Guest Post by Paul Draker

How To Get Great Amazon Reviews For Your Brand-New Novel

First, a big thanks to Tess and Joe for launching this campaign in Tess's War On Alzheimers. You never know which bullet will end up winning a war, and with our help, Tess and Joe have already delivered more than $25,000 to the front lines. If you haven’t done so yet, please go visit her page and donate.

If you’re reading this, maybe you’re a newbie writer like me. A story idea sinks its hooks into your brain and won’t let go. You find yourself grinning into an open refrigerator, whatever you were going to grab forgotten as the perfect plot twist or high-concept hook reveals itself to you. Your spouse/kid/significant-other has to repeat themselves three times before you realize you’re still standing there with frost forming on you’re face. And still grinning like an idiot.

You go write the story. And rewrite. Study craft books. Rewrite. Join critique groups. Rewrite. People start liking what you wrote. Some even love it.

You make whatever sacrifices are necessary to get yourself a great editor. You do that because you know publishing unedited, unpolished, incoherent writing riddled with typos is unprofessional. It’s arrogant. If you expect readers to pay for your writing, they should be able to expect transparent prose and near-perfect copy from you, too.

You go get stunning cover art. A compelling blurb. Professional conversion to epub & mobi files. You upload your book to KDP, Nook Press, and iBookstore, and you “push the button.” Then you celebrate, and tell all your real-life and Facebook and Twitter friends your book is finally out. And you sell a few dozen copies. Your friends compliment you on how talented you are.

And all too soon—to paraphrase Animal Mother from Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket—“…you’re fresh out of friends, Joker.” Because half of your friends don’t read, and the other half don’t like the same kinds of books you do.

So you start eyeing BookBub, Ereader News Today, Pixel of Ink, and the other great sites where we indies can get the word out. But that glaring “Be the first to review this item” link on your book’s Amazon page is an ugly roadblock. You need reviews. Good reviews.

Still with me? Great. Let’s go get those reviews.

Should we:

1)     Harass friends and family to write their first book review ever?

2)     Pay a service to bulk-email a hundred or a thousand prolific Amazon reviewers in our genre, blasting them with a generic mail-merged solicitation to review our book?

3)     Review other new authors’ books ourselves, just so we can ask them to review ours?

No. All three approaches are total bullshit. Worse, they will damage your credibility as a newbie author. And you’ll end up making the rest of us indies look bad, too. Here’s why.

The problem with friends-and-family reviews:

I’m not going to touch the ethics here; I’m only going to focus on the practicalities. When checking out a new author on Amazon, the first thing a savvy book-browser does is look at the distribution of ratings. A natural distribution of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 star reviews is very easy to recognize. So is a pattern of friends-and-family-written 5-star reviews—even with a couple fake 4-stars and one 3-star thrown in to try to appear more authentic.

The next thing a savvy Amazon browser does is skim a few of the reviews. A quick glance at word count, specificity, and tone usually tells me right away which ones are honest, non-incented reviews by strangers and which ones are what the Amazon reviewer community refers to as “shill reviews.”

If there’s still any question about whether you’re looking at a shill review or not, the proof-positive check is to click on the reviewer’s name, and then the “See all my reviews” link on their profile. If the only three books he or she ever reviewed belong to that same brand-new author… or if five other titles got quick-and-dirty reviews that same day, but the reviewer reviewed nothing before or afterward… then you know.

And you move on immediately. Because the shill reviews look needy and sad, and the sour whiff of desperation makes you assume the book is lousy even when it really isn’t. You resent the author for trying to trick you. You make a mental note to avoid him or her in the future… if you actually bother to remember the name.

Hugh Howey’s WOOL has over 6,000 reviews on Amazon. (Go read WOOL, SHIFT, and DUST. Seriously. Then read ’em again slowly and take notes.) Hugh requires no introduction here, and he’s graciously allowed me to quote him on the topic of reviews.

Hugh Howey says:

I ask my friends and family *not* to write them (I had my wife delete some reviews for my older works)… It was over a year or so ago that I had to tell my father not to write reviews for my works. I love the man to death, and he was just trying to support a son that he was proud of, but he would get on and review my works as soon as they went up (he reads them in draft form before I publish them). At this point, I was aware of Amazon's review policy and the sensitivity toward authors soliciting reviews from friends and family. I never asked my dad to write reviews. He was just being nice. Same thing with my wife. What stinks about all of the controversy around the reviews is that my friends and family *do* read my books, and at least some of them actually like them. And they can't share their opinions.

Paul Draker says:

We can learn a lot from Hugh. Every new author has to find his or her own path, but with selfless folks like Hugh and Joe lighting the way for us and sharing their experiences so openly, it’s a hell of a lot easier now.

If you are *still* tempted to go the friends-and-family-reviews route at this point, here’s a final caveat emptor. Amazon’s independent reviewer community doesn’t like authors who do, because it devalues and shows disrespect for something they care a great deal about: honest, impartial reviews. Amazon’s most influential reviewers are people like you and me who are very passionate about what they do. They put a lot of time into it. They hate it when you make everyone question the integrity and credibility of Amazon reviews. As a new author, do you really want to poke our new gatekeepers in the eye? Especially when those gatekeepers are some of our best customers?

The problem with spam-solicited reviews:

I ran across a few services that will spam Amazon’s Top-100 or Top-1000 “contactable” reviewers if an author pays them to. Some target reviewers by genre: Mystery, Thriller, Romance, etc. One predicts a 9% response rate and a 6% agree-to-review rate. But if you try this approach, your chances of screwing yourself good are also reasonably high. Here’s why.

If you’ve written a novel that evokes strong reactions—and if it’s good, believe me, it will—your true target audience will love it. But not everybody will. Some people will hate it, and that’s fine. Look at the most-successful novels and you will see a plethora of one-star reviews panning them, too. Look at Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl reviews. And who wouldn’t want her sales?

But you aren’t Gillian Flynn. If you are, call me—I’ve got a series idea we can co-write ;)

If you write “thrillers” as I do, you face a real audience-segmentation challenge. The term “thriller” can mean anything from a CSI-style procedural or a courtroom drama, to an apocalyptic end-of-the-world epic, a gore-drenched serial-killer hunt, or a guns-blazing spy-versus-spy technothriller. Each has a distinct audience, and they don’t overlap much. “Mystery” could be a parlor-room cat-sleuth cozy or a Hitchcock-style suspense story or splatterpunk noir. “Romance” could be sweet, soft-focus boy-meets-girl that makes you go “Aww…” Or it could be sexually-explicit erotica. Genre-mashups make the problem worse. Industry BISAC categories fail to delineate the real distinctions between what a given group of readers will love and what they are likely to detest.

An email solicitation that begins: “Dear iluv2rivu, because you like thrillers…” is more likely to net you a bunch of lousy reviews than good ones. Not because your book sucks, and not because the solicitation screams “spam,” but rather because you ended up soliciting reviewers predisposed to dislike your book.

Oh, and a lot of the top reviewers *do* find getting spammed by those emails annoying. Especially when they can tell the book is one they won’t like. Once again, caveat emptor.

The problem with you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours author peer reviews:

Amazon already has, or had, a policy of deleting reviews by other authors. Enough said. If poking the new gatekeepers in the eye is a dumb idea, what about biting the hand that feeds you?

