Well, here's some advice for amateur bloggers: don't promise to start writing regular posts a week before you start a new job. I just started working at a hospital, and though I'd love to tell you guys about what I'm doing I feel like it might cross a professional line. Maybe someday I'll come back and explain more, but for now all I'm saying is I haven't had time to blog. I've barely had time to write, and I like that way better than blogging...
But weeks ago, I said I would discuss my feelings about Goodreads ratings. I'm going to expand that topic a bit to include Amazon reviews as well. But first, let's talk about orange juice.
Wait, what? Orange juice?
Take a moment and think about the orange juice you get in the store. Does it say "not from concentrate?" Good, that's the one I'm talking about. They want you to think it's the same as the stuff you get when you juice a real, fresh orange. Have you ever made orange juice from squeezing oranges? It's sweeter, clear, and surprisingly less "orange" flavored, isn't it? What's going on?
You see, oranges don't grow evenly year-round. But people want orange juice to be in stores all the time. So orange juice producers got an idea: they take the oxygen out of the orange juice then store it for later, sometimes many months later. And that's... fine. It's got the same nutrients, more or less, but it doesn't taste like anything, let alone orange juice. So the producers create "flavor packs," which are these carefully formulated combinations of things like orange peel oil and citric acid. They add these things, all natural things, back into the orange juice which turns it into that bright-yellow, sour, very orange-flavored stuff you buy in the store. Some people like it better than fresh-squeezed, some prefer fresh, and most don't even realize there's a difference.
Why did I just waste all your time with that? Because the modern publishing industry is very much like the de-oxygenated, re-flavored orange juice you find in the supermarket. At best, publishers have editors work and re-work an author's novel until it's "marketable," which means it's carefully tailored to what focus groups and marketing people think the mass market wants. At worst, a publisher will come up with a plot outline and ask a writer to fill in the blanks of a story they know people want to read. And that works for the mass market, but some people prefer their reading to include some "fresh squeezed" writing. That's the inherent beauty of the newly emerging strength of the independent author.
My novels aren't edited by someone who wants to make it "marketable." That means it comes out rough around the edges, with potentially unlikable characters and a plot which sometimes veers in the wrong direction. It's not mass-market, it won't suit everyone's tastes, but some people want a "fresh squeezed" story instead of one which reads exactly like every other bestseller they've ever read.
The problem with the independent author market is that there's a lot of junk out there. I'm not saying my books are more appealing to all, but there is a significant quality difference between many books available on the market. Since independent authors have much smaller reader bases, they tend not to get reviewed as often by major publications. People don't know which independent books are good, and which ones are junk, but more importantly people don't know which ones fit their tastes and which ones they won't like.
That's where reviews come in. On Goodreads, people can rate a book from 1 to 5 stars, with 1 and 2 indicating distaste and 3-5 indicating enjoyment. That hints at whether a book is quality, but it does nothing to let someone know if the book will match their tastes. And then there are people who rate 1-star because their ideologically disagree with a book (and there is a particular ideological group who are inclined to be offended by my book because of who the killer is, which I can attribute at least three 1-stars ratings to judging by their book lists). Goodreads allows people to write text reviews, but those seem incredibly rare. Amazon only displays written reviews, but all too often those are misused or too generic to create a recommendation.
Which is why I'm pleading with you, the readers, who probably don't even stop by this page, to start writing reviews. I don't care if you liked my book or not, I still want you to write a review for mine, and for other books you read. Only about one in a hundred purchases on Amazon lead to a review, and those tend to come from people who prefer mass market books. So, if you like "fresh squeezed" stories, you need to review them. And just saying "I liked it" isn't enough. What did you like, what rubbed you the wrong way, and who do you think would appreciate this book?
People who don't think women in their mid-twenties "drop the f-bomb in casual conversation" won't like my book. That's a GREAT REVIEW!!! I mean, yeah, it's a negative review, but it tells a certain group of people to stay away from my book. I need more like that, though I'd prefer a healthy mix of positive and negative reviews if at all possible.
And considering (as of this post) 20% of my Amazon reviews are from people who "Didn't receive the book so I can't give a rsting (sic)," you might want to just ignore star ratings completely and read the reviews before you buy.
/rant
No promises when I'll be back next time, so I'm going to make a little challenge: I will post a new blog post within 24 hours of someone asking for one. How do you ask? Just send an email to JMoriartyAuthor@gmail.com with the title "New Blog Post Please." I don't expect anyone will take me up on it, which would just prove that nobody reads these...
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Monday, November 30, 2015
NaNoWriMo Day 30... just, ugh.
1667 words a day. That sounds so... easy, doesn't it?
But 1667 words takes dedication, luck, and an easy to control schedule. It doesn't account for sick days (I've come down with a terrible cold which is only now subsiding), or holidays (I spent the Thanksgiving week either traveling to Houston or spending time with my dad who was visiting from Phoenix, and wrote nothing for three whole days).
