What Writing Success Requires

I have a very strong presence in legal thrillers. The secret has been marketing. My two most recent books are around 8 and 10 in legal thrillers top 100. The books I can't move in order to get a better ranking are John Grisham (of course) and the rest are Thomas Mercer imprints where the author has one or more books by TM that then pull the others along and they all rank in the top five or six all of the time. So be it, there's nothing I can do about it except bank my mid-five-figures each month and look at the next shiny toy on Amazon's site.

But I was lucky and somewhat knowledgeable when I first published in January 2014. I had done SEO on Google's Adwords for ten years and was pretty up on the importance of graphics and keywords. The graphics paid off by Bookbub giving me like ten or twelve promos in my first fifteen months. This had everything to do with my cover art, I am convinced. No, the covers are not typical genre like many gurus preach, but they did all have the indicia of legal thrillers such as courthouse columns or scales of justice somewhere in the cover. But my cover artist is a genius and had done Internet branding for many years and knew what i needed/wanted. So that was a good fit--and how else did Bookbub select me so often except by my covers since I started out a total unknown writer? Now I rank about number 26 in kindle thriller writers two years later.

Branding is the name of the game for me. Which will at least get you to the Look Inside feature. After that you better have a compelling story, worldview, and voice or no matter how great your cover you won't sell books. Purchasers are very astute when it comes to authorial sophistication and I was lucky in that regard too because I had written novels for thirty years, never made a sale to tradpub, and was quite accomplished (not bragging, I hope) when it came time to producing sentences people would like. Since January 2014 I have published 14 books and sold in excess of 150,000, the majority of those in the past eight or nine months.

I believe that trying hard is admirable but it's not enough. Practice is required within the art form itself; lots of unrewarded practice. Thank goodness no one did publish my first novel, my second, or my eighth or ninth. Thank goodness the New Yorker and The Atlantic rejected the hundreds of short stories I submitted over the years. But today I would be proud for them to publish me. I think I have finally started to learn how to say what it is I envision and what it is I am trying to distill from that vision into words on the page.

It didn't come to me in full until I was 74 years old. You have to really want this more than anything.

Yes, Amazon has definitely saturated my genre and I am paying them back. I am saturating it too.

Why Amazon Doesn't Violate Antitrust Laws (for the hundredth time)

“The central problem is Amazon’s enormous dominance of the entire book publishing industry,”

I am the publisher; Amazon is the retail outlet. The “publishers,” consisting of thousands of small fry just like me, exist in the most democratizing store front in the history of the world, Amazon’s website. Legally, one could argue that Amazon is a consignment store. “Here is a place to sell your goods,” says Amazon. “Bring them into our store and we will collect the money from the sale and keep a percent for rent and other overhead.”

How Amazon is strikingly different from Standard OIl and AT&T is that Amazon has no ownership interest in even one item out of the millions it sells. It doesn’t own oil lands, leaseholds, drilling platforms, tanker ships, or oil, the commodity itself. Neither does it own communication products put into the stream of commerce for resale. It uses communication products just like it uses carbon fuels, but it doesn’t own those things and has no competitive footprint in the market of such items.

Neither does Amazon have a competitive footprint in the market of books in the sense of ownership interest in the books it sells or the tires it sells or the garden hose it sells or the bracelets it sells–it’s simply a provisioner of a marketplace. You would never accuse a mall of antitrust; you would never accuse a website of antitrust. Offering other people’s products for sale in your mall just doesn’t fit inside the unfair competitive advantage by price-fixing and monopolistic practices the antitrust laws contemplate.

Finally, Amazon’s business practices in no way restrain trade. Every whiner and bitcher out there can go over to Go Daddy, buy a URL for $2.99 and set up a website for $9.99 a month and compete with Amazon 100% restraint free. There is no monopolistic practice that prevents that.

