Writing Faster

October 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In one writers’ Facebook group I am in, we have a writer who is producing prodigious amounts of work.  She not only has 11 books out under her own pen names, she writes for customers, too.  Every time I turn around, it seems like she is telling us about a new book she has up or is thousands of words into her next book.

It’s working for her.  She has had 1000 sales already this month, mostly over 6 titles.  These are mainly fiction titles, and I know she writes sweet romance, not erotica.  The books receive lots of compliments.  I suspect within a year she will be retiring from working for others.

So how do we duplicate this effort?  One way has got to be increasing our writing speed.  Write more and faster.  Let’s not worry too much about how good or bad the work is at this point.  That’s what experience and revision will improve, if it can be.

Using this as a basis of thought, I took a look around the web to find some tips on improving writing speed.  These are my own versions of what I saw or what they made me think when reading them:

  • - Next month is NaNoWriMo where writers are encouraged to write a novel in 30 days.  This is going to require about 1700 words a day to be written on the novel.  Join the site or do you own novel writing challenge if you don’t want to hand in your work to someone.
  • - Don’t edit or obsess over details.  The details will come out later if they are important, or they can be added during revision.
  • - By writing fast, you have to listen to your inner muse.  Let the muse take over.  Just get the words down.
  • - Use whatever helps you get into the flow be it coffee, loud music, the carrot, or the stick.
  • - Writing time is uninterrupted time.  Tell the family, friends and whoever not to bother you unless, as I say, “blood is spurting or the house is on fire.”
  • - Set a target for your writing time, and don’t stop till you hit it.  It could be a time period, word count, or scene count.  If time, use something to countdown the time for you.
  • - Shut down your browser and get rid of anything but the file you are writing on.  There are even some ways to darken your desktop with only your writing showing.  If your email chimes every time you receive one, shut off your speakers or headset.  Turn off skype.
  • - Outline before you start so you can just write.
  • - Set a regular time to write if at all possible.  Make it an appointment and keep it.
  • - Don’t try to write the Great American Novel.  Just get a short story done if it’s your first work.
  • - Improve your keyboarding skills.  A hunt and peck typer is not going to be as fast as someone who doesn’t have to look at the keyboard.

Those are just a few ideas to get you started writing faster.  Biggest are to set aside a specific time and set a goal.  I personally try to write 1000 words on my third book of the trilogy a day.  That’s just one thing I write a day but it’s the one for which I set a word count and time period.  I also write short stories, blog posts like this one, squidoo lenses, emails, etc.  I don’t always get time to do it, but that’s the daily plan.

I also pick my best time of the day to write which is first thing in the morning once I get on my computer.  By afternoon, exhaustion can set in.  Morning is when I’m fresh and best able to think.  Plus my fingers aren’t already tired by all the typing I’ve done.  For you, it could be after the kids are in bed and the house is quiet for the night.

One way to improve your writing is to write.  By writing faster, you write more which, unless you are like the guy who has one year’s experience over and over, means you are going to learn and improve.

Get at it!

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , ,

September Sales, Pixel of Ink and Holiday Books

October 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I was trawling through the Kindle Boards today looking for something to talk about and found a couple threads with interesting information.

The first is the September Sales Thread.   Looks like every month, members of the boards have an opportunity to post their sales for the previous month.

There were quite a few people posting small amounts of sales such as a single digit or small double digits amount of sales.  Some even complained of their sales being down from August which were down from July.  One person stated that a slowdown happened in August and September of last year, but that sales had picked up again in mid October.  However, some people had a better month in September over August.

One thing I drew out of it was that a handful or less of people really know what they are doing.  One person reported 50,000 book sales.  All of her books appear to be erotica judging by the racy covers.  Another reported over 23,00 sales with his best seller being priced at $5.99.

The other thing I got was that you don’t make much money at all with only one or two books.  Most authors doing well have several books for sale.  I also think what genre the author’s books are in has something to do with how many books they sold.  That is not a statistical finding but more of a feel from what I read.  What do you think?

In another thread on the forum, someone asked for guidance on how to get your book’s free days promotion accepted at the big sites (PixelofInk, EreaderNewsToday, KindleNationDaily, FreeBooksy, KindleAuthor, and BookLending).  The gist seemed to be it was pure dumb luck.  Estelle Ryan said, “I agree with the pixie dust, goats, firstborns, unicorns [last three being sacrificed] and dancing naked in the forest being needed to get to PIO.”

If you figure out the secret, please pass it along.

