay to access someone's platform (i.e. Bookbub). Two: build your own. I'm not really a fan of emails even though I have over eight million on my mailing list (from my app). Open rates and what not. Plus, push notifications > newsletter.
> 
> ...


A few people seem to be getting very excited about this - but anyone who thinks it wouldn't be INSANELY difficult to achieve such numbers should probably do some research before throwing a lot of eggs into the Instagram basket. In fact, it seems barely possible for ONE person to have done it, let alone anyone replicating it.

Holden, I've read some of your other posts too, and you seem like a very smart person indeed, but your numbers seem &#8230; unlikely. (I'm going to try to put things in perspective for anyone who thinks they can achieve such numbers.)

The average 2.2 million "likes" you get on each of your Instagram posts would put you right up the top of Instagram, along with a very few household names - a select few movie stars, pop stars, sportsmen and Kardashi&#8230; nah, can't even bring myself to type it.

Thing is, Kim Kardash&#8230; you know who I mean&#8230; she has over 100 million followers there, yet is averaging less than 2 million likes per Instagram post. So, Holden, whoever you are, apparently you're doing better than she is. Go you!

You have six times as many Instagram followers as Rupi Kaur, and get 10 to 20 times the number of likes, despite all reports being that the more followers people get, the lower this percentage becomes.

You also have more Instagram followers than Rupi Kaur, John Green, Rainbow Rowell, Cassie Clare, Bella Forrest, Veronica Roth and Elizabeth Gilbert PUT TOGETHER. (Anyone getting excited about Holden's statements, think about this: HOW are YOU going to do better than ALL these people PUT TOGETHER.)

You have 75 TIMES AS MANY followers as Veronica Roth. You have 7 times as many followers as John Green, and get 20 to 50 times the number of likes per post he does.

You are showing what appears to be a Google Play App Store screen shot in your KBoards signature that shows over 5 million app downloads, and over 3.4 million ratings - that's about the same number of ratings that the Goodreads app and the Kindle app and the WATTPAD app have on GP - PUT TOGETHER! You appear to be more popular than reading itself!

And all this building of Instagram while writing over 20,000 words a day to add to your 14 million word speculative fiction series, for the 8 million readers on your app.

For anyone still in possession of an unexploded head, in another post Holden explained that Amazon are 4th on his earnings list, paying him around half a million dollars per month -- behind Apple, Google, with his top earner being Direct. So that would be all up earnings of well over 2 million dollars per month.

What a pity I didn't get to hear everyone else's heads exploding, as my ears disappeared when my own head went BOOM!


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Looking back over the past 18 years, I'd say a couple of things stand out. My first published story, a science fiction piece about a guy who accidentally emails his hand as an attachment, won Australia's highest spec fic award ... for horror. That told me I could write, and also told me I was useless at staying within my chosen genre.

Getting my first novel shortlisted for the George Turner prize that same year (2000) was a boost as well, even though I missed out on a trade pub deal worth $10k.

I self-pubbed in 2000, and then came the biggest fillip to my career: a trade publisher picked up the rights to my first three novels. I went on to publish four novels with them, before we split amicably in 2010. I got my rights back, published the ebooks on Amazon at exactly the right time, in 2011, and was very early on the perma-free bandwagon with book one.

Book four in the Hal series was up for two major awards in 2008, short-listed with only four or five other titles. It didn't win, but I still love that novel more than anything else I've written, and my latest novel is a spinoff featuring one of the major characters.

In 2010, Bastei Lubbe picked up the German rights for books 1 and 2, and published them soon after. They're the publisher for many major series, including all the Star Wars books.

What about the negatives? I wrote a middle grade novel in 2011, and sent the first three chapters to three major publishers. I gave them a lot longer than they'd asked for a reply, then self-published. A week later one of them asked for the manuscript, and I had to tell them they were too late.

I've had two big-name agents in my career, but neither could interest a trade publisher in the overseas rights. Part of the problem is that my books have already sold in Australia, which is considered a part of the UK territory for publishers. (30% of their potential sales gone.) As for the US, the agent reckoned they just didn't get my humour. (I don't mean everyone in the US, obviously, just the editors he approached.)

EDIT: typo.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

For me it was the fact that I happened to have enough savings to pay for childcare a couple of days a week, which freed up some time and allowed me to finish my first book.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

I use Instagram and got up almost up to 10K in followers quickly. I did it manually, not using any kind of bots to follow people or like and comment (and there's a helluva lot of going on on Instagram). Then I realised it was just useless. I wasn't do it to sell books but if I'd wanted to, there's hardly any engagement from followers let alone engagement that lets to sales. 

