Category: Business

Getting Leverage On Yourself Can Help You Finish Your Novel

The other day I talked with a friend who fell on the ice, her second fall this winter. She’s always had trouble with balance, and she’s worried because this time her injuries were more serious.

I asked if her doctor suggested anything to  prevent falling. She said oh, yes, she has 10 minutes of balance exercises to do each day but she never does them.

Most of us have things that, if we did them regularly, would help us reach our goals. We know what they are, yet often it’s hard to follow through.

The challenge of following  through day after day and week after week to reach a long-term goal is something novelists grapple with all the time.

No matter how fast you write, it’s impossible to finish a novel in one sitting. You need a long-term habit of writing in smaller chunks over many days, weeks, or months to reach (on average) about 80,000 words.

So how can you make it more likely you’ll do that?

A Tale Of Two Friends

When I attended the Oregon Coast writers workshop last fall, Dean Wesley Smith talked about when he was a college student taking a writing class.

He and his friend both wanted to write a story every week and submit it to a magazine or other publication.

They agreed to meet for dinner once a week. Whoever had failed to  complete a new story and mail it (this was back when you had to actually print and mail your manuscripts) would buy dinner.

As both were students and neither had much money, the fear of needing to pay for dinner got both of them to finish and submit stories weekly.

The agreement between these two friends is a great example of using leverage and accountability to meet writing goals.

Leverage And Accountability

You probably first heard of leverage in connection with moving physical objects. It literally means exerting force by means of a lever. It also means to support or strengthen.

When it comes to personal habits, to get leverage on yourself means to use a consequence or outside force to exert more pressure on yourself.

In the story above, the consequence of paying for dinner on a tight budget created pressure to accomplish the weekly task of writing, finishing, and submitting a story.

Accountability also can be used to get leverage on yourself.

Dictionaries define accountability as an obligation or the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own actions. That’s why corporations are talked about as being accountable to shareholders.

On a personal level, by telling someone you trust your goals and setting a schedule for reporting your progress (or lack of it) you become accountable to that person.

It’s much harder to skip doing something if you not only must admit it to yourself but to someone else.

Dean Wesley Smith’s story includes accountability.

In addition to the cost of a meal, he’d need to admit to his friend that he’d failed to do something he’d said he would or, on the flipside, he’d get to enjoy reporting that he’d accomplished his weekly goal.

Getting The Leverage To Finish Your Novel

The One-Year Novelist (my latest release) includes within its week-by-week plan specific ways to get leverage on yourself to finish your novel. You can adapt the methods, though, to fit your own schedule.

Here are a few options:

  • Tell three people that you will finish your novel by this time next year. (Or by whatever date you choose, just be sure to set a particular date.)

Ask each person if you can check in (via email, text, or some other type of message) every so many weeks to share an update on your progress.

If one or more of those people is willing, have a phone conversation where the person asks how you’re doing. But even if you simply report without getting a response, having to tell someone else will help you stick to your goal.

Caveat: I don’t suggest relying on posting on social media.

While it’s true that many people may see your goal and your periodic progress posts, there’s no guarantee that the same people will see them each time. Having to tell specific people who will follow your progress creates a lot more pressure and accountability.

  • Write down why you want to write and finish your novel. Be specific.

Do you love immersing yourself in a fictional world? Is it relaxing to get away from real life and write fiction?

Will you feel proud of yourself? Will you be fulfilling a lifelong dream?

Putting your feelings about finishing your book into words on a page will get you in touch with how wonderful you’ll feel if you achieve your goal, and you can look back at it when you need inspiration.

  • Now do the opposite and write how you’ll feel a year from now (or whatever timeframe you choose) if you haven’t finished your novel.

Be just as specific here.

The idea is to clearly identify and feel what it will be like if the time passes and you didn’t reach your goal. Look at these written feelings to spur you on as you write or when you’re tempted not to write.

If you want to add accountability, share both of the pieces of writing you’ve done with a trusted friend.

  • Close your eyes and imagine the moment you finish your novel.

If you like to type The End, see those words on the screen.