Okay, so none of those approaches are worth pursuing and some can backfire. They can seriously hurt your author cred. But that “Be the first to review…” link is still sitting there like a big, ugly cankersore in the center of your product-page’s face. So…

How does a newbie author go about getting great, honest, real Amazon reviews?

You know your book is good. Really damn good. You know there is a specific group of readers out there somewhere who will absolutely love it. They are your audience. In fact, you even know the exact tastes of those ideal readers. You know precisely what books they read, what movies and TV shows they watch. You know which ones they’ve loved, and which ones they’ve hated. And you know what they loved or hated about them. You know all of this because you see one of your ideal readers every day. In the mirror.

You *did* write the kind of story you always wanted to read, right? If not, what are you doing here? Go write *that* book, then come back.

Because what comes next presupposes that you’ve already done your part. You’ve written a story that people will actually love reading, and you’ve had it professionally edited, and honed your prose to perfection before you try this. The reviews you’re about to get will be no-bullshit honest reviews. If your book isn’t ready for that, you should NOT be doing this at all. If you do, you’ll get reviews, all right—one and two star ones. Worse, you’ll also hurt the credibility of the rest of us indie publishers.

But if you did do your homework and wrote a good book, your audience is out there somewhere. Even better, some of them are honest, tenured reviewers who will love what you wrote and give you a heartfelt, enthusiastic review on Amazon. Your book may well be a unique and beautiful snowflake, but right now it’s invisible in a blizzard of brand-new books. Your ideal reviewers are busy writing Amazon reviews for other books. They have no idea that yours exists. You would love to tell them about it, but you have no idea who they are, either.

What you do know is the other books and movies they love. And which ones they hate. And why. So roll up your sleeves… it’s time to get to work. I didn’t say this was going to be easy, did I? But you already wrote a good book. Compared to that, this part is cake. And you’ll see—once you start engaging and talking to reviewers who are part of your own unique target audience—that it’s rewarding, gratifying, and fun as hell, too.

Let’s dive in. Here it is, step by step.

STEP 1: Make a list of books and movies you absolutely loved, and which some aspects of your book are similar to. Unique snowflake? Nothing else like it? Gee, sorry, but something inspired you to write that particular type of story. Figure out what your all-time favorite book and movie influences were and write them down. You need a statistically-significant spread, so write down at least twenty. The more distinctive they are, the better. The more unique to your taste they are, the better. Then make a second, shorter list of five or so books and movies your friends expected you to love, but you ended up hating instead.

STEP 2: Read five-star and four-star Amazon reviews of the books and movies you love first. Whenever a reviewer’s specific comments make you smile and think, “Yep, that’s exactly what I thought,” or, “that was the most memorable part/character/twist/setting for me, too. That’s why I used a similar one in my book,” click the reviewers name to pop open their profile. Some reviewers have email addresses listed, but don’t jump in and email them yet. A single book or movie on which your tastes are similar doesn’t mean much. Sending them a vague email implying that any five-star reviewer of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books should be thrilled to hear about your own won’t get you good reviews. At this stage, you would probably just be annoying the recipient with unwanted spam. You might even earn yourself a lousy review by doing so.

STEP 3: Read the reviewer’s “In My Own Words” and “Interests” which some have taken the time to fill out. Look at their frequently used tags. All these things will give you a better feel for whether this person is part of your audience or not. If you see red flags that apply to your book (no graphic violence, dislike profanity), or just get a general sense they might not be a good match for you, move on. Again, you’re trying to find reviewers who will *want* to hear about your book… and trying not to be that jerk spamming people who don’t.

Look for Amazon rank badges next to the reviewer’s name: Top 1000 reviewer, Top 500 reviewer, etc. Reviews from higher-ranked reviewers generally get more visibility on your product page, in the two slots for “most helpful positive review” and “most helpful critical review.”

But trying to get the higher-ranked reviewers to review your book isn’t necessarily the best approach. They receive tens of daily email solicitations to review this or that. Most are Vine Voices, often with a backlog of obligatory reviews they owe Amazon before they can even consider tackling yours. They are already jaded by the tons of free review copies big publishers throw at them every day, so many have adopted a policy of ignoring indie book review solicitations. Because they have to review so many books, they might only speed-read or skim yours, then write a generic review that reads like backcover-blurb-summarized-plus-generic-faint-praise. That’s not what you want, either.

Instead, look at the reviewer’s “Helpful votes received on reviews” percentage. Here, the higher, the better. 80%+ is good. 85%+ is great. 90%+ is stellar. Below 50%, and you are asking a person to review you whose reviews most people consider unhelpful. In other words, probably a troll. Move on.

Also, some reviewers’ profiles clearly state “I don’t accept review requests” or “no self-published books” or “no e-books” or “I don’t review fiction” or similar. If so, respect their wishes and move on. They aren’t your audience. But if the reviewer’s profile reads like something you might have written yourself, you’re getting warmer. Still, you have much more to do before you can decide whether to click that email link or not.

Many profiles are blank: a nickname, but no details and no contact info. Even that’s not a showstopper if the reviewer’s tastes turn out to be a great match for your book, as we’ll see shortly.

Some profiles have a website or blog listed for the reviewer, but don’t go there yet, either. Save that for last. We’ll come back to it if the reviewer still seems like a good match after the next—and most important—step.

STEP 4: Now click on “See all 114 reviews” (or however many this particular reviewer has done.) Page through them to find which of the other books and movies on your lists the person reviewed, how they rated them, and what they said about them. If they haven’t reviewed several of the other books and movies on your list, it’s an indication they probably aren’t a good match, because folks tend to review their favorite things. Look at their one- and two-star reviews, also, and read what they say. If the reviewer disliked a book or movie you love, that’s a big yellow flag. If you disagree with why they say they disliked it, that’s a red flag. Move on. But if their opinions on the other things on your list parallel your own opinions, too, and they say “should get seven stars” and “my all time favorite” or say “fell asleep halfway through” and “I wanted the annoying sidekick to die” about the same ones you would, then BOOM. You most likely have found someone who would want to review your book. Another good sign is when they make frequent references and comparisons in their reviews to yet other books and movies you love—like John Carpenter’s THE THING—too.

Take notes on the individual reviews and colorful comments that you most strongly agree with. Seriously, take those notes because you’ll need them when you contact the reviewer. And don’t forget, you’ll be looking at lots of different potential reviewers and tons of titles each have reviewed. If you don’t take notes, it will all blur in your head. And then you’ll embarrass yourself telling someone you loved what she said about the chainsaw flashback in Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter when it was actually someone else who said that. Did I mention to take notes?

If you see reviews you emphatically don’t agree with, it’s time to move on, because the reviewer is not your audience. But if you find that the more of their reviews you read, the more you believe their tastes match yours, it’s time to go back to their profile page and click the link for their website or blog.

One last thing: as you read reviews, look for the word Kindle: “I was turning Kindle pages faster and faster at the end.” “My Kindle battery died on the last chapter, and I almost cried with frustration.” “When I read that part, I wanted to throw my Kindle in the pool.” If you find references to their Kindle or other e-reader, then grin and make a note of that, too.

