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What is Important?

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Ok, so I just looked up the 100 most successful books on Amazon. I guess if you really want to make it big as an Indie author, and appeal to the masses with a formula for success it would appear that you need to get into the Romance/Erotica/Sci-fi genre. Hopefully with a half naked man on the cover. He should be a doctor, or someone in a position of authority.
 

kennyc

Inkling
I think you are both right and it comes back to what I said before. Why are writing? Is it to make money, is it for posterity, is it for yourself, is it for acknowledgement....

These are not mutually exclusive, but do have some contradictions.

Writers write for many reasons. To each his own, eh?
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Ok, so based on that analogy I think you do make a point. So i wonder where the balance is then? Is that what you are asking? What is the basic request of the consumer that they would be willing to pay for, without having to be 'the best'…

Actually, what I'm asking is this:

I'm a guy who has worked on his writing for the last four and a half years in pursuit of a dream. Now that I've decided to become a self publisher, I need to figure out the business side of this thing. Since this is the writing questions forum, I posed the question, what is most important (from a writing perspective) for me to become a commercially successful?

My hope for the thread was twofold:

1. I've come up with some theories on what I need to do. I'm using those theories to make real life decisions about how to proceed with my self publishing career. If I'm wrong on any of those theories, I need to know as soon as possible. Thus far, I have not heard any factual or logic-based arguments from anyone that would lead me to change my theories.
2. Presumably, there exist others on this forum that have already taken the leap into the business side of things or will one day do so. Hopefully, those individuals will find the arguments on this thread useful in shaping their own careers.

Back the the direct question of quality:

I think it's important to reiterate this - I started from a viewpoint much like I think yours is. My belief was, "Quality is one of the important factors in my future success."

Recent research into the business side of self publishing kinda clarified that for me. I think a revised belief is more along the lines of, "Getting your quality high enough to deliver a certain reader expectation is crucially important. That level, however, seems to lie below the level of most Big 5 (in comparison to someone like Baen. I really don't see a difference between the quality of some of their stuff versus most successful indies) traditionally published authors."

So I'm asking:

A. Is the belief stated directly above accurate?
B. How in the world does one go about figuring out exactly what level of subjective quality is needed?
 

kennyc

Inkling
Ok, so I just looked up the 100 most successful books on Amazon. I guess if you really want to make it big as an Indie author, and appeal to the masses with a formula for success it would appear that you need to get into the Romance/Erotica/Sci-fi genre. Hopefully with a half naked man on the cover. He should be a doctor, or someone in a position of authority.

Ha! Exactly! :D
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
I think you are both right and it comes back to what I said before. Why are writing? Is it to make money, is it for posterity, is it for yourself, is it for acknowledgement....

These are not mutually exclusive, but do have some contradictions.

Writers write for many reasons. To each his own, eh?

I don't think that anyone disagrees with these statements.

The original purpose for the thread, however, was to figure out what is most important to help indie authors become commercially successful. Considering that goal, I'm unclear how saying "to each his own" is helpful ...
 

kennyc

Inkling
Actually, what I'm asking is this:

I'm a guy who has worked on his writing for the last four and a half years in pursuit of a dream. Now that I've decided to become a self publisher, I need to figure out the business side of this thing. Since this is the writing questions forum, I posed the question, what is most important (from a writing perspective) for me to become a commercially successful?
...

By using that last as the criteria, you've already screwed the pooch in a manner of speaking. What does it mean to become commercially successful? Sell the most books? Make the most money? Have the most readers?

There are a bazillion factors which play into a writing career, some of which you have control over, some of which you don't (see the recent Konrath 'luck' postings).

The real answer is, It all Depends....
 

kennyc

Inkling
I don't think that anyone disagrees with these statements.

The original purpose for the thread, however, was to figure out what is most important to help indie authors become commercially successful. Considering that goal, I'm unclear how saying "to each his own" is helpful ...

Nor is anyone going to be able to help you with goals any more than they have already in 17 pages of posts. You yourself have to decide what your goals are, you have to define specifically what that means instead of relying on terms like indie author and commercially successful.

As I said there are a million/gillion/bazillion factors including luck which play into it. The bottom line which I keep seeing from successful authors over and over is to Write, Write the best stories you can, keep at it, improve your craft. No one else can do it for you.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
By using that last as the criteria, you've already screwed the pooch in a manner of speaking. What does it mean to become commercially successful? Sell the most books? Make the most money? Have the most readers?

