year seven? Eight? Report on successful career

lorna_w

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Things are still going fine for me as a self-published novelist. I took some chances the past 18 months, and enough paid off to keep me at a fulltime level of earnings. I had an okay 2019, though not my very best year, beginning it with another trip up the best seller lists. (when I say “best seller" I mean "Best Seller. Overall, and usually in multiple countries and all stores. Top 50, sometimes top 10 in this or that country, ranking above King and Rowling and Patterson for a week. That kind of best seller.” Just so there’s no confusion about the term, which seems clear enough to me, but people get terribly confused.) In 2020 I had another such trip, though in fewer countries/stores--it was a targeted advertising push in those countries only.

I turned down another agent a few months back. Trade is a slow system that holds no appeal for me, the royalties are too low, and this late in my life, I can’t see myself going that way ever, though in 2005, that’s what I wanted. People change and grow. Life’s externals change, and sometimes for the better, and the Kindle revolution fell solidly into that “better” category for me. I signed another audio contract as well a few months back.

However, I’m easing up on production, which will mean a drop in income going forward. I’m getting older, and this route is harder than trade publishing by several steps because you’re a publisher and entrepreneur as well as a writer. Furthermore, there’s not much else I feel driven to accomplish. I’ve had my good years, I’m financially stable, I’ve had plenty of ego-satisfying moments. I’ve sold over a quarter-million books, and while that would be nothing to Stephen King, it’s plenty good enough for me.

How do I have this success? Mostly, I write. Most of my books are priced at $4.99. 363 days of the year, I do not advertise. I don’t ever advertise books that haven’t taken off on their own first (which tells me there is a larger potential audience for them). I do no social media. No Patreon or other forms of begging. No side hustle that exploits wannabe writers (a practice I find pernicious and appalling). Instead, I write. I tell my fans when I release a new book. When they write me fan mail, I answer. That’s my simple, effective plan.

This journey has been tiring at times, but it has also been rewarding, and all the more rewarding because my trade success which sounded impressive for more than a decade before I made this switch paid me diddly squat. I like that people all over the world are reading my books, that they’re crying over them or feeling their hearts beat faster when worried about the characters. I like knowing I’m a full-time novelist, an accomplishment sadly few can claim. I have a good team of contractors, and they like me as a client. It was as stable as a creative career can be.

If you want to know the “secrets” (they aren’t) to success, start with my prior posts or with Shelley’s sticky post. If you don’t believe me or Shelley, no problem, and no offense taken; find someone you can verify is selling tens of thousands of books in your genre per year and listen to and watch them instead. In short, listen to the winners if you want to be a winner at this (or any) game. Plenty of decent human beings in that position are blogging or posting to forums or FB groups and telling their method for free. If you want success in trade publishing, listen to successful trade-published authors. If you want success this way, listen to successful writer-publishers. If someone with no writing success in the past few years is giving you advice, listen to them as attentively as you’d listen to your 3-year-old niece on the topic of your investments in the stock market.

In sum: it’s possible to succeed at a moderate level, making a living as a novelist. Two s-p writers of my acquaintance made more than 3 million last year, and another 25 or 30 make over a million, so it’s possible to do very well indeed, but thousands more of us are earning a middle-class living. Keep working hard, learn to be a smart businessperson, learn to be a good writer, and spend much less time on social media or writers’ forums than you do on writing. Do this for enough years, and some good things will happen for you, almost guaranteed.

Work hard and don't quit. That's the best advice I can give.
 
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Maryn

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Thanks for the informative post--and congratulations!

Maryn, pleased to see you
 

sandree

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Can we see your books somewhere? Maybe we want to read them too! So wonderful to hear from a very successful self published author.
 

lorna_w

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Thanks for the informative post--and congratulations!

Maryn, pleased to see you

Thanks! great to see you again. Here's an imaginary glass of wine to share.
 

lorna_w

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Hey Willow! As I'm sure you know, if you're moderately successful and talk about it on writers' boards, frustrated people not yet having success do drive-by one-stars on your books. If you're Hugh Howey, you couldn't give a hoot, but at my level (see the avatar for a good month, tho this month is not nearly as good), I'm not willing to take that hit to rating, as it could make the difference with, say, a Bookbub decision. So the three or four sales extra? Not worth the risk.