If this seems like a lot of effort to put in to get to know a single potential reviewer, just consider how many hours of *their* time you are asking for, when you ask them if they want to read your book.

STEP 5: Read the reviewer’s webpage, if they happened to provide a link to one. Browse their blog posts. Get to know them better. Again, look for red flags that have relevance for your book (“BF took me to see Joss Whedon’s CABIN IN THE WOODS yesterday. Yawn.”), and make note of interests that match yours.

If the reviewer didn’t include their email on their Amazon profile but listed their website or blog, you can usually find their email or other contact info there.

STEP 6: You’ve now gotten a good feel for how this reviewer thinks and talks, what gets them jazzed, and what annoys them. You’ve read so many of their reviews that you can practically hear what they’ll say about your book in your head already. If you still are convinced they’ll love it, it’s time to send that brief email. Include:

·         How you found them: by reading a bunch of their reviews on Amazon.

·         Which comments and reviews of theirs you enjoyed. You write books. They write reviews. They want folks to read and value their reviews just as much as you want people to read and value your book. Tell them which reviews you liked, and why. Be specific. But be succinct, too.

·         Why you are contacting them: because you think that, based on what they said in their reviews, they might enjoy your book, too.

·         A very brief teaser or blurb for your book. But provide enough information to let them know what to expect, plot-wise and tone-wise.

·         A statement that you are looking for honest, unbiased reviews of your book.

·         Offer them a free review copy of your book.

If you are sure they read on a Kindle or other ereader (check your notes), offer to email a free mobi file of your book. But do not send it until they tell you they want it. Many will decline and buy their own copy, which is even better. They do it because they love books and want to support you, the author. And also because they don’t like to put the FTC-mandated disclosure of a free author-provided copy in the review, which might cause someone to question the honesty and impartiality of what they said about it.

If you have a print version available through Createspace or Lightning Source, you can offer the reviewer their choice of formats. It’s a classy thing to do. But it can get expensive fast.

If you don’t currently have a print version, narrow your target to reviewers who have mentioned their Kindle or ereader in a review. Otherwise, you’re probably wasting their time. And yours. And disappointing or annoying them.

No email address on their profile? No contact info? No problem. That “Add a comment” button beneath their most recent review of a book you both love? Leave a briefer version of your review request as a comment instead, but make sure you tick the “Receive an email when new posts are made” checkbox when you do it.

Be courteous. Be brief. Be honest. Be yourself.

Remember, nobody can express what’s great about your book as well as you can. And you’ll also be talking to the most receptive audience possible: the reviewers most likely to love it.

But no means no. If a reviewer doesn’t express interest, don’t pester them. Don’t spam them. Move on. Reviewers are our most influential, most valuable, most enthusiastic customers. Don’t pee in the pool the rest of us indies are swimming in, too.

STEP 7: Shake. Rinse. Repeat.

Before you start, I also recommend reading How To Get Good Reviews On Amazon: A Guide For Independent Authors and Sellers by Theo Rogers. It’ll help you avoid shooting yourself in the foot. You’ll learn a lot about the Amazon.com reviewer community from it, and I’ve borrowed from it shamelessly here.

If your own book is good—if it’s polished and professional and people actually enjoy reading it—repeat STEPS 1-7 enough, and that ugly “Be the first to review…” will go away, replaced by pretty yellow stars. Lots of them.

The best part is: you won’t only be gathering honest, positive reviews from well-respected Amazon reviewers this way. You’ll also be planting seeds that will grow into your own eager army of Constant Readers, too. And you’ll be meeting new friends who share your enthusiasm for the books and movies you love, including your own. Reviewers are by definition the most active, outspoken readers, and they share what they like with their friends. They spread the word. Your reviewers are all unique and beautiful snowflakes, too. You never know which snowflake will be the one to set off the avalanche.

As I type this, I’m staring at my own book NEW YEAR ISLAND’s ugly “Be the first to review” link. But I’m grinning at that nasty little sucker, because it’s not going to look that way for long.

Does combing through Amazon reviews until you find honest reviewers who share your tastes sound like a lot of work? Then picture Joe in the pre-Amazon days, driving around the country from bookseller to bookseller, talking to several a day and doing back-to-back book signings. For years.

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

If you’ve managed the hard part and written a book that some people will enjoy reading, then your own audience is out there, waiting for you. Now go find them.

Guest Post by Brianna Salera

I have a confession. I’m not Brianna Salera. I don’t even play one on TV. I do, however, write using that name and just published Brianna’s first book, Tessa’sEscape to Athena’s Ground, which is now free on Amazon. Why would I do that when I’ve got well-reviewed books under my real name?

I’m gonna blame Brianna on Joe.

My “real” books are genre reads that are well-written and professionally edited. They’ve gotten very good reviews (yes, even by a goodly number of people I’ve never met.) I’m proud of those books, and plan to do more.  The frustration is sales: the first one has sold from good to not so good, with the past six months being horrifically not so good. The second has sold well enough to take the family to Mickey D’s for a happy meal. 

Maybe twice.

I was 30,000 words into Book Number Three and plotting ways to address my woeful sales when I started hearing voices, well, a voice. It was the voice of Joe Konrath and he was singing one of his favorite songs: When One Thing Doesn’t Work, Try Another. I tried to ignore it. I put my fingers in my ears and sang “la la la la la, I can’t hear you.” But I could. Loud and clear.

A very long time ago, back in the day when covers had to be hidden because eReaders didn’t exist, I got hooked on historical ‘bodice rippers’.  My attraction to exposed breasts and giant ‘members’ died after a year or two, but I fondly remember how much fun they were to read and I wondered if they’d be as much fun to write. Joe’s Try Something Else siren song and the devil on my shoulder had me loading up my Kindle with contemporary erotic romances. I read, and acquainted myself with the heaving bosoms and throbbing members of today’s literary scene. Those books were fast and fun and I was only a little surprised when my own contemporary, not historical, storyline grew almost as quickly as this genre reader’s libido.

So I wrote it.

Now I had a little problem. I think my book is pretty good, for those who like erotic romance. But I’m a fairly conservative girl, and I embarrass easily. More importantly, I’m a professional with a serious job and I’d be incredibly uncomfortable if my day job coworkers and employer knew I wrote erotic contemporary romances. So I did what any brave writer would do, what some of you have already done, what Joe’s song inspired me to do: I published under a fake name.

I learned some interesting things with this little experiment.

A rose by any other name…the name on the cover was the only fake thing about writing Tessa’s Escape to Athena’s Ground. The book required attention to all the things we writers strive for: creative plot well-presented, interesting characters, proper pace, engaging voice, grammatical and structural competence, etc. Yes, Brianna’s name on the cover will spare me problems at work and embarrassment at the family dinner table. (“Hey Gram! Tell me about your new book, the one Mom won’t let me read.”) But it didn’t spare me the work any writing involves, whether one’s real name is on the cover or not. (Confession Number Two: the research for this one was a whole lot more fun than the research for my other books.)

Location, location, location…when starting in a new genre, reading a lot in that genre is essential, and so is knowing how to categorize your new book at Amazon. I chose Romance-erotic and Romance-contemporary after sampling other books in those categories. Did I pick the right online locations for Tessa’s Escape? I don’t know. Part of this trying-something-new business is making your best decision and being willing to change if it doesn’t work.

