The business of writing...

I was recently asked to participate in a project being run by TheLadders where they are reaching out to writers and asking them what advice they would give for new graduates attempting to break into the field. TheLadders are a career resource for professionals across all vocations and at at any stage of their careers. You should check them out. www.theladders.com.

So here is my advice:

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Most authors nowadays understand that things are different to how they used to be. Being a storyteller is no longer like being a rockstar. It isn't about crossing your fingers and hoping for a big break - a big break that brings millions of dollars and power lunches in New York and book signings in London. It's about good business. No more literary rock stars, just businessmen and women.

Are things better now? I think so. There is still the odd rockstar out there, like James Patterson, Lee Child, J K Rowling, and the rest. Like Paul McCartney and Madonna, these writers will remain rich and successful until they eventually die out. And rightly so, for these people were the hard workers of the previous generation. But once they are gone, things will carry on without them. In their place is a new and improved free market where anyone can sink or swim. Everyone gets handed the same pair of speedos and it's up to them to keep themselves in shape and stay afloat. There are no more sharks in the water, deciding who lives and who dies, but the water has become chock-full of swimmers fighting for room. The weakest swimmers are going to drown.

Business is hard. Doesn't matter whether you are selling sandwiches or writing books. Most businesses fail. Now that writing has become a free enterprise, most writers will unfortunately fail. But that's always been true. The positive changes we have seen recently mean that at least now more writers will SUCCEED, and that is why today is a better time than ever to be an aspiring writer.

Now that writing is a business, the only person in control of whether or not you fail or succeed is you. Your books are your products and you need to sell them. You will do this in the same way as any other business sells its wares. Common sense and entrepreneurialism.

0. Understand that writing is a craft
Before we start, I just want to make one thing very clear. You can't just decide one day to be a writer;  no more than you can just sit at a piano and decide you want to become your generation's Beethoven. Writing is a passion and an innate skill, but it is also a craft and a trade that needs to be learned. An author should be well read, not just in their chosen genre but in the study of writing itself. Fill your bookshelf with texts on plotting, grammar, novel-writing, description, and anything else that a writer needs to know. Understand that writing a book takes as much education as it does innate talent. Learn the purpose of a sentence before you start tossing them around like some sort of word-hooker.

It would also serve you well to learn as much as you can about Word Processors, Photoshop, website design, eCommerce, accounting, blogging, twitter, newsletters, and anything else that the business of writing will entail. The more you know, the better. Always learn whatever you can.

1. Start small, grow big
Now that the self-publishing environment is bedded in, there is little chance of a becoming a 1 book millionaire. Instead, your first book is likely to make you peanuts, but that's okay. It's really okay. Every new business starts small. The first step is only to get a hook in the mountain; after that you can start climbing and planting flags. Write your first book and make it the very best you can - spend as long as you can on it. If you are serious about making writing your living, then use some of your savings to hire a good editor and purchase some professional artwork. You may balk at spending $1000 on what seems like a self-indulgent hobby, but remember that you are trying to start a business here. Most businesses lose money in year 1 (and 2 and 3). It's an investment and you need to spend money to make money. Your intention is to make that money back with interest.

Once you get that first book published on Amazon, itunes, or some place else, sit back for a moment and enjoy the excitement, but then get back to work. Like any business, you now need feedback on your product. Offer free copies for review, give it away for nothing on Amazon in a promotion, swap with another writer and help each other. Don't be overly proud by demanding that people must pay for your hard and valuable work, because that will be your downfall. As a new business, your sole goal at this point is to get your brand in front of people. When a new chocolate company starts up, what do they do? They give away free samples at the supermarket to get their milky goodness in people's mouths. You need to do the same. Fill people's mouths with your milky goodness. Get those reviews coming in, good or bad. Take note of what they are saying and accept them as market research. Your ending sucked? Well, remember that for you next product (or book 1 version 2). Listen, improve, and pay attention to your customers. Once you get some reviews racking up, you may be able to approach larger book review sites or promoters like Bookbub. Everything you do should be geared towards disseminating your book into the world. At the same time, you also need to be working on book 2.

2. Develop your brand.
Make your name synonymous with your genre. When people say Stephen King they think horror. You now need to start living and breathing your genre. Tweet about your favourite films and books, try to get interviewed by websites that cover your genre. Join Facebook groups that enjoy the kind of books your write. Get yourself embedded in the culture of the people you are selling to.