I have, however, read your book and liked it. : )
 
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Woollybear

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I love your post, Lorna. Thank you for validating my instincts!

Patty, just starting lap #2
 

sandree

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Hey Willow! As I'm sure you know, if you're moderately successful and talk about it on writers' boards, frustrated people not yet having success do drive-by one-stars on your books. If you're Hugh Howey, you couldn't give a hoot, but at my level (see the avatar for a good month, tho this month is not nearly as good), I'm not willing to take that hit to rating, as it could make the difference with, say, a Bookbub decision. So the three or four sales extra? Not worth the risk.

I have, however, read your book and liked it. : )

I didn’t realize that people do that. Sometimes people are just the pits.

You read my book - gasp. You are among a very elite group!
 

Kerry56

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I've come to the discussion late, but do you have an editor and someone to produce covers for you?
 

Maryn

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Those are good questions. We await the answers with baited breath.

Maryn, using nightcrawlers
 

Cephus

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I didn’t realize that people do that. Sometimes people are just the pits.

You read my book - gasp. You are among a very elite group!

People can be assholes. You'll get people who will give bad reviews for books they have never read because they are either angry that their own books don't perform as well, or simply because they like tearing down things that people like. It's why I pay little attention to non-verified reviews on Amazon. If I can't be sure you bought and hopefully read the book, I shouldn't care what you have to say.
 

lorna_w

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I've come to the discussion late, but do you have an editor and someone to produce covers for you?

Sort-of yes and yes. My process in brief:
  • Outline, draft in a month or less, revise over 2-4 weeks then proof 2 different ways
  • Usually 2 amateur proofreaders. Maybe send a scene or two to an expert (like a welder, if I have something about welding in there) for fact checking.
  • Pro proofreader (though he does a bit of copy editing for me if he catches a factual error. No content editing. I trust my skills.)
  • Pro cover done while the amateur proofers have it. Mostly around $300 but I've grabbed a few premades on sale for $20 or less that worked fine for a stand-alone book

When I was cranking and building the back list, this meant I could get six books out per year, which is crazy and exhausting and I do not recommend it in the least. My last book I drafted in less than 2 weeks, a personal record (it's not my worst either, not by any means) but it's still resting before I re-visit it. I prefer 2-3 books per year with rests between draft and revision or revision and proofing.

It took a whole lot of searching to find a good proofreader. Cover artists are easier, and mine is particularly wonderful for me but became popular after I found them and is now scheduled out half a year or more for new clients. It's one of the hardest parts of this, finding that team. And then praying no one in your team quits because that kind of entrepreneurship is hard too!
 

Kerry56

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Thanks for the update. I have some test readers who point out mistakes for me, but I wouldn't call them proofreaders, that aren't that diligent. :)

Finding an artist might be on the agenda at some point.
 

pattmayne

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Can we see your books somewhere? Maybe we want to read them too! So wonderful to hear from a very successful self published author.

This is important. Self-publishing services are VERY lucrative, so anonymous accounts of success are HIGHLY suspicious. I don't want to be rude, but I simply do not believe that this success story is true. On the anonymous internet, the burden of proof is on the speaker who is making a claim of success in a field where success is super rare. By default, I consider this an ad.


Hey Willow! As I'm sure you know, if you're moderately successful and talk about it on writers' boards, frustrated people not yet having success do drive-by one-stars on your books. If you're Hugh Howey, you couldn't give a hoot, but at my level (see the avatar for a good month, tho this month is not nearly as good), I'm not willing to take that hit to rating, as it could make the difference with, say, a Bookbub decision. So the three or four sales extra? Not worth the risk.

I have, however, read your book and liked it. : )

Maybe this is true. Maybe it's an excuse.

Again, I don't want to be rude, but why trust an anonymous and unverifiable success story when we're all inundated with ads trying to monetize our plans?
 
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Pastelnudes

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I'm afraid I agree with Pattmayne. This doesn't smell right.

Surely, sales made through your exposure in this thread would outweigh the possibility of a one star review.

Hope I'm wrong!
 

