questions from a new writer

A new-ish writer had some questions for me, so I thought I’d answer them here:

1.) Currently, I’m trying to build my daily word count up so any advice you have towards managing higher numbers would be appreciated. Do you have any books/videos/etc. that you would recommend?

It really helps if you outline what you intend to write in advance. This helps for two reasons. First, you know where you’re going, so you can get there faster. Second, if you outline your story or book in advance, you have to work out any potential plot holes in advance. It also forces you to do the hard thinking of what should happen in the plot. Some writers start out with a really great first couple of chapters, don’t bother to work out what happens next, and then get stuck once they finish those opening chapters since they never worked out what to write after that This problem can be avoided with an outline.

I would recommend the book 2k To 10k by Rachel Aaron for more advice on this topic.

A neat trick is to set a timer and see how many words you can write until it goes off. When doing strength training, I rest 70 seconds between sets, so I’ll try to write as fast as I can in those 70 second bursts.

Also, turn off the Internet while writing. Most of the Internet is a waste of time. I don’t want to name any names, but there are writers who are years late on their next book who yet somehow manage to find the time to post on Twitter dozens of times a day.

2.) Also, any advice about juggling multiple fiction projects while writing, editing, and also publishing?

I usually do what I call an eighty percent/twenty percent rule. Eighty percent of my effort goes to one project, and twenty percent to another one. When I finish the first project, the previous twenty percent project gets promoted to the new eighty percent, and I start a new twenty percent project.

It might not be wise to start that right away – I only taught myself how to work on two different fiction projects at once in 2015 out of necessity. It was difficult at first but three years late I’m pretty comfortable with it.

3.) Do you self-publish entirely or are you hybrid?

(Definition: a “hybrid” writer is one who both self-publishes and traditionally publishes.)

I self-publish all my ebooks and print books. I suppose I’m technically hybrid because my audiobooks are through Tantor and Podium, but all my ebooks and print books are self-published. I was traditionally published in 2005 and 2008, but I got the rights to those books back, and I haven’t submitted anything to a publisher in seven or eight years. (Tantor and Podium contacted me, not the other way around. I had decided in 2016 not to do any audiobooks because of the prohibitive cost of producing them, and then Tantor contacted me about the FROSTBORN series. Man plans, God laughs.)

I saw a bunch of young writers making it their New Year’s Resolution to submit more to agents, and I thought it was such a waste of time. Traditional publishing is a buggy whip industry in an automotive world. (Recently the CEO of a conglomerate that owns one of the Big 5 publishers called ebooks a “stupid” product, which neatly demonstrates just how clueless the big publishers are about how things have changed.) Those young writers would be much better off self-publishing and learning a little about marketing, which leads us to the next question.

4.) How do you find new readers? Do you go seeking them or do you let them find you or is it a mix?

Marketing & advertising.

Book marketing can get really (and unnecessarily) complicated, but you can boil it down to a simple formula.

-Write a trilogy, or more.

-Make the 1st book free.

-Promote the 1st book through ads.

-Stick a link to your new-release newsletter at the back of every book, and send out a newsletter every time you release a new book.

That’s been my basic marketing strategy for the last seven years, and it’s worked out pretty well. You can get really complicated with giveaways and algorithms and categories and Kindle Unlimited and Facebook Ads and such, but that basic formula works pretty well. It sets up a virtuous circle – people read the free book, and if they like it enough to buy the sequels, they’ll probably subscribe to the newsletter, and they’ll probably buy the next book in the series when you announce it with your newsletter.

Like, I haven’t done any marketing on my TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS series for years, but in January 2018 I gave away 227 free copies of the first book in the series, and sold 43 copies of the second book in the series. That’s an 18% conversion rate, which isn’t bad for a series I wrote in 2003 and self-published in 2012.

-JM