Late on Posts - Busy With New Book

The new book is Michael Gresham. Michael is 55, Catholic and prays, divorced, spends hours cleaning up after a brother who refuses to take his meds, negotiates with ex-wife who needs money to buy hormones and get pregnant, and defends a client with diminished capacity who is accused of killing the wife of a federal judge. This is enough to get anyone rolling down the the thriller tracks.

The idea for the book--it will develop into a series--is the constituency of my readership. The great majority of my readers will relate to Michael's age and marital status because so many fall within the same general characteristics. Is this a ploy? You're damn right it is. I want to read about people I can relate to and I bet you do, too.

Michael Gresham is a legal thriller. There's enough going on between the covers to keep you up late, reading when you should be sleeping and getting ready for tomorrow's mini-drama down at the office, or store, or station, or wherever you earn your keep. The book is written in the first person--your author's notion of how Michael Gresham sounds when he speaks. His words, his dialect, his depth of appraisal of the world around him, his reaction to events: you will come away knowing who he is, I promise you.

Now the question is, do I let one of Amazon's imprints publish the book or do I self-publish? On the one hand, Amazon has access to all the readers any writer could ever want. On the other hand, I do love my freedom and independence and ability to turn on a dime if I decide to change this or that about my work or manipulate the book's price or cover or the jillion other little things authors like to fiddle with. There's always that. So I'm going to let my beta reader Maia decide what I do with the book. She won't know she's making this decision: but when I see her reaction I'll know exactly where to place it for adoption. Another wounded child on its way home.

And that, my friends, is how I view the publication of one of my books.

Now Is The Time, Content Makers

More and more I'm beginning to see some of the pioneering purveyors of ebooks on Amazon's selling machine begin to fade away. The first publishers were simply that: first on the scene. Then, once the scene was discovered by all, the writing abilities and ways with words became increasingly disparate, and the readers sorted the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Readers still do that on Amazon, voting with their wallets for the writers who will survive and allowing to fall by the wayside many of those who were simply early adopters.

Does this mean the gold rush is over?

Not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I believe the public's appetite for content is only going to increase. As the real world becomes more troubled, it seems, the more it seems that people will reach out in equal parts for diversion. Hence the huge upswing in video games, movies, music and song, concerts, reality TV shows, and books and stories and nonfiction. If you are one of the blessed ones who can provide original, thoughtful content, if you are one of those blessed with a way with words, you're in luck. You just walked onto the modern day set of Albert in Wonderland and it is brimming with people and businesses just fighting to hand you money for your work.

Content is king.

Writers are the kingmakers.

There has never been a better time to get it down on paper and put it out there.

Write and publish. Repeat. Then do it again!

100,000 Books Sold - What Happened?

I published my first book in January of 2014. I just published my eleventh book in September 2015. Number 12 is underway with a Xmas publication date.

I write "legal thrillers." I don't know how "thrilling" my books are, but I don't make up the categories, either; Amazon does that.

Bookbub
My first month I think I sold maybe 40 or 50 books. My second month 400. My third month 1100. I was growing and selling more every month until about August of last year when I came on KBoards and found everyone talking about Bookbub. So I submitted and got accepted for a freebie on about my third try. Since then I've had eleven more Bookbubs (upcoming one is next Tuesday). Most have been freebie giveaways although a couple were promo sales. All in all Booktrakr tells me I've given away about 300,000 books, which I couldn't have done without Bookbub. And I've sold over 100,000.

So I guess BB is really the story of any success I've had. Why did they accept me so often? I think much of it has to do with my covers, which are made by Nathan Wampler. If you would like to ask him about covers he can be reached atnathanwamplerdesign@gmail.com. Please don't get him so busy he ignores my pleas for help. The guy's a genius, as far as I'm concerned and I can only say, based on BB's acceptance of my promos, they must like him too.

