We’ve got a guest entry today from one of my old critique buddies from the SFF Online Writing Workshop, Patty Jansen. She first posted a version of this encouraging article at the Kboards, and I asked if she would be willing to share it here as well. I hope you enjoy it, and if you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy make sure to check out her work. The first book in her Icefire trilogy is free at Amazon and elsewhere.
How to Be a Happy Indie Prawn with Patty Jansen
A couple of months ago, Mark Coker from Smashwords said: Amazon is playing indie writers like pawns. Silly me, of course, I cannot see the word “pawn” without reading “prawn”. So there we go, the indie prawn. This species is a bottom feeder, living off little scraps that sink to the depths. The indie prawn busily moves around, out of the path of the large predators, but rarely, if ever, rises to the surface.
Confession: I am a little indie prawn. Hear me roar. I am astonished that I’ve managed to sell more than 100 copies a month for 15 months straight, but I’m not much bigger than that. Coffee-and-donut money is very close to my past.
We all start out like prawns, putting up our books and hoping that someone will buy them. Sometimes, people do, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t until you’ve brought out an entire series. Which means that you’ve got to write an entire series first.
While you’re doing this, waiting for sales to take off, things can get pretty depressing. You check your sales and there is little or no movement. You know you’re in it for the long haul, but you feel like you’re swimming against the stream.
If you are unhappy, frustrated and unhealthy within your writing, how can you expect your fiction to sing? How can you expect to find the energy you need to keep going?
I initially wrote this article as a post to the Kindleboards, a large community of self-published writers, for those unfamiliar with it. This online community boasts many extremely successful members, some familiar, others not so, who make a living from their writing. As a new and unknown writer, it is easy to log in to the forum and become demoralised in 10 seconds flat. After reading posts where people complain, “I used to sell 30 copies a day but now I’m only selling 10”, you feel like crawling under the bed, because you’d be jumping for joy if you sold 10 copies of a book per month, or just 10 books full stop.
Definitions
Russell Blake so famously said on the Kindleboards: Most. Books. Don’t. Sell.
I actually dislike this statement. It is 100% true that most books won’t make any bestseller lists. They don’t need to. There are legions of writers doing quite well (and meeting their own goals, including paying a living wage) without ever having had any books in any bestseller lists.
My books sell. They just don’t sell enough to pay my bills, but they sell a heck of a lot better than they did in tradepub. So, if your books sell enough to buy you a cup of coffee, they sell, and go and celebrate your damn coffee!
Attitude
If you need money desperately, get a job. Alternatively, manage your despair or channel it into something positive, because despair is like that woman on the train wearing far too much perfume: no one wants to sit next to her. If you need to whinge, don’t make a habit of doing it in places where potential readers can see it. Don’t continuously whinge in public, like Twitter, or your blog or Facebook.
At the Kindleboards, this statement generated some heated comments from people who said, “But I can’t get a job,” and other less kind statements. My comment about getting a job is about two things. 1. Security. A regular income working for a boss is, for most people, easier to get than any level of income security from writing. 2. Interactions with the world around you. If the lack of success in writing makes you a sourpuss to be around, and your family and friends (and readers) are starting to avoid you, find something that tips you back into more happy territory. Your writing will benefit.
Expectations, and the managing thereof
The only thing that’s a dead-set certainty is that brown bar at KDP at the start of the month, or the zeroes on other sites.
Whether you’ve sold 10 or 10,000 the previous month, there is no guarantee that the next month will bring similar results. There is no steady path climbing slowly upwards. No one owes you a living.
So, if you go through life expecting that brown bar to last forever, you’ll feel good when you get a sale. Feeling good is paramount.
At the Kindleboards, there was also some interesting discussion on this, with a subset of writers expressing the need to feel more ambitious and less “good” when writing. It could be that some people feel this. The anguished writer is an old cliche. Personally, I’ve never believed in the anguished writer. I believe that most writers will produce their most solid and constant work, delivered on time and of acceptable quality, when in a balanced state of mind. Anguish over the lack of success is a really, really destructive thing.
Ignore the Joneses
Sales are funny. Once you get used to a certain level, it’s never enough. The other funny thing is that no matter how much you sell, someone else will always sell more.
You are not someone else. You don’t write their books. So simply say “Congrats!” and move on. No need to dwell on other people’s lucky breaks and why you are more deserving than they are.