I also tried driving for Uber (look back on how badly that turned out), got incredibly serious about finding at real job again, and of course I took the weekends off to spend with my wife and daughter. Well, I took the first two weekends off. I spent late nights during the last two trying to catch up.
All in all, I think I had about seven full days to write, plus half days or two-hour blocks here and there. For me, that's enough. Heck, I can write 1500 words per hour if I have a good idea where I'm going.
And that, my friends, is why I entered the last two days with 10k words remaining. Like I said before, I can't write without a good outline to tell me where I'm going. I start going down an inconsequential path or I forget that a new plot point contradicts a major past or future one and suddenly all my writing is lost. So, when I had to reconsider something major around the 25k word mark, it threw me into a three-day planning binge where I wasted three of my seven full days reworking my outline to account for the changes.
If it weren't for NaNoWriMo ending today, I could have, and I would have, spread those last 10k words out over the next month which, since my novel will be about 90k words in the end, is something I would be doing anyway. NaNoWriMo was merely a waypoint, not the beginning, nor the end of my writing. I plan to finish the week before Christmas, but without the specter of NaNoWriMo hanging over my head, that's a slightly flexible goal.
Anyway, in case you absolutely need to know, I marathoned my way through those last 10k words between yesterday and today. It helps that I was writing set of key action scenes which goes much more easily and quickly than, say, a dialogue-heavy exposition scene.
I thought I'd be blogging more during NaNoWriMo... ha! Not with that 1667 word a day whip at my back.
Whatever topic I promised to get to last time, I'll write about when I recover. I promise that will be sooner than the last time between my blog posts.
But 1667 words takes dedication, luck, and an easy to control schedule. It doesn't account for sick days (I've come down with a terrible cold which is only now subsiding), or holidays (I spent the Thanksgiving week either traveling to Houston or spending time with my dad who was visiting from Phoenix, and wrote nothing for three whole days).
I also tried driving for Uber (look back on how badly that turned out), got incredibly serious about finding at real job again, and of course I took the weekends off to spend with my wife and daughter. Well, I took the first two weekends off. I spent late nights during the last two trying to catch up.
All in all, I think I had about seven full days to write, plus half days or two-hour blocks here and there. For me, that's enough. Heck, I can write 1500 words per hour if I have a good idea where I'm going.
And that, my friends, is why I entered the last two days with 10k words remaining. Like I said before, I can't write without a good outline to tell me where I'm going. I start going down an inconsequential path or I forget that a new plot point contradicts a major past or future one and suddenly all my writing is lost. So, when I had to reconsider something major around the 25k word mark, it threw me into a three-day planning binge where I wasted three of my seven full days reworking my outline to account for the changes.
If it weren't for NaNoWriMo ending today, I could have, and I would have, spread those last 10k words out over the next month which, since my novel will be about 90k words in the end, is something I would be doing anyway. NaNoWriMo was merely a waypoint, not the beginning, nor the end of my writing. I plan to finish the week before Christmas, but without the specter of NaNoWriMo hanging over my head, that's a slightly flexible goal.
Anyway, in case you absolutely need to know, I marathoned my way through those last 10k words between yesterday and today. It helps that I was writing set of key action scenes which goes much more easily and quickly than, say, a dialogue-heavy exposition scene.
I thought I'd be blogging more during NaNoWriMo... ha! Not with that 1667 word a day whip at my back.
Whatever topic I promised to get to last time, I'll write about when I recover. I promise that will be sooner than the last time between my blog posts.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
NaNoWriMo Day 17... What's Working, What's Not
It's NaNoWriMo day 17, and I haven't been blogging much. Why? I'm incredibly busy, and no, not just with writing.
So, as I said at the beginning of this blog I was going to try to make writing work as a career. Sales on Kindle are increasing at a steady rate, so that's a good sign. But, it certainly won't fully pay the bills for at least a year, and that's assuming the best case scenario.
One option I considered was driving for Uber. Everyone I mentioned it to beforehand was very encouraging. "You can make so much money doing that," was probably the most common response. I didn't need "so much money," just "enough."
Well, let me tell you this: Uber DOES NOT make you "so much money" and it doesn't even come close to "enough." This is true in San Antonio where I currently live, so I can't speak to any other major city where Uber operates. But here, it's just not a viable option. I realized this Friday last week as I spent more than 8 hours driving around, wasting gas, without picking up rides. Friday is supposed to be the most lucrative night, and I certainly know the areas where riders would want rides, but I only made a net of about 30 dollars for working from 7:30PM to 3:30AM.
Oof...
Before my last night driving Uber, I had begun calling in every favor and contact I have in this city and started really looking for a legitimate job once again. I'm quitting full-time writing. But I'm not quitting writing, not by a long shot.
I can't. I'm in too deep now.
