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Is it worth it?
This isn’t my first time on this merry-go-round. I’ve asked myself this question several times over the years. Is this all worth the effort I’m putting into what I’m doing? I’m creating art, but to what end? Why put so many hours into something only to put it out and watch it fail?
GRPC2 launched yesterday. I sent an email to my newsletter. Put out a blog post. The YouTube video. Put it out on FaceBook. All my other social media.
2 days in, I’ve sold 0 copies.
Let me stop you from going and buying the book right now. Please, don’t buy the book because I don’t want to guilt anyone into buying a copy. I fully expected to sell zero copies. I said when I launched the book, I expected to sell zero copies in the first month of launching the book. This isn’t a surprise.
When I launched Golden West, I sold a couple of copies. Gave away quite a few. Second book, I sold very few. I didn’t sell any of the 3rd. To this day, I think one person has read book 3 in the Golden West trilogy and that’s a completed trilogy. Honestly, I expected to sell some copies. I didn’t think the story would fall dead.
It did. I didn’t fully promote that series. I don’t even know how many people know I wrote it. By the time I’d started publishing those books, I’d already lost a good number of my audience. These things happen. It’s all my fault for having so many stops and starts over the years.
For those that have stuck with me and watched what I’ve done, thank you for being there. Even if you’ve not bought a book and are waiting for audio editions, I still appreciate you being there. You help keep me motivated to keep going and put out more books.
So, is this all worth it?
Honestly, I won’t be able to tell you for quite a while. I don’t know. I’ve invested myself in a 2-year plan. I want to get these 16 books written, published, and out to readers. After those 2 years, I want to work on something else if the sci-fi hasn’t taken off. If, after 5 years, I’ve still not garnered an audience, I’ll have to evaluate if it’s all worth it.
Yes, I’m giving myself 5 years. I hit publish on my first book, Chosen: Astel 1, back in 2011. I’ve been at this for 10 years already. I’ve published in fits and starts and with no consistency in either topic, genre, or schedule. This time around, I’m changing my tactic. I’m on a schedule. I’ll be putting out only Sci-Fi (Space Opera) books until I complete a story arc. I want to give readers a completed story line to follow from beginning to end.
I know I’ve lost so many people because of what I published and how I published it. I can’t change that. What I can change is how I approach my publishing going forward. That means getting on a course, on a schedule, and sticking to it. Getting words down every day to get more books done. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The only thing that’s currently out of my control is growing my audience. How will readers find me? By me getting more and more content out there. That’s my goal. If I stick to it, over the next two years, I’ll have a dozen new books, and 50 or more short stories. 2 years, over 60 new pieces out there for people to find. That’s how I’m planning on attracting people’s attention.
Well, part of it. I also plan on reaching out to podcasting friends when I get the wheels in motion. I’ll reach out to blogs, send out review copies, find websites that do reviews and see if they’d like a copy. I’ve got plans in my head and I’m reading more books and taking more lessons to help better chart my course. Many have gone before me. Some have been wildly successful.
Let me state emphatically, I don’t feel I’m owed anything. It’s not “my turn”. I won’t succeed simply because I waited long enough and I want it bad enough. That’s not how art works. First of all, art is subjective. What one person hates, another will love. I need to get work out there, and let people find it. That’s all I can do right now.
Is it all worth it?
I simply won’t know for quite some time to come. I’m going to enjoy the ride for all its worth. I’m glad you’re here with me and I hope you stick around to see what happens next.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0131-e10dirf
A journey of 1,000 steps…
After many false starts writing Of Gnomes and Dwarves, I felt I needed to do something different. That world wasn’t ready to be written and my brain wasn’t fully ready for the task of creating such a monumental body of work. I had several things I needed to learn before I’d ever be able to write my great epic fantasy.
One of the biggest things I needed to learn was how to tell a full story from start to finish. I had limitations on word choice and needed to study up on grammar. There were many holes in my education. I understood technical jargon, but when it came to writing a story, I was lacking.
During NaNoWriMo, oh so many years ago, I wrote V&A Shipping. It was, at the time, intended to be a stand-alone book. I had no intention at the time of writing to create more than one story in that universe. Much like Of Gnomes and Dwarves, Vic and Argmon were from a role-playing game we’d played in high school. Other than the characters, the story had very little to do with the game.
