Thoughts After Eight Years of Self-Publishing and About What’s Ahead

In the beginning… 

I published my first novel, The Emperor’s Edge, in December of 2010. I’d taken a short stab at querying agents, but at the same time that I was doing that, I got my first kindle, and I realized from a few blog posts (there weren’t that many at the time), that authors were not only publishing straight to Amazon but that they were making money doing it. More money, in some cases, than their traditionally published counterparts, who earned a smaller percentage of the pie and had to sell a lot more books in order to make a living wage.

I abandoned all attempts at querying and jumped in with the two novels I had been workshopping and considered complete. Encrypted was the second and remains one of my favorites, though it was The Emperor’s Edge that I turned into a series, eventually nine novels. (Encrypted did get a sequel, Decrypted.)

There weren’t any podcasts teaching book marketing or self-publishing techniques at the time, and the only sites where you could advertise were Kindle Nation Daily and G00dreads (pay-per-click ads). I didn’t have a lot of money for advertising or high quality covers, not that there was an industry of cover designers for indie authors back then. I commissioned some of my earliest art by contacting artists on Deviant Art.

For authors publishing in those days, there was a lot of stumbling around in the dark and figuring out what worked.

Fortunately, I found readers who enjoyed my work, and by the end of 2011, I was making about $3,000 a month with four books out (Encrypted and the first three Emperor’s Edge books). The income went up and down (making Book 1 free was what gave me my first big boost) when looking at it on a monthly basis, but as I published more books, the trend headed upward over time.

By 2013, I was making more than I ever had at my day job, and I’d long since transitioned to writing full-time. By 2015, I was making a lot more.

It was amazing to get to that point, especially since it had been drilled into my head as a kid that nobody makes a living writing fiction and that I should get a degree in business or computer science. It wasn’t until the kindle and other e-book readers came along, and we could upload books directly to the stores, that it became more viable.

Over the last eight or nine years, a lot of “mid-list” self-published authors have been making a full-time income and then some. Even though things have gotten more competitive, with countless titles now available in the ebook stores, there are still a lot of independent authors making six figures (and some seven).

From two novels to 50+ (becoming more prolific)

These days, I have more than fifty science fiction and fantasy novels out under my name and another dozen-odd under my pen name (Ruby Lionsdrake). “Ruby” publishes science fiction romance novels with more detailed sexy bits on the page.

(In case you’re curious, I started the pen name in part to see if I could anonymously start from scratch in late 2014 and still do well — you could and I did — and in part because a few readers complained when I published Balanced on the Blade’s Edge, which was a fantasy romance adventure with a more graphic sex scene than I’d done in my other series. After that, I decided to make LB a little more chaste and switch to RL if I was in the mood to write sex scenes. That waxes and wanes, I’ll admit, and Ruby’s fortunes along with it. The challenge of starting a pen name is that you need to keep publishing regularly to stay in people’s minds and keep selling books.

My first novel took seven years to finish. As you can see, I’ve learned to write more quickly, and I’ve published ten or more novels during each of the last three years.

Increasing my writing speed started out mostly as a challenge to myself (other full-time authors were writing 6,000 to 10,000 words a day, so why couldn’t I?). Balanced on the Blade’s Edge was the first book I wrote quickly (from rough draft to a manuscript ready for my editor in less than a month). And I loved it.

I loved finishing a novel that quickly (the rough draft in about two weeks), because I really got into the zone or the flow state or whatever the latest term is, and I was able to remember everything that happened early in the novel when I was writing later stuff. (When it had taken me months or even years to finish something, I ended up wasting a lot of time going back to re-read and dither around with early stuff.)

I also enjoyed the characters and the story–you can tell since what was supposed to be a one-off stand-alone fantasy romance, but it eventually turned into an eight-book series (later dubbed Dragon Blood) with a side novel (Shattered Past) and a five-book spinoff series (Heritage of Power).