If, like me, you like to print out your manuscript to review, envision the printer shooting out the pages.

Get in touch with the sense of accomplishment you’ll feel.

  • Plan a reward for when you finish your novel.

It could be a weekend away, a longer vacation, or something as simple as a fancy latte at Starbucks. Whatever it is, though, it’s something you vow you won’t do until you finish your novel.

(I did this when I started my own law firm by skipping my favorite Chai Latte until I got my first check from a client. That was the best Starbucks drink I ever tasted.)

That’s all for this week, though you can always follow me on Twitter for other writing tips and ideas.

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you’d like help fitting in the time to write your novel, you might find The One-Year Novelist: A Week-By-Week Guide To Writing Your Novel In One Year helpful. It’s available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Reaching More Readers

This Friday, I recommend checking out PublishDrive if you’re selling your books in ebook format or plan to.

Part of my PublishDrive dashboard after uploading The Awakening books.
Selling In Multiple Stores And Countries

PublishDrive offers a way to upload an ebook once and sell it in over 400 stores worldwide.

The stores includes ones you’ve likely heard of, like Apple iBooks, Kobo, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and also hundreds of others.

What I like about PublishDrive is that chance to reach readers–many outside the U.S. and Canada–who might not have access to Amazon, Kobo, or other well-known companies, and to do it without needing to upload separately in hundreds of stores.

Books Already Published Elsewhere

If you’ve already published your books on other platforms, you can still use PublishDrive.

I recently listed all four books in my Awakening supernatural thriller series. Because those are already available on Kobo and other platforms, I simply unchecked those boxes, targeting only stores I hadn’t already published in.

I don’t know how much I’ll get in sales as I haven’t yet figured out how to advertise for all the stores, but I didn’t see any downside to making the books available through more sites.

The Price

There were no upfront costs to publish. As of right now (January 2018), PublishDrive gets 10% of the digital list price.

Again, this seems like a no-brainer. If there are zero sales, it costs me no money out of pocket. I spent time setting up the books to publish, which is a cost, but it was only a few hours. That seems worth it for the chance of future sales.

Caveat – Book Descriptions

I hope to write more about PublishDrive down the road once I’ve had my books published there for some time.

So far I’ve found one downside.

The book description section appears to allow using basic html codes (such as for bold, italics, headlines, etc.) to make the description look appealing, which I wrote more about here.

At least one platform, though, dropped all formatting, including headers and paragraph spacing, resulting in this run-together, awkward-looking sales copy:

To deal with this, I revamped all my descriptions into simple paragraphs that I feel more confident will be readable on all platforms.

And now a word about Writing As A Second Career:

A Change Going Forward

Last Sunday I wrote an article More Than Writing a/k/a Goals For The New Year.

After writing it, I created my author business goals and started scheduling the next few months’ time to pursue them. In the process, I discovered I have far less time than tasks to do.

One of my major goals is to write a series of articles on my author website answering questions about what is truth and what is fiction in the background mythology of my Awakening series. Ultimately, I hope to compile the articles with additional material into a Readers’ Guide.

Going forward, to make room in my schedule to do that, I’ll be skipping Sundays and limiting my writing on this site to every Friday.

I hope you’ll stay with me!

If there area any particular topics you’d like me to address please post them in the comments or email me [email protected].

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

Using An EBook Formatting Service

A couple weeks ago I wrote about using Vellum as a self-publishing tool. It allows you to pretty easily convert your word processing files to ebook and print formats.

A lot of writers, though, have asked me about using a service to do this instead. 

Up until this year, that’s what I did with each of my novels. It’s a good option for many writers who self-publish.

You can also check out the free formatting option at Draft2Digital. I haven’t used it myself, so I won’t comment on it.

When Should You Pay Someone Else To Format Your Book?

In my opinion, contracting out the formatting of your book makes a lot of sense if:

  • You don’t like working with software

If using new (or any) software makes you want to tear out your hair, it may be worth paying a service. While I find Vellum is pretty user-friendly, as with any software, it takes some effort to learn its quirks and ins and outs.

Also, user-friendly is a relative term.

