[lazarusInfinity]

I love how his gives a lot of great tips and shares numbers that everyone can benefit from.  Information like this makes me want to keep writing.

 

[Sophrosyne]

I think if you have a good cover, you have a leg up. If you have a bad cover, then you need to overcome the cover. It's just an added layer of effort to get to the reader.

 

[JA Konrath]

Thanks for the kind words, all.

And Hugh, beer is on me. But steaks are on you, you successful mother flubber! 

 

[Betsy the Quilter]

Thanks for the kind words, all.

And Hugh, beer is on me. But steaks are on you, you successful mother flubber!

*adds mother flubber to ban list*

Betsy

 

[Sophrosyne]

Thanks for inspiring so many of us to go the DIY route. It's certainly changed my life for the better!

 

[ACboy]

Joe works hard. From reading his blog, he always worked hard. This is his full time job. He's got great covers. And he's in a popular genre.

 

[Gertie Kindle]

Man, this is so true. I first started hanging out here in early 2011, right after Amanda Hocking made it big. there aren't a lot of regulars from those days who are still around. ('Course some of those people are still writing but not hanging here. And they're doing well.) There are a lot of people--people with four or five titles even--who never got traction and just threw in the towel. And there are also people who were selling gangbusters back then who hit a snag, lost sales, and have slowly faded into obscurity. Sometimes I think about them and go look them up on Amazon and see that they haven't put anything out in a year and a half. I wonder what happened to them.

Never give up. Never surrender. Never tell me the odds.

"Never give up. Never surrender." The Commander (just watched the GQ 20th anniversary special yesterday)

"Never tell me the odds." Han Solo

I've been here since 2008 and I'm still hanging out and hanging in and having fun.

 

[Michael J. Scott]

I honestly believe much of it comes down to luck. You can write a good book, and have barely any sales, if any. Likewise, you can have a bad book and sell. So, I really do think it comes down to the roll of the dice. Putting out a bigger backlist, having good covers etc. just increases the chance that luck will find you.

Ugh. I hate luck. I'd rather have a secret ingredient that works every time it's tried. Sigh.

 

[Jay Allan]

Konrath's blog was one of the first things I found when I started researching.  I was stunned how forthcoming with info he was.  I suspect a lot of people doing very well owe a lot to his willingness to share his data.

 

[P.C. (Peter) Anders]

Amazing story.

Incidentally, there's an Indian IT guy, now in the Bay Area, who has written a few how-to books about how to make millions with the help of Kindle books, and how to write nonfiction books super-fast. Color me skeptical.

[Sorry, deleted the comment I posted earlier, that belonged to a different thread, accidentally posted in this one.]

 

[Suzan Butler]

I remember coming across Konrath when I first started writing. i don't remember how I found him. It might have been a writing article. Not sure. I want to say this was 2008, 2009ish? Maybe?

But I do remember that he was giving away many of the stories he's got out there now. He put a bunch of stories on his website at the time for free, and most of them were shorts connected to his Jack Daniels series, and then he loaded them onto KDP just to make it easy for people who wanted them for their Kindle. (Kindle was brand spanking new back then. I think they only had the one model.) But they didn't allow him to set the price to free, so that's why they were $0.99. He had no intention of making money off those stories at the time. This was all stuff he had put on his website, which has since been redesigned, obviously.

Oh, I remember what it was now. I found an article by him on marketing books through relationships with bookstores and signings.

 

[Alain Gomez]

Man, this is so true. I first started hanging out here in early 2011, right after Amanda Hocking made it big. there aren't a lot of regulars from those days who are still around. ('Course some of those people are still writing but not hanging here. And they're doing well.) There are a lot of people--people with four or five titles even--who never got traction and just threw in the towel. And there are also people who were selling gangbusters back then who hit a snag, lost sales, and have slowly faded into obscurity. Sometimes I think about them and go look them up on Amazon and see that they haven't put anything out in a year and a half. I wonder what happened to them.

Never give up. Never surrender. Never tell me the odds.

I was just thinking about this the other day since October is my publishing birthday (3 years, w00t!). I've seen the crowd regulars change many times.

Consistency is really the key, I think. Compared to a random fluke like JK Rowling, Joe barely sells anything at all. And yet he's making a healthy living just from being consistent. I think any of us have that kind of potential, break out or no.

 

[Jd488]

The one thing Konrath said that keeps me plugging away is that this is a marathon, not a sprint. I published The Acts of 1 a year ago this month, so my marathon is still in the early stages.

Surprisingly, The Acts of 1 is my best selling book to date.

 

[Stephen M Holak]

Joe's writing inspired me a few years ago to stop wallowing in self pity and just write--and publish. I put out two novellas to get my feet wet last year, published a 165k-word novel last month, and am deep into the second book of the series. Sales are slow but steady on the novel, and I can't beat the feeling I got from two or three people telling me they got pulled into the book and couldn't put it down. I'm in for the long run--but who know? I might have given up if I hadn't stumbled across JAK. He continues to pull us all up by our . . . (thinks of Betsy and her censorship wand) bootstraps. 

 

[LynPerry]

Joe and Hugh (and others, of course) have brought up the issue of luck. Good discussion.