Huh?

You said this:

Why are writing? Is it to make money, is it for posterity, is it for yourself, is it for acknowledgement....

The whole purpose of listing the criteria was to define the debate as being about making money instead of any other reason that people may be writing. In essence, to avoid being sidetracked by posts like yours.
 

kennyc

Inkling
Well as I also said there are much better ways to make money than writing fiction. If the sole purpose is to make money then you're in the wrong business or writing the wrong thing.

Technical manual writers make much more money as an example. If the idea is to make money and damn the writing then you need marketing.

A good marketeer can cell ice to Eskimos.

I say focus on marketing selling.

And I'm far from sidetracking this thread so don't you dare try to put my posts off to that. If you look back on page one you'll see that most everything that needed to be discussed was.

You'll note the subject of this thread is 'What is Important' and it's in the Writing Questions subforum. All the responses I've read have attempted to address this question, but you continue to push back.

I tried to summarize above and tried to get you to clarify ... which you did ... yer in it for the money ... so you have your answers in the previous seventeen pages.

Carry on.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
The bottom line which I keep seeing from successful authors over and over is to Write, Write the best stories you can, keep at it, improve your craft. No one else can do it for you.

Truthfully, I think this advice is somewhat outdated. Again, the context of the discussion is how to succeed financially as a self publisher, so let's look at that piece by piece:

1. Write - abso freaking lutely. The more you have on the market, the more sales you'll make. Not only that, but their seems to be an almost logarithmic progression as you add books. I can live with this being the number 1 factor.

2. Write the best stories you can - I think this is sub-optimal for maximizing profits. Instead, I'd say, "Write the stories that readers want to read."

3. Keep at it - Yes! Persistence pays off. Definitely in the top 10 in the list of importance.

4. Improve your craft - Once you reach a certain level, I'm not sure how much improving craft helps you. (Prior to reaching that level, though, it's pretty darn important.) I think your craft will naturally improve as you continue to write and work with editors. I don't think you should dedicate a lot of your limited resources of time and money to it (assuming you've reached that minimum level, of course).

In the context of a thread on writing, your advice isn't horrible, but I don't think you were limiting yourself to that parameter. In that case, what bothers me most about your advice is the things you've left off. Learning to write is only half the battle. Once you've got something to sell, you have to figure out all the business crap. Marketing. Promotion. Email lists. Formatting. Hiring freelancers. The optimum scheduling of releases. The ins and outs of KU2 so you can make that decision. The list is endless.
 

kennyc

Inkling
No that advice is not out of date. It is as true as it ever was and applies well beyond writing. It's true of any creative field.

But as I've already said, and will not say again is that it all depends on your goals. You seem to already have the answers so I'm not sure what the actual purpose of this thread is and I'll leave it with you.

If you want to know how to sell and market in order to increase your profits, that has little to do with writing.

Bye.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
2. Write the best stories you can - I think this is sub-optimal for maximizing profits. Instead, I'd say, "Write the stories that readers want to read."

Ok, so now that I think I know what you are getting at (I hope), lets talk about this.

There are two things I'm assuming here based on your previous posts:

1) You are aiming to achieve as much success as possible as an Indy author.
2) Your strategy is to write what you hope readers want to read.

Ok, so lets look at those two things.

You want to sell a lot of books so you can make money (or at least be able to live comfortable off of selling books.)

You need, then, to write books that readers want to read.

Lets look at the clientele of the Amazon Indie market. Who are buying those books?
I'm guessing people who are looking for some element of escapism but don't care too much about quality. They want escapism cheap and fast. So who are these people?
Children - no. They can't purchase books over the internet unless their parents are purchasing for them. I imagine this is a fairly limited market.
Teenagers - possibly. I teach High school. I can think of perhaps four kids/32 who would be reading their kindle in the evening or at school instead of watching tv/playing video games/texting/face timing with their friends. Also, they need money and access to credit cards. So again, limited market.
Adults - From what I can see on the Amazon top 100 list the adults buying Indie fiction tend to be mostly women looking for high romances/soft core porn. There are some sci-fi books in there, again with a high romance plot line.

I think that people buying books from Indy writers are people who:
- Are looking for something that is not offered in the bookstore (cheap soft core porn/erotica or highly specialized erotica like the dinosaur woman we saw earlier.)
- fast action sci-fi/thrillers that are easy to get into, chew up, and discard.