I’ve used computer programs for over thirty years, so a lot of things that seem obvious to me could be challenging to understand if it’s your first attempt to use a program beyond a word processor.

  • You need or want to minimize the amount of computer work you do

Many writers, including me, struggle with neck strain or back strain from typing a lot. Other issues from laptop and computer use include eye strain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and prolonged inactivity.

You may prefer to pay someone else to do the technical work so you can reserve your computer time for writing. This can be especially important if your day-to-day career also requires a lot of typing.

When I worked a lot of hours as a lawyer, I spent much of my day in front of my keyboard, as I wrote a lot of legal briefs, corresponded with clients mainly by email, and kept my books on my laptop. Whatever computer work I could outsource for my self-publishing, I did.

  • Your time is limited and you can afford to pay a service 

Sending your word processing file to a service can also save you time.

There are a few caveats, though.

You will still need to review the finished product and flag any conversion errors. This takes time in itself. With Vellum, I find I integrate this into the formatting.

Also, correcting errors directly in the Vellum file generally doesn’t take any more time than sending notes on the errors to a service.

Despite that, overall, having a service format your book is usually quicker.

All of the above, of course, assumes you can afford to pay a service. To give you an idea of cost, before I started using Vellum, I sent my files to 52novels.

Here are the prices from its website as of December 29, 2017, when I’m writing this:

Formatting manuscript into an ebook format from Word, WordPerfect, RTF, or another “readily workable native text format”:

Under 15,000 words: $125
15,001 to 40,000 words: $150
40,001 to 100,000 words: $200
More than 100,001 words: Quote, with $225 minimum

Keep in mind that if you ask for too many follow up corrections due to your own errors in the manuscript, you’ll also need to pay per-correction fee.

Print conversion has additional fees. (See the pricing page here.)

  • You’re not sure if you’ll write or publish another book

If you’re not sure if you’ll write or publish another book, it probably makes more sense to pay a service for formatting.

It’ll probably be cheaper than the cost of Vellum or a similar program. Even if it’s not, you won’t need to spend time learning a new program that you may never use again.

Tips On Working With A Formatting Service

Based on my own experience, there are some things you can do to make working with a service go more smoothly.

  • Get A Recommendation

You can do an Internet search and find plenty of ebook and print formatters.

It’s best to get a recommendation, though, from another writer.

Ask about how reliable the service is, whether there are hidden costs, whether the service keeps to the promised schedule, and if there are any reasons the writer would not recommend the service.

  • Plan Ahead

As with any business, there are busy and slow times for ebook formatters. It’s best to contact a service well in advance to find out what the waiting time is before your book can be started and how long the conversion process takes.

Be sure to check the schedule before you announce a release date for your book or, worse, set it for preorder.

That way, if the timeframe is longer than you’d expected, you can push back your dates or shop around for another service.

I’ve waited as short a time as 2 weeks and as long as 6 weeks. I’ve gotten files back sometimes in days and sometimes weeks. So far, happily, the times have always conformed with the estimates I was given or been shorter.

  • Finalize And Proofread Your File, Including Back Matter

As noted above, if you need to make too many changes after conversion, you’ll need to pay extra.

If you carefully proof your file and have someone else proof it as well before you send it, you’ll be much less likely to need a lot of changes.

Also, don’t forget to add any back matter, such as an Author Biography and/or an Also By page and provide links to your other works, your website, your social media platforms, or anything else you want your readers to find.

It’s easy to forget about those pages in your rush to get your story polished.

If you create those back matter pages quickly when the service reminds you (as some formatters do), you’re more apt to make errors that require corrections later. (At least, I’m more apt to make errors, as exactly that happened with When Darkness Falls, the last book I had formatted for Kindle.)

  • Proofread And Eyeball The Formatted Files

Carefully check the files you get back.

Doing so will help you spot proofreading errors you missed. It’s also vital for spotting conversion errors.

Glitches can happen with any conversion, and you don’t want to find out after you’ve started selling your book that certain letters were replaced with odd-looking characters or the paragraphs are running together.

The latter point is why I mentioned “eyeball” above.