Oh, if you want to get any holiday fiction out, looks like early November is the best time to publish it.  I picked that up from one thread.  However, do it as soon as you can if you can’t get it by then.  If you have any books in the works at all, strive to have them published and up before Christmas day.  All those new Kindle owners are going to want to add new books to their new Kindles and it could be one of your best sales days ever.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Writing 10,000 Words a Day

October 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Someone in a writing Facebook group I am in pointed out this post – http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html – from last year on increasing word count during your writing day.  It’s from legacy published author Rachel Aaron.

Aaron faced a dilemma many authors face when trying to write a novel.  She had limited time to write due to a new baby.  However, by use of a babysitter she was able to get hours in which she could write.  Problem with this was she was not actually writing more than she had when her time was limited by a day job even though she had a deadline to meet.  She wasn’t going to make it.

But by learning how to write smarter, Aaron was able to finally increase her word count from 2000 words a day to 10,000 words a day.  From what she learned, she created a “Triangle of Writing Metrics.”  The three points were based on the Knowledge of knowing what she was going to write before writing it, Time being tracking her productivity and evaluating the best times and places for her to write, and finally, Enthusiasm which meant writing things that excited her.  That last point included scenes within the book, not just the overall idea of the book.  If a scene didn’t excite her, it didn’t belong in her book.

Now, knowing what your are writing before you write means knowing what is included in the scenes or what she was to be writing that day.  If you end up with some of Holly Lisle’s writing courses (and I HIGHLY recommend her “How to Think Sideways” course), you learn so much more about doing this than what Aaron addresses of doing a quick handwritten outline before sitting down to do your real writing.  This point alone led to her increasing her word count by 150% (from 2000 to 5000 words).

The time point of the triangle is important as you end up learning how you are most productive.  By keeping track over two months, Aaron found out she writes better in the afternoon and at her local coffee shop that had no internet available.  The first finding surprised her as she thought she did best writing in the morning.  This is what keeping track can do for you.  Other changes she made based on what her tracking had shown her raised her word count to almost 7000 words for 5 hours of writing.

The last point, enthusiasm, led to her increasing her count to 10,000 words.  It had the side benefit of improving her writing as well as improving her story.

There are other interesting posts on her blog to check out.  One of them just might be the bit of information you need or want to improve your writing.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

It’s More Than Marketing That Helps Sell Books

September 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When it comes to selling books, it’s not just the marketing you do that plays into how well you do, it is also how you set up your books.  Or so it appears according to one recent discussion on the Kindle Boards.

Right now as I am taking Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series course among others, I found the ideas presented in this thread – http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,126077.0.html – of interest.  Of course, one of the ideas could be done as singles, I suppose.

The first is from Lady T. L. Jennings in that thread.  Her idea is to keep writing short stories and getting them up quickly.  Once you have several short stories (I’m imagining stories that are under 15,000 words.  Maybe less.), then you start offering them for free on a rotating basis.

So let’s think about this.  If you are allowed 5 free days out of every 90 days a book is enrolled in KDP Select, then you are going to want about 12 – 13 short books.  You then rotate with each one free for one week, not counting weekends.  If you do want weekends included in your free offers you will eventually need a minimum of 18 books.

Of course, you will have a link to your full length novels in the back of each short story and, as possible, links to the other short stories as well.

Now I can see where this would be a good reason to have people sign up to a mailing list at your author site in order to know what book is going to be free next.  Plus they will know when your new novels come out as well as when your latest short comes out.

So what outcome has Lady T. L. Jennings had with using this plan?

Afterwards some of the short stories experience one or two weeks of a sale increases, but it varies widely.

If you are writing a series, maybe your short stories can be about characters or other incidents that happen around the actual series.

In that same thread, “Dalya” had another proposal which was to start 5 different series with the first book being under 15,000 words and then only write book 2 (and so on) for the ones for which there is a demand.  Write what people want to read.

I really like her comment here:

Wool is right here staring us in the face. It was a serial.

Serial is the future.

Based on other articles, this may very well be true.  I have been hearing things about the return of the old time serial like early movie goers had an opportunity to see.  This was also a popular form of publishing back in the 1800′s.  Just consider that Hugh Howey, author of Wool makes 6 figures most months now and has had the story optioned by Ridley Scott for a movie.

I have to admit that the biggest thing I got out of this thread is to write and keep on writing.  It’s how you get better, and publishing more books increases your chances for readers, and buyers, to find you.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle Marketing

It Starts With A Word

September 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When you pick a book up from the shelf at the used book store (please dont tell me I am the only one who goes to a 2nd hand book store still) and think about writing a book yourself it seems impossible. The thinnest book I have read recently was 300 pages, most are 500+ pages, that is a lot of writing.