I'm sure some fantasy sells OK to a small margin of nerdy boys/men who are into that sort of thing, but if you are looking for the highest number of sales I think you need to be looking to the biggest market, which appears to be women between 18-65 who are too embarrassed to buy their soft core romance novels from the lady at the checkout counter.

So what does this mean for you becoming the MOST successful as an Indy author? I think, if you are correct about writing books that people want to read, you are in the wrong genre and selling to a very limited market.

Lets look at your newest release "Repulsive" for example. Who is this book going to be marketed to? Based on what I have read, and seen of the cover I would imagine boys between 12-25? Maybe? 12-18 year olds are not buying books off the indy list on Amazon. At least not a ton of them.I'm going to estimate maybe 5% of teenagers actually get their parents credit cards and buy books. Only a small percentage of those will be boys specifically looking for superhero books. Men between 20-25, maybe, but how many men between 20-25 are reading books about comic book heroes? Again, limiting your market down to maybe 10%? There is a reason that the fantasy-sci/fi section at the book store is a tiny section, off to the back and there are very limited super hero books coming out. It has been done to death. Marvel has taken over the genre. Unless you can compete with Marvel, or offer something new in the Super hero genre you are taking on Goliath, basically.

I mean no offence to you or your book. Again, like others have said, you can write what you are passionate about, and if it is a good book it WILL sell. However, you are asking how to make the MOST success as an indy author. My response to that is to sell to the largest market.

Same goes for Rise of the Mages. May see some moderate success. If it was:

"I was a virgin sacrifice who slept with the mage who was going to kill me" then you would have a best seller.
 
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BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Heliotrope,

When I first started reading up on the concept of self publishing, I read the advice to learn who your reader is and market to them.

Truthfully, I was never able to fully grok that advice. I have no idea how to figure out who is reading my book. So far, women seem to like it better than men, but I certainly don't want to exclude the male audience.

Assuming I decided "Okay, my target audience is women aged whatever to whatever," I'm not sure what to do with that information.

Recently, I've encountered a whole new source of advice, and none of it tells me to figure out what demographics my readers are. The promotion sites are based on genre, not demographic. If I'm doing a FB ad to build my email list, every piece of advice that I've read is to target similar authors, not base it on demographics.

You may be right, however, that I should try writing romance. My fantasy already tends to be more relationship based than most in the genre. Truthfully, I may try dipping my toe into that market when I finish the Repulsive trilogy.

EDIT: Note however that, as far as I can tell, fantasy is not a bad ebook market. It's not on the level of Romance, but it's not orders of magnitude lower.
 
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C

Chessie

Guest
Fantasy does just fine in the Indie market. One of my favorite fantasy authors is self-published (Lindsay Buroker). Her quality is great, and on the plus side she writes Steampunk which is difficult to do--and she does it well. But on the topic of writing romance, I may have briefly mentioned it either in this thread or another, but this is a shift I've made in my journey. Fantasy adventure was what I wrote most of until several months ago, when I realized that the only ghosting jobs I was getting were for romance of some sort. This changed the type of books I write to sell, most of which are now mythical fantasy with shapeshifter romances. It's a good thing I'm really enjoying it, because I can't see myself investing time and money into writing stories I hate. But if you can do romance, then it's worth giving it a try, especially if you're trying to make more than chump change.

EDIT: I hit the submit button too soon. I'd like to comment on Heliotrope's post about mass production not being equal to quality. I don't think that's always the case. If you can get to a place where your writing habit becomes a regular thing, your word counts will increase and so will the quality of your words. It also depends on the length you're writing. I write mostly novelettes and novellas, so I have several that will be going up for sale within the next few weeks. It's easier to produce those and I like writing shorter stories anyway. So getting various titles under an author name isn't that hard, depending on your time availability, how fast you type, and the length of your books.

These days, I view Indie publishing like the art world. I live in a town where everyone is either a musician or an artist of some sort. Every other person has a studio, cd, or First Friday show coming up. I see pieces for sale in the hundreds or thousands that are like "what?" and have gone to several music shows that don't compare to Tool, for example, but were still fun. No matter how you slice it, writing is an art, and everyone likes something different when it comes to that. I think people get too caught up in the need for perfection when it comes to publishing books. Yes, they should be professional, but looking for books on my Kindle now is like walking into a First Friday show, deciding I don't like what I see, then going to the next venue and buying a piece there. And I prefer obscure anyway.
 