It’s important not only to look at words and paragraphs but to scroll through the pages to see that chapter headings, chapter endings, and back matter all look right.

You’ll also want to check the links in the Table of Contents and in your back matter.

I hope you found the above useful!

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Promoting Your Audiobook

It’s not easy to promote audiobooks, at least those done through Audible/ACX. You can’t run a sale because you have no control over the price.

I just listed The Illumination with Audiobook Boom.

One thing you can do to help get reviews is to request free promo codes from ACX.

You will almost always be able to get 25 for a new book, and sometimes I’ve gotten additional codes down the road.

You can then submit your book to Audiobook Boom.

For $10, Audiobook Boom (if it accepts your book), sends a listing about your audiobook to its list of almost 5,000 subscribers.

How Audiobook Boom Works

Those who are interested in listening to and reviewing your audiobook request it. You are not required to send any of them a promo code, though.

Audiobook Boom sends you each requester’s name, email address, and review profile on Audible (or sometimes Goodreads). You then look at the profile and decide if you want to give that person a promo code to use to download your audiobook for free.

I just did this for the fourth (and last) book in my Awakening supernatural thriller series, The Illumination.

When I checked profiles, I looked for people who either (a) had reviewed a lot of books (many had reviewed hundreds) or (b) had reviewed at least 6 or 7 audiobooks that fell within the supernatural thriller, suspense, horror, or occult genres within the last year or so.

One person had reviewed 5 audiobooks but judging from the bare man-chests on 4 out of 5 of the covers, they all had a strong romance component.

My Awakening series has an occasional sub-plot involving a romantic relationship between characters, but it’s minimal and, for one couple, occurs entirely off-screen. So I didn’t send that person a code.

If a person uses the code to download your book, you do get some credit on your Audible sales dashboard.

It’s hard to say exactly what that translates to in dollars, but I’m pretty sure every time I’ve used Audiobook Boom it has paid for itself.

Potential Drawbacks

There are possible downsides.

(1) There’s no guarantee that your audiobook will be requested. I’ve always had at least 10-20 people request each book in my series. But even if no one does, you’ve only lost $10, so I think it’s worth a shot.

(2) Not all requesters actually leave reviews.

That being said, Audiobook Boom does ask that you report if people don’t leave reviews, and that eventually may take them off the subscriber list.

(3) Audible has changed its practices. You used to be able to use the promo code yourself to send your book as a gift to the requester. Now instead you send the person the code with instructions on how to download your book. There is nothing, though, to stop the person from using the code for a different book entirely.

(4) Finally, there is the obvious possible drawback–people are not obligated to leave a positive review.

For the most part, though, if your blurb and cover accurately signal the genre and your audiobook is of reasonable quality, most people will be fair. At worst, if they don’t like something, they’ll say why, and you may learn something for your next book.

Let me know if you try it out.

(For more on creating audiobooks see 3 Ways To Create And Distribute Your Audiobook and The Cost To Create An Audiobook Edition Of Your Book.)

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If, like me, you are posting an audiobook that is not the first in the series, you may want to make sure you have codes for previous books available as well. I’d rather give someone an extra code to try the earlier book first than to have them try to listen from the middle and not understand what’s happening.

 

Making Your Book Description Look Pretty On Amazon

If you’re pretty new to self-publishing or you’re planning to publish soon, you may not know that you can customize how your book description looks on Amazon.

Compare These Descriptions

Here’s a description of a Vampire Queen Saga boxset (which I haven’t read, I picked this for the typeface) that uses different type sizes, boldface, italics, and paragraph spacing.

This approach highlights the tag lines, italicizes titles, and makes the entire description appear easy to read.

The description below is from an Anne Rice book.

It includes boldface, but the paragraph of description is not broken up at all, making it a little less inviting.

Changing The Appearance Of Your Book Description

You can customize your text in your KDP Dashboard. Choose Edit Book Details for your published book.

In the description box (shown below), you’ll add some codes, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Click Save at the bottom and the next screen until you scroll down to Publish. You’ll need to republish for your changes to appear.