Even though I’ve published numerous series by now, and my oldest, The Emperor’s Edge, remains a fan favorite, the Dragon Blood series has earned me more over the years than any of my other series. About $900,000 from the ebooks in the original eight-book Dragon Blood series (and the side novel, Shattered Past) since the first book was published in March of 2014. (For those who are curious, this series has never been in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited and exclusive with Amazon. I’ve spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000-$10,000 lifetime for advertising on it, usually pointing pointed toward the Books 1-3 bundle, which I often drop to 99 cents or free for sales.)

I share this as a nah-uh to those who say you can’t write quickly and produce good stories. I’ve written books that weren’t very good that took a long time to pen, and I’ve written books quickly that are favorites of mine (and of fans). This isn’t to say that everything I write quickly is wonderful (after 60-odd novels, I definitely have some favorites, and I have some duds), just that it doesn’t matter a whole lot if a book took a year or a week to write, at least for me.

To stay self-published or to try for a traditional publishing deal? 

This is a question I ask myself from time to time.

When I look back at my path, I’m so relieved I didn’t get a nibble from agents with that original handful of query letters, because traditional publishing is — let’s face it — a slow slog. Even if I’d been lucky enough to get a deal, I never would have replaced my day job income after two years (odds are, I wouldn’t have even seen my books published by then).

But many authors now hybrid publish, meaning they have some books traditionally published (you still get a lot more visibility overall that way), and they self-publish other works on the side, where they take home that 70% of the sales price. It’s a pretty good gig, if you can get it.

Despite modest successes over the years, I’ve never hit it really big and had a book or series stick at the top of the Amazon sales charts for months and months (though Dragon Blood and Fallen Empire had good runs!), but I’ve had a few series do well enough to be noticed, at least insofar as literary agents go.

I’ve talked to someone who had read my books and seemed like a genuine fan, and I’ve been contacted by someone who saw my books were selling well, read a couple of chapters, thought they seemed okay, and wanted to represent me. You can guess how fast I said no thanks on that one. I can’t say that a Big 5 publisher or Hollywood producer has ever come knocking, so I haven’t had to wrestle much with temptation.

Yes, there’s still some temptation. I know I’d never make as much with a traditional deal (and I know I’d bristle at how slow the process was, how much they’d want me to edit, and that my fans would have to pay $9.99 or $14.99 for an ebook instead of $5 or less), but I still have my imposter syndrome moments and admit it would be nice to have one trilogy out there available on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Especially now that I’ve made enough money to buy my house outright and sock away some extra.

I’m pretty nonchalant about it, though, and have filed this in the “someday” category. It’s possible that something appealing will come my way, and I’ll say yes, but I’m not so enamored with the idea that I’m pursuing it.

I do have a publisher for a lot of my audiobooks. Since those cost a lot more to produce, I’m generally happy to foist the work off on someone else and just get a quarterly bank deposit. I’ve done some of my series on my own (hiring a narrator and producer through ACX), and it’s time-consuming and so far hasn’t paid off in a big way for me.

Concerns about the future?

I’ve always had a bit of a glass half-full outlook and expected things to get harder for self-publishers, basically since the day I started. Believe it or not, when I published at the end of 2010, I thought I’d missed the boat. Amanda Hocking and a lot of huge success stories had already come and gone, and the secret was out. Self-publishing had become viable, and hungry authors were flocking to upload their trunk novels.

But I believed then, as I believe now, that it’s possible to gain enough fans that you can make a living as a creator. So long as you’re willing to work on your craft and also be a bit of an entrepreneur. This doesn’t necessarily mean writing to market (though it’s certainly OK if you enjoy what the market is craving), just learning a little about marketing and writing books with enough commercial appeal to find an audience.

I’m not a write-to-market person, mostly because I’ve never enjoyed what’s popular. One of the reasons I started writing was because I struggled to find the kinds of stories that I enjoy. What I do try to do is mesh what I want to write with what has a chance at selling.

It’s possible to make a living selling to fans of a niche, but if that niche gets too small… well, you’re only making a few dollars per sale. So, doing the math suggests your fans need to be in the thousands, not the hundreds or dozens, at least if you want to make a living.