Girls just wanna have fun…while I’m proudest of my “real” books, writing hot romance was so much fun I could hardly tear myself away from the computer. This makes me wonder: does this mean my “real” books are the wrong genre for me? Should delight in the process of writing dictate what one writes? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m sure thinking about it in a way I hadn’t before.

Joe’s blog has given me a lot to think about over the years. My biggest blog takeaway is to try something different when things seem stuck (refuse to give up!)  What’s your Number One Takeaway from Joe’s Blog? And how have you used it?

If you enjoy erotic romance please check out Tessa’s Escape to Athena’s Ground, by me, not really Brianna Salera. It’s currently on KDP promo, free at Amazon through September 21^st.  If Tessa does even a little better than nothing, I’ll probably write another in the Athena’s Ground series. It’s just too damn much fun, it keeps Joe’s song down to a dull roar, and I already have a new character bouncing around in my head, begging for a shot at Athena’s Ground.

But first I must get back to my “real” writing. I’m going to finish Book Number Three before Christmas, or my name isn’t Brianna Salera.

Joe sez: Pick up Tessa's Escape. It's free.

My #1 takeway from my blog is the comments and guest bloggers. I'm constantly learning from other people, and upping my game because of it. Thanks for the blog post, Brianna, and for the free book. 

Guest Post by Hillary Rettig

Do You Suffer From Marketer's Block? by Hillary Rettig

Recently, I've noticed an interesting evolution in the writing productivity classes I teach. Up until a few years ago, writers almost always took one of my classes because they were procrastinating or blocked on a book or other work. These days, however, many who take my classes have finished their book: it's their marketing they're stuck on.

And many of those who are stuck are indie publishers.

What gives?

To understand what's going on, you first need to understand that procrastination isn't caused by laziness, lack of discipline, lack of commitment, or any other lack, but disempowerment. Disempowerment means you're not missing anything; just separated from, or constrained from using, that which you have. Locate and remedy the disempowering forces in your work and life, and your energy, discipline, commitment, etc., will "automagically" reappear. Here's more info on how to do that.

So what would disempower an indie publisher?

The major disempowering forces are: perfectionism, ambivalence, resource constraints, unmanaged time, ineffective work processes, traumatic rejections, and a disempowering career path. I characterize them all, and detail their solutions, in my book The 7 Secrets of the Prolific.

Perfectionism is the most serious because it undermines you in many ways, and also impairs your ability to solve the rest.

But let's look at that last one: disempowering career path. In the bad old days of traditional publishing, writers slogged away for years in a fundamentally disempowering system. You took years to write a novel; an editor or agent held onto the manuscript for months and then decided its fate in a few minutes (if you were lucky). And often, depending on how your publisher treated you and your work, getting accepted only brought on more disempowerment, since you would have little or no say over your book's cover, editing, and marketing.

In such a situation, where the odds are really stacked against a writer's success--especially if your work isn't trendy, or otherwise easily salable--procrastination actually makes sense as a way of "opting out" of an unfair and hopeless-seeming system. So that's what many blocked writers were doing: rebelling.

This example illustrates two core features of procrastination:

(1) Our reasons for doing it are always valid. Always. And,

(2) It's a suboptimal response to a bad situation. Procrastination isn't a character flaw; it's simply a coping strategy. And it's even okay (and entirely human) to procrastinate once in a while. However, as a primary coping strategy, it's a disaster, and leads to a life of unfulfilled bitterness.

Cut to 2013, and the glories of indie publishing.

Most readers of the Newbie's Guide to Publishing blog know that indie is a a major liberating and empowering force for writers. As Joe himself recently wrote: "It truly is the best time in history to be a writer. The are no longer any boundaries. You can work with whomever you want to, at your own speed, get paid monthly, write about anything you want, do very little marketing, and still reach readers....What an amazing, incredible time to be alive. How lucky we all are."

I concur! I indie published The 7 Secrets, and wound up with a book I truly loved that is now helping many people and selling hundreds of copies a month in electronic and paper formats. Like many successful indie publishers, my main problem is not the disempowering drudgery of dealing with capricious and uncaring publishers, but finding the time to replicate my success by writing and marketing as many other books as possible. Believe me--it's a much better problem to have!

Which brings us to all the cases of Marketer's Block I'm seeing.

I think what's happening is that many writers, who finally see themselves as having a realistic path to publishing via indie publishing, are no longer feeling disempowered when writing. And so they're finishing their books.

But then, after they start to market, it's a whole other story. Suddenly, they realize that marketing is not just a much bigger process than they had envisioned, it's also much slower. They had dreams of winning readers by the dozens or hundreds, but instead they're winning them a few (or one!) at a time, in what seems like a painfully slow effort.

They're also discovering that, while it's fantastic to have access to a superabundance of great marketing tools, it's also overwhelming. For many writers, figuring out the right mix of marketing tools and techniques is a constant challenge that's only getting tougher. A year ago, for instance, few writers had heard of email direct marketing companies like BookBub, BookGorilla, and BookBasset, but now they're all the rage.

It can all lead to a kind of overwhelm, decision fatigue, "analysis paralysis," and the feeling of disempowerment that leads to procrastination.

So what to do?

Here are some techniques that will help:

1) Acknowledge that you're in a business. The writers who succeed are those with the clearest vision, and what they see most clearly is that indie publishing is a business. So they educate themselves on business (visit www.SBA.gov to learn about free resources in your area) and conduct themselves like businesspeople. ALL businesses, whether they're selling shoes or salsa or science fiction, require lots of marketing and sales; and the best any business can offer is a decent return on an investment, which means that to succeed, you need to be be prepared to make initial investments of money, time, and attention. Relatedly,

2) Lower your expectations. Forget about the overdramatized, reductive, and probably untrue "overnight success" stories the media constantly pushes--they're not the norm. Indie publishing, like most businesses, is a long term endeavor, so work hard, moderate your expectations, and relish even your small successes (which probably aren't as small as you think).

3) Don't compare. In practically every class I teach, sooner or later someone starts complaining about Fifty Shades of Grey--how bad it is, how unfair it is that it's a bestseller, how much the world sucks for "real writers," etc. (It used to be Twilight, by the way--writers can always find someone to envy; and while I'm at it, let me remind you of Joseph Epstein's famous quote that, "Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.") It doesn't matter. Focus on writing the best books possible, and on doing the best possible marketing for those books, and your odds of a success that will be satisfying, if not stratospheric, will soar.

4) Work on your perfectionism. Because it is the main brake on your productivity and success. It's not at all the same as having high standards; it's a toxic brew of unreasonable expectations, harsh self-punishments, grandiosity, shortsightedness, reductionism, dichotomization, and more. For the complete description, click here. And for the solutions, click here.

And, finally,

5) Have fun. Because Joe is right: this is a golden age for writers. The problem we have is the one we want to have: too much opportunity. It's the problem of the proverbial kid in the candy store, and, like the kid, all we have to do is pace ourselves and we're in for a great time.

