The Three-Year, No-Bestseller Plan For Making A living From Your Fiction is a series of books that take the hype out of self-publishing and deal only with the reality.
My credentials? I make a liveable income from my fiction, I can say hand-on-my heart I’ve never had a book that “took off”. I have solid series that do the hard lifting with constant but not spectacular levels of sales.
I have no interest in selling affiliate products or services (and the only ones you’ll find on this page are the 8 cents I claw back from Amazon if you buy through this page). I don’t sell courses and don’t teach, or want to sell you anything except books.
This series is designed to help you cut through the hype that surrounds the idea that you can make money from writing fiction.
Yes, you can.
No, it’s not easy.
Yes, it requires work.
No, you don’t “have” to do “all that stuff”.
Yes, it can be tremendously enjoyable, if you go about it in the right way.
Ready? Let’s go.
Self-publishing Unboxed
The Three-Year, No-bestseller Plan For Making A Living From Your Fiction 1
You intend to self-publish or have published a book or two. You’re not selling very well and wonder why not. You feel you should be doing something, but the thought of “marketing” gives you nightmares.
You don’t want to become one of these people shouting “Buy My Book!” on Twitter.
But you would still love to start selling some books, and pay some or even all of your bills with your writing income.
The good news is that this is ever more possible when self-publishing, if you set yourself up right.
This is where the three-year plan comes in.
The Three Year, No-Bestseller Plan For Making a Sustainable Living From Your Fiction has been a popular forum and blog post on the subject of career and audience building vs chasing sales and rankings of individual books.
People have long asked me if I’m going to turn the post into a book. The post itself is about 1500 words long, but it covers only an overview of the strategy and is intended for people who are already familiar with many of the tactics discussed. There is much I could add and explain in more detail.
Enter the books!
Self-publishing Unboxed is a 101 guide to self-publishing and selling your self-published books, and it will show you:
–The basics of self-publishing
–How to optimise your book’s listings
–How to decide which services to use (and how to pick scams!)
–How to decide what you need to spend your time on besides writing
–Easy and cheap ways to promote
–And much more
It is ideal for people who are at the beginning of their publishing career, as well as those who have dabbled a bit, but are ready to take it seriously.
Take control of your writing career and get your copy now.
Mailing Lists Unboxed
The Three-Year, No-bestseller Plan For Making A Living From Your Fiction 2
Self-published authors are coming to realise that a stable career is about a backlist of titles and keeping that backlist selling.
But how do you do this?
Invariably, advice given by other authors includes holding promotions and lowering the price of the first book in series, or even making it free. However, few people mention one of the most powerful ways to keep your backlist selling: the author mailing list.
This is where Mailing Lists Unboxed comes in. It shows you:
–The different types of author mailing lists
–How to recruit people to sign up
–What to do with your list once you have one
–Attitudes about mailing lists, including those that stand in your way
–Warnings and precautions
–And much more
This is not a book for beginners. If you know little about self-publishing, read Self-publishing Unboxed first.
Going Wide Unboxed
The Three-Year, No-bestseller Plan For Making A Living From Your Fiction 3
A companion guide to Self-publishing Unboxed and Mailing Lists Unboxed, for those who want to start selling on all ebook platforms.
In this book, you will learn:
–The major non-Amazon platforms and their quirks
–Tips about promoting your books and increasing non-Amazon sales
–The greatest hack for maintaining website pages with multiple retailer links.
Indie Writer Unboxed
The Three-Year, No-bestseller Plan For Making A Living From Your Fiction 4
So. You’ve self-published.
You’ve written some books, but they’re not selling as well as you hoped.
Or maybe you sold well in the beginning but your sales have slipped and you don’t know what to do. You’ve tried advertising, but you don’t think you’re very good at it. Or maybe your books just suck. Or maybe the algorithms hate you, or it’s because some troll gave you a one-star review.
At any rate, you’re struggling.
You’re too busy doing stuff that probably doesn’t matter, but you can’t see what or how to cut.
This book is for you!
Indie Writer Unboxed follows four hypothetical writers from the same online writing community on their journey, with challenges they face and steps they take to overcome them.
As reader with some self-publishing experience, you’re sure to find something in common with one of them: Tom, the semi-retired chemist who looks after his ill wife, Jack, who has lots of small dabbles at many different things, including having sold some books to a traditional press, Emily, who writes lots and lots of books but feels burnt out, and Lucy, a stay-at-home mother with a husband who really doesn’t “get” her desire to write.
This is not a how-to book, and it’s not a book that shows you how to (or claims that you will surely) make squillions. It’s a book about the range of realities that the vast majority of writers will find themselves in after the initial glow of publishing has worn off.
It’s a book about how to adapt, how to change your mindset, and how to be happy.