Build yourself a website, nothing fancy, but let people know you're around to stay. Make sure that if people google your name they find you. When people visit your website you have control over the information they see about you, so don't undersell yourself. You may be small, but never admit to that. You may lack confidence at this point, but never let it show. You are the Boss, the greatest writer in the whole frikkin' world and anyone who has discovered you is damn lucky. If you visit a website looking for a new sofa and are met with a bunch of childish nonsense and amateur web design, you will look elsewhere, right? So even with 1 book and no sales, your website needs to make it seem like you are rubbing shoulders with Anne Rice and Thomas Harris on a daily basis. If you want to compete with bestselling authors, your brand needs to be as good as theirs. Copy their layouts and designs if you have to. See what a professional website should look like and make yours the same. Established authors may look at you like some impudent upstart, but fuck them. This is business. Let all the big name authors know that you're coming for them!

Your brand should always be a key focus from now on and will continue to evolve as you do so as a writer. Create a reusable font for your name so that all your books share a familiar style. Apply the designs to your website, too. Pick a colour and make it your own (mine is purple). Work out a catchphrase for your promotional material (mine is: Fear on every page). Get yourself signed up to every single social media site in existence, old and new. You can always unsubscribe to the ones that suck later.

Find the fans that enjoy your work and be good to them. They are your family now and will be with you for a long time. Give them freebies whenever you can or even meet up with them if you are a social butterfly. Your cheerleaders will always be the first to review your books, point out typos, inform you of opportunities, and they are the most important asset your business has. You have attracted fans and now you need to maintain brand loyalty by never letting them down (the hardest part of the job). Don't be a schmuck. Don't make everything about you. Share the work of other aspiring writers. Show an interest in the lives of your fans. Post about things other than your work and share what you know. Give a piece of yourself to those supporting you and be a nice guy. ALWAYS BE A NICE GUY. Or gal.

3. Grow
Once you have built your platform and started your brand, you need to grow. That chocolate company has gotten people hooked on its candy bar, but now it needs to release a new product to keep the business flowing and growing. A healthy business is a growing business. Never stand still. You need to write a second book. You can write a sequel, or something completely new - doesn't matter. What does matter is that you use what you learned from book 1. Address any concerns raised in your bad reviews or via feedback. Remember the mistakes your editor picked up in book 1 and try to avoid them. Do everything you can to make book 2 better and yourself a better writer. Then, when book 2 is done, sink all of your profits from book 1 into hiring an editor again and getting more artwork. It may feel like a lot of work for no reward, but remember that you are growing. You now have 2 books instead of 1.

When book 2 is released, let all of your followers know. Don't shove it in people's faces, but make it easy to find. You can even run a promotion on the first book to promote the second (make sure you link to the 2nd book at the end of the 1st). You can give away your new book for free, just to get some momentum going, or you can sit back and wait. There's not a massive amount you can do at this point, because you are still in the growing phase of your business. What you really need to do is write book 3.

You now have a healthy platform established and hopefully a trickle of sales coming through. Hopefully you also get periodic reviews appearing on their own and maybe even a nice email or two coming from a fan. Once this is happening, your business is organic. It's breathing on its own. People are talking about it, Amazon is ranking and promoting it, google is linking to it. A total stranger could fall upon your book and buy it. You don't have a massive presence yet, but you exist. The best thing you can do now is create more products to sell to your existing customer base and to increase your odds of attracting new business. Every new reader is a building block in your empire.

You should also look towards expanding your existing products to as many platforms as you can. Do you have audiobook, paperback, and ebook versions all available? If not, then get it done. Maximise your income streams for every title, because this is the time where you either sink or swim.

4. Be the business
Hopefully, when you have 3 or 4 books out, you'll be earning enough money to cover the cost of editing and releasing your next book while also leaving you a small profit. Keep writing new books while looking for ways to promote your catalogue of existing products. Promote 'yourself' wherever possible rather than a single book. Direct people to your website whenever you can. Sign them up to your newsletter (Mailchimp). Offer a book or two cheaply or even permanently free to keep on dragging in new customers. Keep momentum going in anyway you can. Now that your have some experience, do some blog posts and share what you know. Start selling signed copies of your paperbacks to fans. Contact some of your role models and see if they reply. Start acting like you're a successful writer, because you are. Writing a book is hard, and you now have several, so in that you are already a success. Well done. You are making money from your books. Well done. People are enjoying your books. Well done. (If people are not enjoying your books at this point, then maybe it's time to face harsh facts).