Hillary Rettig is author of the best-selling The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block (Infinite Art, 2011) and other works. She has taught writing, creative, and business productivity for more than a decade at Grub Street Writers, The Mark Twain House & Museum, The Loft Literary Center, and www.SavvyAuthors.com. She worked as a business coach and microlender for more than a decade, until indie publishing made it possible for her to live entirely on the proceeds from her books, workshops, and coaching. Visit www.hillaryrettig.com for free information about overcoming procrastination, perfectionism, and writer's block; and to learn more about Hillary and her work. She welcomes your inquiries at hillary@hillaryrettig.com.

Joe sez: Good advice, well presented. 7 Secrets of the Prolific is now $3.95 on Amazon, and I just bought a copy.

If anyone has questions for Hillary, please put them in the comments.

Guest Post by David Haywood Young

Hi everybody!

I say that sometimes on my blog, too, and it's a sort of private-to-me joke. Very nearly an entirely private joke: I don't have a lot of readers. Compared to some people.

But when I started I had none. Even my wife and my mom needed constant prodding! (In fact they still would, but I gave up on 'em...the traitors.)

These days, a couple of hundred people read each of my posts, and...well, I obviously ain't no Joe Konrath but I find that both flattering and humbling. As it says on my homepage, I'm not sure I even want to be the sort of wildly popular writer who can't respond to his readers. I love the interaction.

Okay, enough about me. (I would've also described myself as a Konrath groupie, but then I'd have had to tell you he doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, and then somebody would raise the obvious question...frankly I neither know nor care what he does with them, and neither should you. Best to let it lie, don't you think?)

Let me tell you what's different about this guest post: I'm not talking about any of my books. I'm not even linking to them. I'm confident enough in my plan for the next year that I can say this: frankly I don't think I need to plug anything here. Also, I don't think it would benefit me much in the long term even if I did.

(I don't think there's anything wrong with self-promotion, by the way. I'm just trying to make a point about an alternative approach to the problem.)

Bear in mind:

1)      Reviewers of my books (on Amazon) have generally been quite kind,

2)      My first novel sold fairly well for the first couple of months, but

3)      Current sales can't even climb out of the...plumbing...to reach the toilet, and

4)      My second novel never really sold at all even though I do get nice comments from its few readers (a self-inflicted wound, I think: my sense of humor won't let me change the title, and its cover sucked), but

5)      I'm nevertheless pleased as all hell with my writing career just now.

I'm here for the long haul. I need to generate material for various retailers' virtual shelves. I also need to connect with readers. Thing is? I can. It'll just take some work. So, for the near future, I'm going to use that shelf space a little differently than most. Than any, as far as I know, unless you folks want to come along with me. Which you're welcome to do.

All right. I'm coming at this whole writerly ambition thing from a software/entrepreneur background. I've posted about that before, and you can find that stuff if you want to. What gripes me most about the current indie publishing world? Customer lock-in at Amazon. The customers under discussion? We're them. As a business guy I have to say this: it sucks the bottom line.

I mean, let's face it. They've got us. We do our damnedest to send people over there to buy books. And why not? It works. They know who our actual repeat customers are. And they know better than to tell us. Since they also have a huge pool of potential first-time buyers handy, we're convinced we can't afford to take our toys and go home. We play in their sandbox, or—essentially—not at all.

Seriously? Doesn't that bug you? We advertise for them? I grok the necessity, but it's damn well backwards if we want to grow a long-term self-sustaining business for ourselves. Here's the neat part: I think we can improve the situation. I don't even think it'll be all that hard, as long as we're willing to work at it. And no, I'm not just talking about email lists...though I do think they're essential.

Right now I should tell you all about my new guaranteed way to do business without Amazon. That'd be cool. But I'm not going to tell you about a foolproof get-rich-quick scheme for indie writers (though of course I do have one). Nor am I going to tell you about the bright future indies have in traditional bookstores (though I'm wildly optimistic on that score too).

Incidentally, did you follow those links to my site? Sucker! Fun, though, I hope.

Seriously though: it's the counter-intuitive but dead-simple ideas that work. I did a goofy giveaway on my blog a little while back, in which instead of posting download links I personally emailed free e-copies of any book anybody asked me for, one to a customer (obviously on the honor system there), in any format they liked...for 30 days. I put a lot of work into the post explaining it all, trying to make the offer sound enticing. And a ton of work into getting all the books sent within 24 hours of the requests, with personal comments included if the requester had a blog or something. My wife was...supportive and pleased and exasperated as hell by the end of it. Maybe I'll wait till next year to do it again! {8'>

But every single one of the recipients has my personal email address and knows I'll talk to them. I got a few reviews and a few new beta readers out of the deal (and it was fairly recent, so there may well be more coming), but the main thing? Though the overall volume was a small fraction of what I could've done with a KDP giveaway, it was a hell of a lot more fun for all of us. And I think a bunch of these new people will stick with me. If I can continue to earn their attention. My opinion? Joe Konrath can't afford to do this sort of thing. But I can. So, as long as I'm willing to put the work in and I don't let it stop me from writing new stuff, I have a competitive edge. If so, I should use it, huh? My readership, though puny, can grow a lot (in a percentagewise sort of way) from a few efforts like this.

I'm doing another goofy thing in which I'll be writing a story about a character who likes a particular computer game. Oddness ensues. The character is a bit player from my first novel, so there's some potential to help re-goose that one (also the sequel I'm writing ought to help, and so will the first novel's eventual perma-free status).

Thing is, I'm doing this story in semi-collaboration with the game designers. We're going to try some cross-pollination between our audiences. And why not? It should be fun for everybody involved.

But here's my main topic for today: I'm doing something deceptively straightforward, both at Amazon and emphatically not.

1)      I'm posting a new free story on my blog every Wednesday. For a year.

2)      Each following week I'm publishing them via Smashwords (as freebies) and Amazon (as...well...$.99 specials, pending the elusive price-match).

3)      I provide links to retailers on my site so folks who feel the urge will have a handy way to go post a review if they like, or recommend the story to others...or whatever they choose to do.

4)      The biggest bit, simple as it is: each and every one of these stories, when posted at Amazon and elsewhere, will include language right on the “book description” page (and in a “Thanks for Reading!” section at the end of the ebook) telling folks about the weekly freebies on my blog. People will see that whether they buy the story or not.

5)      Yes, I'm continuing to write novels. Though, yes, at a slower pace.

Essentially? I'm trying to turn the tables on Amazon (to some extent) by using them to place a highly-targeted ad for my blog. Let their recommendation engines roar! Hell, I don't even have to make a sale for this to work. Anybody who finds any of my “Weekly Challenge” stories can: (1) go away, (2) buy the story, (3) at some point buy a story collection including the story they've found, or (4) come play with me at my place today. Or some combination of the above.

Let me ask you...which is of greater value? A $.99 sale, of which I get to keep $.35? Or bringing a reader to my blog, where if all goes well he/she will get in the habit of reading my fiction every week? Possibly even signing up to one of my mailing lists?

Kind of a no-brainer, isn't it? And here's a funny thing—my blog subscription email list, which I put off even creating for a long time, is growing more than three times as fast as my RSS subscriber pool (assuming Feedburner is roughly accurate on the RSS side of things). I had no idea how many people I was essentially turning away until I tried it. Which makes me feel kind of stupid, because I knew exactly how much my email list was worth when I ran an internet startup: essentially it was the only asset I owned that mattered. The same applied when I was doing freelance work, though in that case phone numbers mattered too. I did have a new-release-only list going already, but I was still kinda dumb.