At this time, I also thought I wanted to be a humor writer along the lines of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. Only, when I wrote, that humor didn’t fully materialize for me. There are a few funny moments, but overall, the tone of V&A Shipping is a serious story. Far deeper than intended. Yes, I wrote the story, but it went where it wanted to go.
Now, when I say this was a NaNoWriMo novel, I wrote a majority of it during the money of November, but I finished it off in December. The book weighed in around 100,000 words. It was a hefty work, but I’d finished it. I told the story I wanted to tell and I loved it.
Then I did a re-write because as everyone knows, a good book isn’t finished until you’ve done at least one re-write, right! I subscribed to the myth of re-writes and did that a couple of times with this book before putting it aside and working on Astel. Then Billy Barbarian. Then Paradise Palms. Then My Teacher is a Zombie.
I’ll stop here and pause for a second and try to explain what I was thinking at the time. My intention was to write the first book in several series. I would drop those books out into the wild and see which people loved the most. V&A Shipping and Billy Barbarian I did as podiobooks and got those uploaded. They generated an audience. So, logically, the first book I published was Astel.
You can see where I’m going here. I failed many times over. First off, I should have kept writing in the V&A Shipping universe. Secondly, I should have published V&A Shipping first. Eventually I did, but I’d released so much else first. I compounded my errors by not sticking to one series or even one genre. I wanted to write and publish everything.
Nothing sold (of course).
This caused me to completely rethink what I was doing and I stopped writing and publishing. I’d put out 16 books over the course of 4 or 5 years. Nothing stuck. I’ll put numbers out next week and show where this failure happened. It was depressing.
I’m one of those people that was quite prolific and then disappeared. I’m a “what ever happened to?” writer. I’ve done that a few times. I’d pop my head up and drop something, only to fade away again. Why? Cuz I kept failing.
Now, I wasn’t putting a lot of effort into keeping things rolling. I’d write books and keep track. I blogged. But I wasn’t releasing anything. I came up with more excuses than you can shake a stick at not to publishing anything else.
There is a silver lining to all this. I found my way into the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it. I wound up with a backlog of books in that story and I’m excited with the direction it’s headed. Much has changed in publishing over the years and with my mindset around what I’m doing and planning on doing. I’m excited once again about what’s coming.
I’m not just excited, I’m pumped! I’m eager to start putting books out again and getting this machine rolling. Why? Because for the first time in years, I’ve a plan, a schedule, and a backlog. With this series of blog posts I’ve been doing over the past few months and with the YouTube videos I’ve been doing, I’m excited once again to see what’ll happen.
As I keep saying over and over and over again, I know this will be a LONG slow journey. I’m not expecting to do well out of the gate. It won’t happen. Each time I’d drop a book, I’d anxiously reload the web pages to see what sold. Multiple times per day. I’d be disappointed. I’m not doing that any more. I know my numbers will stink on ice. I’m starting at the bottom. Lower even. I’ve already put out books that went up the charts and rapidly dropped.
My plan going forward it to, once a month, pull the numbers and present them. How are books doing? How am I selling? How is my platform growing? What am I doing to expand my reach? I’m going to do all of this publicly.
Why?
Transparency.
I want you to see what I’m doing and know that I’m keeping an eye on things. That I’m not letting this slip again. I’ll even start posting daily word counts once again so you can follow the progress of the books I’m working on.
I’ve got big plans. Everything is already in motion. It’s difficult to explain how excited I am. I almost can’t contain myself.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0123-evhu4o
From here to there, from there to here.
When I was still in high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to tell stories and write books. Long ago I’d bought into the myth that selling a book meant instant fame and fortune.
So, I tried to write a book and failed miserably. I did, however, get on the path to telling this story about the first book I ever wrote.
Like many teens in the 80s, I played Dungeons and Dragons with friends. Many, many hours of Dungeons and Dragons. Also fantasy games like Ultima, Adventure, Wizardy, Bard’s Tale. But it was the characters from those lengthy D&D sessions that stuck in my head well past high school. I knew I had to tell stories about them.