Adding Codes

You don’t need to know coding already or be a programmer or website developer to customize your text.

To see some of the basic codes that can be easily added, I use this blurb preview page. It lists “Allowed Tags,” such as <b>, which turns on boldface, and </b>, which turns off boldface. The <h1>, <h2>, etc., are headers.

For example, the <h4> in my Super Simple Story Structure description above makes the first two lines larger and boldfaced and adds an extra blank line after them. The </h4> turns off the header setting so the next lines are in regular text:

In the blurb previewer, you can type or paste your description into the Input box, experiment with adding codes, and see (roughly) how they will look in the Output box below.

Caveat:

The Output display you’ll see is not always perfectly accurate. After you change your description in the KDP Dashboard, watch for the description to update on the book’s sales page and check it so you can quickly modify it if something doesn’t look quite how you expected.

Experimenting with the codes and how they look is a great way to spend an hour on a gloomy winter day.

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

Using Vellum To Create eBooks And Paperbacks (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 3)

If you self-publish your work or plan to, Vellum is a valuable tool that can make your life easier.

I used to pay services to convert my Word files to ebook and print formats, but now I do it myself. (For more on using a conversion service, see Using An eBook Formatting Service .) Doing it yourself is less expensive and it takes only a little more time than it used to take me to send in edits to files the services created for me.

It’s also is far less expensive (considering both time and money) to do updates, such as when I want to add a book to About the Author and Also By pages.

Right now, Vellum works on Mac, which is how I use it, and not for PCs.

I have heard, though, that you can use Mac in Cloud to run Vellum. (I have not tried that myself.)

Create Publishing Files Easily

Originally, Vellum created ebook files (including mobi for Kindle and epub files for other platforms like Kobo and iBooks) from your word processing files, but not print books.

Now you can create paperback editions with Vellum as well.

Here’s a screen shot of the page where I added title information yesterday for my latest book The One-Year Novelist.

Screen Shot from The One-Year Novelist Title Section on Vellum
Favorite Features

Vellum creates that column on the left automatically, listing your chapters. (For this book, I used Weeks instead.)

It also creates a Table of Contents for you.

One of Vellum’s many  wonderful features is that you can drag your word processing file into Vellum, format it quickly, and generate all the types of files you need in one step.

For print, Vellum generates a PDF you can upload to whatever print platform you’re using (such as CreateSpace). It automatically inserts headers with the book title and author, allows you to choose trim size, and sets the pages with the correct gutters.

How It Looks

There are different options for how your chapter headers look.

Below is what I used in The One-Year Novelist, where I titled each section by Week rather than Chapter. I’m hoping to finalize the print edition over the weekend and have the paperback available by the end of next week.

If you want to customize your print edition, you can use the Duplicate feature to create a new copy of your book and edit that version for print.

Cost And Ease Of Use

You can download Vellum for free and see how you like using it, which is what I did at first.

If you want to generate files to publish, then you need to purchase. You can buy a license to publish only ebooks, ebooks and print, to publish a limited number of books, or to publish an unlimited number.

Buying the unlimited license with print and ebook cost me under $300, which is about the same as I paid to have a service convert two novels to ebook formats only, so for me that was the best deal.

If you are pretty comfortable using word processing programs, I think you’ll find Vellum user-friendly. Most features are easily findable and, if not, a quick Internet or Help search usually reveals the answers.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on tools of the writing trade see Scrivener (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 1) for writing software and Canva (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 2) for creating graphics.

 

Experimenting With First In Series Free

On Friday, I recommended two resources for creating marketing plans for your novel and promised to share what I’ve done in in 2017 and how it’s worked out.

My main goal for advertising and marketing for 2017 was to bring new readers into my Awakening Series.

My main strategy was to list the first book in the series free.

BookBub Listing March 2017

 

I thought that might be worthwhile because the final book, The Illumination, released in May in ebook and paperback, and the audiobook edition became available this month, so at last the series is complete. (I published The Awakening in ebook format back in 2011 and waited far too long to write and publish the other three books.)

