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Indie Author Confidential 9
Secrets No One Will Tell You About Being a Writer
M.L. Ronn
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eBook - ePub
Indie Author Confidential 9
Secrets No One Will Tell You About Being a Writer
M.L. Ronn
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About This Book
The ground-breaking, behind-the-scenes look at a working writer continues with Vol. 9! Prolific writer M.L. Ronn (Michael La Ronn) shares his lessons learned on his journey to become a successful writer. You'll discover writing, marketing, business, and other miscellaneous tips that you don't hear every day. Covered in this volume:
ā¢ How Michael exploded his word counts even further with a voice recorder
ā¢ Michael's thoughts around the problematic one-third mark of novels
ā¢ Experiments with book pricing
ā¢ Analyzing future trends that are surely coming to the indie author space
The information in this book is what writers discuss over beers at writing conferences. You may find it useful on your journey to becoming a successful writer. It just might make you more money and help you satisfy your readers, too. Are you ready to dive into the world of Indie Author Confidential?
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BECOME A WORLD-CLASS CONTENT CREATOR
ASSESSING THE VALUE OF THE INDIE AUTHOR CONFIDENTIAL SERIES
Someone recently asked me why I write this series. These books donāt necessarily have actionable advice, theyāre not focused on any single topic, and, to some people, they might be perceived as vain.
I write this series for several reasons.
First, I write it for myself because by doing so, I am more likely to retain the information I learn. If I can articulate concepts simply in 500 to 1,000 words, then I've grasped them.
Next, I wrote this series because of great advice I heard from Gary Vaynerchuk a long time ago. He recommends that influencers and entrepreneurs should "document" their progress and use marketing tools as practitioners of those tools. People will follow you because they're interested in the process and the steps you're taking. That has been insanely true for my writing business.
This series will continue to build in value with every volume I create. Every four volumes (which represents a year, except for the first year), the series quadruples in value. I keep reminding myself of just how powerful a series like this can be ten years from now, or when my career really takes off.
I don't know of a single mega-bestselling author who documents their day-to-day experience like I am doing. For example, I believe it would be immensely valuable to know what Dean Koontz was learning early in his career, especially events that shaped his writing. People would pay a lot of money for that.
Therefore, if I start documenting my progress now while I'm a relative nobody, and I keep it up even when it's not financially lucrative to do so, and if I write honestly, thoughtfully, and intentionally, there's no telling what could happen with this series.
At the time of this writing, each volume of the series is worth $4.99. Every year, I add approximately $10 in value to the series. I do have an anthology collection that pulls all the quarterly volumes together, so I would expect a reader to buy that over the individual volumes.
With the current number of volumes I have published, if a reader bought the entire series, that would gross around $20 if they bought the anthologies (which would net me $14), and $40 if they bought the individual volumes (which would net me $28). Thatās per person, for just the early volumes in this series.
If 1,000 people bought this series in its entirety, that would make me between $20,000 and $40,000.
Traditional publishers would laugh you out of the room if you told them you were only going to sell 1,000 copies of a series. Successful indie authors would laugh you out of the room if you told them you were only going to sell 1,000 copies too.
But here's where they completely miss the point: this is just one series. And sales of this series could help to improve sales of my other titles too.
If I become a bestselling author with a lucrative career, I'll be making way more than $20,000 or $40,000, so this series just adds to my profit. Hell, that money is the equivalent of many peopleās salaries. Ten years from now, I'll have way more books in this series, and the average value per reader will be over $200.
If I do the same math but ten years from now, if I sell just 1,000 copies of this series, that will between $200,000 and $400,000.
Again, for just one series. For just 1,000 people. I'm assuming that this series will not be a bestseller. If it becomes one, the math changes.
Funny how the numbers add up like that.
Are these numbers delusional? No. Ambitious? Yes. But if Iāve learned anything over the last decade, itās always to bet on yourself and that success happens in ways that you least expect.
THE PROBLEMATIC ONE-THIRD MARK OF NOVELS
I wrote a blog post this quarter that resonated with my audience. It had to do with the one-third mark of novels, which is often a graveyard for writers. Hereās what I wrote, lightly edited for your pleasure.
I wrote 2,000 words today. Iām approximately at the one-third mark of this novel, which is around 16,000 words.
Oh, the one-third markā¦itās a serial killer. So many novels die during this patch somewhere between the 25 and 33 percent mark.
I write about the one-third mark in my book The Pocket Guide to Pantsing. Itās a strange phenomenon that I canāt explain other than to say it exists and it rears its ugly head in almost every novel I write. Iām not the only one who experiences it.
The one-third mark is the first point in the novel where you have literally no idea what is going to happen next. Youāve been on a sugar rush from the time you started the book, and now your sugar levels have crashed. You lose momentum and every word feels like a struggle.
I have a theory for why this happens.
First, many writers would agree that you want to introduce all the key players and stakes within the first 25 percent of the book. All heroes, supporting characters, and villains (to an extent) should at least be introduced so the reader is aware of them. The first quarter of the book, in a way, is about setting up all of this so you can develop the story and characters.
Once youāve set the table, so to speak, now all your character and plot lines are convergingāhero, supporting heroes, villains, settings, A plots, B plots, and so on. Itās like a giant traffic jam and you have to figure out how to unclog the road so that everyone has their lane. Again, for most novels, this hits right around the 25 to 35 percent mark, sometimes sooner. It hits with varying degrees tooāsome novels (like the one Iām writing) only have small traffic jams. Others have massive ones.
While your subconscious is figuring all this out, it pumps the brakes and your writing output slows down somewhat. Not completely, but enough to where you notice that you canāt āseeā what happens next as easily. You may have zero idea what to write next and lose confidence in yourself and/or the story.
The novel I am working on now my 37th novel, so fortunately, Iāve developed some tools to deal with this.
Tool #1 is to write the next sentence, even if you donāt know what it is. Follow your fingers. Easier said than done, but it works.
Tool #2 is to take frequent inspiration breaks, such as walking your dog, taking naps, getting away from the writing keyboard and exposing yourself to new people and situations, watching movies and television, and so on. The trick is to look for a āspark,ā that one thing that your subconscious needs to smooth out the traffic jam and get going again. Find the spark, and the novel will ignite.
Tool #3 is to remember some basic tenets of writing;
- When the going gets rough, throw a man with a gun in the scene. It works like magic.
- If the words arenāt coming well, write quickly through the current scenes. Not sloppy, but quickly. Donāt overthink themāitās very easy to fall into the trap of overthinking. The secret is, when you return in editing (or looping), most of the time, the scene will read better than you felt it did when you were writing it. Always assume your mind is playing tricks on you. When you think somethingās good, it may not be. When you think something is bad, it also may not be. The best thing you can do is get to the finish line, hire editors, and let readers decide. Readers will often surprise you.
- Keep momentum every day. Even just a few hundred words is okay. The one-third mark only lasts a few thousand words or so.
The experience I dealt with went like this: I knew exactly what was going to happen for the next three to five chapters, but I found myself in an immediate scene where I didnāt know what would get the hero to the next scene.
In other words, I knew what would happen in Chapter A, C, and D, but not B. Chapter B was the trouble.
I followed the tips above and I moved past B into C, and all is clear now. The words are coming back in full force.
Again, donāt be sloppy. But donāt overthink your writing ...