Now, I’ll stop you from your eye rolling. Yes, I’ve long since heard the “Don’t tell stories about your D&D characters. I’ve heard that many, many times over the years.
In the Navy, I read many fantasy books and I thought, “Hey! I can do this!” The excitement overtook me and I set out to write, by hand, long form, in a notebook, the first stories about those characters. I would get 3 or 4 chapters in, re-read what I’d done, or someone else would read what I’d done, and it was terrible. I’d throw it out (I wish now, so many years later, I’d have kept it all).
I did this several times over my Naval career and failed every time I tried. I would give up and shake my head. I didn’t have a typewriter. That was my excuse. My hand writing is so bad that it’ll never be good enough to be a book. I had every excuse to stop and not continue.
The writing bug kept calling me back.
When I left the Navy, I still wanted to write those stories. I’d started collecting comics again and discovered Cerebus. I read every word in those comics cover to cover. Dave Sim was quite clear that he wanted to write 300 issues and end with the main character’s death and be done with it.
Wait a minute! That’s what I could do! I decided writing comics was easier than writing a novel. Why didn’t I describe each panel and put in the words that’d go with each panel? I loved comics, maybe that’s what was holding me back. I understood story structure, but I wasn’t good at telling the story.
Over the course of the next year, I would spend time writing, by hand, the first book as a comic. My plan was that each story arc would be 15 comics and I would later re-write it all as a novel. Over the course of 300 comics, that’d be 20 books in total. I plotted and planned each arc and wrote the first 15 comic arc.
Then I wrote the next 15 comic arc. Then the third. Then the fourth.
At the time, I hung out a lot at the local comic book store and met Pete Woods. Pete was a struggling artists and fantastic! He was submitting his art everywhere. I let him read my first pages and he nodded and said “Yeah, I could draw this. Looks interesting.”
I was stoked! I had an artist. I would just need to get money together to pay him and to produce a comic, indie style! It was the wild west with comics and indies were the thing.
Then Pete got a gig doing Warrior Nun Arela. Then he got picked up to work at Jim Lee’s studios. Pete and I hung out at the studio and I met many young artists, colorists, letterers, and a couple of the big names (never Jim Lee). Pete was on the fast track and we soon lost touch as our schedules no longer lined up.
I didn’t have an artist any longer. Drat!
Then I finished school, had my associate’s in Electrical Engineering, and went to work at Qualcomm. I put writing aside. I was there for a year and started at Pacific Bell.
I’m unsure why, but the writing bug hit me again while I was at PacBell. I had these comic scripts and knew I wanted to write them as novels. It was time to write a book.
Using the first 15 comic arc as a plot outline, I wrote book 1 over the course of a year. I agonized over that book and struggled to get it written. That first version was roughly 50,000 words when done. But it was done. I’d done it. It took me 15 years, but I’d finally finished book 1 in the Of Gnomes and Dwarves series. My epic fantasy novel had been written. Only 19 more to go and I’d have the entire collection done!
Yeah. The book was awful. Even though I had a computer to write on with a spell checker, I wasn’t well versed in sentence structure, grammar, and the flow of a story. I was excited at telling the tale, but it wasn’t a good book.
That didn’t deter me. I wrote the same book again. Then I spent the next 2 years editing, re-writing, and editing some more. I submitted that book anywhere I could, only to be rejected over and over again.
It took me a long time to finally put book 1 aside and look at the pages for book 2. I’d changed positions at work and was sent off for a week-long training. I took my laptop and decided, I’m going to write book 2. Let’s see how much of a start I can get into book 2 on this week long trip.
I left Sunday afternoon and checked into my hotel. I wrote all night long until around 10pm, which was my normal bedtime. I was up at 5:00 am, showered and ready by 5:30 am. Uh…I didn’t have to be to class until 10:00 am. So, I sat and wrote until the last minute I needed to be out the door. Packed up my laptop, and off to class I went.
We had an hour long lunch. Being frugal, I’d brought lunch. I had an hour to sit there and write. We had 15 minute breaks regularly. I’d write. We’d get done around 4:00 pm. I’d go eat dinner, go back to the room, call the Mrs, then spend all night writing.
