When she can’t find anything good to read, a finance employee starts writing romance novels of her own. The books go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies and pull her family out of debt.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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greetings and hello, and welcome back. This is out of school. My name is critical about today, when I talk about writing books and making
money which our two subjects that don't always go together now ripening beginning I'll, tell you. There are a couple of big myths about writing, bugs and
one is that writing a book is a good way to get rich. Second. Why is that?
one who write books makes any money, so neither of these things are really true.
Your goal is to make a lot of money in a short period of time. In writing. A book is probably not the best idea for you, but at the same time, it is possible with the right efforts.
Jim plan to actually make money running bucks even make a good amount of money. So personally,
Love writing bucks. I dont do it as a marketing tactic. It's not an extension of anything else. For me, riding in publishing bucks is something I really enjoy and though it certainly taken some effort, I've actually been able to make a good living doing some work for traditional publishers to publish my bucks, but today story is all about a finance employee who sells two hundred thousand self published romance novels ample or family out of debt, and at the end of the story, I ll give you a few tips. If you want to write a book
That's coming up in just a moment now
story carry
what has always been an avid reader one night after finishing a buck, she found herself struggling to select the next, but she was
She must have our reading on any reader where she also searches for, and purchases new bucks. For some reason, none of the
available that evening were capturing her attention and it was in that moment she wondered if she could write a book that she wanted to read
when her writing journey began carry,
mainly rating young, adult paranormal fantasy, which is a very popular genre for her. She enjoy the setting and the stories, but the element these books were missing was more descriptive romance. She felt it was a bit superficial, at least in some of the books she read and while she loved books about young love, she wanted a book where the characters
a bit older and the romance was more detailed. Of course you don't just sit down to write a book for the first time or, if you do it,
It usually end up being one you can do much with when carry began. Our task of writing your first back. Like most new authors. She made
mistakes in novel writing. There are two types of writers plotters and panthers. Now plotter. As someone who carefully plans knows exactly how the plots going to develop from beginning middle to end, whereas a Panzer is someone who kind of flies by the sea to their pants makes it up.
Alone, but first carry was a panther and her stories went wherever her imagination was going at the time. That kind of free riding can be fun for a while it can be freeing, but it's not necessarily great for readers, nor does it tend to make for good finished bucks. So halfway through the first draft, she really
She had no conflict and her story. The hero and heroin met and fell in love without any issues blocking their way. Anyone who likes to write fiction probably knows why this is a big problem. What's the point of reading a stir
with no conflict stories are all about conflict. It took her six months to write that first draft and another five months working on edits and rewrites before she was able to power
as far as it was to learn all the new skills associated with running a full length, novel going back and adding that necessary conflict, the publishing process was actually a lot easier. I mentioned at the top of the show that my books are traditionally published, meaning that I partner with the publisher for all aspects of production and distribution, carries books herself published, which means she's in charge of all aspects of our publication. So in the traditional system, the publisher handles the editing, the cover design, the formatting, the printing, the foreign rights, the publicity and many other things with a self published book. If you're unqualified, to perform those tasks or if you don't want to do them, you need to hire freelancers. So that's what carry did she hired freelancers.
Oh tasks so that she can keep writing to distribute the book. She began with a service called Amazon Candle, direct publishing, sometimes known as Amazon Katy P. That would immediately allow Amazon, DOT coms users to purchase and download the book. She also signed up with smash words and other service that fetter bucks to additional Eba retailers like Barnes, a noble and ibex. Once she had figured out how to create conflict and plot.
Stories a bit more in advance. Cherry realize that she really likes writing books. In fact, after finishing up first one before it was even published, she's already started on her next one in over the next four years. She kept writing and publishing on a very rare
cycle. She began in two thousand: thirteen and she's not publish fifteen bucks, eleven of which are part of three different series and, with the series she's been able to use a creative strategy of growing her audience. She markets the first book of the serious using free buck promotions and sales and then once someone reads the first book that naturally promotes all the ones that follow it. So the whole goal is to get somebody hooked on the series and then naturally going to purchase the second one. The third one and maybe beyond carry also does a fair amount of self promotion. She has a blogs users, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. She has a newsletter to keep in touch with readers and advise them of new releases, so doesn't just happened by magic. She works hard for it, but for others
work has been a very real reward and response since that first book came out, she saw more than two hundred thousand copies worldwide. Her books are now translated in several other languages and are also of it.