This is your life now, you should take what you are earning and scale it up to the point where you can quit whatever other jobs you have and write fulltime. Do you have 5 books earning you half of what you need? Then you know you probably need to write 5 or 6 more to go fulltime. Maybe you need to write 20. At least now you should have some idea. That's your business plan. Write as many books as it takes to be a fulltime writer. Once you achieve that, it's all gravy.

5. Go with the flow
In the four years I have been doing this, things have changed a dozen times. I have been up and down and sideways. Now that writing is an enterprise, it is extremely volatile. Successful businesses can and do go bankrupt. You can make it big one minute and lose it all the next. The only way to curb the risks is by forever being on the cusp of the industry's waves. Always pay attention to what is going on now and what appears likely to happen next. Never let anything take you by surprise. Always plan for the worst and always look for ways to climb above your rivals. If you see an opportunity, take it. Have an idea that no one else has thought of? Then put it into play. In business, it is innovators who last longest.

MAKE YOUR OWN DREAMS...

There was a time when self-publishing meant that you were silly enough to pay some company of crooks a load of money to print several dozen poorly constructed copies of your naively written novel and then try to sell them from the boot of your car.  It used to be called Vanity Publishing, and for good reason: the only thing it was good for was stroking a wannabe writer’s ego.  What it did not do was put food on their table or allow them to quit their day job.  Self-publishing used to suck.

That all changed when the gadget era began.  First music migrated to a digital existence via itunes.  Then films did it via Netflix.  Now books are doing it via Amazon Kindle.  Of course there are other players such as Apple, Kobo, etc, but I truly believe that Amazon were the ones with enough vision to truly take reading into the digital realm.  They championed the rise of the ebook like no other.

Now, both aspiring and established authors can sell directly to the public.  They can cultivate their own audience and grow their online business in the same way a person selling monogramed toilet seats can.  For that is what the ebook revolution has truly done: it has changed the publishing industry from an old boy’s club to a free enterprise where effort and talent is rewarded.  Now, finally, in the same way as any other business, a person can start from fresh, deliver a good product and grow their business via positive reviews, recommendations, repeat business, advertising, promotions, giveaways, partnerships, and any other avenues an entrepreneurial writer can think of.  The devoted will succeed, while the weak-willed will struggle.  That’s right, not everyone will make a fortune self-publishing, but at least now everyone CAN!  The potential is there for everyone to have a crack at it and give it their best shot.  The publishing industry is finally fair.  Somebody wanting to be a writer now has the same obstacles as someone who wants to be a carpenter.  Learn the craft, work hard, find customers, and succeed.  Welcome to the business world.  You are now a Director of your own destiny.  Here are some of the experiences I had on my own path to making a good living as a writer.  There is no failure anymore, just varying levels of success…

The Early Stages

The early stages are hard and prone to tears.  No one can make it easy for you.  As you self-publish your book, many of you will be opening yourselves up for the first time to criticism and disappointment.  Well, don’t be afraid, because getting told you suck is one of the most important parts of your growth as a writer.  I will explain why in a moment.

Now, just to prepare you, when you self-publish your very first book – you will get no sales (well, maybe a few).  Your earnings will be poor and you will shake your head and weep that you will never get to leave your horrible job.  Well, don’t panic, because that happens to all of us.  No one knows you exist!  It’s not that you are no good.  You could have written a masterpiece, but right now no one can see it.  You need to get customer reviews, word of mouth, and also wait while Amazon (and any other vendors you have used) integrates your product into its vast website algorithms.  You are at the very first rung of the ladder, and your only focus now should be to climb a little higher each week.  Don’t focus on how much you WANT to make.  Focus on what you did last week and beat it.

Now, the first thing you need is reviews.  Buying a book with little or no reviews is a risk, and customers don’t like risking their money.  So what do you do?  You reduce the risk.  For the time being, give away your book free via promotions or price it as cheaply as you can (you can charge more when your book has lots of great reviews).  You still may not move a lot of copies, but you will slowly start to get some people reading your book.  Some of those people will leave reviews; and that is what you need.  If you’re lucky, one of those people will like you and become a fan.