Over the course of that week, I wrote book 2. It weighed in around 60,000 words. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It was finished. It was, to this day, the fastest I’ve ever written anything. The closest I’ve come is writing 95,000 words in one month.
Of course, both book 1 and book 2 in that series were terrible. So was book 3 and the half of book 4 I’d written. It’s not garbage. I learned a LOT writing those book. They were all lacking.
I’d finished them, though. I learned that the best thing I could do was to finish a book, and move on to the next. By doing that, I became a better story teller.
This post is getting long. I ramble more about this in the video. Suffice to say, this is only the next stop in my writing journey. I’ll talk more about that journey tomorrow.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0122-evfseg
My brain goes where it wants to go, I guess.
Read the quote again.
One more time.
I never intended to do this blog as writing advice, but I’m going to pontificate for a bit today, if you’ll indulge me.
Back in 10th grade…oh so many years ago, I took a creative writing class. I’d written some stories before and tried drawing cartoon. All were awful. This was the first time where I had a teacher explaining things like structure, pacing, and the like. I learned about poetry and haiku as well as different styles of writing.
The teacher introduced me to things beyond what I had thought about when it came to creating stories.
Learning about writing was a great thing and I applied what I learned in the stories I wrote during her class. It was a great class (watch the video for more about the class).
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of great things about writing and I picked up many hard to forget myths about writing as well.
This is all I’ll say. I don’t subscribe to the million words of crap theory any longer.
Yes, I’ve written about this in the past. I no longer believe that EVERYONE must write a million words before they’ll write something worthwhile.
Why?
I think back to that creative writing class. everything I wrote in that class got a “A” from the teacher. She didn’t know me. Didn’t know my background. All she knew was my passion for creating what I thought was a good story. She loved the stories I wrote. So I kept writing stories.
I lost my way many times along my writing journey, but I always wanted to be a writer. An author. To have people read my stories and enjoy them. To that end, I’ve succeeded. Many people have read and enjoyed my work. Many I don’t know.
Not all the words I’ve written are crap even though, over the years, I’ve written somewhere between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 words, of those not everything it published. Many of those words will never see the light of day. They were practice words.
That doesn’t mean I’ve trunked everything from those early days of writing. As I said, I don’t think all of it is crap. Some of those stories I learned a lot from and some are decent stories. I’m sure not everything I will write in the future will be a great story, but I will learn from everything I write.
Why am I saying all this?
Because I know with every word I write, I will get better at my craft. I’ve said many times over the years, it’s impossible to get worse at art if you practice with regularity.
To that end, not everyone will be at the same path on their journey. Some will take longer to produce a quality story than it’ll take someone else. One person will write significantly faster than another person. Everyone is different. What will make a person a better writer is persistence, patience, and practice.
That’s my goal, to keep plugging away and putting out books and improving my craft. Not everything I write will be a story everyone will want to read, but that will be more a matter of taste and opinion. Not so much that the story is lacking in quality.
What I’m saying is simple: don’t try to be Stephen King with your first book. Have patience with yourself and know it’ll take time to learn the craft of writing (or any art for that matter). Practice your craft regularly. Be persistent in completing and producing work. You’ll get better at your own speed and in your own time.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0120-evarrk
Rebuilding.
One of the many things I thought about over the weekend, while relaxing by the pool, petting dogs, and enjoying the Southern California sunshine, I knew what I needed to do.
I’ve said this many times over the course of this blog and on 5 a day with Jay. Yes, I know I’m becoming a broken record, but it needs to be said over and over.
I’m rebuilding the relationship with my fans.
Back when I was podcasting, I had an audience of around 200. That doesn’t sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but when I look my number now, I’m lacking. I’ve had to think why am I lacking and what can I do to fix that.
One word I’ve used over and over has been consistency. Doing this blog every day. Posting 5 a day with Jay on week days. I need to get doing my newsletter to my email group monthly. I need to get my books and short stories scheduled so they’ll drop on time without fail.
Why? Why do I need to be consistent? What is it about doing this regularly that I’m hoping to achieve? What does this do with the relationship between the reader and me?
It rebuilds the trust.