But here's the cool thing. Both of them (and others!) have recently provided opportunities for new writers to take advantage of the "luck" (success, surge, fan interest, etc.) that they've been fortunate enough to experience.

For example, Hugh opened up his Silo world to others, then it got picked up by Kindle Worlds. I was able to publish a story ("The Last Prayer") in that universe because the author offered me a chance at luck.

Joe is opening up his Jack Daniels series to new writers using a franchise model. I've written "Drinking Games" as a stand alone sequel to a couple of stories I've submitted to Joe for consideration.

Have I been successful? In that I've written stories I'd never have otherwise written, so yes. It's a lucky thing for me (and others!) to take advantage of the luck/success of writers like Hugh and Joe. Thanks guys! ... And others.

 

[Taking my troll a$$ outta here]

Inspiring. Thanks for the link. 

 

[Desmond X. Torres]

I often find these kinds of articles both enlightening and massively frustrating because for me they always leave out the one piece that I need the most, and that's how they got from completely unknown to starting to sell well. In this article, he talks about how in his first year with his one book he sold 27,222 copies of one of his books and then shows us the success from that point forward. .........

As one of those many struggling writers, I'd kill to sell 27,222 copies of one of my books in a year. And this isn't meant to be a complaint or even a criticis of the article because it's great information. It's just a frustration that I came away with having read a lot of articles like these that seem to hint at telling the inside story and it's still a story after the fact.

If you read his archives, you can see regular posts on how he went about doing it. They make for a fascinating read as he went from being trad pubbed and made his decision on going indie. I read all his posts over a year ago. One thing that comes through from Konrath is an incredible work ethic on all fronts- on the writing, and on the marketing (in that order). He spent over five years trying to get his first publishing deal after all.

He's the last person to say his success came suddenly.

 

[28612]

Ugh. I hate luck. I'd rather have a secret ingredient that works every time it's tried. Sigh.

I've found recognizing luck in this to be tremendously liberating.

Backstory: I had 24 books print published in 16 years, the majority with Harlequin/Silhouette. I didn't sell well enough for them to leave me be. I sold too well for them to dump me. I spent all those years being told I was pushing the envelope, and if I'd just stay inside it everything would be fine. Of course, each of the 31 editors I had for those 24 books had a different envelope in mind, and very few of them could (or at least did) articulate where the edges of the envelope were. Any book that didn't sell well was my fault, no matter what cover art, title, scheduling or other mayhem they had indulged in. Any book that sold well was because of their marketing prowess.

All during those 16 years, I kept thinking there ~had~ to be a way to succeed at this. There had to be that secret ingredient, and I was going to find it, dammit. I tried like the dickens to fit inside that morphing envelope while still writing what I needed to write, I tried ads, I tried tours, I tried entering contests, I tried hiring a pr person, I tried other things I've apparently blocked from memory. Out of all that ... I got some nice contest plaques and awards. No secret ingredient. A lot of frustration.

I reached the No Mas point. Decided to write for myself and shred envelopes to a fare-thee-well. Not particularly easy to do with those editorial voices still in my head. (That was my responsibility, not theirs -- as was sticking too long with trying to succeed in their envelope. I'm just a teensy bit stubborn.)

Then came ebooks. I put most of the books whose rights had reverted to me up starting in Sept.2010. They sold verrrrrrry slow at first, and I was thinking the long tail ~might~ be long, but it sure was skinny.

Then family situation arose and I ignored them from Jan. to late April 2011. When i looked up again, they'd gone from making enough money to pay my monthly water bill to paying my mortgage. And the book that was doing the best was one an editor had said Hq/Sil would never reprint because it was "a loser."

Since the spring of 2011, my monthly average income has increased about 10-fold. I'm not a big hitter like Hugh or Joe or Lilliana or Bella or Barbara Freethy or a lot of others. But I'm making a lot more than I ever did in print (which never supported me) or in print + part-time profession combined.

And I came to the conclusion that beyond the commonsense basics, essentially nobody knows why or how. And that's GREAT news. Because what it means is we are freed from pursuing that draining quest to find a secret ingredient, from feeling that if we don't have it, it's because we aren't trying hard enough, that it's Our Fault. It means that we cover the commonsense basics (which is, indeed, a hefty amount of work), and then we get our heads back into the writing.

Hallelujah!

 

[MGalloway]

Ugh. I hate luck. I'd rather have a secret ingredient that works every time it's tried. Sigh.

How about writing the best, slightly out-of-the-box books that you can, and then marketing them in slightly unconventional ways?

 

[Desmond X. Torres]

I've found recognizing luck in this to be tremendously liberating.

And I came to the conclusion that beyond the commonsense basics, essentially nobody knows why or how. And that's GREAT news. Because what it means is we are freed from pursuing that draining quest to find a secret ingredient, from feeling that if we don't have it, it's because we aren't trying hard enough, that it's Our Fault. It means that we cover the commonsense basics (which is, indeed, a hefty amount of work), and then we get our heads back into the writing.

Hallelujah!

I've read on Konrath's blog just how tough it can be writing for Harlequin. Your success with them and your success here is in inspiration. Look's good on you, kid. (Yeah, IRL I do a killer Bogie imitation). Congratulations!