Because I have a travel Instagram, I thought about going after travel sponsorship but I spoke to a few people who do that and they said it's barely worth it. You have to put hours into researching and contacting the right people then more time into the actual posts and follow up. If you're talking about 5-10 hours of work for a free night's hotel room, then you have to weigh that against writing for those hours and paying your own way. At least if I pay my own way, I don't have worry about telling the truth if the place sucks.

Instagram is a very visual type of social media. People go on there to find pretty pictures not books to read. If I was going to put time into a social media presence, it wouldn't be my first choice.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Even though I've been writing for a long time, I still consider my author career to be relatively young (almost 15 months since I first hit publish). I'm still unknown and sell in teensy numbers. It'll probably be like that for a while BUT, if there is one thing I can say that has upgraded my experience, I'd say it has to be community. I couldn't have published, or even constructed, stories that are worth being read without the help from Kboards and smaller author groups. Being able to reach out and plug in with the Indie community has literally changed my writing life because all of you helpful and supportive authors out there have shared valuable information. Without it, I wouldn't know half the stuff I do now.  So thank you.


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## Holden (Feb 5, 2015)

Everything has a tipping point. The first thousand followers was harder to get than the first ten thousand. Ten thousand harder than a hundred thousand. The first hundred thousand was harder than the first million. It took Rupi Kaur longer to get that first 500k than the two million that subsequently followed. Admittedly, I've been on Instagram since its inception, so I had that going for me. But it wasn't always smooth sailing. I had to rebuild my account and change its direction, multiple times. I even got my account hacked. Twice. And shut down after achieving 500k. It wasn't until I got verified that all those problems went away. The problem with reporting peoples images is that it's automated. All it takes is one determined hater to report your images, often and consistently, to have your account locked and deleted.

Think of all that time you spent going through my post history and building a dossier, not only to call my bluff, but to discourage anyone reading this to not even bother trying. Honorable effort.

But to anyone reading this and wondering if it's worth it. Only you can decide that. Only you can decide what your time is worth and what you want to do with said time. You may never be able to achieve fifteen million, but so what? 10k could make a difference. 25k. 50k. 100k. I was just trying to open you up to the possibilities. When people look at something, they're always inclined to judge it from the surface level, and that's fine. To the vast majority of people, Instagram is only a place where people post selfies. They've made up their mind. Who am I to go out of my way and waste my time trying to convince them otherwise? I'm not here to write a book or sell a course to authors.





































I'd show you my paypal and admob account, but I'd hate to blow up what's left of your carcass.

To those just starting out, some advice: don't compare your behind the scenes footage to someone else's highlight reel, you'll lose every time. I had to start from zero just like all of you. And also, I'm staying anonymous. Take it for what it's worth.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

I'm not sure if I qualify for this post -- I'm writing full-time because I had to leave the workforce due to illness but not making a full-time income yet -- but the key difference for me has been tenacity. Luckily, stubbornness runs in my family. I've been at this since 2011 and I've seen a lot of authors come and go in that time. The key for me has been sticking with it and continuously educating myself on craft and marketing.


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

Holden said:


>


Those stats definitely put you in the Top 500, but the only ranking close to those numbers that pretty much share the same ratio between posts, followers, and following was for an app called musical.ly, whose Google Play stats seem similar to the badge in your signature...

https://socialblade.com/instagram/top/500/followers


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2018)

TellNotShow said:


> A few people seem to be getting very excited about this - but anyone who thinks it wouldn't be INSANELY difficult to achieve such numbers should probably do some research before throwing a lot of eggs into the Instagram basket. In fact, it seems barely possible for ONE person to have done it, let alone anyone replicating it.
> 
> Holden, I've read some of your other posts too, and you seem like a very smart person indeed, but your numbers seem &#8230; unlikely. (I'm going to try to put things in perspective for anyone who thinks they can achieve such numbers.)
> 
> ...


Thank you. I was wondering when somebody would point this out. I'm pretty new to both kboards and writing so I didn't want to be the one to do so. I was beginning to wonder if it was some sort of tongue-in-cheek running joke on the boards that I wasn't clued in on.


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## Just Griff (Sep 28, 2017)

That took a turn. I was mentally on the Hogwarts Express, full steam ahead to the school for Instagram-craft and App-ery.

Thank you, fact checkers. I wouldn't have even known where to begin to figure that out. I also assume people tell the truth when I shouldn't.