When I disappeared, several times over the past decade, I proved to readers I wasn’t to be trusted. Sure, I put out a good story, but I didn’t put them out in a timely manner. I didn’t keep the content flowing. Why keep following someone who isn’t going to keep their head in the game?
When talking with Tim Niederriter this evening for his podcast, that’s the one thing we kept coming back to. Consistency is key, but it helps build trust with readers.
That’s what I’m working toward. Rebuilding the trust I once had with readers.
I’m off to go make some magic happen
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0117-euq5ci
More on topic than I thought I’d be…
When I started tonight’s video, I thought I’d be talking more about blurbs and the short stories I’m adding introductions to.
Well, I did spend a good portion of the video doing just that. The trip down memory lane as I think back to when I worked on a specific story has been a lot of fun. Adding those introductions is fun and I’m getting into a good flow.
That wasn’t the main point of the video and I do hope you take the time to watch it. My main point is…don’t wait to get started on something. Don’t wait until what you’re working on is absolutely perfect before you show it to the world. Don’t spend your hours agonizing if someone will love everything you produce.
This doesn’t matter if you’re talking about short stories, novels, paintings, digital art, YouTube videos. Everyone must start somewhere. The more you do that thing, the better you’ll get. There will always…ALWAYS be bumps along the road to success, but if you never start down the road, you’ll never know what you’re capable of accomplishing.
The point is, stop worrying and start producing. If you create art of any kind, share what you have, know it’s a snapshot in time of your talent at that moment, and move on to the next piece. Someone will find and love what you’re doing. It may not be a million people for your first piece, and that’s perfectly fine and completely normal.
I started this blog over 12 years ago. I’ve been a bad blogger. My intent is to change all that. I’m now trying to blog daily even if it’s a picture from the bird in the tree outside my window. I want to blog every single day and I’m on a 75 day streak. Consistency.
I’m trying to post a YouTube video M-F when I’m at home and able to record. I’m up to episode 114. Consistency.
And when I start publishing on May 5th, I have a schedule of what I’ll be putting out and when. This is helping me identify which works I need to have ready first so I can get those prepared and upload, and then I can commit time to the next piece and the next piece. The schedule will keep me on track so I can do what? Maintain consistency.
For me, consistency is the key. I’ve said it SO many times in so many posts and videos but is needs repeating even if I’m the only one hearing it. It’s impossible to get worse at doing something if you do it regularly. It’s impossible to get better at something if you never even start.
This blog had 40 followers when I started my latest streak 75 days ago. It’s now up to 100. I saw that number and thought something was wrong. It had to be, but 100 people are following. Let me thank you for being here and following my story.
My YouTube channel started with 5 followers in October. I’m nearly at 40.
My Anchor audio only version of the YouTube videos has one follower. I’m so happy that person is there! Thank you.
I have the expectation that when I drop GRPC book 2, my first book in far too long, I’ll sell one copy on the day it’s released and probably 0 copies for a long time thereafter. That’s my expectation. If I sell 0, I won’t be surprised. It I sell 2, I’ll be shocked. Honestly shocked.
I’ve been away from publishing for long enough that people wondered “What happened to Murdock?”
I’ve been inconsistent enough for people to lose interest in a long series that will likely never be finished. I’ve lost reader’s trust in my ability as an author.
How do I regain that trust?
Consistency.
I’m off to go make sure I don’t fall down on my face.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only:
Going wide and slowing down.
The past couple of days has allowed me to do a lot of thinking away from the computer. Some changes and all of it good. I think.
First off, I’m going to slow down the planned release schedule. The more I look at the schedule I’ve laid out for myself, a release a week for 12-18 months, looks incredible on paper. It really does. I’d be excited to hold to that schedule.
That said, I don’t think it’s tenable. I think I’d get started and fall flat on my face because I’m trying to run too far too fast. There’s no hurry. There’s no rush. I have a limited audience (and if you can’t wait, let me know and I’ll send you books now!). With that limited audience, there’s no one banging down my door for the next release.
On top of that, I still have a family and a day job to content with. If I burn the candles at both ends, I’ll burn out quickly and this won’t be fun any more. I don’t want writing to be painful and beat me down. I want it to be fun. If that means I need to slow down and not pump out content at breakneck speed, so be it.
