Congrats on $20k! I'd be proud of it too. Nice job.
Congrats on $20k! I'd be proud of it too. Nice job.
Great job dude!
Awesome milestone!
Get it!
So just a (probably) stupid question.
How are you setup to publish with a pseudonym?
Pretty simple, on amazon when I enter all the info to publish a new book, i just type my pen name in the appropriate fields.
Your success defiantly motivates me to put in more effort. I did manage to to finish my lastest very short work, a choose your own adventure style story. It was a cheap way to get around not being able to make up my mind about events in the story.
Writing is fun! Get a few books under your belt, become familiar with how to craft a story and how to write it quickly. My first book, a 17K word novella, started as a short story that was modified several times. Took me months to write. Now, when I'm motivated and actually have some free time, I can churn out 5000 words per day fairly regularly. Once you're able to write, take your stories and adapt them to a genre that sells well. Step three, profit!
Speaking of which, I've been majorly slacking lately. I shouldn't say slacking, I just haven't had time to write. I've been working on a new book and I'm 54K words into it, but progress has been very slow. I'm hoping to find some time this week to make some real progress.
My first trilogy still sells well, so I'm still making pretty decent money from it, several months after it came out. It's a good feeling.
So, let's talk audiobooks. Audiobooks are a bit more difficult, as you have to find voice actors and that's not cheap. So you go with a publisher. My publisher is a very successful author in the genre that decided he wanted to help the other authors. So instead of getting a 25% cut, like with one of the larger publishing companies, I get 70-75%, depending on which book in the series, and after paying off the up front costs (voice actors, etc). Overall, a pretty good deal. I've actually never listened to an audiobook before. I like reading books, preferably physical books. But they're very popular in some genres.
So, last month we were out to dinner with some friends. Money was a little tight, because I'm stingy and saving every penny. Halfway through dinner my phone chimes and I pull it out. It was an email from paypal saying I had just received $541. Hello audiobook royalties! I also just got another email five minutes ago about royalties. Another $743.58. This is great because my cyberpunk books were a total flop.
Still working (mostly) hard on my next book, which I think will be a hit. I'll pass 80K words today. I'm hoping I can have a few productive days and get it out soon.
Oh, and yesterday my book "Mask of the Gods," book 1 in my first haremlit trilogy, passed $10,000 in ebook sales and page reads. The series total has made a little over $20K. That's all house downpayment money! (Although I did order a carbon fiber hood and a couple lightweight parts for my car)
So far I've managed to publish a book every month this year. I wasn't going to even bother publishing my final cyberpunk book, as the series hasn't done well, but I finally decided to do it. So I took two days, went through the whole thing and made some edits and tweaks, and put it up for preorder. Book comes out tomorrow. 17 preorders in a few days, which I'm pretty happy about. I'm not hugely happy that the series has been a major flop, but at least releasing book 3 completes the series and it'll earn a few bucks. If I get two or three hundred from book three I'll consider that a success.
Writing is tough with a full-time life, and work has been too busy to write here. My son just turned 2, so spent some time there. I just haven't really been able to write much. But, my next book is sitting at 98K words. If I can finish my tasks at work reasonably quickly I'm going to try to break 100K words today. The MC and his love interests are currently traveling back to the city they started in, and when they get to the city it'll be attacked and there will be a small battle. That's all I have to write. I'm hoping for 115K words. I think this book will do well. If it sells as well as Mask of the Gods that'll be great, since it's close to twice as long. More page reads=more money. Although Amazon released their KENPC numbers, showing they lowered the amount of money we get per page read, but they increased bonuses to top sellers. In other words, the top sellers (who are already making a ton of money) get more, everyone else gets less.
infinitenexus said:Amazon released their KENPC numbers, showing they lowered the amount of money we get per page read, but they increased bonuses to top sellers. In other words, the top sellers (who are already making a ton of money) get more, everyone else gets less.
How very Amazon of them.
So, I'm writing the final chapter in my next book right now, so I went ahead and put it up for preorder. In 3 days I've gotten 59 preorders, so that's awesome. This book is straight to market, a cash grab, if you will. The cover is great, and I'm writing a long one, 110K words, so it'll earn more money. So far the comments on my preorder have been great. I think it'll be a big hit.
Work has been crazy busy lately and they brought in one of those guys that's a jerk to everyone and claims he's here to make things more efficient. Yeah, no one likes him.