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## AlexisR (Apr 3, 2015)

Ditching all my preconceptions, treating it like a business that needed consistency and bootstrapping, and experimenting with different lengths, genres, and styles until one started getting traction, and then growing from there. Continuing to experiment a lot with promotion strategies and genres. Listening to people smarter and more experienced than me when they told me what worked and had the numbers to back it up. Still growing, very excited to see what the next few years bring.

Edit: Not giving up when the first few things didn't work sure helped a lot too.


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

The fact that psychological thrillers have become very popular and me loving writing them. I believe putting out the right type of book at the right time makes a huge difference. In other words, luck plays a very big part in someone's success or failure. Of course, the more you write, the more your luck will increase


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I am not saying Holden doesn't run one of the most popular instagrams out there (though looking at the list of top Instagrams, it is clear that if Holden does run one, it isn't book-focused or author-related in any way, so not sure what use directly to an author career it would have, but maybe I'm missing something). However, this is the internet and it is very easy to make the screenshots posted here. I could go to any Instagram, cover up all but the stats in MSPaint, and post a similar following.  Maybe Holden is legit... but go look at the top 500 Instagrams. Most people on Instagram will never see millions of followers nor will they sell lots of books using it. I love Instagram, but not as an author.

Always look at claims, people. Decide for yourself if that's really the path or not, and how supported those claims are. As I said in my own response to the OP... I fell for people giving advice that were lying about their success with that advice and I wasted a ton of time and money following bad advice and people presenting as more successful than they are. Don't be me!


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## TellNotShow (Sep 15, 2014)

Holden said:


> Think of all that time you spent going through my post history and building a dossier, not only to call my bluff, but to discourage anyone reading this to not even bother trying. Honorable effort.


Holden, you've attributed reasons for my actions which are incorrect.

I never even said you had a bluff for anyone to call. And I certainly don't want to discourage ANYONE from trying ANYTHING. I do understand that, by saying, "Honorable effort," you mean to ridicule me and say I'm being DIShonorable. So, I'll explain some things.

Just like Annie B, I have not said you don't run a popular Instagram account. Maybe you do. What I did do was RESEARCH. I did this research because the things you spoke of interested me. For a long time I've been meaning to look into the possibilities of Instagram, and you were finally the catalyst for me to do so. I REALLY wanted your numbers to be true and correct, and your Instagram/apps strategy to be a gamechanger. I'm not here to call bluffs, I'm here to read interesting ideas of HOW to better succeed in my business, ideas that I can then RESEARCH.

According to my research, your numbers seem unlikely. 
Your Instagram engagement rates appear almost impossible to achieve. They appear to be achieved only by VERY targeted accounts with much smaller numbers of followers. (There's a LOT of research people have done into this.)
Your sheer number of followers seem to be achieved only by major celebrities. 
The $60,000 per sponsored post you quoted seems achievable only by accounts with over 100 million followers.

I then researched Google apps, because also, it's something that has long interested me. The possibilities! My mind is open.

You appear to have more app users than Wattpad. Many more than Goodreads or Kindle. That seemed just wrong right away. I wondered if you're famous for something not book-related. Possible.
So I next looked at your other posts on here.

You haven't made many posts here, and you ARE extremely articulate and intelligent (whether your claims re Instagram, apps, and earnings are true or not). You're my sort of people, because you're thinking outside the square circle star.
One of your posts was EXTREMELY interesting, and I would absolutely encourage everyone to read it. It's at http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,260999.msg3632411.html#msg3632411

I also liked what you said in another post about how writing in a single series with recurring, developing characters helps you with flow, which I see as a huge help. I can't imagine typing 155wpm, or averaging 100wpm for over four hours a day. My hands would undoubtedly explode, although much more literally than my poor head so recently did.

I wish I HAD built a "dossier" on you, as you suggested. But I didn't, so I'm relying on my puny brain and its memory now. But I believe you said you have Less Than Seven Books on Amazon. I remember the odd phrasing, because I thought, "Does that mean six, five, what? Or does Less Than Seven mean seven? Odd."
Anyway, even at seven books, to be earning 500K a month from Amazon, there's very few people you could be. I don't know if ANYONE is earning that sort of money from seven books, and I won't be researching it, my research time for the week has all been used up.