For writing, I would still like to get a book every 2 months done and on top of that, get 2 short stories per month written. This will keep me filled with backlog and should something happen that breaks my writing stride, I’ll still have a backlog to content with and keep content flowing without interruption.
Secondly, I’m not going exclusive with Amazon. I’ve given this a LOT of thought. I want to maintain control over what I’m doing with my stories and where they’re released. If I go exclusive with Amazon, I wouldn’t be able to participate in a book bundle, should I get an invite. I wouldn’t be able to sell direct from my website. There are so many other reasons, but mostly, with the amount of content I’m going to put out, I want to reach the most readers possible. I don’t think Kindle Unlimited is the way to do that. Again, if you’re desperate for my books and on a limited budget, drop me a note and we’ll work something out. Heck, join my beta readers team and you’re all set.
Thirdly, My Favorite Daughter got her first full-time position with what she’s calling “her dream company”. The company is based out of Hawaii and they have an office here in San Diego. She’ll be a Jr Graphics Designer with, for a starting salary, do quite nicely with her first job.
I wouldn’t be more excited for her. She applied and interviewed for this last year. After a series of interviews, the company put all hiring on hold. She reached out to them recently and jumped back into the interview process. She signed her paperwork today and starts toward the end of the month. It’s an exciting time for sure!
Finally, an update on my reading goal for 2021. I plan to read 40 books this year. Currently I’m sitting at 7 read. With all I did this month, and very little reading, I’m not concerned that I’ll miss this target. I finished Patrick McLean’s Manligator yesterday and started Dee Dee Ramone’s autobiography today. Can’t keep a good reader down.
I’m off to relax and read a little before bed.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0111-eu4mq9
A little slower than intended…
Hey Howdy Hey gang!
I didn’t do as much this evening as I intended to do. These things happen.
You want to know how the sausage is made? This is going to be that kind of post. If you’re not interested, feel free to skip this post. It’ll be dry. Probably short, but not very interesting.
Still here?
I’ve cleaned up and prepared V&A1, 2, and 3. Also Golden West 1,2 and I’m almost done with 3. I had wanted to do another 3 books tonight, but with the weather pounding on my brain, I didn’t get to it.
I still have Almost-Super Heroes 1 and 2 to clean up as well as GRPC 1 and 2. Then I need to get to Astel, Paradise Palms, and Super Natural Learning, 1, 2, and 3.
When I get the clean up/edits done and back into the manuscript, that’s when I can prepare the ebooks. And then I can work on getting the print versions ready to do. Finally, I can upload everything and start scheduling.
There’s a lot to do and I’m putting pressure on myself to do things quickly. Today I needed to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize all I really need to get accomplished is to have the books and short stories ready for May. Yes, it’d be nice to have EVERYTHING done, but this isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. I will have time to get it all done.
I’m off to get some sleep and get my head back. Tomorrow it’s not supposed to rain again, is it?
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/etheig
A Potential Path to Publishing Success
Note: this path assumes that you know how to write a complete 50,000 word story, create a cover, and edit your own work. It also assumes that you know how to record audio. Furthermore it assumes that you know where to put your writing and audio once it’s complete. This is also not my personal path and I will post a follow-up to this post explaining my own path.
A recent conversation with a friend of mine led me to realize how many different paths there are to get a story into a reader’s hands. This one will focus on serialization and possibilities therein.
Warning: There may be math involved.
If you’re looking to write, but you worry it’ll take you too long to write that monster epic you’re looking to produce, here’s a little trick you can try using.
One of the best ways to get visibility is through consistency. If you put out content on a regular basis, week in and week out, you have a chance of getting noticed because people will follow those that continuously put out content. If you’re not putting out content on a regular schedule, this is when readers will forget about you and disappear. Trust me, I’ve discovered this the hard way.
If you only have one hour a day to commit to doing this, your path will be easier than you think. The biggest obstacle in your path will be staying on track and focusing every single day. It will require only seven hours of your time a week and will get you putting out content faster than you thought possible.
Step 1: Write 1000 words a day Monday-Friday.