I originally intended to put the stories into KDP Select, and in fact I did that with the first one. But I got pushback via blog comments, Twitter, and email. I can't say how much of that was genuine interest versus frustrated entitlement, but people flat didn't like it when I shut them out via Amazon-exclusive content. So I learned something there too.

Speaking of obvious stuff I missed going into this? Until recently I failed to grasp something so important it's kind of funny. It's out there for all to see, but I think nearly everybody is missing it. Let's recap: Amazon is giving less of a boost to indies (especially via KDP Select) than they used to. Thus, it's hard to sell much of anything unless you have a following or pay for an ad, and you kind of need a following to get enough reviews to place an effective ad. So...what's that mean? Should we panic? No, we should direct our efforts elsewhere. Because Amazon has made themselves much less important to indie writers than they used to be. I'm waiting for other people to notice this and come up with new strategies accordingly.

In fact...if we need to go find readers ourselves in order to get a sales “bump” to kick off Amazon's algorithms, why do we even need Amazon? Not that I'll go out of my way to stay away from their sites, but true fans we find for ourselves are probably at least somewhat portable. Seriously, just today a reader saw a post about some trouble I'd had with Amazon and asked me via email where I'd prefer she get my stuff in the future.

Feel free to discount all of the above. This isn't a success story. It's not a testimonial. I'm just telling you what I'm up to, because I think it will work. Possibly very well indeed. But if it doesn't? It doesn't really matter. I'll just try the next thing.

And thanks, Joe. You helped inspire me to go back to writing fiction. I'll make it work one way or another—this is, or will be, my third career (after professional poker and software development). Neither of the other two was easy to break into. I don't at all mind that I'll need to earn any success I attain in this new area over time. Sounds like a blast actually!

Oh, and if any of you guys are in the place where I used to be? Where you get a lot of value out of Joe's blog but haven't read his fiction? Well, if that's your spot, change it. I've now read most of his fiction. It's also a blast. Those books, I'll plug anywhere.

Did I mention I believe success will come from hard work and a bit of creativity? 'Cause I do. And nobody seems to be stopping me from finally doing what I've always wanted....

Joe: I applaud David for thinking outside the box, but will offer some unsolicited advice: Novels sell much better than short stories. At some point, while releasing a story once a week, consider releasing a segment of a serial novel, so at the end of the year you have a longer work or two. Those can then be put together and sell for $3.99, and you'll make more money in the long run. 

Also, I'm a good reminder that blog traffic isn't directly comparable to ebook sales. The first part of the zombie novel GRANDMA? that I'm writing with my son has sold 100 copies since we released it last week.

I'm a name brand with a popular blog and lots of bestselling titles, and that ebook--my latest--is selling lukewarmly. I expect it to pick-up as we add more installments, but so far I'm underwhelmed.

No one knows what sells, or why. Having a well-known name, lots of publicity, a brand, a blog, 10,000 Twitter friends--none of that makes people buy books. All of my experience points to the majority of my books sales due to Amazon's algorithms and website structure (reviews, bestseller lists, also bought, search engines.) Who I am outside of Amazon.com doesn't seem to matter much. 

So go for it, David, but keep your expectations modest, and remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's smart to increase your virtual shelf space with a lot of content (provided it is good content) and if you can wrangle a novel or two out of your experiment, all the better.

My Collaboration Agreement

Addendum: This post is now superseded by my Kindle Worlds terms. I am no longer collaborating under the terms of this post, but please check out my website for details on how to write in my universe.

So this is what my lawyer and I came up with re: an agreement between me and any potential collaborator. For those hearing this for the first time, I have allowed anyone to utilize the universe I have created (my characters, settings, plot lines, and ideas) and write within it and then split the profits with me. Details here.

This is the outline for the eventual contract that any collaborator and I will sign. I'd like to hear any concerns in the comments.

Collaboration Agreement

1) Parties
a) Joe Konrath (Joe)
b) Author

2) Work
a) Preliminary title and brief description of the planned book or books

3) Collaboration
a) Joe and the Author will collaborate to create the Work as described herein.
b) Author has created a manuscript utilizing the characters and settings of Joe’s novels
i) List of novels in Exhibit A
c) Joe grants Author a terminable license to utilize Joe’s characters and settings to create new works under the terms of this Agreement.
d) The Work must be approved by Joe prior to publication.
e) Joe will have final editorial control over the Work, including control over how his characters and settings are depicted and continuity control for story and character arcs.

4) Author Credit
a) Joe and Author will each be named as an author of the Work wherever the authors are identified in the Work and in publicity and promotion materials created to promote the Work.
i) Author’s name will be depicted in the same manner as Joe’s, alphabetically.

5) Copyright
a) The copyright for the Work will be registered in the name of Joe and Author.

6) Publication
a) Joe will pay all costs of publishing the Work.
i) Cover
(1) Joe will consult with Author concerning cover design but Joe will have final authority to determine and approve the cover design.
ii) Editing, Proofing, Formatting
b) Author will consult Joe concerning marketing, advertising and promotion of the Work, but will have final authority to determine all marketing, advertising and promotion. Joe and Author will split all costs of marketing, advertising and promotion if any costs are incurred.
i) Nothing in this paragraph will prevent Author from personally marketing the Work.

7) Royalties
a) Joe’s Manager
i) Joe and Author jointly appoint Jane Dystel (“Manager”) as the accounting manager of the proceeds received from the sale of the Work.
ii) Manager shall collect all proceeds received from the sale of the Work.
iii) Manager shall receive a commission of 10% of the proceeds received from the sale of the Work.
b) After deduction of the Manager’s fee, the balance of the proceeds shall be divided equally between Joe and Author.
c) Royalties shall be paid by the Manager on a monthly basis within 30 days of receipt of sales proceeds.
d) Each royalty payment to Author shall be accompanied by a royalty statement prepared by Manager detailing all proceeds received.
e) Author may request additional details concerning the sales of the Work from Manager.

8) Subsidiary Rights
a) Author may attempt to license, sell or otherwise exploit subsidiary rights to the Work.
b) No subsidiary rights will be licensed, sold, or otherwise exploited without the written consent of both Joe and Author.

9) Termination
a) Either party may terminate this Agreement upon written notice to the other.
b) Consequences of Termination
i) The Work will be removed from publication as soon as practicable, subject to rights of electronic bookstores to retain copies to replace lost ebooks previously purchased by readers, and any outstanding subsidiary rights contracts.
ii) Author shall have no further rights to utilize Joe’s characters or settings in any book or story.
iii) Joe shall be the sole owner of any editorial changes or additions he made to the Work and Author shall not utilize any materials.
iv) Author shall be the sole owner of the material included in the Work in the form in which it was first submitted to Joe for review excluding the names of any of Joe’s characters.