I also researched writers with less followers on Instagram. One I'd never heard of wrote prose as well as poetry, had almost 2 million followers, high engagement rates, and around seven books on Amazon. He had inspirational quotes from the books with high engagement rates -- he also had posts where he advertised his books for sale, and these had TERRIBLE engagement rates. This fit the pattern of everything else I'd heard of about Instagram, that being it's a place where people fly through the posts, spend almost no time engaging with them even when they choose to engage, and don't actually buy books, because they're not really readers. Oh, and that guy's seven-ish books were all in KU, available on no other retailers, and all ranked in the 100,000 to million-ish range, so not exactly successful at the moment.

I may be completely wrong, but my research leads me to conclude what others have already said here. Instagram is lovely and fun, can be visually beautiful, is the least time-wasting of the social media apps (because it's mostly just pictures not words), and is not a place to build a readership for our books, or to make money from books.

Holden, the last thing you said here was, "To those just starting out, some advice: don't compare your behind the scenes footage to someone else's highlight reel, you'll lose every time. I had to start from zero just like all of you. And also, I'm staying anonymous. Take it for what it's worth."

That's fine advice, and I believe you're a smart person with much to offer here. But what I'm saying is, I took what you said about Instagram and apps and earnings, used it as a place to begin my research, and despite my very openminded (and very hopeful) outlook on where it may lead, found it didn't lead to anything that looked possible. Someone else may research this and get different results. No one should ever be discouraged from trying something outside the square circle star thingie.

Personally, I believe all the high priced self publishing courses available to us are close enough to worthless (I've not tried them all, just a few), yet I would very willingly pay you $10,000 to be taught exactly how to get even 1/10th of the results you're claiming.

And if anyone DOES manage to get anywhere with Instagram or apps, I'd LOVE to hear about it, and am open to paying well to be taught how to make money from these things with books. But after this, I'll need to see actual names. (Ironic, as I'm anonymous here, I know. And a good place to leave this discussion.)


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> You can learn how to write until you're blue in the face, but it's not unless you learn how to connect with your readers and learn how to sell that there is actually a career to speak of.


So true! Thanks for posting this.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

I figured Holden's followers/following/posts may have changed since he took the screenshot, so I  went through every Instagram with between 15m and 20m followers.

Not a single one of them appeared to be an author, and I didn't see anyone that was advertising their books on there... Every single one of them was a model, celebrity, or a major brand that is unrelated to writing. Gotta say, I am very disappointed, because I was all geared up to swallow my pride and actually try the Instagram thing based on Holden's accounts.

Perhaps Holden is a model, celebrity or runs a corporation and that's why he has 15 million subscribers (if it's not a flat out lie)? And if that's the case, then none of us are going to be making 7 figures a month by whoring our books on Instagram. 

And only 7 books to make half a million per month on Amazon ebooks alone? Even more selling those books direct? I just don't get how those numbers add up. I might make 40-60k per month on a single $4.99 book that hangs out in the lower rungs of the Amazon top 100. The only way I can see those numbers possible on only 7 books is if you had 3-4 of those books in the top 20 of Amazon at the same time. Is there any author with 3-4 books in even the top 100 right now? It's rare when that happens... Last I remember seeing it was when Bella Forest was tearing up the charts.

Maybe I am missing something? I dunno... But I can't get my head around how any of this is real.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Luigi said:


> So, if you don't mind sharing, what is the one thing you did that really has made a difference.


Back in seventh grade *mumble* years ago, I wanted a year of band. I was given a semester of Spanish and a semester of typing.

I am now a speed touch-typist with a caffeine addiction.

This, by far, has had a HUGE impact on my life. I strongly recommend people learn how to touch type if they're going to be a pen monkey full-time.

Secondly, spending over a year on the Internet Writing Workshop's critique group (free) not just submitting my own work, but reading crits other writers wrote, and critiquing other writers' works. I could see what others picked up that I missed, and where I was lacking in my skills.

And yes, you have to write more than one book. And keep writing. You're only as good/successful as your next book, so keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. (I have over 140 titles as of right now and while I'm not Stephen King, I do this full-time.)


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

And to add to the discussion... The one thing that helped my career was when I stopped trying to replicate what other authors were doing and writing in the genre that everyone thought was most profitable at the time.

When I said "F" it and decided to try new genres that people weren't writing in and writing things that I just wanted to write, my income exploded.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

I'm seeing some people saying that people don't go to Instagram to buy books. For what it's worth, IG has an exuberant and large reading community. Check out hashtags #bookblogger, #bookstagram, and #bibliophile for starters. People love posting and looking at pretty pictures of books posed with pretty, relevant objects.

For example...