Build a brand and your own readership
Ads can give you short-term shots in the arm, but you should be working at creating a loyal fan base who are interested in hanging out with you and reading your brand of fiction. Work on that brand. Amazon is probably not a very good place for doing this. You should “own” your brand by directing people to your Facebook page or author site or some other place that is yours, where you talk about your fiction, waterskiing or Greek pottery, or whatever is part of your brand. Study the brands of authors you admire. Try to describe in one sentence what is unique about you and your fiction. Your public persona is the brand and accumulating readers around that brand is a slow process, and so is building a coherent library of books.
Genre-hopping?
If you feel you have to write a certain genre to get sales, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Yes, it’s true that Romance sells well, but if you’re like me and don’t read Romance, stay away from it. I’m stuck in the dungeon of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I’m determined to stay there, because dammit, that’s what I like to read and write, sales be damned. In order to remain happy, you’ve got to stay true to your passion. There is nothing wrong with trying other genres or subgenres, but if you’re doing so only in the hope of getting more sales, you’re doing it wrong.
Price
If you’re only going to sell a handful of books per month, you may as well sell them for the full whack. Especially if you’re writing genre fiction, your competition is not other indies, it’s tradepub books. So if you price just a bit under tradepub ebooks, you get two advantages:
1. You’ll look more like a tradepub author (presuming your book is up to scratch)
2. You have a decent amount of room to move if you want to do a promotion
If your book is going to sit at below 500K in the rankings, it’ll look a lot better priced at $6.99 than at 99c.
As another bonus, if you sell a copy, you get $4.50 and there’s your cup of coffee! I believe in some countries you can even get a donut with your coffee for that amount.
Coffee and donuts make a writer happy.
There is no shame in coffee and donuts.
They are YOUR coffee and donuts. Be proud of them.
Last year I was on coffee and donuts, this year I’ve paid for an international trip and a professional camera. Next year I may be back on coffee and donuts. Or not. The only thing I can do about that is to keep writing and to keep myself in a state of mind that allows me to write.
Bio:
Patty Jansen is an Australian author of Science Fiction and Fantasy, who has published novels both through traditional press (Ambassador, Ticonderoga Publications 2013) and self-publishing platforms.
You can see all her books on her author site. Patty blogs about writing, self-publishing and a variety of other things at Must Use Bigger Elephants.
First book in the Icefire trilogy: Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.
Great article, Patty. I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, attitude in the industry or in life is paramount to how you approach things. I keep this quote by Charles Swindoll handy:”The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes”
Trying the book. Thanks and good luck!
A breath of air to read this, Patty. Also liked your suggestion that if a book is going to sit to price it more competitively.
I agree we have to find the joy in what we do. Writing makes me happy and that’s why I do it.
I was reading an article the other day where some preached the doomsday of indie publishing. I guess because Amazon’s changes cut into their sales.
Seems the only constant is, we have to adapt to the changes. And I think if we write good books and are good to our fans, we’ll do all right even in rough seas.
Here, here. Well said. Also, reminded me why I get so fed up with Kindleboards. I promised myself to follow and surround myself with positive influences. Thanks for the reminder.
Just what I needed to read today. I’ve been getting frustrated, and even the news that KDP is dropping the thresholds for EFT didn’t cheer me up. After all, it just meant I’d get paid my tiny coffee and donut money more often.
But you’re right. Ain’t no shame in coffee and donuts. Back to the page!
I definitely agree with the sentiments in this post. Until just a few months ago, it seemed like the only accounts I heard about self-publishing were stories of massive success. I remember feeling especially frustrated when J.A. Konrath mentioned he’d published a piece about “how to stop farting,” just written it up while drunk and slapped it on kindle–and that stupid farting book still managed to sell more copies than all of the books I’d written put together!
I love this post! It’s so antithetical to some of the doom and gloom blog posts about how most of us indie prawns will never make it (love that – my new favorite moniker) I’ve been reading lately (with the exception of Hugh Howey’s recent upbeat offering).
What I’ve (re)discovered lately is that being Indie means never having to lose the joy of writing, even – or especially – if you don’t make much money. Yet. Or Ever.
Thank you!
Thank you for writing this, it certainly helps keep things in perspective. I have a job, and have to have a job. But I think it makes me a better writer; it puts me in contact with happy ambitious people who aren’t writers–and it’s good to see another slice of life.