It's funny, but I practiced law 40 years and never earned as much as I do now by writing. I'm also an old guy so I wish (if wishes were horses...) I had started this years earlier. Whoops, actually I did. I had an agent back in the nineties when Grisham got so hot, and my agent peddled my books around NY and no one was interested. Even last January when I first self-pubbed I had just queried something like 45 agents and none of them wrote me back except for two canned, brief, brush-offs.

Hot New Releases
I like self-pub. I like writing and releasing on my own schedule. More than that, however, I've come to know that you need to play the Hot New Releases cycle and self-pub allows me to do that. For example, right now my latest book The Trial Lawyer is under thrillers > legal and it's about #4 under HNR. Also, my next book is on preorder and it's also on the first page of HNR and will remain there for the ninety days while it's being written. This is very important to me in how I move books.

KU
I'm in KU 100%. Many of my peers are wide. But I like page reads and get between 1.5 to 2.0 million per month. It would be hard to give that up for the "wide" adventure. Maybe at some point I will, but right now it works for me. Maybe not for you, but for how I'm building my backlist it works just fine. Everyone will have a different plan and use these tools to best suit their plan.

Mark and Nick
Yes, I've taken Mark Dawson's FB course and Nick Stephenson's mailing list course, with crossover between them. These guys, have taught me so much. Mark is brilliant at teaching Power Editor for FB and even a dummy like me now has it figured out. Nick was equally brilliant in teaching now to building that mailing list. My list right now has 5100 names and I can launch a book quite high in the rankings.

Can you learn from me?
This is an area where opinion seems to be all over the road. If we could replicate success from posts like this one, then why don't we all take James Patterson's course and become megasellers by following his path. But that's where it breaks down for me. I think generalities have been good for me to learn here on Kboards (write series, publish often, don't respond to the 1-stars, etc) but so far I haven't had the success others have had simply by following what someone else did. I've had to find my own way.

If I were starting out today, I would: find a small niche; write and publish no more than 90 days apart; tickle the Amazon algos by boosting sales through FB ads. When I first started out I advertised on FB in order to get sales so Amazon's algos would sit up and pay attention. My ads were money losers--but it wasn't profit I was after, it was movement. A gradual upswing in sales. I am NOT saying I acquired hundreds of sales by FB, maybe 4-6 sales per day to start. It doesn't take much. But as a long-time advertiser on Adwords I had come to know that I had to invest money up front to make money on the back end. Why wouldn't that same business tactic work with Amazon? I believe it does. And what Mark and Nick are doing is showing us how to not only get movement in our sales but, by their methods, even to turn a profit. What could be better than moving books on FB ads AND turning a profit? The one feeds the other. Just my opinion, of course. But again, I was all but broke when I started publishing and I know how hard it can be to spend money you don't have on advertising. Yikes. We all come to this differently.

Finally, those who know me know that I have asked probably the most butt-dumb questions on KBoards in a long time. I had to, because I knew absolutely zero about self-pub when I first came here. When I found KDP I was a phone call away from publishing with a company called XLibris and the guy had me talked into something like a $3,000 program guaranteed to line my garage with insulating boxes of books. Thank God for KDP. I went on their site and read it like ten times, each time looking for the part where it says how much I would have to pay to publish a book. Amazon removed the last obstacle for me: the gatekeepers. And all I have to do is keep writing, which is like a virus that wracks me and won't let go anyway. With or without Amazon, I'm writing anyway.

Never give up. I lost my first six books I wrote before my first self-pub in January 2014. Left on other people's computers or lost in printed formats. Gone. But maybe it's just as well, I don't know. But the point I want to make is that I had written continuously for thirty-some years since college until Amazon opened the door for me. Nobody bought anything from me. Nothing. But once the door opened, I had unlearned a lot of bad habits and was left with a style that more than anything aims for clarity of story. That's it, simple. Nothing matters to me but clarity of story. Sometimes I hit it, sometimes I miss it. But there's my goal.

Good luck everyone.