Why can't I quit? Why will I continue to pursue publishing my stories even though it will mean filling in all my personal time with typing and plotting? Readers. They're like a drug, man... Every time I see another purchase on my Amazon account I don't think to myself: there's another $3.44 for my pocket. I think: oh cool, another human is about to read something I wrote. It's exhilarating. These past two weeks, between purchases and Kindle Unlimited reads, I've had over 200 people check out my novel. That's awesome.
There are four accomplishments/acts I'm most proud of in life: my daughter, the effect my human rights career has had on the world (I recently played a tiny part in the conviction of Sadeq Alamyar, for instance), giving half of my liver to (and thus saving the life of) my father, and having people read a story I've written. Having readers ranks number 2 on that list. Yeah, #2, that's pretty damn important to me.
Anyway, all this Uber driving and job searching has gotten me about 7k words behind on my NaNoWriMo goal, and I intend to make that distance up this week with a marathon push before Thanksgiving inevitably slows me down once more.
Next time I blog, let's talk about my mixed emotions on Goodreads ratings, ok? I'm bookmarking that topic because I have some thoughts but
So, as I said at the beginning of this blog I was going to try to make writing work as a career. Sales on Kindle are increasing at a steady rate, so that's a good sign. But, it certainly won't fully pay the bills for at least a year, and that's assuming the best case scenario.
One option I considered was driving for Uber. Everyone I mentioned it to beforehand was very encouraging. "You can make so much money doing that," was probably the most common response. I didn't need "so much money," just "enough."
Well, let me tell you this: Uber DOES NOT make you "so much money" and it doesn't even come close to "enough." This is true in San Antonio where I currently live, so I can't speak to any other major city where Uber operates. But here, it's just not a viable option. I realized this Friday last week as I spent more than 8 hours driving around, wasting gas, without picking up rides. Friday is supposed to be the most lucrative night, and I certainly know the areas where riders would want rides, but I only made a net of about 30 dollars for working from 7:30PM to 3:30AM.
Oof...
Before my last night driving Uber, I had begun calling in every favor and contact I have in this city and started really looking for a legitimate job once again. I'm quitting full-time writing. But I'm not quitting writing, not by a long shot.
I can't. I'm in too deep now.
Why can't I quit? Why will I continue to pursue publishing my stories even though it will mean filling in all my personal time with typing and plotting? Readers. They're like a drug, man... Every time I see another purchase on my Amazon account I don't think to myself: there's another $3.44 for my pocket. I think: oh cool, another human is about to read something I wrote. It's exhilarating. These past two weeks, between purchases and Kindle Unlimited reads, I've had over 200 people check out my novel. That's awesome.
There are four accomplishments/acts I'm most proud of in life: my daughter, the effect my human rights career has had on the world (I recently played a tiny part in the conviction of Sadeq Alamyar, for instance), giving half of my liver to (and thus saving the life of) my father, and having people read a story I've written. Having readers ranks number 2 on that list. Yeah, #2, that's pretty damn important to me.
Anyway, all this Uber driving and job searching has gotten me about 7k words behind on my NaNoWriMo goal, and I intend to make that distance up this week with a marathon push before Thanksgiving inevitably slows me down once more.
Next time I blog, let's talk about my mixed emotions on Goodreads ratings, ok? I'm bookmarking that topic because I have some thoughts but
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
NaNoWriMo: Day 4
I'm still hanging in here, writing the middle 50k words for my new novel. As of last night I had about 6k finished, which means I was only about 667 words behind. Today that number is 2334. I think I'll get more done, and here's why:
Individual scenes vary greatly in writing difficulty
The scenes I was working on for days 1-3? A dinner party. I don't know about you, but those things can get dull very quickly. But, you can't just spice things up for the sake of reader interest. I could have had a meteor fall on the street below, but that would completely violate my the rules of my story's universe. So, how do I make a dinner party work without boring the reader into quitting?
1) Focus on what you need to accomplish. In my case, there was a lot of character development and relationship building to hash out quickly.
2) Skip dialogue. People talk a lot at dinner parties, some of that isn't entirely relevant to the reader even if the gist of it is. Write that it happened, but leave out the words of the actual conversation. Make sure to include a good proportion of dialogue too, but just the best parts.
3) Edit it down considerably when revision time comes. By then, the whole story will be written and the absolute most important elements will be clearer.
Writing boring scenes without boring the reader is essential. Most people judge a book not by its cover, but by the first pages. But the first pages are, with few exceptions, the most boring part of a book! While these scenes are essential to a good story, you have to be very careful not to lose reader interest. Naturally, writing these scenes is hard.
Today, tomorrow and Friday's scenes? Oh, a murder attempt! Exciting to write, exciting to read... EASY. But the impact would be lost without the preceding character development.
I suppose I could just put murder attempts, meteors and explosions in every other scene. That would make me the Michael Bay of novels.
But I don't want to be the Michael Bay of novels...
