I started publishing nationwide at about 12–14 with an amateur comic book company. Then in college newspaper, magazine, chap books and by my thirties books and eBooks. In my twenties I had an online book business on Amazon.
Its a business. Like selling widgets or socks or shoes. If you have one product then that product has got to be the sun and the moon because you’re trying to get it to one tale fit all. You have to learn as much as possible because you have to understand marketing or be able to absorb what works and what doesn’t.
Here’s what doesn’t work.
Writing the same friggin story over and over and over and over again. I mean this in fiction.
Dragons, cop tales, anti hero, romance stuff, vapire, zombie, with the recalcitrant hero. Serial killer bs. Essentially regurgitating TV or the books you like.
What does work is LOVING writing. Writing because YOU MUST. And publishing because it’s a culmination of the Writing Experience, not the goal.
You can have no darlings in writing and releasing. All your babies are up for grabs, digs and swipes and being ignored once you release it to the market and most writers are discovered after they’re dead. Your jouissance is that the tale is completed and in a book format on a shelf and maybe a few folk will tell you they enjoyed it and maybbbbbbbbe you’ll make enough off of it for a good steak and lobster dinner. And if the Gods love you and it’s got some legs, that will happen monthly and then weekly and then daily. But invest that money in something else that will grow, like real estate.
Stop thinking you’ll be the next hit so and so. Generally those people have built audiences over years, have other jobs or are producing the same mindless pablum for mindless readers. Or a combination of all of the above.
Real writers, shut the fuck up and write. And then they write some more. And they spend a lot of time shutting the fuck up and writing. And reading. And reading stuff they can’t understand, can’t replicate but can’t put down. Then they go write. And shut the fuck up. If you find yourself pontificating about writing more than say once every six months, you’re probably a shit writer. A real writer wants every damn minute he or she can get to do the damn thing. It’s like someone who is constantly talking about sex; when are they actually doing it then? Rarely. And probably badly when they do.
I wish I knew how much other wannabe writers are a quicksand when I first got started.
I wish I understood mass marketing and that it’s a ten year stretch with each book. Minimum.
I wish I understood that you make more the longer you’re in the game so to never expect a hit. Copyright lasts a lifetime plus for reason.
I learned a lot of these things and still have more to learn. I wished that was something that people told me upfront—-you’ll never know all of anything, There’s no magic answer, there’s reinvention and failure and you want to fail fast, fail often, fail more, fail again, you want to keep tooling and trying and twisting and you’ll find what works for Project A doesn't for B, C, D and E but that you need Projects A - Z because then you have an army storming the world rather than one little book about three lost kids in a mall hoping it will rock the world.
It’s a numbers and time game. I have 500 titles that will be out in multiple genres by 2020. There are over 150 out now just ticking away. There’s another 80 on the near completion board for the next year. There are 4 to be released in the next few weeks. The only one I’ve seen run writing like a business is James Patterson—-his office looks like mine with scripts laying around in varying stages. No coincidence he was an ad executive first.
That’s how you make sustainable money.
You run a business.
Writer is the core of what you are but businessman is the surrounding pervasive truth of what you also become.
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