Woollybear

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I'm not at all skeptical of Lorna's story here. There are plenty of folks on the Indie Authors FB page and on the 20 books to 50K FB page who have similar trajectories. The key seems to be focusing on the content and marketing angle--lots of ongoing products, and building an audience. The numbers she gave upthread indicate that Lorna worked pretty hard to get out lots of titles.

Maybe if it seemed Lorna was selling something I'd feel otherwise.

When I ran a free promotion of Aerovoyant and publicized that it was free through various newsletters, I saw almost 3500 downloads in a week. There are people out there who want to read new books. It was an enlightening week.
 

lonestarlibrarian

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I've always enjoyed Lorna's posts. Her path is very much of the "I write when I'm inspired, and fortunately, I'm inspired every morning at 9 o'clock" variety.

I'm happy that Lorna shares her experience and her path with us. It's also very much of the "I put all my eggs in one basket, and then spend all my energy protecting the basket" variety--- she's got a niche that she's developed, and spends her efforts in catering to it and developing her presence in it, and it works.

Honestly, I've never bought a book from an AW writer just because I happened to like their thread. But I have responded to an AW'ers call for submissions, submitted, and never got paid. :p We're a lovely community, but I can see how someone would prefer to keep their forum presence on the socializing-and-information-sharing level, rather than trying to show off x number of titles for street cred, or treating fellow forumgoers as possible sales figures.

I enjoy your writing, Lorna, even if I haven't read your actual books. Thank you for sharing with us!
 

heza

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This is important. Self-publishing services are VERY lucrative, so anonymous accounts of success are HIGHLY suspicious. I don't want to be rude, but I simply do not believe that this success story is true. On the anonymous internet, the burden of proof is on the speaker who is making a claim of success in a field where success is super rare. By default, I consider this an ad.

But an ad for what? At the very most, the post might read like a PSA that self publishing has the potential to be a viable path to income if you work very hard at it for many years. I really don't see any villainy or false promises in that. Anyone I've seen trying to prey on other writers with their "success" story is 1) making success sound super easy and fast and 2) linking to their own self pub how-to book, publishing services, monetized blog, or online seminar. I give Lorna the benefit of the doubt because if you read the posts, you can see she's not selling anything here. It's just free advice you can take or leave, and I don't see any way that she's benefiting financially from posting it here.
 

Pastelnudes

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I don't know Lorna, but some of you have a history, so that's cool. I'm just super wary of anyone who makes impressive claims (that could really mislead a newbie), and then have some very good reason why they can't prove what they say.

As for what someone doing that could be selling, there are no end of things. Maybe the people who profit from self pubbers have a marketing dept. Why wouldn't they? I've had lots of friend requests on Twitter from people who don't exist. So I presume that people get paid for acting as real people on social media.

I'm not saying that's Lorna, and I apologise if I'm wrong.

There's nothing wrong with being sceptical. The internet is a weird place.

As for the way the OP’s post presents a realistic view of how much hard work is involved in self pub success, well, if I was being paid to promote the self-publishing industry, that's exactly how I'd present it.
 

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I'm going to stick my head in to remind people to be courteous, and remember to Respect your Fellow Writer.

I'm profoundly unhappy with the tone of some of the posts in this thread.

Knock it off. I'm not going to warn anyone a second time.
 
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Maryn

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I'm friendly with Lorna from elseweb, and she is what she claims to be.

Maryn, on record
 

Laer Carroll

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I've posted about my success several times on AW so I won't go into more detail here. My experience parallels that of Lorna's in several ways and that of other writers I know. I repeat the same conclusion: Work hard and don't quit.

Although I have to amend that. I love every aspect of writing and publishing. So even though I do a lot of work during each part of it does not feel like I'm working hard.

My first six books over as many years brought in at most a thousand dollars each year. Then in 2018 I published the first book of The Space Orphan trilogy and it hit big by my modest standards. Every since then I've made thousands of dollars each month.

Whether this momentum will continue with my future books I have no clue. I don't understand what's different about the Orphan trilogy and its companion piece The Star Woman. I do know that all my previous six books have begun to sell too.


I should mention that I only sell via Amazon. This lets me get income from the two Amz subscription services KU and KOLL. This amounts to about twice the money from book sales.