BookBub Featured Deal Results

BookBub is one of the only enewsletter featured deals that has paid for itself and generated significant additional income each time I’ve been able to get one.

(The BookBub Featured Deals are a single listing for a flat price in the enewsletter, as opposed to BookBub ads, which appear at the bottom of the newsletter and for which you pay per impression.)

I had a few features in previous years with The Awakening ebook editions at a sale price of $0.99 (regular price has varied from $2.99-$4.99). But BookBub turns down many applications for deals, and it seems to get harder to get one the longer a book is out.

I applied two or three times in late 2016 and was turned down until I switched The Awakening to free.

On March 2, 2017, The Awakening was ranked No. 16,366 of all Free Kindle books.

By mid-afternoon March 6, the day the feature ran, it was No. 11 on the overall list of Free Kindle books. By evening, it reached No.5.

What Does Free First In Series Mean For Sales And Royalties?

Obviously, there are no sales or royalties on a free ebook, only downloads.

There is one exception–sort of.

When there’s a spike in downloads, I usually sell additional audiobook editions as well as a paperback or two. Audible usually discounts the audio price, and the paperback royalty is low, so I estimate in 2017 that added up to not much more than $100-$200  over the course of the year for Book 1 in The Awakening Series.

The real boost came from the remaining books in the series.

In March, Books 2 and 3 were for sale and Book 4 available for pre-order on five ebook platforms (Amazon, Kobo, Nook, GooglePlay, and iTunes).

Kobo sales showed a dramatic difference. From January through November 2016, my total Kobo royalties were $293. But from January through November 2017, the royalties were $1,195.

On Nook, during the six months before the March 2017 BookBub feature my royalties for The Awakening Series were anywhere from $10-$50/month. For the six months from the BookBub feature on, it has averaged $103-$370.

On Amazon, royalties for the Kindle editions of The Awakening Series totaled about $3,400 for January through November, 2016. This year for the same time period, the total was $7,282.63.

Other Advertising

During both 2016 and 2017 I also advertised The Awakening and sometimes The Unbelievers in other enewsletters. (For limited times, I discounted The Unbelievers to $0.99 compared to a regular price of $3.99-$4.99.)

These other enewsletters also resulted in spikes in downloads.

In fact, just last Friday, The Awakening reached No. 1 on the Occult list for Kindle due to a Fussy Librarian listing.

A Few Caveats

The numbers above reflect a lot of variables.

First, The Illumination (Book 4) came out in May, 2017, and The Conflagration (Book 3) released in May, 2016.

So for the first four months of 2016, I only had two books out in my Awakening Series. If I could have had the whole series released in 2016, presumably those numbers would look a lot better.

Also, I updated all my covers in 2017. The news ones more clearly brand the series and better convey the type of book.

Finally, there’s no way to know what my royalties would be if I’d left The Awakening at $3.99 and run $0.99 sales periodically rather than leaving it free for the year.

I think it’s unlikely I would have gotten a BookBub Featured Deal, so I would not have had that big spike in March 2017. But I probably would have gotten $0.99 listings in other enewsletters, as most have accepted The Awakening every time I’ve applied over the years.

Also, readers are much more apt to read a book they paid for, even if they paid only $0.99 cents, than one they downloaded free. So while I’d have a smaller number of Book 1s on people’s ereaders, there might be a higher percentage who actually read it and bought the later books.

In the end, I feel it was worth making Book 1 free.

There were over 60,000 downloads, so despite that probably less than 10% of them resulted in actual reads of the book, that many people saw it, liked the cover, and are likely to remember it if they see it later.

That’s a type of reach and advertising that’s expensive to buy, and through a BookBub Featured Deal and other enewletters ads, my advertising dollars generated a net profit.

That being said, I’m considering putting The Awakening back at $3.99 in January and running some $0.99 sales to see how that goes for 2018. (I’ll talk about other reasons for that in a later post.)

Either way, I’ll let you know.

What’s your experience with free first in series? Please share in the comments.

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

 

 

Creating A Marketing Plan For Your Book

If you want to get your novel into the hands of readers, you need a marketing plan.