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen more and more ebooks coming into the market (traditional publishing has gotten more backlist stuff out there, self-publishers have gotten very efficient and are publishing more and more novels, and then you’ve also got people hiring ghost writers to publish books by the dozens), and we’ve seen a rise in the cost to advertise and “gain visibility.”

On Facebook and Amazon, we’re bidding against each other and being encouraged to spend a dollar or more for a click (which may or may not turn into a sale). Some folks are speculating that we’ve entered a pay-to-play market where it’s not going to be possible to get seen and find a readership if you don’t have money to invest.

I agree that there is more competition. The books available have increased exponentially, but most of the English-reading markets are considered mature, meaning there probably won’t be more ebook buyers this year than last.

But do you have to come into this with piles to spend on advertising? Enh, I think there are still ways to be seen and find readers without dropping thousands a month on Amazon ads. Ads give you a brute force option to get your book seen. Which can be great. I’ve certainly started spending more on launches in the hope of gaining new readers with new series.

But when I started, there was barely anyplace to advertise. If you were writing in a smaller genre and didn’t know what you were doing with cover art (this was me), you probably struggled just as much to be seen back then as you do now.

I believe that you can still make a Book 1 in a series free and use social media, group promos, and small inexpensive ads to get readers to find and download your book. After that, it’s really up to you and the job you did with the story as to whether those readers will want to continue on (and are willing to pay to do so).

I do think it’s getting tougher for new authors to jump in with a full price book and find readers (if they don’t have much money for advertising). For the last few years, KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited (and Amazon exclusivity) has been a place where new authors can launch a full-price book and gain some traction (since people could borrow unlimited books with their monthly fee), but we’ll see if that continues indefinitely.

As a new author today, I would expect to have to write a series and make the first book free or 99 cents in order to (one hopes) suck people in. And then I’d expect to write another series. And another. If lightning strikes, and you get some massive hit, that’s awesome, but expect to work (write) year in and year out to make a living at this, and you won’t be disappointed if that’s what the future has in store.

The good thing is that you don’t have to sell piles of your first book or rank in the Top 20 for your category on Amazon to be a successful author.

I usually have a more recently published series that’s selling well enough to be on a chart somewhere, but I make good money every month from books that aren’t charting anywhere. Readers find my free Book 1s (I usually have at least three free series starters at any given time, which I pay to run promos on now and then, or put into inexpensive boxed sets with other authors, so we can take advantage of everybody’s reach), and enough of them go on to buy subsequent books in this series for me to continue to make up stories for a living.

Which is amazing.

The pessimistic part of me doesn’t think self-publishers will always be able to make as much as they can now, but I do believe that creators will always be able to find a way to reach their fans and earn an income from doing it. I’ve seen a lot of marketing tactics come and go over the last eight years, but the free sample continues to work. The free sample just has to be exactly what at least some readers are looking for.

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31 Responses to Thoughts After Eight Years of Self-Publishing and About What’s Ahead

  1. Thank you for this post. I wrote a novel and a few short stories, then life just got super busy. I stopped writing all together, but I want to start back. I found this post encouraging, as it can sometimes be overwhelming when learning about all the changes that are constantly happening in indie publishing.

    • Lindsay says:

      Stuff does change every month, it seems like! Good luck with re-starting your writing career. 🙂

  2. Toby Frost says:

    Thanks for writing this. I am a traditionally-published author, writing science fiction, but I’ve recently self-published my 8th novel and I’m finding it quite hard to get a good idea of how the market works. I thought this was very interesting and helpful.

    • Lindsay says:

      You’re welcome, Toby! If you’re interested, I’m one of the co-hosts on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Show (marketingsff.com), and we interview successful authors each week. Lots of self-published, some hybrid, and some trad. You may find it useful if you’re getting into doing more online promoting. Good luck with your self-publishing adventures!

      • Toby Frost says:

        Thanks very much Lindsay, I’ll have a look at that. It’s early days so far and I’ve got a lot to learn!

        Toby.