As audio books and carry gets paid monthly royalties from these sales, with Amazon
but his prized to ninety nine or higher. That's two dogs and ninety nine
or higher the world. He is about seventy percent and four ebooks that price under two ninety nine, the wealthiest closer to thirty percent unnaturally, since she is in charge of everything she can set her on prices,
She usually asks for a price of a brown three hundred and ninety nine, just under four dollars being that she earns about two dollars and seventy nine cents on every book that salt stuff, you do, the math, I'm sure there's some variants of different prices and probably some promotional pricing in there somewhere, but it more than two hundred thousand copies sold. It's fair to say that she's
multiple six figures through writing and publishing these novels, and that income has allowed her to pay off debt that she struggled with before she began publishing. It has also given it a financial freedom to travel and save for the future. Writing. Fifteen bucks has not been without challenge, especially the beginning, carry struggled with trying to find the right balance between time with her family the day job she still
And her writing career. She had a hard time saying no to book events. She ended up over scheduling herself and to meet her deadline, which, of course, we're all self imposed. Since she was in control of the entire process, she found herself ignoring her family and running yourself ragged. She says there is this belief in the indie book community that you have to publish one book a
to remain relevant and ass, fast ass. She could work that schedule was too accelerated and she even began to have panic attacks which obviously took
from all the enjoyment of the writing had been bringing her. Fortunately, over time, she finally learn to seek more balance between all these competing responsibilities. She still publishing books just not for them a year and for her that balance means travelling.
Buck, signings less, while having more time for a family but still writing and still publishing, and still developing, though, series that get people hut, there are at least several different path to success in writing. Bucks. We could spend a long time talking about each.
What carry has done the model she's followed. It truly is enabled by new technology and platforms like Amazon's, Kindle Direct publishing, there's a whole subculture. People doing this
and some of them are able to have big successes like hers. Naturally, not everyone successful, there's a lot of people trying, but not able to find enough for years for their bucks just like in any industry, but it is certainly possible and carry story is not the only one. This whole no
publishing for books and a year. Obviously paranormal romance is not my genre. But personally I can't imagine and accelerated schedule like that. Actually, right and publish fairly quickly in my genre annually published a book every year and a half or two years maximum, and that's considered pretty fast for what I do know. Obviously the process is a lot. Different. Carry doesn't go to fifty cities whenever she has a book out, there's a lot more real,
involved and the kind of case study process their use. I don't have to worry about adding conflict to my characters, at least not most of the time, but still it's a lot of work, not whether you're interested in Kindle Direct publishing some other kind of self publishing some form of traditional publishing or somehow
where an approach which a lot of people, including myself, are doing in different ways. I do have some advice. I think it's ok to learn about the business of publishing. In fact, I think you should you should educate yourself, but if you're kind of you know just now think
so I want to write a book. I think you should make sure you're also learning a lot about the structure and our of writing bucks, and you can do that. First, just by paying attention to the books, you read
should read thoroughly within your John Raw. You should not just read current bucks, but you should go back a decade or two decades or a century or two centuries, depending on what you're writing and you should also read outside your shoulder- a really good writers and interesting riders tend to Poland experience from different fields there, not just influenced by the John rather there in this is similar to what we see with us, a different sort of stories with people pulling indifferent skills, different exe
answers to come together and create something this totally new. So if you're interested in young adult romance, you should check out, carries books, of course, linked them up and if you're interested in the business model behind it willing that up to and the shadows for today, what you can find it sizeable school dot com, slash sixty five,
Six five I'll include links to Amazon. Kindle direct publishing smash words to a new service users
No, I didn't talk about to publishing.
That my literary agent wrote a few years ago, which is very helpful if you're, especially considering traditional publishing and probably some other things as well, so going check that out when you get a chance has always remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. I'm critical about this institutional school and I'll see you tomorrow.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-07.