This will give you an easy 5000 words a week. This sounds like a challenge. It is. I’m challenging you to week in and week out write 1000 words a day every weekday. Without fail. Don’t give me excuses about how tough life is. I never said this would be simple. You need to trust me. It’s not as difficult as you might think. Honest. You can do this!
Step 2: Edit and put a cover on your story.
Yes, you should learn how to do covers. If this is a serial, you’ll want to have a similar cover for all the weeks you’re writing the serial. In this step you’ll also want to assemble your front matter and get your ebook ready to publish in all the locations you want to publish. If you want to go wide, don’t go into Kindle Select. If you want to focus on Amazon only, go Kindle Select. This choice is really yours.
Yes, you’re into week one and you’ve already written a 5000 word start to your serial. Drop that out on Amazon for 99 cents. Ignore it! Don’t go checking your stats. Don’t even tell anyone. Trust me!
Step 3: Sunday – Record the audio of what you’ve written.
Yes, you wrote 5000 words. It’ll be short audio. It shouldn’t take you long to record and edit 5000 words. Put that audio up on your website. Make sure your hosting plan can support your audio and you don’t have to worry about. Again, don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Allow this to happen organically. Make sure your blog post points to where they can buy the ebook version.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 for 10 weeks.
Yes, that’s right. Remember how I said you’ll need to do this week in and week out? Yes, you need to do this weekly. Every week. We’re going for consistency here. So if you can’t commit to doing this on a regular schedule, don’t start. I’m not saying give up on writing. I’m saying that this method requires commitment. A lot of it.
At the ten week point, you should have written 50,000 words, give or take. Assemble all your files into one book and drop that book. Make sure in the description of your book, you note that this is a collection of the first serial. You don’t want to upset readers that have found you along the way. The cover should either be the same or similar. For 10 weeks you’ve put out a 99 cent story of 5000 words all leading up to the end of your serial. Now you’ve got a completed book. Put that out for at least $4.99. This is a great discount for those that chose to wait, but if they want to follow along weekly, they’ll pay a slight premium.
Take all your audio, split it into chapters, and drop that onto Audible as a complete audio book. Price what you feel appropriate.
Now it’s 10 weeks later and you’ve got a total of 12 (10 serialized stories, 1 full ebook, and 1 audio book) items up for sale. How’d that feel? Weird? It should. You’ve come further than many will ever get and it only took you 7 hours a week to do it.
Some options you can mix in here.
Only publish every other week. Still write, edit, record, but release the ebook at 10,000 words. This gives the reader a little more. Then you’d be putting out 5 10,000 word serials every other week, and at the end of 10 weeks, one 50,000 word novel. That’s still respectable. Very respectable.
Want to do it even more aggressively because you have more time to commit and/or you write faster? Fine. Do 2000 words a day each weekday. Then you’re putting out a 10,000 word serial every week, an audio production, and every 5 weeks, a new book.
Why 50,000? If you’re doing a serial, you’ll need to be compact and pushing the action. This will be something that at the end of each serial you’ll need a cliffhanger to pull the reader back in to pick up again next week. Most pulp novels from the 30s, 40s, and 50s were 30,000-50,000 words long. That’s what you’re doing with this process. You’re becoming a serialized pulp writer. It doesn’t matter what genre you choose. Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Mystery. Any will work with this method.
You MUST remain consistent to be successful. Look at the podcasters that made it to get their publishing contracts. They were publishing audio weekly, week in, week out. Without fail. If you’re not pushing out content on a regular basis, you will see things drop off.
This isn’t a trick. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. This is the new world of publishing and anything is possible. Even if you don’t have a rig to record with, there shouldn’t be anything stopping you from opening up your word processor and writing 1000 words a day 5 days a week. An hour on Saturday to edit and cover, and wow, look at you go! This is possible. Very possible. I don’t know anyone personally doing this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are many.
If you made it the full 10 weeks dropping every week (or every other week, or 5 weeks if you went for 2000 words a day), this is your time to shout to the world what you’ve done. You should be excited. Now is the time to check your numbers. Remember, I said don’t check them. Why? Numbers disappoint people. If you’re out there every day looking at numbers, you’ll get depressed and stop. You don’t want to lose momentum.