  3. Zoe says:

    Thanks for this post, Lindsay, and congratulations on your writing milestone! I find stories like yours really encouraging. My debut (a paranormal romance) is coming out later this month – in KU – so I’m trying to be calm about it as much as I can. I think everything will be easier once I have a bit of a backlist… In any case, I’m a fan of your podcast and really appreciate what you do! 🙂
    Zoe

  4. Amanda says:

    Really interesting post, Lindsay. It’s a rare glimpse from someone who’s gone the e-publishing route and been successful at it. I suspect many authors are worried about giving secrets away, as if that’s going to lessen the pool of potential readers. I’m always on the lookout for new authors to try, and found the anthology route a good way to find people whose writing I liked, particularly those who aren’t promoted in the UK. My partner and I have tried to go the publisher route with a series of ten illustrated children’s books commissioned by a Malaysian education company and published in Malaysia and Singapore for children learning English, but for which we could find no UK market. Having read your post, I think maybe we should have another go at getting them to market ourselves. Thanks so much for your thoughts, and keep up the good work!

    • Lindsay says:

      Good luck, Amanda! It’s tough when a niche is too small for a publisher to be interested in, but there’s usually an audience out there somewhere!

  5. Nate says:

    Wait, “Edge” was your first novel?

    Wow, you’re good!

  6. 1. I want to be you when I grow up.

    2. This was very nostalgic. I’ve been reading for years, and it was nice to read how well you’ve done AND how things have changed.

    3. It was great to meet you at 20books!

    Roland

  7. Irene Davis says:

    I’ve been following along with your career since 2012 or so, when I started dipping my toes and trying to figure out how self publishing worked. I’ve not been as prolific as you, but I have learned a lot, and earned more than I thought was possible. My parents were both newspaper reporters so I also started with the assumption that there was no money to be made in writing. I am deeply grateful for the information you share on your blog and in the SFF Marketing Podcast. Thank you, and here’s to many more successful years for you and the indie pub world!

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  9. Congratulations, Lindsay. This post is encouraging and your story continues to inspire me and I’m sure, many other authors as well. Thanks for all you do to share/help other indie authors.

    As someone who likes the “entrepreneurial” side almost as much as the writing side, I love finding posts like these. So much of marketing as you stated, is experimentation. What works for one author might not work for you and vice versa.

    I love love humble attitude and the fact that you thought you’d “missed the boat,” when you started publishing in 2010. Pretty hilarious! 🙂 Congrats again–hope you have a wonderfully successful 2019 and beyond.

    • Lindsay says:

      Thanks for reading, JP! I’m still seeing authors come out of nowhere and hit it big, so it’s not too late. No missed boats. 😀

  10. Thank you for sharing. As a long time fan, I appreciate the glimpse behind the curtain. As a writer who manages to support himself by writing through persistence and improving my craft, as well as several revenue streams your career, books, and podcast, have given me support. You keep writing, I’ll keep buying and reading as well as pointing others to your books. Even with my wife passing away from in the last year I’ve been able to keep writing and supporting myself.

    • Lindsay says:

      Thanks for reading, Jimmie. I’m sorry you lost your wife last year, but I’m glad you’re doing well with your writing. Keep chugging along!

  11. Vela Roth says:

    Thanks for this realistic but encouraging post. As a new author who just self-published her first two books in 2018, I find your insight invaluable. I spent a long time (years) planning and preparing before I finally got my books out there, and every step of the way I relied on your blog for advice. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and promoting transparency among authors about what’s going on behind the scenes. It helps us newcomers so much.

    I also discovered your novels after visiting your blog for publishing advice. Little did I know a post on ebook marketing would lead me to fall in love with Sicarius. 😉

  12. Paul Davis says:

    I’d be interested to know which books you thought were duds as you put it. I’ve read everything you’ve published ans enjoyed them all. (Some moe than others of course, but still…)
    Thanks for this article. It is very interesting and informative, and I’m going t link it to my aspiring author daughter.