The book mentioned in the post above came out yesterday, and it's doing very well. I had 178 preorders and so far my best rank has been 930. Remember there are about 10 million books in the kindle store, so that's a very, very good rank. I made over $800 on release day. After my cyberpunk books flopping so hard, it feels good to sell again. I started book 2 yesterday, still trying to feel out the direction I'm wanting to go, but I'll get there. Book 2 will be much shorter. Book 1 wound up being 111,000 words, and the later books will probably be closer to 60-65K. I've been doing my best to learn from those more successful than me, and that's a good technique to maximize money (with a huge book 1) and still release books quickly (with short books afterwards). It's late and I'm tired, but I wanted to post a quick update. I had a good feeling about this book, and my feeling was right. It's doing very, very well.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop. That's awesome :)
Yeah it's certainly nice when I put a lot of effort into something and it turns out successful! I got 80,000 page reads yesterday. That felt really good to see. In 2 days the book has made more than $1200. In my previous fantasy trilogy, which was pretty successful, book 1 wound up making a bit over 10 grand (still earning slowly) I think this book will beat that.
I've been joking that the subtitle for book 1 should be "house downpayment" and book 2 should be "porsche 944" but we'll see. It's day 3 and my book ranking is still 1100, which is fantastic. The reviews and ratings are starting to come in as well, which is good. I got a couple 1-star reviews right off the bat on day 1, which is just people being jerks. There are some people that don't like haremlit so they'll automatically 1-star books for no other reason than they don't like it. And there are some authors that will 1-star other people's books, I guess they see it as competition. Fortunately I have a huge pile of 5-star reviews coming in to drown those 1-stars.
Been a bit over a week since the book came out. It's rank is still sub-2000, which is great, and it's steadily making $200/day or more. I'm almost at 100 ratings, and it's at 4.6 stars. All good stuff. Readers have also started checking out my other books, so I've seen small bumps in my first trilogy. I've started writing book 2, and I'm about 5500 words in. Progress is much slower than I'd like, but I'm getting there.
Oh, I forgot to mention one very important thing! Remember the (mostly sarcastic) title of this thread? Become a best-selling author? Well, I can now officially call myself an Amazon best-selling author, as I got the #1 new release badge and I was the #1 book in two categories for a while. So yeah, now I'm a best-selling author. Gotta work on that world famous part next!
It's interesting to watch the rank go up and down. It got up as high as 2200 just briefly, then went back down to 1400 yesterday. Right now it's sitting at 1900. As a reminder, there are about 10,000,000 books in the kindle store, so I don't feel like doing the math but that puts my book well within the top 0.1% of books on the amazon store, which is awesome.
Also a big announcement, I put my two weeks in at my job yesterday. My last day is October 13th. I have my military retirement coming in so I have a safe cushion, and I'm waiting on a lawyer to help get my disability up to 100%, but I make more than enough from my books that I can live on them. Also, I'm tired of living in Cleveland, crime is just getting worse and worse here.
Congratulations! That's very exciting, it's nice to see hard work pay off so well :)
In reply to infinitenexus :
Congratulations!
Congrats!
Also I'm using this thread to encourage my dad to finally start writing the multiple books he's started
Thanks guys! I'm pretty excited to be able to just write all day, and schedule things when I want instead of around a job. We've been saving a lot of money—you guys know I'm very open and transparent about this stuff, so I'll just come out and say that I have $38K saved now. It feels great, I've never had that much money before. Once we hit $50K I want to start cautiously looking for a house over in the finger lakes area of western new york.
Also, I had the #1 new release badge for a while, then it went to the #1 best seller badge. It feels good. Now I just need to finish book 2! I'm 13000 words in, it's just been really hard to work because work has been crazy busy lately. Of course.
Huge kudos!
That's awesome! Congrats!
I don't think there is much better way to follow up officially becoming a 'best selling' author than that. Double congratulations, and thank you for sharing your journey.
Just ran through this thread again. Man. Way to go!
Also wanted to say, you've inspired me to start writing. I don't have aspirations to be rich or famous, but I wouldn't say no. Now, if I can earn some money on the side that would be awesome.
My approach is going to be slower, actually starting with a series of bedtime stories/children's books, since I've been making them up on the spot for my kids for several years. Get some titles and exposure out somewhat rapidly similar to the smut approach. Then starting on the world and lore I've been building in based on my D&D campaign I've written about in the Nerds!!! thread.
You'll need to log in to post.