Side note:
For all the harassment people give Michael Bay for his ridiculous plots and tissue-thin character development, the guy is an action/explosion savant. Though it's not everyone's thing, the guy knows his audience and he gives them the best version of what they want. I recently watched and hated his version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I watch movies at the gym), and though I was utterly disappointed, I did find reason to appreciate his work. If you can, go watch the scene where the turtles are sliding down a mountain with a big rig truck, fighting humvees with retractable shocking harpoons and answer this: what kind of mind can come up with this stuff? It's hardly cerebral to watch, but I dare anyone to say Michael Bay doesn't possess a twisted bit of genius to come up with it.
Individual scenes vary greatly in writing difficulty
The scenes I was working on for days 1-3? A dinner party. I don't know about you, but those things can get dull very quickly. But, you can't just spice things up for the sake of reader interest. I could have had a meteor fall on the street below, but that would completely violate my the rules of my story's universe. So, how do I make a dinner party work without boring the reader into quitting?
1) Focus on what you need to accomplish. In my case, there was a lot of character development and relationship building to hash out quickly.
2) Skip dialogue. People talk a lot at dinner parties, some of that isn't entirely relevant to the reader even if the gist of it is. Write that it happened, but leave out the words of the actual conversation. Make sure to include a good proportion of dialogue too, but just the best parts.
3) Edit it down considerably when revision time comes. By then, the whole story will be written and the absolute most important elements will be clearer.
Writing boring scenes without boring the reader is essential. Most people judge a book not by its cover, but by the first pages. But the first pages are, with few exceptions, the most boring part of a book! While these scenes are essential to a good story, you have to be very careful not to lose reader interest. Naturally, writing these scenes is hard.
Today, tomorrow and Friday's scenes? Oh, a murder attempt! Exciting to write, exciting to read... EASY. But the impact would be lost without the preceding character development.
I suppose I could just put murder attempts, meteors and explosions in every other scene. That would make me the Michael Bay of novels.
But I don't want to be the Michael Bay of novels...
Side note:
For all the harassment people give Michael Bay for his ridiculous plots and tissue-thin character development, the guy is an action/explosion savant. Though it's not everyone's thing, the guy knows his audience and he gives them the best version of what they want. I recently watched and hated his version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I watch movies at the gym), and though I was utterly disappointed, I did find reason to appreciate his work. If you can, go watch the scene where the turtles are sliding down a mountain with a big rig truck, fighting humvees with retractable shocking harpoons and answer this: what kind of mind can come up with this stuff? It's hardly cerebral to watch, but I dare anyone to say Michael Bay doesn't possess a twisted bit of genius to come up with it.
Monday, November 2, 2015
NaNoWriMo: Day 2, Pantsers Scare Me
Of course, NaNoWriMo had to start on a weekend when my mother was visiting...
I was supposed to have 1667 words written by today, and another 1667 by tonight. My grand total sits at exactly 0. That is, I have 0 words written during my NaNoWriMo push. Technically I already have more than 20,000 words written for my second novel, and tons of outlining/notes.
By the way, I don't know who out there might be reading this, but for some reason I saw a spike in sales of my first novel yesterday. I can't really explain it, but there are a few reasons I can imagine. Perhaps it was my NaNoWriMo profile which caught someone's attention, or maybe it was the fact that I activated my Goodreads author account over the weekend, or there was pent-up demand for books due to Halloween, or maybe my new ads on Amazon are gaining traction, and of course I can't discount all my loyal blog followers deciding to purchase a copy of my book *crickets chirping.* Anyway... if you have some insight feel free to leave a comment on this post.
So, today is going to be a quick post because I need to get on to writing before my daughter wakes up and I have to get her to school, get to the gym, take a shower and get back to writing.
I am a devoted member of the church of plotsers
According to writing blogs, there are two kinds of writers: plotsers and pantsers. The naming convention is suspect in my mind, as pantser sounds like someone you might meet in a middle school locker room, but those are the names others have chosen. A plotser basically plans their writing ahead of time, whereas a pantser just writes whatever comes to mind "by the seat of their pants."
I'm not going to sit here and argue that one method is better than the other. Whenever I start out, I like to have extensive notes, including character maps, a proper timeline of events, plot details and with my mystery novels, a map of the clues and red herrings I need to embed within the narrative. When I start out writing, I have a definite plan.
And then that plan is torn to shreds within the first 10,000 words.
The problem with writing character-first plots is that, when I'm planning the story, I'm planning it from my own personal perspective. But when I write characters, sometimes I have them in a scene where I expect them to do something but I realize as I'm writing that they wouldn't do what I have planned. So, these fully independent people who live inside my head start dictating changes in the plot. If I were a pantser, this might not be the problem it is. Every time something changes, I need to return to my plan and figure out where all the remaining plot points and mystery clues need to go. I couldn't imagine trying to juggle plot threads in my mind as I'm writing because most of the time I'm inside the characters' heads working out what they're thinking about. Keeping my notes external allows me to forget the story and just write the scene.