Even if you have a traditional publishing contract, unless you’re Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark (in which case you’re probably not reading this article), only limited resources–or no resources–will be devoted to your particular book.

When I started self-publishing in 2011, I did an overall business plan. It included some marketing, but all of it quickly became out of date as the publishing industry changed.

Since then, I’ve been a bit haphazard, though I’ve had some success. I’ll share what I’ve done this year and the results on Sunday.

My December goals include creating marketing plans for my new Q.C. Davis Mystery Series (first two novels are in progress now), for The Awakening Series, and for my non-fiction writing books.

I looked at two resources to figure out what ought to go into the marketing plans, both of which I recommend.

Small Business Administration Plan

The first is the Small Business Administration marketing and sales page.

It provides a good overview of what should go into a marketing plan, including figuring out your target market, your competitive advantage, your budget, and more.

A few aspects may not be that relevant to your author business. For example, there’s a discussion of accepting checks, cash, or credit cards.

That might matter for in-person events, but most indie authors sell primarily online, in which case we’re getting paid by direct deposit from Kobo, Amazon, or one of the other ebook platforms. (Some indies are starting to sell direct from their sites now, though, which I plan to research and write about.) If you have a traditional publishing contract, your publisher will be paying you (I hope!).

Marketing Plan Template

I found an extremely helpful article on Forbes.com: Marketing Plan Template: Exactly What To Include. The author, Dave Lavinsky, includes within it a link a to template that’s for sale, but I found the article alone perfect as is.

Lavinsky does exactly what the title promises, explaining 15 steps for your marketing plan.

I found nearly every one well adapted to marketing novels. I used his 15 sections to start making notes for the Q.C. Davis plan yesterday.  (When it’s finished, I’ll provide a link so you can download it for reference.)

Beginning notes on marketing plan for Q.C. Davis mysteries

The article is from 2013.

The only part I thought was somewhat dated was splitting out Section 8, Promotion Strategy, from Section 9, Online Marketing Strategy. Most of my promotion is done online, so at first it seemed to me the two would be duplicative.

As I wrote thoughts on each, though, I realized it might be good to separate these points out. There may be offline marketing and advertising opportunities these days that other authors and businesses are neglecting, which could make it less expensive to use those ways to get a book or series in front of potential readers.

Also, don’t let the fact that there are 15 sections discourage you from sketching out thoughts on each one. I did it in about 45 minutes.

While my notes include a lot of blanks and follow up items, doing that got me started on market research last night that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. (I found readers of two more authors to add to my target list — Tess Gerritsen and Jonathan Kellerman.)

Also, it brought home to me that I really do need to start planning now if I want to release in Spring 2017, as I hope to do.

Looks like it’ll be a busy December!

For quick reference, here again are links to the two marketing plan resources I found helpful:

Until Sunday, when I’ll talk about putting the first book in a series free as a marketing strategy—

L.M. Lilly

 

One Word And Your Writing Life

At a recent conference on business for authors, several panelists talked about figuring out the one word that gets across what you want from your business/writing life.

The word doesn’t need to be specifically about writing or business. Instead, it sums up what you want from life.

The idea is to ask yourself what will make you happy and what word expresses that and build your business around it.

One Word Matters

When I started my law firm, I never thought about choosing a word or exactly why I wanted to run my own firm.

I knew I wanted to work for myself, as that was one of the reasons I became a lawyer. I also wanted more control over my schedule and more time to write, but I didn’t specifically set out to create that. I more or less assumed it would happen when I became my own boss. (Anyone who worked for themselves probably could have told me that wouldn’t happen. Quite possibly someone did tell me and it didn’t sink in.)

Because of that, my firm grew in ways I didn’t expect. Other attorneys congratulated me on my success, and I was happy to have a lot of business.

But because I hadn’t figured out what type of life I wanted, I rapidly recreated exactly what I’d left–more work than I wanted and little time for the rest of my life.

I don’t want to do the same thing with my writing business. There are only so many career changes I want to make in my life.

That’s why the one word concept drew me it.

Examples Of One Words

Author Joanna (J.F.) Penn has said her word is Freedom.

