Member-only story
The greatest story never written
I Made $500 From My First Novel (Without actually writing)
The great literary shortcut to an imaginary bestseller
When people ask about my writing career, I proudly tell them I made $500 from my first novel. But what I don’t mention is that my word count was virtually zero.
More specifically, I had written three words: “Chapter 1: Beginnings.” That’s where my life’s work began and ended, and yet it still turned a profit. My $500 payday earned me a sweet $166.67 per word — which I’m pretty sure exceeds what Hemingway makes. Because, you know, he’s dead.
It all started with a late-night Wikipedia rabbit hole. Three cups of coffee and seventeen tabs deep, I discovered the real legend of Hua Mulan. Not the Disney sing-along version, but the ancient Chinese ballad about a woman warrior. And as luck would have it, a Chinese bookstore in California had just gone out of business, which meant mulanbook.com was now up for grabs.
Score!
As every great writer knows, getting a novel done is 99% preparation and 1% writing. By the end of my first week, I had set up three email addresses — press@mulanbook.com, adoringfans@mulanbook.com, and business@mulanbook.com.