I'd love to see a breakdown of successful authors and which ones are plotsers vs. which ones are pantsers. Steven King is most-often cited as perhaps the king of pantsers, as he wrote in On Writing that he doesn't outline. I think the assumption is that pantsers are faster writers, as they are not bogged down by note-taking and planning, but I'd question that assumption because pantsers' heads must fill up with so much information that they get bogged down by the weight of it all. To be a truly successful pantser, you have to have an incredible mind.
I'm not saying I don't have an incredible mind, but mine certainly isn't set up for pantsing. I'm just terrible at memorization and holding multiple threads in my head at once. I have a mind which works by understanding how systems work on a macro level, but I can't remember minute details without some preparation ahead of time. That's why I loved physics and hated chemistry. In physics, you can get away with literally just understanding calculus and the basic rules of nature, then re-build the formulas in your head as you're taking an exam. The same can't be said of chemistry, which relies on information which can't be divined and must be either memorized or recalled via notes.
Final thoughts:
Some pantsers aren't genius writers who can juggle plot threads and character voices in their heads, they're just lazy.
Some plotsers aren't meticulous planners, they chronic procrastinators who are afraid to transition from planning to writing.
Nobody's perfect... but this post is way too long already and I have writing to do.
I was supposed to have 1667 words written by today, and another 1667 by tonight. My grand total sits at exactly 0. That is, I have 0 words written during my NaNoWriMo push. Technically I already have more than 20,000 words written for my second novel, and tons of outlining/notes.
By the way, I don't know who out there might be reading this, but for some reason I saw a spike in sales of my first novel yesterday. I can't really explain it, but there are a few reasons I can imagine. Perhaps it was my NaNoWriMo profile which caught someone's attention, or maybe it was the fact that I activated my Goodreads author account over the weekend, or there was pent-up demand for books due to Halloween, or maybe my new ads on Amazon are gaining traction, and of course I can't discount all my loyal blog followers deciding to purchase a copy of my book *crickets chirping.* Anyway... if you have some insight feel free to leave a comment on this post.
So, today is going to be a quick post because I need to get on to writing before my daughter wakes up and I have to get her to school, get to the gym, take a shower and get back to writing.
I am a devoted member of the church of plotsers
According to writing blogs, there are two kinds of writers: plotsers and pantsers. The naming convention is suspect in my mind, as pantser sounds like someone you might meet in a middle school locker room, but those are the names others have chosen. A plotser basically plans their writing ahead of time, whereas a pantser just writes whatever comes to mind "by the seat of their pants."
I'm not going to sit here and argue that one method is better than the other. Whenever I start out, I like to have extensive notes, including character maps, a proper timeline of events, plot details and with my mystery novels, a map of the clues and red herrings I need to embed within the narrative. When I start out writing, I have a definite plan.
And then that plan is torn to shreds within the first 10,000 words.
The problem with writing character-first plots is that, when I'm planning the story, I'm planning it from my own personal perspective. But when I write characters, sometimes I have them in a scene where I expect them to do something but I realize as I'm writing that they wouldn't do what I have planned. So, these fully independent people who live inside my head start dictating changes in the plot. If I were a pantser, this might not be the problem it is. Every time something changes, I need to return to my plan and figure out where all the remaining plot points and mystery clues need to go. I couldn't imagine trying to juggle plot threads in my mind as I'm writing because most of the time I'm inside the characters' heads working out what they're thinking about. Keeping my notes external allows me to forget the story and just write the scene.
I'd love to see a breakdown of successful authors and which ones are plotsers vs. which ones are pantsers. Steven King is most-often cited as perhaps the king of pantsers, as he wrote in On Writing that he doesn't outline. I think the assumption is that pantsers are faster writers, as they are not bogged down by note-taking and planning, but I'd question that assumption because pantsers' heads must fill up with so much information that they get bogged down by the weight of it all. To be a truly successful pantser, you have to have an incredible mind.
I'm not saying I don't have an incredible mind, but mine certainly isn't set up for pantsing. I'm just terrible at memorization and holding multiple threads in my head at once. I have a mind which works by understanding how systems work on a macro level, but I can't remember minute details without some preparation ahead of time. That's why I loved physics and hated chemistry. In physics, you can get away with literally just understanding calculus and the basic rules of nature, then re-build the formulas in your head as you're taking an exam. The same can't be said of chemistry, which relies on information which can't be divined and must be either memorized or recalled via notes.
Final thoughts:
Some pantsers aren't genius writers who can juggle plot threads and character voices in their heads, they're just lazy.
Some plotsers aren't meticulous planners, they chronic procrastinators who are afraid to transition from planning to writing.