ETA:

I'm a strong believer in preorders because a preorder can stay on the "coming soon" pages for 90 days. Then when the book is released it gets another 30 days on the HNR page and then gets into the "New Releases/last ninety days" pages after. At this point my practice is to then establish another preorder book and climb back on the "coming soon" pages again while my latest release is HNR for thirty then "New Releases/last ninety days." This is the cycle, of course. Your mailing list will help you maintain a high level of visibility as you do this.

This model requires constant publishing, every ninety days. But in my experience, it is these lists that sell books on a regular daily basis, moving them ever higher as they go. It also requires a mailing list to keep your book churn up while the HNR algos kick in.

What is beautiful is that Amazon gives us these data filters (the lists) as tools we can (and should) use. I have been unable to find another sales portal that gives me this.

The All-Time Logical Fallacy (Or, How I Saved $99.99)

There is a logical fallacy among many writers (witness the blogs and their followers) that goes like this: You sell lots of books; if I study how you did it, I  will sell lots of books, too. This thinking doesn't, of course, take into account the factor of fortunate coincidence: in the first writer's case, certain events occurred that probably won't happen again in your case. But the second factor, and what this little blog exercise really is about, is what I call the logical fallacy of success. Here it is: Your ability to do something doesn't automatically mean I have the same ability.

Let's face it. Some people are smarter than other people. That is why they happen to succeed, because they thought their way into it. Or maybe they're more talented, so they wrote books that more people wanted to read. Just because author Jones can write unputdownable books doesn't mean author Smith can do the same. For author Smith to spend $99.99 to take author Jones' course on How to Sell Books is a foolish expenditure, if viewed in this light.

Now I'm going to tell you the secret of selling lots of books as it's come to me: write books people want to read. Can everyone do that? No. Can  you? If factor one (the fortunate coincidence of events) and factor two (the level of IQ or talent) are both present, the answer for you is "maybe." Why only maybe? Because you might throw up your hands and give up on book nine when book ten was the one that was really going to sell. Or maybe you're writing romance when it's really erotica that's your gift.

But here's the bottom line. Can you write and sell books and quit the day job? You won't know until you try. And try. And try.

That's what the rest of us did.

But save the $99.99. That's the price of admission for one day at Seaworld. (I know, Shamu is a victim of his own success. My wife is actively campaigning to set them all free, so got that covered. Which leaves me more time to write. But seriously, go to Seaworld rather than take someone's course for $99.99. If you don't yet understand how the oblique leads to the unique in your art, you might not be ready.)

Appointment World

I write on two Macbook Pro's. One is on my treadmill desk and one sits with me in my writing chair. The last time I was in Mexico my writing chair Macbook blew up (not literally). So I took it to Geeksquad when I returned to the U.S. They sent it off to Apple, who reported back the motherboard and this or that were burned out. Fried, they said. Fair enough. So I authorized the repair bill, which was about half the cost of a new machine ($700 repair). Lo and behold, I get a notice today from Geeksquad telling me to go on their calendar and make an appointment to come pick up my machine.

Apppointment?

What rock have I been living under? In Mexico I had my eyes examined by Dr. Cornel in Rosarito (great eye doctor, by the way). But first I called for an appointment. "Just come in tomorrow," he said, answering his own phone. "Yes, but what time?" I asked him. Silence on the line. "Just come in when you're ready," he said. "I'll see you then," he finished. So I did. He got me right in the next day when I turned up in his office. No forms to fill out, go right into the examining room. Exam took all of thirty minutes, following which he fitted me with the best pair of glasses I've ever owned. They have all the bells and whistles you can buy in the States, of course, but the point I'm trying to make is that an appointment wasn't necessary even for the office visit. But back in the U.S.? Apppointment for my computer pickup?

All right, so I'm old fashioned and, to be honest, an appointment does sound better than waiting forever in the customer service line at Geeksquad. Maybe it's time I learned to get with it, American style.

Still, I think back to my Mexico days. Come in when you're ready.

It works for me.