1) https://www.instagram.com/p/BgY0ns7jl8z/?taken-by=missmolliwrites
2) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgs9IEUh3H2/?taken-by=najlaqamberdesigns
3) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg9ZGcFH2Xf/?taken-by=barbetti


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

elizabethbarone said:


> I'm seeing some people saying that people don't go to Instagram to buy books. For what it's worth, IG has an exuberant and large reading community. Check out hashtags #bookblogger, #bookstagram, and #bibliophile for starters. People love posting and looking at pretty pictures of books posed with pretty, relevant objects.
> 
> For example...
> 
> ...


My understanding (based purely on what others have said because I know nothing about Instagram and am just trying to quietly learn over here  ) is that people will like pretty pictures/inspirational quotes from books, etc, but they don't click through to buy. Is that wrong? As I said I know nothing about Instagram.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

MelanieCellier said:


> My understanding (based purely on what others have said because I know nothing about Instagram and am just trying to quietly learn over here  ) is that people will like pretty pictures/inspirational quotes from books, etc, but they don't click through to buy. Is that wrong? As I said I know nothing about Instagram.


I don't know anything about Instagram either, but that comment sounds like a typical Negative Nellie, oh that'll never work, response. Possibly from people who tried and failed to use Instagram and didn't think it might be because their cover sucked. People are no less likely to click on a cover on Instagram than they are on Facebook. Neither are book-selling sites, so why would people buy books there? Yet Facebook ads have made many authors' careers.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Abderian said:


> I don't know anything about Instagram either, but that comment sounds like a typical Negative Nellie, oh that'll never work, response. Possibly from people who tried and failed to use Instagram and didn't think it might be because their cover sucked. People are no less likely to click on a cover on Instagram than they are on Facebook. Neither are book-selling sites, so why would people buy books there? Yet Facebook ads have made many authors' careers.


There is a major difference: you can't add links to Instagram posts.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Patty Jansen said:


> There is a major difference: you can't add links to Instagram posts.


Oh that makes more sense. It isn't that they don't click, but they can't click.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

People don't go to Instagram to buy books, because they can't buy books there. 

I don't think that anyone is arguing that Instagram can't help you to some insignificant degree. If you get a few thousand followers, perhaps a couple of those people will see your books and remember to try to look you up on Amazon or wherever later. If you've already got an Instagram, and it coincides with your author name, you'd do well to post pics of your books from time to time. But even under the book hashtags, the number of likes people are getting in their books are insignificant, and most people on Instagram are also using Facebook and would probably see you there anyway.

While Instagram has the potential to be nominally beneficial, there are misconceptions in the thread like--you can gain millions of followers on Instagram just by posting pics of your books and quotes from your books or that the average author is going to see a big impact in book sales by jumping into Instagram.

I would love to see an example of any author on Instagram who is only posting book-related content who has a ton of followers and a lot of likes. I don't think one exists. Sure, the poet that was posted earlier has a nice instagram, but poetry books are basically page after page of quotes that can be turned into images/shared and made viral on the internet to help you gain notoriety. And every other post she made was a modeling post as well. Not many of us are going to drop what we're doing to write prose and poetry and take photos of ourselves everyday... If you're just writing a plain old fiction books, I don't see Instagram working the same way.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

Abderian said:


> Oh that makes more sense. It isn't that they don't click, but they can't click.


You can put one clickable link in your profile. So, if you post a photo, you can say something like click the link in my profile to buy my books or whatever but often people don't even read the text with photos. I know when I go on Instagram, I'll just scroll and like. I never click off the site.

It might be possible to make it work for you but for the amount of time you'd have to put in may not be the best pay off. To get any kind of attention, you really need to post a minimum of one photo a day, 2-3 is better. There's a limit to how many pics of your book cover you can post.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Abderian said:


> I don't know anything about Instagram either, but that comment sounds like a typical Negative Nellie, oh that'll never work, response. Possibly from people who tried and failed to use Instagram and didn't think it might be because their cover sucked. People are no less likely to click on a cover on Instagram than they are on Facebook. Neither are book-selling sites, so why would people buy books there? Yet Facebook ads have made many authors' careers.


Commercial intent is low on Instagram. It's much higher on Facebook because users are accustomed to seeing ads.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

I can honestly say that the one thing that made the biggest difference for me was finding the Writers Cafe on Kboards.

Not that this is very helpful to anyone reading this, because, well, you're already here. But I couldn't believe the wealth of information in one place, the amazing support and sharing from authors I already admired and read.