I often think it is the thought of having to write 500 pages that puts people off the idea of writing a book. As Kindle publishers we know that you can do shorter novellas, 10k words is only about 25 pages and people do buy them.  Even knowing that it seems that people still consider it to be too much work.

Stop thinking of it as a book, you are not writing some mammoth tome, you are writing one word after another. They become a sentence, which becomes a paragraph. A group of paragraphs becomes a chapter and a group of chapters become a book.

Sounds simple when you put it like that doesn’t it? So don’t start off by writing a book, write a sentence and see how you go from there. If you write a sentence each day you will soon look at your document and realize you have a book.

Filed Under: Writing

Offering Books for Free

September 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today I’m going to write about a post on offering a book for free on amazon and the experiment of one author with changing hers over to be free permanently.

As I recently tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to run a couple free days for one of my books, I thought I would note a couple comments on how well one person has done as a result of her free offering.

Let’s take a quick look at Marie Force’s blog post over at http://e-bookformattingfairies.blogspot.com/2012/09/results-of-free-offering.html with her results of offering the first book in her “The McCarthys of Gansett Island” series for free.

Back in the middle of June, she decided to set the first book in the series free and not just for a set number of free days.  To do this she set the price to $0 on Apple and Kobo and then told Amazon it was to be found free on those sites.  Since Amazon will price match other sites, this made it free there, too.  She also offered it to B&N for free via Smashwords.

You can find the monthly breakdown as to how many free books were downloaded and how many of her other books in the series also sold each month.  But here we will simply give the grand totals.

For June 15 through the end of August, two and a half months, she gave away 331,870 copies of her first book, Maid for Love, and then sold 191,418 of the other 5 books.  Looking at the other books in the series, we can see they sell for $4.99 except book 5 which sells for $3.99.

When I calculate that out at 70% of the price for each one, I get $646,360.27. Not a shabby payday for less than 3 months.  This does not take into account the sales of her other series and single books.  Looks like there’s something to be said for offering a book for free IF you have follow up books ready for sale within a series.

Although one of her series of books has seen lower sales following this freebie offer, another series has seen higher sales, and even her single offerings have done better.  This is clearly good news and shows a couple things.

1) Offering a book that starts a series for free is not a dead technique as some have been discussing.

2) Having more than one book or even one book series is definitely the way to go.  Keep writing, keep improving and get more, many more, books out there.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Success for Indie Author Ruth Cardello

August 24, 2012 By 2 Comments

Starting with this post we’ve created a new category here on Writing to Selling.  Since most of us are creating books and selling them first in Amazon’s Kindle store, I’ve decided to post some of the success stories we have heard.

Now, most of us know about Amanda Hocking and John Locke.  In fact, their success stories are the ones pointed out most everywhere by people online and in the media as being the potential we all can reach.  Even if you are not into erotica, surely you have heard of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey?  The mentions of it in different TV programs, blogs, newspapers and magazines make it impossible to miss even if the story writing is horrible (imo).  At this time, Royal Pains, a TV series, is using “50 Shades of Divya” as their commercial for the next show.  But there are other success stories coming up and I plan to post about them as I hear about them.

First up is an interview between indie author Ruth Cardello and the blog owner Jeff Rivera at http://jeffrivera.com/index.php/for-writers/758-why-indie-author-ruth-cardello-turned-down-a-7-figure-book-deal.html

Ruth has written 3 books and is in the process of writing her fourth which should be available in November.  She offers the first volume, Maid for the Billionaire, for free in the Kindle store.  I’m in the process of reading this first of her Billionaire series, but so far, it appears to be a romance with the protagonist being a dashing and arrogant billionaire and the feminine foil, a school teacher.

Now here’s her success story.  Ruth’s third book, Bedding the Billionaire, hit the New York Times Best Sellers list.

Not only is she doing very well with an estimated 60,000 downloads of her last two books in July this year, but she has received several offers from legacy publishing companies for her work.  One was a 7 figure offer … which she TURNED DOWN!  Of course, if she keeps selling her books at the same rate or increases her sales from July’s figures, she’ll make 7 figures on her own without the hassle of the traditional publishing system.