The biggest trick, writing the next 50,000 words. Yes, you need to keep this going. Celebrate, but continue to put out the content. Don’t let it slip and fall behind schedule. That’s how you’ll lose readers. If you can keep it up, you’ll put out 5 books in a year (take two weeks off at some point) and you’ll have written 250,000 words (or 500,000 and 10 books if you go for 2000 words). That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’re sticking to this schedule, it’ll add up so quickly. Don’t be too aggressive until you know what you’re capable of.
If you can stick to this schedule for a full year producing serials, ebooks, and audio, I would recommend starting up a pateron. This is another revenue stream and I won’t go into it here. Do your own research. Just know that consistency is key to all of this working. Stay on track and you can do it.
Do I guarantee this will work? Simply, no. I don’t know you. Your situation. Your writing ability. If you try this and it doesn’t work out for you, look at what you’ve accomplished no matter how long you try. Seriously. Are you further along in your writing than you were when you started? How many books did you complete? Did you follow all the steps as closely as possible?
If you do try this, let me know how it goes. I’d love to follow along. I want to cheer your successes. If you have questions, ask. I’d love to do all I can to help. Honestly. I’d love to see this work for someone. Give it a try. You’ve got almost nothing to lose. If you have fun doing it, then all the better.
I’m off to go make words happen
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Daily Update: Two Days in One.
Yesterday. Holy cow.
So I had this training session yesterday. It’s for work. It’s dry material. The instructor knows it’s dry material. He does his best to keep in interesting. It’s still dry material, but we need to go through the lessons.
I met my friend Mike.The one who’s done all that music work and cover work for me in the past. You know, for V & A shipping, Billy Barbarian, Murdockian Tales. Yeah, that guy.
He’s a local to this area and we headed over the Bay Bridge. Saw Alatraz and the Golden Gate. Saw, as in, “Hey, see that over there.” We didn’t atually visit. What we did visit is China Town. That was so muh fun. A very touristy place and there were no tourists. Being a Monday night there was no one out and about. Oh, sure, there were a couple of people. It was nothing like what I expected. I had expeccted wall to wall people.
Being a local, Mike pointed out shops to buy touristsy things. I bought touristy things for the Wife, Mi Suerga, and My Favorite Daughter. I think they’ll like what I got and it was all so inexpensive. That caught my by surprise.
It was neat to see some things and I’ll mention that more in a later post and why it was so cool to see them.
Again, the local Mike piked out a place for us to eat. He’d been there before. A young boy followed us to our table. Sat at our table. Climbed up on our table. Giggled, laughed, had a great time. High-fived me. I took a picture with him. I took a picture of the menu on the white board writting in Chinese. I ate something with pork and noodles. A little sweet with a great spiy after taste. It was some good stuff.
Afterward I called up J.D. Sawyer. Mike and I drove over to hang with him. We had a beer, a great cigar, and a lot of conversation. Being both authors we discussed authorly topics. Suh as:
Works in progress
Works in print
upcoming works
legal rights
story concepts
story finances
how little writers make
We also talked about many other author friends and shared a lot about those authors. We talked about (in no certain order)
Scott Sigler
J. C. Huthins
Mur Lauferty
Gail Carriger
Scott Roche
Jake Bible
Paul E. Cooley
Mike Stackpole
Terry Bisson
Mike Plested
Lorna Suzuki
We talked about publishers
Dragon Moon Press
Hades Publiations (Edge)
Flying Island Press
Kindle / Amazon
Smashwords vs Paypal
It was hard, but I did allow Mike to talk as well. He and J.D. share a common interest in photography so they also did a lot of talk about photography. Before we knew it, it was late, the cigars were long cold, and the wind had picked up significantly. Mike and I called it a night.
Perhaps it wasn’t just two days in one, it was three. I did so muh that I woke up this morning and started packing for home. I sent a great deal of pictures home for the wife and my favorite daughter. I miss them. Even keeping myself busy didn’t keep my mind off of things. Even though I’m having a great time up here, I do miss them. It’ll be nice to go home and sleep in my own bed.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 