Nobody's perfect... but this post is way too long already and I have writing to do.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
NaNoWriMo 2015
I have mixed feelings about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which starts tomorrow. I'm participating this year, as it coincides nicely with my goal to push past the middle of my sequel, and I'll be blogging about my experience a little more frequently during the month.
I participated in 2011, just a few months after my daughter was born. I did well the first two weeks, but trying to fit writing between working as a lawyer and taking care of my daughter meant losing too much sleep, so I dropped it. It wasn't very good, anyway.
I thought about participating in 2014 when I was in the middle of writing my first published novel, but it didn't make much sense. I had put myself on a generous writing schedule and was meeting my daily quotas with ease. It just didn't seem necessary to force myself to write 50k words in a month.
Then there's the quality issue. There are so many would-be novelists who participate in NaNoWriMo, come out with something tangible but ultimately lacking polish, then immediately publish it on Amazon. There's a lot of junk on Amazon, so between fake reviews on one side (Amazon is working on this) and unpolished amateur stuff on the other, it's hard for readers to find new authors like myself who actually take the time to rewrite and rework their manuscript into something readable.
But, I also appreciate NaNoWriMo for getting new authors started. I don't think anyone has a "special talent" for writing. It's not genetic, or a gift from God, or some crazy skill like figure skating which you have to learn from the age of 2 to be any good. Sure, innate talent, education and practice help, but anyone can produce a good novel if they simply sit down and work on it. The problem is, people think that after one month of working on it, it's good enough to publish. No, it's not. That's not true for Steven King, it's not true for J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins, and it's certainly not true for Susie/Johnny Amateur.
So, cheers to a solid month of writing goodness! (And also a 50% discount off Scrivener if I get through it, because Word sucks for writing a 90-100k novel).
Note: I am not affiliated with, nor have I received any compensation from, NaNoWriMo or Scrivener beyond typical consumer usage. Not that I'd complain if I was/did.
I participated in 2011, just a few months after my daughter was born. I did well the first two weeks, but trying to fit writing between working as a lawyer and taking care of my daughter meant losing too much sleep, so I dropped it. It wasn't very good, anyway.
I thought about participating in 2014 when I was in the middle of writing my first published novel, but it didn't make much sense. I had put myself on a generous writing schedule and was meeting my daily quotas with ease. It just didn't seem necessary to force myself to write 50k words in a month.
Then there's the quality issue. There are so many would-be novelists who participate in NaNoWriMo, come out with something tangible but ultimately lacking polish, then immediately publish it on Amazon. There's a lot of junk on Amazon, so between fake reviews on one side (Amazon is working on this) and unpolished amateur stuff on the other, it's hard for readers to find new authors like myself who actually take the time to rewrite and rework their manuscript into something readable.
But, I also appreciate NaNoWriMo for getting new authors started. I don't think anyone has a "special talent" for writing. It's not genetic, or a gift from God, or some crazy skill like figure skating which you have to learn from the age of 2 to be any good. Sure, innate talent, education and practice help, but anyone can produce a good novel if they simply sit down and work on it. The problem is, people think that after one month of working on it, it's good enough to publish. No, it's not. That's not true for Steven King, it's not true for J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins, and it's certainly not true for Susie/Johnny Amateur.
So, cheers to a solid month of writing goodness! (And also a 50% discount off Scrivener if I get through it, because Word sucks for writing a 90-100k novel).
Note: I am not affiliated with, nor have I received any compensation from, NaNoWriMo or Scrivener beyond typical consumer usage. Not that I'd complain if I was/did.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
This... is my job?
It's been a while since I last posted, and I'd like to say that's because I lost internet up here on my mountain. I did, but I'm not sure that's why I haven't blogged in a while. I think it's because I was mentally distancing myself from the idea of continuing as a full-time writer.
Why? Because of a job interview.
As I might have mentioned in my previous posts, this writing thing isn't a sure bet. For one, the money will probably never be as good as it could have been had I stayed on the lawyer path. Did I mention I am/was a lawyer? It's true. And a few weeks ago, just before I wrote my last blog post, I had a second interview for a job working in government relations. It was uncharacteristically short, but the questions seemed to suggest I had a good chance of getting that job. I fit the profile, or so I thought.
I haven't heard back.
I also did some political volunteer work. That was fun. I've worked in legislative politics a few times in various states and I've always enjoyed it. If I found myself with a job offer in that arena, I probably wouldn't turn it down.
After my last blog post, I started to envision my work life being primarily government/legal work and suddenly my dream of writing novels began to feel more like a hobby again.
But I still haven't heard back...
In the mean time, my sales and readership have continued climbing upward. I should have been excited about those things, because they suggested something amazing: I could actually pull off a career as a writer. I could eventually make ends meet with earnings from my novels alone!
During my last post, I promised to dive into how Amazon pays its writers. I don't see a better time than now to discuss that.
How does Amazon pay its authors?