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BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
But if you can do romance, then it's worth giving it a try, especially if you're trying to make more than chump change.

Just a thought for other readers: I don't think it's super easy to change genres. I think that most of us tend to write what we read; part of my biggest reluctance to even try penning a single romance novel is that I don't read the genre. Thus, I don't understand all the expectations that the readers have.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
That's true, Brian, which is why I still write fantasy related romance. A werewolf love affair is much easier to write than, let's say, gold rush romance. I've done it, and it's hard for me because my brain doesn't think in the real world. If you catch my drift. :) So if you're thinking about getting more romantic with your game, then still keep the fantasy elements in. That's my suggestion.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
These days, I view Indie publishing like the art world. I live in a town where everyone is either a musician or an artist of some sort. Every other person has a studio, cd, or First Friday show coming up. I see pieces for sale in the hundreds or thousands that are like "what?" and have gone to several music shows that don't compare to Tool, for example, but were still fun. No matter how you slice it, writing is an art, and everyone likes something different when it comes to that. I think people get too caught up in the need for perfection when it comes to publishing books. Yes, they should be professional, but looking for books on my Kindle now is like walking into a First Friday show, deciding I don't like what I see, then going to the next venue and buying a piece there. And I prefer obscure anyway.

yes. I agree with this 100% and tend to be an Indie girl myself, especially in regards to art and music. I think, though, that that is what is throwing me off about Fosters perspective. Indie is almost always smaller scale than mainstream. When I go to an Indie concert, just like you are saying, it is in a small venue with low ticket sales compared to a mainstream concert. This is great, I love intimacy… however, Foster is asking how to be as successful as possible as a writer in an indy market… I think, from what I can see, the answer would be write romance?
 

Addison

Auror
After I finished the first draft of my story I did all kinds of research. Into the deeper caverns of the craft itself to the many roads, detours and traps of every publishing venue. It was confusing and everything new that I'd learned, basically everything that was in the first post and beyond, plagued me. It affected me to such a degree I threw out my story and started writing a new one based on everything I'd learned. Write for the readers, wide niche, marketability etc. I gave the new story to my beta readers (family and strangers) they all came back with the same message. "We liked the first one better."

So after that I only read the articles and pieces that helped with the process of publishing. Copyright, format, agents and all that. Everything else I've ignored. When it comes to the readers I just make sure my story stays in the target audience range and I don't go back to rewrite anything incase they don't get it because I, like the books on the writing craft say, know to trust the readers. The important thing is to write the story that you want to write, the one you want to tell. If it's a small niche so what, it's not the niche you're telling but how you're telling it that will make a difference.

I confess, my story is not published. But my kid siblings, who hate reading (they're half-siblings), have read the entire story and have shared it to their friends. The most they've shared are pudding cups after losing arm wrestling, sick bugs, homework and instagram. So the fact that two pint-sized Literature-nazis read cover to cover and shared it is all the proof I need that I'm doing it right. So allow me to re-state two key facts; Write the story YOU want to write and tell, trust your readers.

Happy Writing. :)
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Another important item from a writing standpoint (that's hopefully less controversial):

I think I might have figured out a disconnect that I was having. I've read in thread after thread that "editing" is crucially important. On the other side of the equation, every time quality is discussed, I get the impression that there is no objective standards being utilized.

So for me, this situation creates a disconnect. If there are not objective standards, why is editing important?

I think I've finally figured it out (I feel kind of slow on this issue; perhaps it was obvious to everyone else): editing is crucially important regarding the objective standards of grammar/punctuation/typos.

In the beginning, I assigned only a little bit of weight to these factors. Based on the recommendations of those who have gone before, however, perhaps they should be higher on my list.
 
So for me, this situation creates a disconnect. If there are not objective standards, why is editing important?

I think I've finally figured it out (I feel kind of slow on this issue; perhaps it was obvious to everyone else): editing is crucially important regarding the objective standards of grammar/punctuation/typos.

Ease-of-reading would seem to be a very important consideration within the rest of your strategy, so creating few stumbles in this area would be important.

There are other potential pitfalls to keep an eye on: Chekhov's gun, dangling plot threads, inconsistency (of many types), and so forth. These are structural in nature, like grammar/punctuation/typos, and although they might affect quality broadly, the stumbles and irritations they might cause could impact ease of reading.
 
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