When she set out to create her online business, she knew she wanted the freedom to live wherever she chose and travel wherever and whenever she wanted.

With Freedom as her word, she realized she needed a business that allowed her to work from anywhere, one she could run from her laptop. That word also told her what she didn’t want–a business that required separate physical space, lots of equipment, and on-site employees she’d need to manage.

The authors at Sterling & Stone, in contrast, seem to expand the size of their company constantly.

They are three authors co-authoring books, but they also employ multiple people, develop software and services for writers, and host a  yearly conference. Their one word probably wasn’t Freedom, or if it was, it meant something different to them than to Joanna Penn.

As another example, if your word is Security, you probably don’t want to throw caution to the wind and quit your current position the first time you make a hundred or even a thousand dollars in a month from your writing.

If your word is Exploration, you might try playwriting, screenwriting, poetry writing, and novel writing all within a few years or maybe a few months. You also might write in multiple genres or explore other types of creative projects.

Choosing Your Word

Do any of these words express what you want most from life?

  • Joy
  • Recognition
  • Success
  • Fame
  • Peace
  • Connection
  • Freedom
  • Security
  • Excitement

Think about how you feel about these words (or others you come up with) and what they mean to you.

How might your choices be different depending on the word you choose?

My own word (I’m pretty sure) is Creativity.

For decades Security actually was most important to me, as I had a rough time in my late twenties when I was unable to work due to a repetitive stress injury and moved home with my parents.

After that, for a long time I felt driven to achieve as much financial success as possible for fear of hitting a serious stumbling block again. I always wrote on the side, but it was very hard for me to turn down better-paying work whenever it was offered.

Also, if I spent too much time on “non-productive” (meaning non-paying) activities, I worried that I ought to be focused on earning enough to pay off debts or fund my retirement.

Now, though, I’m happiest when I have time not only for my own writing, but to engage in the storytelling of others. I love to read books, see plays, watch movies, and watch television series that tell long form stories.

The more I do all of that, the happier I feel.

What Creativity means to me going forward is that each project or task I do needs to either (a) generate money while still allowing me a lot of time for creativity or (b) be something creative I enjoy for its own sake.

In my perfect world, every activity I do will fit both.

So what’s your word?

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. Choosing a single concept or focus can also help when setting goals.

 

 

 

Money, Writing, & Becoming Unshakeable

On the surface, making the most of the money you earn and choosing good investment strategies seems to have little to do with the creative side of writing. But I believe they are connected.

When I was worried about money all the time, I still wrote, but it was like running with a fifty pound weight on my back.

Worrying about money takes a lot of mental energy.

Also, not having enough money means spending more time on pursuits that will earn you money more quickly or more predictably than will selling your writing.

If I were saving for a down payment for a house, for example, I’d be more likely to accept more legal work, as right now it pays me more by the hour than writing does, and it pays more quickly.

In the long run, though, that’s not a good financial strategy.

Once I sell an hour of my time, it’s gone. If I spend many hours writing a novel, I may not get paid anything for it until six months from now, but it could potentially earn money for 70 years after my death.

For these reasons, this Friday I recommend Unshakeable by Tony Robbins.

A couple Sundays ago I mentioned I’m a Tony Robbins fan because of the distinctions he makes about how we motivate ourselves to achieve what we want. In Unshakeable he turns his focus to money and finance.

After interviewing fifty great financial minds, Robbins pulls out the key knowledge and strategies you need to move toward a life of financial freedom.

If you are unfamiliar with the world of finance, this book is a great step-by-step practical guide that walks you through what you need to know and how to go about getting where you want to be.

If you’re already pretty knowledgeable about investments and feel you understand the financial world, it is still well worth reading. While much of what Robbins covered was familiar to me, there were points that I hadn’t understood when I’d read them elsewhere, or that hadn’t applied to me when I first started learning about how to handle money that now hit home.

The book is available in multiple formats.

If you’re short on time or your To-Read list is already too long, try listening to it instead. That’s what I did, and I found it fairly easy to pick up the thread on each topic even if I went a long time between listening.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly