10 Steps To Making A Living As A Self-Published Fiction Author In 2020
So, you want to make a living as an author.
It’s an alluring idea, the notion that you could spin straw into gold by turning dreams into stories and stories into assets that pay out on repeat, and for the rest of your life. No publisher telling you what you can or cannot write, or what is and isn’t good enough. Without any barrier between you and the reader, the market can decide if your stories are worth buying.
But it’s hard — especially now.
I started self-publishing eight years ago. It was easier back then, and by an order of magnitude.
The market wasn’t saturated; the lines between professional and amateur product (especially on the surface) were more blatantly obvious, Kindle Select didn’t exist, and marketers weren’t all over the industry shilling cheap tactics that piss in the collective pool and make it harder for everyone.
There are plenty of other reasons, but those are the big ones.
Most writers can’t make a decent living writing only the things that they want to. But I can, and so can you. I’ve been at this for a while now, and have seen the industry from many angles. Not only have I written more than 150 books in that time with my partners Johnny B. Truant and David W. Wright, but the three of us also started the first big self-publishing podcast (The Self-Publishing Podcast) back in 2012, when the Kindle was still in diapers. We also wrote Write. Publish. Repeat., which quickly became — and has remained — the industry standard.
We know what we’re talking about, and we also know there are straightforward steps that will get you exactly where you want to go.
I’m asked all the time, What would you do if you were just starting today?
It’s a great question. This is my answer:
Step 1: Decide if self-publishing is right for you.
Being an indie author isn’t for everyone.
For some, it might be the biggest mistake they could possibly make. Every writer is different, and you should never follow someone else’s path without knowing where that person is planning to go. Heaven for them might be Hell for you.
Ask yourself the following questions:
How much control do I want over the content, editing, and cover design of my book?
How well do I understand basic marketing and funnel design?
How willing am I to learn?
How fast am I able to go?
Is writing a hobby or a business for me?
For Sterling & Stone, it doesn’t make sense to go Traditional. We’ve tried. Our four traditionally published books are like the redheaded stepchildren of our studio. We can’t control the content, the Calls to Action (CTAs) in the books, or a single element of our marketing. Our traditionally published books have infuriating typos that we’ve begged our publisher to correct. We’ve been told that this is too “high touch.”
Yet books we publish ourselves can have typos corrected in hours.
Most of the strategies we use to sell our own books don’t work for traditional titles — and even if they did, why would we try them? Why spend good money on traffic to a 15% royalty where we control none of the variables when we could send that same traffic to a book that’s earning us 70%, where we can also measure, track, and improve our results?
Besides, I want my fingers in the clay from beginning to finish. I love the entrepreneurial part as much as the artistry of what we do. So does everyone in our studio.
So independent publishing makes sense for us.
But for other authors — authors who want to write, write, write, going from one book to the next without worrying about any of the publishing minutiae — a traditional deal might make a lot more sense.
You have to choose the path that’s right for you.
Step 2: Decide what “making a living” actually means to you.
The economics of self-publishing have flipped the traditional model.
I’m not suggesting that you quit your job today and make writing your full-time profession, but I can’t count the number of authors I know who already have. Some are making more than they were before — a few substantially. All of them are happier.
And isn’t that what this is all about?
The money can be great if you treat your writing like a business. You don’t have to be a New York Times bestseller. You don’t even have to be in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Thousands of authors are making a comfortable living walking the indie path.
Fortunately, that’s not about luck. It’s simple math:
Let’s say you charge $2.99 for your book. (That’s the low end. You’ll probably charge more, but let’s play conservative.) At 70% royalty, you make $2.10 per book. If all you sold was five books per day, you’d earn $10.50, which is $315 per month.
Not bad for a sideline income. You only had to write the book once.
What if you sold 10 books a day? That’s $630.
What about 100 books? You’d make $75,600 per year.
“But wait,” you cry. “I don’t think I can sell 100 books a day!”
I bet you can.
Sixty-thousand words is a decent length for a book. Just 460 words a day will give you two full-length books a year, and you still get weekends off!
Let’s say you sold 10 copies a day of each book, and you added two new books a year to your catalog. It wouldn’t be long before you could be up to that 100 books a day and replacing your regular income.
And guess what? As an indie author, you aren’t limited to two books a year. You can release as many as you can write.
We know a lot of full-time authors who were born in less than two years. You don’t need to get lucky to make a full-time career as an indie. You don’t need a home run. You need to sell 100 books a day.
And the best way to hit 100 books a day without tearing your hair out?
Step 3: Research the market and know your genre.
So few writers do this, indie or otherwise, but those who do, and do it intelligently, are killing it. Most indie authors will never even make a minimum wage return for the time they spend writing. But some are able to make six figures or more and make it look easy.
They’re writing books that people want to read.
That’s deceptively simple. You’re probably thinking, Well, of COURSE they write books people want to read. But for these authors that isn’t an accident, it’s research. They know exactly how their books will resonate with their audiences because they took the time to find out.
“Writing to market” isn’t a bad thing. It just means you’re writing great books that people want to read.
Successful books should always be about the reader, not about you.
But then there are the writers who get it wrong on the other side. The sellouts, trying to cash in on a hot trend with little affection for or knowledge of the genre.
Even when you’re writing for a specific market, you have to love what you write, or it won’t be sustainable. And besides, readers can smell an outsider. If you don’t belong, they’ll let you know — with poor reviews, anemic sales, and no buy through to your other titles.
The best way to make great money as a fiction author is to find the intersection between what readers want to read and what you love to write.
Chances are, that’s some of the stuff that you like to read, too. If not, start reading now. You must read your market. Don’t skip this step.
More than anything, take the time to ask yourself what you should be writing.
We have something in our company that we call “Genre Therapy.” It was born by accident when one of our authors who had been writing romance forever discovered that romance was not her right genre. Every one of us has gone through this process, and it has led to significant insights, one hundred percent of the time.
The process involves asking ourselves a lot of questions about why we are attracted to a particular type of story. Many writers try to create what they love to consume, and that is often a mistake.
Explore genre and find a home. Take the time you need to explore, without getting stuck. Because eventually, you do have to write.
Step 4: Write (and professionally edit) the BEST novel you can.
Yes, you can hack the algorithms at any given time. But this will always be a short-term solution to a problem you are continuing to make for yourself. It’s like trying to build a business on black hat SEO tactics, hoping that Google won’t change the rules — when they always do.
Why would you want to constantly keep searching for water when you could take the time to build a well, then never look again?
Hacking Amazon — playing into their algorithms — can get you sales, but it’s a difficult way to earn diehard fans. Again with the SEO analogy: a gamed search result might get you some eyeballs, but it hardly helps you build a tribe.
So instead of looking for hacks, write books that resonate with your ideal reader. Write the book she wants to tell her friends about. Make her want to buy everything else you’ve ever written. THAT is how you build a sustainable career where you’re making more every month.
Think long term. Every book is an asset. When you build a strong catalog of quality work, you’re getting in early, buying high-value stock at a low price. There is no half-life to a well-told story. My grandchildren will be making money from work I finished last year. But if I took shortcuts, and worried about buyers rather than readers, I’d have a portfolio of penny stocks, and I’d deserve nothing more.
Step 5: Repeat. Repeat.
Nope. That’s not a typo.
This is one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned over the last few years, and one that’s helping to exponentially grow our business.
I wouldn’t publish my first book until I had a few more already done.
It’s extremely tempting to immediately monetize your first book. It makes sense. You’ve invested a lot of time. You’ve poured your heart and soul into this endeavor, and you’ve finally finished. Now you want the confetti.
But the truth is, you’re not as special as you think you are.
There are countless authors better than you. Not because there’s anything wrong with you, they’ve just been working harder and longer. If you don’t have another book, or someplace to send that reader when she’s just finished with your story, she will almost surely forget about you and move on to another author. No offense.
You don’t want a reader to fall in love with you then have no way to lead her to the next thing to read. Indie authors have been multiplying for years. The market’s never been more crowded, and readers have short memories. Prepared authors will go further, faster.
If any of us at Sterling & Stone was starting right now, we wouldn’t publish a thing until our first three books (in the SAME series) were all finished. Why three books in the same series?
Because that gives us an ideal funnel:
Book One: FREE. This gives our series maximum attention. We can send traffic to a book with zero friction. When you’re just starting out this can throw a tornado behind your tumbleweeds.
Book Two: FREE and PAID. Publish your second book for full price, but also offer it as an incentive to get readers who liked your book onto your list.
Book Three: PAID
Most authors are in such a hurry to monetize their first book that they can’t see how much they’re losing. Be the tortoise, and let the hare think he’s won (that guy is such an asshole).
Never trip over dollars to gather a few pennies.
Create and wait whenever you can.
Step 6: Build an email list.
We all know about the value of an email list for businesses or a non-fiction platform. But for fiction? Build a list before publishing the book?
Yeah, sort of.
You’re not really building the list so much as preparing to build it. But that’s not the sort of thing you want to be behind on. Before your funnel is launched, prepare for your traffic. This is non-negotiable. Even if you’re selling thousands of books a day through digital retailers, that isn’t good enough if you’re never bringing your readers home.
Buyers aren’t enough — you want fans. And it’s much easier to turn buyers into fans when you can communicate with them on your terms.
Your website needs to do a lot less than you’re probably thinking, or than most authors realize. Don’t waste a ton of time, or thousands of dollars. Until you have a fanbase, you don’t even need a blog (and I’d argue that, even then, a fiction author never needs a blog).
Here’s what your website needs:
- A simple landing page with a single job: to present a potential reader with your offer.
- Your offer. A short story, your free Book 2, your grandmother’s recipe for gumbo in exchange for an email. Just make sure it screams value. Put as much effort into your cover and description as you would anything you’d expect them to buy.
- A welcome sequence. Don’t invite your reader into your house and then ignore her. Send a welcome email and a simple autoresponder that welcomes this new reader into your world.
Step 7: PUBLISH.
You’ve got your first three books ready to go. You’ve got your funnel built. You are ready to start the engine.
But there are three things you need to invest in before you hit the Publish button, things that will pay you back exponentially. If you skip these, you’ll be wrapping shackles around your books’ ankles, tying them into a chain gang, and telling them to run.
- Invest as much as you can in your cover. Don’t be cheap. Not here. Your book’s cover is its number one conversion element. Spending $5 on a cover at Fiverr instead of several hundred from a designer might be the most expensive mistake you can make.
- Write a kick-ass description. Or, better yet, pay a copywriter to do it for you. Either way, take off your author hat. This isn’t a book report, it’s a movie trailer. Drop tantalizing highlights so the right reader is ready to click BUY without even thinking. (ProTip: read the descriptions for the top ten or twenty books in your genre, see what they all have in common, and do that. They’re working for a reason.)
- Include super-compelling CTAs at the beginning and end of each book. Your CTAs should include the one, single, next step that you want your reader to take. For example, in the funnel detailed above, your first book should offer the second book, and your CTA should basically say, “Opt-in to my super amazing newsletter to get Book 2 — a $4.99 value — ABSOLUTELY FREE!” Make sure you include the most compelling excerpt you can. This doesn’t have to be (and probably shouldn’t be) a full chapter. Think about a movie clip. Be intriguing.
NOTE: It’s important to set the stage that your book is “normally 4.99,” or whatever. You don’t want to train your readers to expect free books all the time. Also, please don’t ever use the words “super amazing newsletter.”
Step 8: Do it again.
This is the fun part.
Your books are finally live. Real people who aren’t your mom are reading and reviewing what you wrote. You’re making money as a self-published author.
Now keep going.
Many authors make the mistake of seeing publishing their book as a finish line. You’ll fly past them, if you see it as the starting gate for whatever’s coming next instead. You want to continue writing for your ideal reader, so don’t jump the rails here. Your reader enjoyed your book for a reason. If you just wrote epic fantasy, don’t all of a sudden change to military sci-fi. Romance readers expect a romance, not a cozy mystery.
You can expand later. But while initially growing your author platform and bonding with your audience, you need to stay consistent and teach them what to expect.
This was a hard lesson for us to learn.
I LOVE to genre hop, especially when writing with my partner, Johnny.
We’ve written fantasy, sci-fi (with a few different tones), horror, comedy, romance, literary, and stuff I still don’t know how to classify. We want to be known as storytellers, and telling the same sorts of stories over and over won’t serve the things we’re trying to build long term.
But this is a very expensive decision, and we don’t advise anyone else to do it unless you really know why you’re doing it. We would be making many times what we are now if we had simply followed this basic advice.
So yeah. Keep writing.
Step 9: Iterate.
For me, this is even more fun than “doing it again.”
At Sterling & Stone, we’re always seeing what works and what doesn’t, shedding old processes to make room for new ones. We iterate a lot. It’s core to what we do. Here are 10 areas to focus your iteration, in what I feel is a reasonable order.
- Constantly promote without constant promotion. Now that you’re putting new work into the world, you should be gaining readers with every new release. But you want as much of your marketing to be done on autopilot as possible. Make sure that you have smart funnels set up so that readers can constantly find you and read through your catalog without you having to tweet your book 387 times. No one wants that. The better you understand how Amazon and other retailers work, the better job you can do with autopilot promotion. That gives you more time to…
- Keep learning. Things are constantly changing. Not only do you need to keep up with those changes, but you also need to understand them. We never stop learning, doing, experimenting, or pushing things as far as we can so that we better understand our potential. Only after publishing fiction for four years did we finally understand that sending 100 qualified buyers (with compatible shopping histories) to a book on Amazon could yield more benefit than sending 1,000 random readers. This becomes ever more important as you grow your catalog, because …
- Your catalog is your portfolio. Manage it well. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on your new content at the expense of your older titles. This was also a hard lesson for us to learn, and one we’ve invested heavily in correcting. You can do it right from the beginning. But be warned, this will require a bit of …
- List hygiene and management. You need to identify your ideal reader, without being afraid to say adios to anyone who isn’t. List building isn’t an arms race. It’s better to have 1,000 of the right readers than 10,000 random email addresses of people who don’t even read. Take the time to clean your list. And tag them. Know WHO is buying which books, so that you can offer them the titles that they’ll love most. Survey them, find out what they want more of, then offer that. If there’s a new genre you want to try, find out which of your readers are most likely to follow you to that new genre before you invest months in writing there. Move from something like MailChimp or Aweber (where most authors are) to something more sophisticated like Active Campaign. With tagging in place, you can work on building …
- Street teams. One author in our Mastermind hits six-figures with EVERY release and publishes every other month. She knows exactly how to get her readers working for her so that the buzz on every book builds into something substantial. She does more with a smallish list all by herself than most publishers do with a huge team for their biggest authors. With tagging and Street Teams in place, that’s a perfect time to start thinking about …
- Paid traffic. Right now the best ROI in this business comes from a company called BookBub. If you can land an ad, your book will get a metric ton of downloads. With a smart funnel in place, professional covers that catch the first-time buyer’s eyes, a well-written description that compels them to click, and a well-crafted story that naturally leads readers from your promoted book into the next and the one after that, money will rain. Facebook ads are also great, but they take a lot of work to figure out. Amazon has their own in-house advertising platform. Over time, the specific types of paid traffic that work best will shift and change, but there will always be well-converting ways to advertise your funnel-starter book directly to the person most likely to love it and then read through your catalog. And remember, even break-even sales earn you readers, and if you’re good at what you do (this all can be learned) then you can do it for life, and grow with every new release. But to do that, you’re going to have to …
- Outsource. Chances are you’ve already done this. Your most important asset is time, and no one can ever make the things that you do. So hire people to buy you more of those minutes. You probably shouldn’t be working on your website, designing your own covers or promo images, doing your bookkeeping, figuring out Facebook advertising, or anything else that is subtracting from the momentum that matters most. If your work is a pleasure, then every day is amazing. You can make that happen by trusting people to help you grow your business and yourself. You want to use the majority of your time to build new worlds, add titles to your catalog, or …
- Find new ways to connect with your ideal reader. Now it might be time to blog. Or start a podcast. Or adapt one of your books into a screenplay. Maybe you’re a musician (I’m jealous) and want to “score” your book. You have an audience. Show them how much you appreciate them by giving them new things to love. Every crowd is different, and yours will love you for some very specific reasons. Find out what those reasons are, then bond with your readers on their terms in a way that makes you happy and is relatively easy to execute. I encourage you to really …
- Challenge yourself. If you stay comfortable too long, your art and ideas will die. Part of our business model at Sterling & Stone is to “do things that have never been done.” So many artists waste their time searching for great ideas instead of taking the time to make their ideas great. We wanted to flip this around — to prove that ideas are everywhere, and that waiting for the perfect one decapitates your potential. You can always learn by doing. You’re only cheating yourself if you don’t work to push your art and commerce. Only then will you…
- Be open to where this journey will take you. This is my favorite, because oh the surprises. My first love is film. I’ve always dreamed of making movies, but never in a million years did I ever imagine that I would. At least not until recently. Now that has become our reality. Sterling & Stone will make movies one day. We have several lines in the water already, and 2019 is looking shiny and bright. The last eight years of self-publishing have been nothing like I expected, but I wouldn’t have wanted them any other way.
Be open to where things might lead you, and more than anything …
Step 10: Appreciate All of it
Appreciate and learn from all the valuable mistakes you make along the way.
Those are the gold, so please don’t leave them in the mine. We don’t just make mistakes — we fuck up big, and then we talk about it. It’s one of the reasons people like our podcast so much. We’re not afraid to walk around with egg on our faces, because sometimes it’s better to tell the story before we have the chance to scrub ourselves.
Appreciate your readers and fans.
Without them you wouldn’t have the things that you have. We love our readers and are constantly thinking of new ways to please them, and enhance their experience.
Appreciate the people who help you to get where you are.
I’m little without Cindy, my best friend and wife. She bought me a MacBook for my 30th birthday and told me to write. She’s championed every idea and all my mistakes. Without Dave and Johnny, I’m a guy with too many ideas and not enough brain. The storytellers at Sterling & Stone make me exponentially better than I could ever be otherwise.
Gratitude shouldn’t remain silent. Take the time to say “thank you” to the people who make your life possible. When you appreciate the good things, it will always feel like there’s plenty.
Keep telling stories and keep getting better — because the only way you’ll get better is by doing it. A lot. Cindy tried getting me to write for a dozen years before I managed to get a single word down. It took far too long to realize that storytelling isn’t about education, it’s about stories.
If I did it, so can you.