First things first: I'm only going to discuss my own situation here. Amazon has a program with 50% royalty and a tiny advance plus contract conditions which I'm not interested in discussing today. I'm also not going to discuss traditional publishers and the various reasons why I chose not to even pursue that route. You have to save something for a future post, right?
Let's say you've published a book as I have. Great! Wasn't that fun? Now, it's time to get paid. First, choose a price for your book. I priced mine at $4.99. Now you have to get readers to notice your book... See my last post about getting readers to find your book.
Ok, so someone bought your book at $4.99. You're just one dollar away from that $6 burger you're going to eat for dinner tonight, right? Nope.
First, Amazon takes their percentage cut. You can choose from either a 70% or a 35% royalty rate, with 70% coming with a few caveats like minimum price, territory restrictions and, of course, having to pay electronic delivery costs.
After Amazon takes their cut, my $4.99 book nets me $3.44. That's actually really good compared to traditional publishing, but naturally you don't get the same advertisement resources, editing assistance and your book won't be on store shelves for people who don't read e-books. Oddly enough, traditional publishers have been less generous with these benefits in recent years, meaning they're more than willing to take a huge cut of your sales while providing less help polishing and advertising your work. Again, a topic for another day.
So, you get that $3.44 and that's your income, right? Well, no. You have to advertise, silly, otherwise that $3.44 will probably be the last $3.44 your book ever earns.
So you take out an ad on... Amazon. Sure, you could pay Facebook $5 to "promote" your Facebook post and get maybe ten people to view it. Or you could buy a billboard somewhere? (Not a joke, I'm actually considering doing this in my home town next summer to promote my series set in said hometown.)
Ads: Amazon's second cut of your delicious profits.
Amazon has a neat feature where you get the bombard people with ads for your book. You just write a header (50 characters), and a body (150), set a maximum bid price and a maximum campaign cost, plus a campaign duration, and off it goes.
Someone clicks on Amazon to buy toilet paper or a laser level, or maybe they turn on their Kindle, and then something magical happens in the background. Your ad bids for the spot against other ads, and the one with the higher bid wins. If you set your bid at $0.10, then your ad will be displayed fewer times than one with a $0.15 bid, though not 50% more often, actually more like 12% more often.
But, you don't pay every time someone sees your ad, that would be ridiculously expensive. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad. They do so knowing the price of your book, its Amazon rating, and the content of your ad. Then it's up to your book description, cover, ratings and the preview to convince them to buy it. The vast majority of people don't... at least, not on the first pass.
If you bid $0.10 per click, then you will have to make one sale per 34 clicks in order to avoid losing money on your $3.44 book. For me, I'm actually doing better than that. Yay! But it's not at all guaranteed.
Some people won't buy your book, but they might borrow it Netflix-style from Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program if you allow it. Amazon pays you based on how many pages those people read, an amount which changes every month based on the number of subscribers vs total pages read... and how much Amazon thinks they should keep that month. It's not the most transparent process, but it's hard to complain when you're just a little guy against a behemoth like Amazon (and, honestly, I find it fair enough). You can expect something north of half a penny per page read, which for my first novel yields about $1.70. It's half of what I get for a true purchaser (or close to the same as a $2.99 novel), but Kindle Unlimited users are an entirely separate market from à la carte readers. An Unlimited reader wouldn't have bought your book in the first place because they have their "Netflix of Books" and they're only going to get their books from there.
Kindle Unlimited users are voracious readers. For every sale, Kindle Unlimited users read 350 pages of my book (a ratio which has held constant over the last three months). At a minimum that adds $1.70 to each book sold, meaning my earnings from advertisements is actually $5.14 per book (a gross simplification, yes, but go with it).
So, my total advertising cost per sale is my average bid price times the number of clicks per sale. Subtract that from the $5.14 in earnings I receive, and you get your total earnings per book.
At $0.10: 5 clicks-$4.64, 10 clicks-$4.14... 20 clicks-$3.14... 50 clicks-$0.14
At $0.15: 5 clicks-$4.39, 10 clicks-$3.64... 20 clicks-$2.14... 50 clicks... you lose $2.36 per sale.
This... is why I'm thinking about driving Uber a few hours a week until my sales hit a few dozen a day, and why I'm still susceptible to job offers should they come my way. I know writing will probably never make me rich, but for what it's worth I'm enjoying every minute of it.
Why? Because of a job interview.
As I might have mentioned in my previous posts, this writing thing isn't a sure bet. For one, the money will probably never be as good as it could have been had I stayed on the lawyer path. Did I mention I am/was a lawyer? It's true. And a few weeks ago, just before I wrote my last blog post, I had a second interview for a job working in government relations. It was uncharacteristically short, but the questions seemed to suggest I had a good chance of getting that job. I fit the profile, or so I thought.
I haven't heard back.
I also did some political volunteer work. That was fun. I've worked in legislative politics a few times in various states and I've always enjoyed it. If I found myself with a job offer in that arena, I probably wouldn't turn it down.
