Behind the scenes: Royalties, Writing, and Priorities

Royalties

From October 22-26, I ran a free deal of A Dark Inheritance. In those six days, I was able to give away over two thousand copies.

Why give away 2000 copies? I remember when I first thought about self-publishing, I saw so many authors giving away their work for free or 99c, thinking they must be crazy, and wondering, "How good could the book be, if they're giving it away?"

Since then, I've learnt a lot about this business. I still have a long way to go, but I like to think I understand the basics. Giving away a book, or pricing the first in a series at 99c, doesn't devalue its worth, it's simply a marketing tactic. As I was releasing the second book in the series on the 26th of October, it made sense to get book one in as many hands as possible, in the hopes of generating "read-through" and reviews.

I used a promotional website called Book Barbarian, paying them USD$50 to send out an email in the hopes of getting more people into the series. (That email went out on day 1, which is why there's almost 1000 downloads on the 22nd.) I didn't know what to expect, but I made sure to keep my hopes low. Really, all I was hoping for was some Kindle Unlimited page reads (authors in this program get paid per page read) and some sales of the second book. Enough to pay off the promo, at least.

What I didn't expect was this:

You can see it move. Look at the 27th, suddenly the income for book one went way up.

And so far, it's continued into this month:

I know this will likely slow down. It already has, a little bit. But somehow, the promotional push of giving away 2000 copies of the first book has kicked the Amazon algorithm into action, making the book visible to more people.

The money from this may be small potatoes in the grand scheme, but seeing these sales and page reads has made me incredibly excited, and ever more hopeful, for my future as a writer.

I know being a self-published author is a viable way of making a living. I've seen it done, countless times. I know of authors who are making 6-7 figures per year publishing their own books.

But it's a marathon, not a sprint. As they say, it takes ten years to become an overnight success. I know this career will build slowly, it's just nice to see something I've done have such a direct impact on my sales.

I'll definitely be doing a promotion like this again in the future.

Writing

I began writing book three on October 7th, and I am now 59k words in.

I thought people might want to know a bit about my writing routine.

I wake up at 5:30am, and depending how slow I am in the morning, I get between 40mins and an hour and a half of writing or editing in before my day job starts. I also write over my lunch break, getting another 40-60mins of writing/editing.

I have been doing this for the past two years. Being consistent is the only way I've managed to complete two books. The longer I do it, the more efficient the process has become.

When I was writing book one, I was averaging about 1k words per day/5 days per week.

When writing book two, I averaged 2k per day/5 days per week. Until the pandemic hit... that, along with finishing the final proofread for the first book, really slowed me down in the first draft.

Now, writing book three, I've been aiming for a word count I didn't think I could manage. 3k per day. I don't always manage it, but I hit it 4/5 days this past week, one of those days being 3525 words, perhaps the most I've written in a single day for any of these books.

I don't know if this kind of deep dive statistics is interesting at all, and I'm sure you don't want me throwing up screenshots of my Excel spreadsheet detailing my daily word counts for the past two books... but I wanted to share this little victory in my writing process.

I am trying as hard as I can to make writing my full-time living. The path I've chosen, for the foreseeable future, is self-publishing. One day, I might approach some traditional publishers (or, hell, maybe they'll approach me if I'm successful enough), but for now, this is my path.

The most reliable way of making a living wage from writing fiction that I have seen is to release (quality) books at a consistent rate (some authors are able to put out a book a month, which I don't think I could ever manage writing books as long as mine).

That's why I'm focusing so heavily on word count. Every book, I plan to improve two things: the efficiency of my process, and the quality of my writing. If I can do that, each and every book, I know I'll succeed eventually.

That's why I'm so happy I've been able to manage these word counts.

Priorities

You may have noticed I haven't published another chapter of my web serial, Ashrennon. I've also taken away the tier that includes receiving early chapters, and the link to it on my website.

If you've been enjoying the serial, I want to apologise for this, but, as the heading says, I've decided I need to focus in on my priorities when it comes to my writing career.

I thought the web serial would be a fun, easy thing that I could maintain while writing my novels, but once I started working on book three, it began to became too difficult to juggle both projects. As I keep saying, I want to make writing my full-time living. The web serial was a fun project, but as for the master plan, it was too much of a diversion.

I only have so much time outside of my day job and other responsibilities, so I had to make a hard choice and discontinue work on the web serial indefinitely.

The good thing about that is that I'll be able to focus even more effectively on writing book three.

Let me know if you've enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes look. And if there's anything you want to know, about any part of the process, please feel free to ask. I'm not generally publicly open about how much I make from writing, but I like to think of this Patreon as the inner circle.

So, if you want to know anything about the writing process, the editing, or the business (like how much I pay for my covers, or what other types of marketing I've tried), ask away.