It all started here for me. The learning curve was big at first, and then I got my first book out and got to put it in my signature. I think at one point I had my signature loaded with about twenty of my books (all shrunk down so it fit on one line, lol).

I made friends, I found colleagues, I learned and learned and learned. Then I reached a point where I felt like it was rare to learn something new here because I'd been around so long, and became a Moderator so I could give back in some way. But you know what? The industry changes all the time, and I never stop learning.

I'd still be talking about one day being a published author if it wasn't for the WC.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

kathrynoh said:


> You can put one clickable link in your profile. So, if you post a photo, you can say something like click the link in my profile to buy my books...


You can also run a sponsored post, which gives you a clickable button and you can track how many clicks and impressions. I've run a couple IG ads with not-so-stellar results, but my work wife had good luck.

Usually I just post cat pics (my readers love my kitty), selfies (because for some reason people really love those too), teasers (pretty graphics with a quote from your book), and now I've added "book aesthetics" -- not really the correct usage of the word, but that's what bloggers, etc call them -- into my rotation (see examples in my previous post). I've also done piece-by-piece cover reveals, where I use PicSlit to separate my covers into 12 pieces, then I post them one by one. When you visit my profile, you can see the full cover. I've done that with teasers too, but readers seem to like the cover reveal more.

Whenever I post something I'm promoting, I tell them to click the link in my bio. You can use bit.ly or something else to track your clicks. There's not necessarily a need to pay for an ad if you're using hashtags well; those alone will boost eyeballs on your post. I just spent a few minutes the other day looking at book bloggers' posts and compiling a sort of master list of hashtags to use. I'm always forgetting some -- and I found some new-to-me ones.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

Luigi said:


> What's the one thing you did, that has made the biggest difference in sales? Or that allowed you to be a full-time writer?
> 
> We all know, that writing more getting an email list going are the best things to do. But it's my sense that readers are getting tired of email advertising, or advertising in general. And if you did not start in the early days of KDP or you don't have a big group of people to support you, it can be outright difficult, to make it, without AMS ads or some kind of promo that usually breakout even.
> 
> ...


Not getting too hung up on advertising. Writing that next book and not just looking at the one before. I write and move on.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

elizabethbarone said:


> You can also run a sponsored post, which gives you a clickable button and you can track how many clicks and impressions. I've run a couple IG ads with not-so-stellar results, but my work wife had good luck.
> 
> Usually I just post cat pics (my readers love my kitty), selfies (because for some reason people really love those too), teasers (pretty graphics with a quote from your book), and now I've added "book aesthetics" -- not really the correct usage of the word, but that's what bloggers, etc call them -- into my rotation (see examples in my previous post). I've also done piece-by-piece cover reveals, where I use PicSlit to separate my covers into 12 pieces, then I post them one by one. When you visit my profile, you can see the full cover. I've done that with teasers too, but readers seem to like the cover reveal more.
> 
> Whenever I post something I'm promoting, I tell them to click the link in my bio. You can use bit.ly or something else to track your clicks. There's not necessarily a need to pay for an ad if you're using hashtags well; those alone will boost eyeballs on your post. I just spent a few minutes the other day looking at book bloggers' posts and compiling a sort of master list of hashtags to use. I'm always forgetting some -- and I found some new-to-me ones.


Do you get much engagement on the split up covers? Because, tbh, I unfollow people who do that. But then I unfollow people who post quotes too.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

The quotes thing is just me, not a general rule  I follow a lot of travelgrams and people post the same quotes over and over. The best thing to do is post a bunch of different things, see what gets the most engagement and post more of that


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

kathrynoh said:


> The quotes thing is just me, not a general rule  I follow a lot of travelgrams and people post the same quotes over and over. The best thing to do is post a bunch of different things, see what gets the most engagement and post more of that


LOL me, too, on the quotes. I like the occasional travel story, especially when all the posts are genuine. I unfollow people who constantly post selfies or who bleat about their books too much.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

kathrynoh said:


> Do you get much engagement on the split up covers? Because, tbh, I unfollow people who do that. But then I unfollow people who post quotes too.


My readers like it. I do it as a cover reveal. Over several days, they get a new piece daily. It builds up anticipation.

I didn't get to do one for my latest release -- there were issues with the designer and the cover was late -- but I'll be doing it for the next one.

I've done it with teasers, too, but those don't seem to get as much engagement so I stopped.

Now, don't get me wrong. IG hasn't been _my_ game changer. I have just under 500 followers. But there are lots of cool things you can do with it, and a ready and willing bookworm audience you can tap into.


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