After my last blog post, I started to envision my work life being primarily government/legal work and suddenly my dream of writing novels began to feel more like a hobby again.
But I still haven't heard back...
In the mean time, my sales and readership have continued climbing upward. I should have been excited about those things, because they suggested something amazing: I could actually pull off a career as a writer. I could eventually make ends meet with earnings from my novels alone!
During my last post, I promised to dive into how Amazon pays its writers. I don't see a better time than now to discuss that.
How does Amazon pay its authors?
First things first: I'm only going to discuss my own situation here. Amazon has a program with 50% royalty and a tiny advance plus contract conditions which I'm not interested in discussing today. I'm also not going to discuss traditional publishers and the various reasons why I chose not to even pursue that route. You have to save something for a future post, right?
Let's say you've published a book as I have. Great! Wasn't that fun? Now, it's time to get paid. First, choose a price for your book. I priced mine at $4.99. Now you have to get readers to notice your book... See my last post about getting readers to find your book.
Ok, so someone bought your book at $4.99. You're just one dollar away from that $6 burger you're going to eat for dinner tonight, right? Nope.
First, Amazon takes their percentage cut. You can choose from either a 70% or a 35% royalty rate, with 70% coming with a few caveats like minimum price, territory restrictions and, of course, having to pay electronic delivery costs.
After Amazon takes their cut, my $4.99 book nets me $3.44. That's actually really good compared to traditional publishing, but naturally you don't get the same advertisement resources, editing assistance and your book won't be on store shelves for people who don't read e-books. Oddly enough, traditional publishers have been less generous with these benefits in recent years, meaning they're more than willing to take a huge cut of your sales while providing less help polishing and advertising your work. Again, a topic for another day.
So, you get that $3.44 and that's your income, right? Well, no. You have to advertise, silly, otherwise that $3.44 will probably be the last $3.44 your book ever earns.
So you take out an ad on... Amazon. Sure, you could pay Facebook $5 to "promote" your Facebook post and get maybe ten people to view it. Or you could buy a billboard somewhere? (Not a joke, I'm actually considering doing this in my home town next summer to promote my series set in said hometown.)
Ads: Amazon's second cut of your delicious profits.
Amazon has a neat feature where you get the bombard people with ads for your book. You just write a header (50 characters), and a body (150), set a maximum bid price and a maximum campaign cost, plus a campaign duration, and off it goes.
Someone clicks on Amazon to buy toilet paper or a laser level, or maybe they turn on their Kindle, and then something magical happens in the background. Your ad bids for the spot against other ads, and the one with the higher bid wins. If you set your bid at $0.10, then your ad will be displayed fewer times than one with a $0.15 bid, though not 50% more often, actually more like 12% more often.
But, you don't pay every time someone sees your ad, that would be ridiculously expensive. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad. They do so knowing the price of your book, its Amazon rating, and the content of your ad. Then it's up to your book description, cover, ratings and the preview to convince them to buy it. The vast majority of people don't... at least, not on the first pass.
If you bid $0.10 per click, then you will have to make one sale per 34 clicks in order to avoid losing money on your $3.44 book. For me, I'm actually doing better than that. Yay! But it's not at all guaranteed.
Some people won't buy your book, but they might borrow it Netflix-style from Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program if you allow it. Amazon pays you based on how many pages those people read, an amount which changes every month based on the number of subscribers vs total pages read... and how much Amazon thinks they should keep that month. It's not the most transparent process, but it's hard to complain when you're just a little guy against a behemoth like Amazon (and, honestly, I find it fair enough). You can expect something north of half a penny per page read, which for my first novel yields about $1.70. It's half of what I get for a true purchaser (or close to the same as a $2.99 novel), but Kindle Unlimited users are an entirely separate market from à la carte readers. An Unlimited reader wouldn't have bought your book in the first place because they have their "Netflix of Books" and they're only going to get their books from there.
Kindle Unlimited users are voracious readers. For every sale, Kindle Unlimited users read 350 pages of my book (a ratio which has held constant over the last three months). At a minimum that adds $1.70 to each book sold, meaning my earnings from advertisements is actually $5.14 per book (a gross simplification, yes, but go with it).
So, my total advertising cost per sale is my average bid price times the number of clicks per sale. Subtract that from the $5.14 in earnings I receive, and you get your total earnings per book.
At $0.10: 5 clicks-$4.64, 10 clicks-$4.14... 20 clicks-$3.14... 50 clicks-$0.14
At $0.15: 5 clicks-$4.39, 10 clicks-$3.64... 20 clicks-$2.14... 50 clicks... you lose $2.36 per sale.
This... is why I'm thinking about driving Uber a few hours a week until my sales hit a few dozen a day, and why I'm still susceptible to job offers should they come my way. I know writing will probably never make me rich, but for what it's worth I'm enjoying every minute of it.
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