Hers is a real rags to riches story with, depending upon the account you read, her losing her kindergarten teaching job in April this year, and yet becoming a best seller with traditional publishing houses seeking her out with multiple offers.  All I can say is congratulations to Ruth and to Jeff for his excellent interview of her.  I really like her “Kindergarten Teacher’s Approach to Marketing.”  Maybe I’ll write up my thoughts on her marketing approach in another post under selling.

But one thing I want to point out is a comment below the interview that was pointed out to me and others in a Kindle support group.  It is the comment by Annette Blair.  She says that she was told by “Ruthie” to get her books up on amazon on Christmas Eve Eve and “… to ride the January wave.”

Considering the amount of tablet computers and Kindles that are given as Christmas presents, this sounds like very good advice to me.  But why wait?  Get your books up now and get busy promoting them.  Christmas isn’t that far away and the lead up to the holidays begins next month.

Filed Under: Kindle Successes Tagged With: , , ,

Free Day Promotion

August 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Now that I finally have book 2 of the science fiction trilogy I’m writing done and published, I need to turn to promotion.  What am I going to do to market my books?

My thought all along has been to promote book 1 hoping increased sales of it will lead to more sales of book 2 as people want to learn what has happened following the events of book 1.  Book 1 is a novelette and is for sale for only 99c.  I will have no problem offering it for free for the 5 days I’m allowed to do so by Amazon since it is enrolled in KDP Select.

At some point I may very well set things up so book 1 is always offered for free.  I see some books in my genre are always in the free listing (and I suspect others do this as well) and they are always in the top 100 free science fiction books.  Checking out these free books has led me to buy the follow on books so I think this can work pretty well if the quality of my book is good enough.  But, for right now, let’s see how the book does with the free days of the KDP Select program.

The first thing I will do is turn to the listing of sites where you can submit your free book days that is available on Keith Evan’s site at http://theebookguide.com/the-latest-list-of-sites-to-use-for-free-book-promotion/  Right away, I can see there are places I need to submit my book to at least one week in advance.  Others I must do on the day of the promotion.  Looks like I need a spreadsheet set up.

OK, I’ve worked for the last couple hours (off and on) creating my own spreadsheet with the sites and some notes about each.  I’ve split it up into sites that need to be submitted to ahead of the free days and a handful of places to submit to the day the book is free.

I also found that some of the sites have paid listings or advertisements of your book.  Most of those are only for books that are less than $5 or $5.99 and are not free.  A couple do give a primo listing for a free book though.  However, I’m not going to do any of those this time around.

Next on Keith’s list are twitter accounts and facebook pages.  Oh, dear.  Now I need to create my own author twitter account and page.  Twitter should be easy but doing a facebook page will require some graphics.  That will be last on the list.  I wonder if I will be able to offer book 1 for free next Thursday and Friday as I wanted.

For now, I’m off to check out some other articles about promotion of free books and try to find other places to add to my notification list.  That will be my focus for this afternoon and the subject of Thursday’s post.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

You Have To Write Before You Can Sell

August 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I am guilty of this, I have more ideas for books than I could ever write so I start one after another and get some done on each.

People talk about making money by selling on Kindle and it is possible. I know people who are making nice money with books. The problem is that the only way to sell a book is to write it first.

Not just an outline, not just a few chapters, not even kind of a full book. You have to write the whole book and you have to edit it, check the grammar and spelling. Then of course you have to get it formatted for Kindle and a cover made. But that is the easy stuff in comparison to actually writing the book.

You can outsource the formatting and the cover, you can not really outsource the writing of YOUR fiction book. I suppose you could do the outline then pay someone to write it, but that is a conversation for another day.

This may all sound obvious but how many books or stories have you started and not finished?

If you want to make money on Kindle , go finish that book now.

Filed Under: Writing

Grammar is Nice So Are her Cookies

August 7, 2012 By 1 Comment

Oh wait was that grammar or grandma who made me the cookies..

https://plus.google.com/u/0/112726038360301567381/posts

I think the point I am trying to get across is that when you are writing a book, you need to write. You can go nuts worrying about every , : ; ” and which one goes where. Some of the best selling books have errors that even I can spot (so they must be bad) I want to read a story that makes sense and takes me somewhere.  As long as my brain can process the story I will live with it.

I do advise people get someone to read their books for them, at least one person ideally and if one of them is a grammar nazi then that is fine. But it is easier to fix commas and speech marks than it is to fix a story line that makes no sense and goes nowhere.

Write the story and worry about grammar but don’t drive yourself insane over it.  50 shades of grey is not the best written of books but the writer doesn’t care because she can wallow in mounds of $50 bills while she listens to you moan about it.

Filed Under: Writing
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