10) Liability for Claims of Third Parties
a) Each party warrants:
i) That he/she is the sole author of his/her contribution to the Work;
ii) That his/her contribution is an original work of fiction;
iii) That his/her contribution does not violate a copyright or trademark of any person or entity;
iv) That nothing in his/her contribution depicts a real person, living or dead;
v) That nothing in his/her contribution constitutes defamation, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of identity, intrusion into privacy or publication of private facts or depicts any person, living or dead, in a false light or otherwise provides a basis for a claim that publication of the Work has caused damage to any person or entity.
b) In the event of a claim of any person or entity arising from either party’s contribution to the Work occurs, the party creating the contribution shall pay all costs and damages arising from such claim, including, without limitation, the other party’s reasonable attorneys’ fees.
c) The warranties and obligations to pay costs arising from claims of third parties shall survive the termination of this Agreement.

11) Arbitration
a) In the event of any disagreement or dispute between the parties arising from this Agreement or the activities contemplated thereby, the parties agree that such disagreement or dispute shall be subject to binding arbitration.

Joe sez: I think my lawyer hit all the main points. I'd add 6) c) Author has full say in how/where the Work is released, including price, platforms, and sale price.

I want the co-writer to not only have the ability to leave whenever they'd like, but also the power to decide how much to sell the work for, where to sell the work online, and when to discount the work (if ever).

So what about this agreement outline doesn't work? I want to hear from people about things I may have missed.

I Have Seen the Enemy

I have seen the enemy, and it is me.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post explaining how I was willing to franchise my intellectual properties. In short:

1. Test out new writers by having them do a Jack Daniels short story, teaming Jack up with a character from their series.

2. The writer writes the story, without input from me. If my wife likes it (she's my first reader and knows my universe better than I do), I'll do the rewrite and editing, pay for the cover art and proofing and formatting, and then publish the story through my agent, Jane Dystel. Jane will pay us monthly and provide royalty statements. She'll also seek out interest in audio and foreign rights.

The author and I split the profits 50/50, and then do the same thing with a novel (novels sell much better than shorts.)

3. If my wife doesn't like the story, the writer can self-publish it without me, changing the names of my characters. So Jack Daniels would become some other female cop, and the writer would have full rights to the story.

I've gotten over twenty stories in response. 

And I've rejected roughly half of them.

And I hate it.

I know what rejection feels like. I've been rejected over 500 times. And many of those rejections were for books that went on to make me rich, so I know that the gatekeepers were indeed wrong.

Now I'm the guy saying, "Thanks for the submission, but it's not for us" and it makes me feel shitty. I also may be wrong, passing up some good stories. In fact, I hope I am wrong.

If I rejected you, here's the best revenge: self-publish the story and get rich and famous with it. Then you'll be happy you didn't have to share any royalties with me. And I truly hope you do get rich and famous.

That said, it makes me wince when I send a rejection email. Especially since some of them were close calls.

Here's the deal with close calls: A close call means I have to put in more time on the rewrite, and I simply don't have time to do that. That's why I said, in my original blog post, to send your best work the first time, because there will be no resubmitting the same story to me. 

I'm not a publishing house. I can't spend a lot of time turning every story I get into something I think my fans will like. As it stands, I'm putting in lots of hours on the stories I got that I loved. I can't put in even more hours on the stories I only like.

So I feel like a bully and a jerk, and maybe I am, and maybe I'm dead wrong, but it is what it is.

For the record, a lot (not all) of the rejections fall into one of these categories:

1. Not enough of my IP/characters are in the story. They seem added as an afterthought, or just so they're part of my universe. 70% your characters and 30% my characters won't work. Readers are going to buy these stories to read my characters. If the story is all about someone they don't recognize, the reader is going to write bad reviews. 

Joe's advice: Try to make it at least 60/40. Better still is 50/50. I've also gotten a few that were 100% my IP, and I accepted them.

2. I don't think it'll work replacing a character from one of your older works with Jack Daniels. It might, but my hopes aren't high. If Jack Daniels was such a sterotypical character that a simple Find and Replace could turn any cop story into a Jack Daniels story, then my writing sucks worse than I fear it does.

Joe's advice: I think I write unique books, with humor, scares, charm, and memorable, idiosyncratic, unique characters. If you want to be a part of this program, read as many of my books and stories as you can, and start from scratch. Don't cut and paste.

3. Pay attention to my style. I write from various POVs, using a particular tone. I have plenty of action and dialog. There is plenty of white space on every page, and not much description. I use a lot of suspense, and humor, and twists. 

Joe's advice: If you wrote KILLING TIME by Lee Child and instead had Jack Daniels as the hero, I'd reject it. Lee's a great writer, and that's a great book, but that isn't how I write or the kind of book I write. Jack Daniels is not Jack Reacher. Ditto if you write like Evanovich, or Grafton, or Patterson (thank you everyone for not sending me a 20 page story with 65 chapters), or Clancy. Please don't attempt to write one of my IPs unless you not only have read it, but are a fan of it and understand my tone. I'm not simply searching for good writers. I'm searching for good writers who can write like me.

I will say this: I've worked with some terrific writers, but no one can write my character Harry McGlade like I can. It's okay to use Harry in a story and then put (JOE PUT A HARRY LINE HERE) instead of trying to write it yourself. But if you do that fifty times, maybe it would have been better just to leave Harry out of the story. 

   

To wrap up this blog entry, I'm surprised to see I've become the very thing I hate: a gatekeeper. And it gives me a little more respect for the gatekeepers, because it isn't pleasant rejecting someone.

But I'm not a publisher, or an agent. I'm a writer who has made over a million bucks writing these stories, and has accrued a nice-sized fanbase, and is willing to share that fanbase with other writers so we both make money. 

And to that end, I should have the collaboration agreement from my lawyer soon, and I'll blog about it to get feedback. 

Until then, keep those stories coming.

GRANDMA? by JA Konrath and Talon Konrath

For most of my life, I knew I was going to be a writer.

But I didn't know my fifteen-year-old son wanted to be a writer. Not until I saw him working on a story. It wasn't for school. He was writing it just because he felt like it. And he didn't even tell me about it.

Naturally, I asked to read it, and it made me laugh out loud. It needed some work, so I gave him some tips, and when he incorporated those I thought it was actually good enough to be published.

So I did a rewrite, fleshing out the story, adding some jokes, ramping up the suspense.

The result is the first part of a YA serial novel called GRANDMA?

It's Talon's story, characters, and scenes, embellished by Dad.

And it's now available for 99 cents on Amazon.

It was fun writing about zombies, and fun writing with my son. We're hoping to release a new section every few weeks, until it is novel-length.

It also has an afterword by thrilleromedy bestseller Jeff Strand.

When Talon hit the Save and Publish button on KDP, a big smile on his face, I thought about how extraordinary the publishing world has become.

I got my first rejection letter at 18, and wound up garnering more than 500 of them, trying to break into this industry.

Newbie writers, who never worked in the legacy world, have no idea how good they have it right now. It took me a decade of trying to impress the gatekeepers before I got a break. Those were hard, depressing, years where I busted my ass. And then once I finally got published, I spent eight more hard, depressing years busting my ass. I've signed books at over 1200 bookstores in 43 states. I've been to dozens of writing conventions, conferences, and book fairs. When this blog began, I was known as the king of self-promotion, and I spent more of my work week marketing than writing, all while trying to make ends meet with the little amount of money I was making.