On the negative side, some of those reviews might be bad.  They might tell you that you suck.  That is good.  You are not a good writer yet and your probably do suck a little bit.  No one has ever blindly published a masterpiece.  Mozart didn’t just play the piano perfectly one day; he learned and developed.  You must do the same.  Bad reviews are the very best advice you will ever get – because they are harsh, unbiased, and most importantly of all, honest.  You have flaws, sorry, but you so.  If you write for sixty years, you will still have flaws.  Charles Dickens had flaws and so do you.  Bad reviews point them out to you. 

When I first started, I noticed a trend in all my bad reviews (as rare as they were, ha!) was that I was identity confused.  Although British, I was writing like an American to emulate all the great American horror authors I had read growing up.  This led me to have a confused writing style, which included very British words like ‘telly, brew, git, bugger, knobhead,’ side-by-side with very American words like ‘cookie, trunk, wiener, and Justin Bieber.’  This led to both sides of the Atlantic being confused and distracted when reading my work.  Not good.  But my bad reviews made me aware of the problem.  As a result, I made the effort to remain true to my British background and began writing in my own true voice.  My books suddenly had a new identity.  Americans began to enjoy my ‘quirky’ dialogue and my English fans enjoyed being accurately represented by a writer of their own.  Needless to say, my bad reviews became rarer and rarer.  You, too, must take heed of your bad reviews.  They may be hurtful, but dag namit they are helpful.  Only a fool closes his ears to his critics.  You must bend over and welcome your detractors.

Building an Audience

Now, as you get in a few reviews and sell a few books, you will find things will gather a little bit of steam.  Your sales will still be few, but they should be steady.  Your books may appear in searches (I always add subtitles after my book titles, such as ‘A Horror novel’ or ‘Apocalyptic Horror novel,’ as this increases the number of keywords in the title) or be recommended by people who have already read it.  Time to start leveraging what you have to grow your audience.

Now the first thing to do is NOT go on Facebook and start begging readers and other authors to help you.  They get this all the time from dozens of other desperate authors, and quite frankly why should they help you?  You haven’t done anything for them.  Believe me, the path to success is not by shoving your book in everyone’s faces.  You should be championing yourself, not your book.  If you want to make a career out of writing, people need to like YOU and follow YOU as a writer.  So be a nice guy, chat to people about what ever it is that people are chatting about.  Offer to share the work of another author you have seen.  Do favours for others and get involved with the reading community – they’ll return the favour down the road.  It is much better to have someone share your book because they like you and because you did a favour for them previously.  If you are a nice guy people will help you because they WANT to, not because you nagged them.  Believe me, this is the way to go about things.  If you need to share something about your book, do it on your own page or even on pages set up for promoting new releases (there are hundreds), but don’t invade someone else’s privacy, because you will annoy them.

Once you have the ground work set up and a small following, forget about social media and start writing again – and I don’t mean short stories or novellas, I mean novels.  The best way to make more money and gain new fans is by writing full-length novels.  The more novels you have on sale, the more chance someone has of stumbling upon you.  It also means that when you are lucky enough to find a fan, they will be able to buy 2,3,4 books from you rather than just 1.  That in itself equates to more money.  Writing new books should always, for as long as you do this, be your NUMBER ONE priority.  If you want to quit your day job you need books.  The lucky writers will need but a few to make decent money, others may need a dozen, but one thing is true: the more books you write the more money you make.  It will also help you grow and develop as a writer, too.  More words on paper (or eInk) means more practice for you.

Now, I know lots of authors are very eager and they quickly publish a load of short stories or novellas.  These are lovely for bridging gaps between novels for an already successful author, but they honestly waste the time of the writer still wishing to grow.  Short stories make little money and sell far fewer copies than full-length titles (at least in my opinion).  I know it is hard to have to wait so long to get a taste of what releasing a new story feels like, but you have to be patient.  Commit yourself to writing a new novel and don’t stop till it’s done.  It may take a while, but it is time well invested.  Once you publish your new novel, start the next one.  When you have hundreds of fans clamoring for another fix, then you can give them something shorter to tide them over.  As a new writer you need to make money and find fans – novels is where it is at!  Period.

Building a Brand

Once you have the basics dealt with and have built a small platform on which to grow, you need to take things to the next level.  Remember, you should be selling yourself as a writer, not individual books.  You want people to find ALL of your work, not just a novel at a time.  You need to become a brand.