    • Lindsay says:

      Thanks for sharing the post with your daughter, Paul! You’d probably have to get me in a bar with some wine to confess which stories I didn’t end up being as excited about. 😀

  13. Tracy wilson says:

    Lindsey, your books are wonderfully written and very inspiring. This piece you have written about self publishing is honest and encouraging. I am hoping my husband will give self publishing a go and I think this artical will encourage him. I am not surprised you are a dog lover, your books are very heartwarming. Wishing you all the best for the future. I will continue to love and buy your books as long as you write them. Tracy p.s any chance of Tolmek and Cas having kids, I reckon that series is too short!!!! and the dragons, you gotta love them x

    • Lindsay says:

      Thank you for the kind words, Tracy, and for following along with my books! I hope your husband gives it a go. 🙂

      If I return to the Dragon Blood world, I’ll probably jump ahead a few years again. We’ll see if Cas is ready for kids. Kind of hard to be a mom and a fighter pilot, I imagine!

  14. Kristen Pham says:

    You are such an inspiration, Lindsay. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge and tips over the years.

  15. Matt says:

    This is such an inspirational post. Love it. My one quibble (question?) would be about writing fast and producing high quality stories. I’m still early in my career, so I’m definitely not going to argue against what far more successful authors suggest.

    But I do have a question about production speed and quality level that I rarely see addressed by fast writers.

    There’s no argument that you can’t produce content quickly and make a living. Many authors even rely on their production speed for their success, to some degree at least.

    The flip side is that sales and making a living aren’t the same as producing the same level of stories as what trads (or a growing # of more methodical indies) put out after several rounds of editing. Yes, it’s absolutely true that a slower process doesn’t guarantee high quality content – I’ve put down far too many trad-published books to think that.

    And yet, my own personal experience (of reading mostly fantasy) is that I can hardly think of a single book that was indie-published that matched the quality of the BEST trad published works. And further down the food chain, when I read books by authors publishing fast (say a book per 1-2 months), I almost always come away unimpressed and disappointed. I’ve been terribly frustrated by the amount of indie books that I’ve read in which I came away thinking they really needed an editor (and I’m talking more than just copy-editing/proofreading).

    So what I’m wondering is, CAN you truly publish quickly and match the best of trad publishing, or those indies that are mimicking the trad quality control process? Is it not true that some level of quality must be sacrificed?

    I don’t ask this to despair against producing fast, and, like I said, you can’t argue that people are making successful careers with that strategy. But as an author who dreams of competing against the established names in the epic fantasy genre – or at the least wants to release stories that don’t scream indie once past the front cover – I’m terribly curious if writing fast is conducive to that goal.

    Wow I did not intend for this to go so long; sorry about that 🙂

    • Lindsay says:

      If you hunt around the internet, there’s a list somewhere of timeless classics that have been read by millions that were written quickly. 😀

      I’ve only written one novel that I would consider close to epic fantasy in scope (200K+ words, six PoV characters). It did take longer, and with more complicated stories, you have to be more careful about everything tying together well and in chronological order, but honestly, the faster you write something, the easier it is to keep everything in your head. You’ll probably find, too, that you do a lot less editing as you get more experienced — first drafts will start coming out fairly close to what you want the finished result to be. I edited my first couple of novels a TON and ran them through workshops and edited them some more. It’s just different after 20+ novels. The story may be new, but all the fundamental stuff is the same, and you (one hopes!) know it by then.

  16. Enjoyed this post and the insight into your self publishing journey.

  17. Michael Chyzinski says:

    You are very good at what you do, enjoyed, “The Emperor’s Edge. I also write novels, nothing is published, I find it hard to get anyone to look at.
    In the beginning it was even harder because I had my Arm in a full cast, I couldn’t type, I couldn’t spell mostly because I am Dyslexic. I overcome my slight handicaps, wrote 34 novels…I am happy for you for being very successful, reading your work understand why. Michael

    • Roland says:

      That’s amazing. Sounds like you need to get some of those edited and indie published. People will ‘look at them’ as they are reading them on their Kindles 😉

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