In eight years, I made about $350,000 writing. That's about $40k a year, and I spent a lot of that on travelling.

Since 2009, I've made $1.6 million by self-publishing. Not only has it been gratifying, but it's been a lot more fun, and a lot less work, than my legacy years.

Talon makes $40 a week, picking up dog poop. He turns 16 in October, and is looking to buy a car with the money he's been saving for years, and he has talked often about supplementing his allowance with a fast food job in order to get gas money.

If GRANDMA? sells as well as my other short stories, it should make between $2k and $6k a year. But we anticipate there being five parts, all 99 cents, and then that'll be a book we'll sell for $3.99.

I've never done YA before, and I've never done a serial novel released in installments before, and I don't know if the zombie genre still has juice in it, so I don't know how well GRANDMA? will do. But if the series does modest business, Talon has a shot of making more than $40 a week. With a little luck, he could make a few hundred a week. At 15 years old.

Now he obviously has an advantage having me as a father and a co-writer. But if Amazon and Kindle didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to offer him that advantage.

It truly is the best time in history to be a writer. The are no longer any boundaries. You can work with whomever you want to, at your own speed, get paid monthly, write about anything you want, do very little marketing, and still reach readers.

During September, I'll also be releasing nine Jack Daniels tie-in stories, written by writers who followed my franchise guidelines. By 2014 I hope to have several new Jack Daniels novels, written by other writers, self-pubbed and earning.

As writers, we can do whatever we want to. We're only limited by our imaginations.

What an amazing, incredible time to be alive. How lucky we all are.

Guest Post by Kay Bratt

I self-published before self-publishing was cool.

Just like many wanna-be published writers years ago, I had queried literary agents to represent my memoir and received nothing but rejections. But tenacity is a long-ingrained trait and I was not to be deterred. I self-published my memoir in 2009. 

Luckily, because I’d been active in online communities and had somewhat of a reputation in my field, within a few weeks, my memoir titled Silent Tears gained traction in the top 300 of all Amazon e-books. There it garnered the attention of Amazon Publishing and they offered to make me one of their very first published authors.

At first I was skeptical because I was unaware that Amazon had a publishing side. When I educated myself that it was legitimate, I was still unsure if it would benefit me long term. I reached out to a well-known agent for confirmation, then signed with her to negotiate my contract. Through her experiences in the business, I realized that Amazon Publishing was offering a fair royalty split, the perk of a marketing manager, and use of a top notch designer team for packaging. Even back then I also understood that Amazon was a machine that could reach thousands more readers than I ever could hope to on my own.

My memoir, Silent Tears; A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage, was re-launched by AmazonEncore in 2010 and even held spots in the Top 50 of Amazon’s Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store lists in Amazon US and UK. Eventually, the print rights were sub-licensed by Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt and the books have even made it into a few bookstores and hundreds of libraries across the nation and sold well over 60,000 copies.

As I worked hard to keep the buzz going on my book, I received a reality jolt when my local bookstore owner called and asked me to remove the first editions of my book from her store. She’d read about my re-launch by the Big Bad Wolf, a.k.a. Amazon Publishing, and basically said I was sleeping with the enemy.  

Moving on, I spent a few years promoting Silent Tears and over time, with the increase of more websites and bloggers drawing attention to my memoir, I noticed my platform getting bigger and my sales increasing substantially. To continue building my readership, I made sure during that time (and still do) to respond to every reader email, letter, statement, or request. I also began speaking at different venues about my experiences in China.

A few years later, I wrote my first fiction book and submitted it to Amazon Publishing. I was excited about launching a novel with them, as they’d begun to really make a name for their publishing arm. They were introducing new imprints at a rapid fire rate, and I was sure with their power, they’d make my book a success. So far, they’d proved to be just what they’d offered—a partnership with me. I was impressed and wanted more. When they declined the novel, I spiraled into an abyss of self-doubt.

But only for a few minutes.

At that time, the self-publishing stigma was starting to fade and a new breed of authors calling themselves Indies were suddenly releasing new material and even work they’d always hoped to see published, but hadn’t been successful with placing. Again, I self-published the book, titled Chasing China.

At that time, Indie publishing was taking off and authors were hitting what they called the Indie Gold Rush. Determined to prove I could write something else Amazon Publishing would want to represent, I penned another book and again submitted it to Amazon. This one, A Thread Unbroken, was a novel woven around the tragedy of child-bride trafficking in China that required months of research. But my self-confidence was restored when my Amazon editor offered me a contract. In 2012, the book launched, and by then I’d already submitted yet another title to Amazon Publishing, this time a novella of shorter length. Because of the length, I thought for sure they’d decline it, and again planned to immediately self-pub upon their rejection.

Instead, my Amazon editor said he loved the novella but wanted me to dig deeper and expand it to novel length. With his words of encouragement, I was more excited than I’d ever been about any project. He gave me ideas on how to take the story from good to great, and I hung up and got to work.

Four months later when I submitted not just one expanded novel for review, but two—with an outline for a third in the series. He took a few weeks to review my proposed series, then came back with the good news that Amazon Publishing would like to offer me a 3-book deal and a very healthy advance for my series titled The Tales of The Scavenger’s Daughters.

Shocked speechless at first, I accepted their deal, then immediately left my corporate position to focus full time on advocating for children and writing.

When I finished the rough drafts of all three novels, I rewarded myself and my husband with a few days of sun on a balmy Mexican beach. There I sat back and realized that for the first time in my life, royalties as well as a boost from my advances had brought me in well over six-figures for the year. I’d been slogging at it for more than half a decade, writing guest posts, articles, sending out review copies, tweeting, Face-booking, speaking events, blogging and basically doing anything and everything to widen my audience, or as they say in the business—build my platform. I was receiving decent royalty checks all along, but I’ll admit, passing those magical digits made me feel like I was on top of the world.

Between drafts of the series, I’ve started work on book four for the series. I also have a rough draft of book one of a new series I’ve kept under wraps. I’ll submit both to Amazon Publishing and if the so-called Big Bad Wolf wants a bite, I’ll gladly don a little red cape and hand them over. After all, Amazon Publishing might be getting a piece of the pie, but there’s plenty left over to satisfy my appetite. In other words, I can’t imagine that I’d have been happier with any other publisher than I’ve been with Amazon Publishing. They’ve done all they’ve promised me as an author and more.  

For other struggling authors out there, I would give this piece of advice: Find something you’re passionate about and make that your niche/genre. Be an expert in your subject. Do research, take field trips, and learn all you can about it. They always say write what you know….but I’ll take that a step farther and say write what you love. Communicate in depth with your readers, and if you don’t find success with your first book(s), just keep writing until you get there.

And good luck! Please connect with me on www.kaybratt.com

*For those who have made it this far on my Pro-Amazon rant, I’d like to acknowledge that the first book in The Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters was released on August 13 and along with my own aggressive launching campaign I had some help from my team at Amazon. Compliments of a snazzy banner on their Kindle book landing page, plus a GoodReads ad and giveaway, some Kindle screen-saver action, and probably multiple email blasts, by the end of day three the book reached a ranking of 55 in all Kindle books and hovered in the Top 100 the entire post-launch week.