can you make a monthly income writing?
Let’s talk about the business of writing today! Bradford emails to ask:
I am a new author with my first book out this week on amazon. I have read your frostborn series, Demonsouled series and the Ghost series. I have enjoyed them all so far and looking forward to reading the Ghost Exile series next.
Was hoping you might have a few tips on marketing. Do you have any recommended places to put my money for advertising.Also very curious at what book number did you finally start seeing a steady income? I have read many a authors tale and some say 3 books others 5 books.
It’s important to remember that there are no guarantees of anything with writing or publishing, and especially with marketing. I’ve tried things that I thought were good ideas, but nothing happened. I’ve tried things on a whim that took five minutes, and it turned out to be wildly successful.
That said, I started seeing (relatively) steady income after eight books – the 1st three Demonsouled books, the 1st three Ghosts books, my Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide, and my Windows Command Line Beginner’s Guide. I had also made the first Demonsouled book free and the first Ghost book free. That especially did the trick, since it’s five years later and there are now ten Demonsouled books and eighteen Ghosts books (nineteen if you count Blade of the Ghosts).
I should also mention that I was something of an anomalous case because I was able to do all of that in four months. I had written the novels over the previous ten years and was unable to get them traditionally published, so I could self-publish them pretty swiftly. Additionally, my Ubuntu books was originally a long series of blog posts for one of my older websites, so I combined them together in a single book.
If I was starting now, I wouldn’t spend any money on advertising until I’ve got at least three or four books in the series. (I won’t really do anything to advertise CLOAK GAMES until after the fifth book SHATTER STONE comes out, hopefully in December.) I’ve had good results with BargainBooksy, BookGorilla, and BookSends. Bookbub is the best, but you need a certain minimum number of reviews first, and they reject about 90 percent of their submissions, so persistence helps.
Of course, that is true of all things in life!
-JM