The first thing you should do is get help.  People think self-publishing means going it alone.  IT DOES NOT.  Self-publishing means you’re the boss, but even bosses need to hire out for other services.  McDonalds doesn’t make its own tables and chairs in a McWoodwork factory.  It pays someone else.  A writer does not paint his or her own covers.  They pay someone else to do it.  Artists, editors, website designers, and formatters are all worth the money they charge, so consider them carefully.

Use the money you earn from you books and reinvest it.  When you first start to use your earnings towards investment, the first thing you should look at it artwork.  Unless you have a qualification, you should not do your own covers.  If money is short, you can pay graphic designers to pull something nice together from stock images, but even this should be a stopgap until you can afford to pay an original artist (I use Stephen Bryant at SRB Productions).  Expect to pay around $450 dollars per cover for a top-class painter, but I promise you that the cost covers itself.  Develop a relationship with your artist and develop a brand with them.  Study the best selling books in your genre and take note of what they all have in common (hint: they are usually vague and only seek to create mood.  Very rarely do they give away any content of the plot or characters.  Moody and vague is key for Horror, Thrillers, etc).  If you have more than one book, develop a template.  The individual artwork and colour scheme should change for each book, but your template should remain.  Have your name appear in the same font and size on every cover.  Give yourself a strapline (mine is ‘Fear on every page’.  James Patterson’s is ‘The pages turn themselves.’).  Make it obvious to a browser that you are more than just one book, and that you have longevity.  Readers like to know that an author is writing more books (Reading books is an investment and good authors are hard to find).  Also, by having a consistent brand, your books will stick in a browser’s mind.  If they ignore your book a few times, but keep seeing the same name in the same style and font, they will start to get curious.  You will have made them aware that you exist.  This is the fundamental challenge of being a self-published author: being discovered.  Your cover is one of the best weapons you have to hook a new reader.

Expanding your brand even further, create yourself a website and get your artist to do you a banner with the same fonts and templates as your book covers.  Link all of your online sites together and your whole presence as an author will become more cohesive and more professional.  The differences between you and a New York Publishing house author will become less and less.  You are not less than they are, so why should you seem it.  Look at the websites of authors you admire and emulate the layout.  Don’t get too fancy.  You’re a writer not an online casino.  Join up to as many social media sites as you can and link to them from your website.  Make it easy for fans to contact you, but don’t waste your day on Facebook because it is folly.  You should be writing books, remember?  If you are lucky enough to have a fan contact you, then you better bloody well get back in touch with them.  Love your fans and they will love you.  They are family now and you need them!

Expanding

Once you have a few books out and a cohesive brand, you should be making enough money to get butterflies in your belly.  You might be able to buy a new flat screen TV with the money you have earned, or even start being a little rude to your boss at your day job (you will be able to stick your fingers up to him one day soon if all goes well).

The last part of the puzzle is to expand, expand, expand.  You need to write new novels, I cannot stress that enough, but you should also make sure that in addition to ebooks, you also publish paperback copies through Createspace (formatting is tough, so pay someone), and look at publishing audiobooks through ACX (doing a royalty split with the narrator means no upfront cost).  You can also look at foreign publishers, comic book artists, and more.  Each of these things will only earn only a small income, but if you do it with all of your books, then that small income will become not unsubstantial.  It also has a benefit besides income: it makes you look professional.  When a reader sees your book and then notes ebook, paperback, audiobook, and German, it tells them that you are the real deal, and that you take this shiz-nit seriously.  Just make sure to exploit every money-earning opportunity that you can.  Succeeding as a self-publisher is not about writing one big hit, it’s about writing lots of books and maximizing the profit each of them makes.  It’s a business and books are your products.  You need to sell them.

The Future

I don’t know what the future holds, (people like JA Konrath and Barry Eisler are better prophets than me) but I can say that my fortunes keep increasing as a self-published author.  I started at zero, with no publishing credits and no friends in high places.  Now I feed my family and love my life.  Self-publishing gave that to me.  It took me out of my crappy, low-income job and gave me a life I love.  It may not happen for you, I am sad to say that, truly, but there is no reason that it shouldn’t.  The best thing the self-publishing revolution has given us is an equal chance.  You have as much chance of succeeding as anybody else.  So give it your best damn shot, buddy.  I hope to see you at the top.