The Sustainable Six Figure Storyteller
Indie author trying to hit 100k a year, the sustainable way.
I’m an indie self-published romance author / stay-at-home mom. I always w̶a̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶r̶ to make a living from my writing, but I detoured into more reliable work like teaching. While I was teaching, I took writing workshops and classes and spent almost a decade reviewing mass market fiction for places like Publishers Weekly.
I stopped teaching when I had my first kid, and while my kids were at home with me, I discovered the new opportunities to be had with self-publishing, and decided to try it out. So in 2015, I hired a professional cover artist and an editor to put out my first short story at .99
I didn’t break even for a very long time.
But I learned so much by doing.
I made friends, I read, and researched, began listening to podcasts and begin writing a longer length work.
In 2017, I released 2 books in a science fiction romance series, each about 50k words in length. I made just under $2k that year.
In 2018, I released 2 books in a paranormal romance series of about 30k words in length. I grossed about $34k, which was mostly from those 2 books.
This year, I’ve only released one new work (a novella of about 40k words) but I’m on track to hit a much higher five figures, but still short of 100k.
I have a small catalog (5 full length books), I’m a slow writer, and I’ve got other obligations that are more important to me (kids!) The most reliable six figure author income strategy is off the table for me: I just can’t write and release fast enough consistently. The writing (and business) stops for school breaks, kid activities/sicknesses etc.
So I have to find another way, a more sustainable way for me.
And that’s what this newsletter is about: my journey to a slower, more sustainable way to six figures.
I’m not doing this for the money. Most of the content will be free, but if you really want to see exact sales figures and ad spend, you’ll have to sign up for a subscription.
Sometimes, when you talk to wildly successful indie authors to find out how they “made it,” you discover it was a matter of them being in the right place at the right time. There are some who hit market right (i.e. publishing when KDP began), or maybe they were the early adopters before Facebook throttled organic reach. What they did to grow and attract readers isn’t necessarily going to work now because the environment that they came up through, doesn’t exist anymore.
IMO If you want to take a journey through a forest, you should go with someone living there now, not with someone who passed through three years ago.
In this newsletter, I’m going to show you my experiments, my results, how much I spent and what my results were (exact dollar amounts because that forces me to reflect and actually look at numbers). We will look at both successes AND failures because if you don’t learn from failure, well that is a missed opportunity.
I’m going to tell you about my theories of sustainable low-cost marketing and show you what I’m doing so that you can try it on your own.
I’ll tell you my opinions about changes in social media, the marketplace and what it might mean for your business.
I’ll also offer up opportunities for AMAs (ask my anything), marketing critiques, platform/business/ branding feedback (probably subscribers only).
As an entrepreneur who primarily sells a digital product (ebooks), ebook marketing is primarily digital marketing which as we know keeps changing month-by-month, week-by-week, day-by-day. Stuff that worked 3 months ago isn’t going to work now, and stuff that DIDN’T work before, might work now.
The best way to find out what works in digital book marketing right now, is to find out from someone actually doing it RIGHT NOW.
All I ask is for you to take me out for coffee…eventually.
T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶S̶e̶p̶t̶e̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶2̶0̶1̶9̶,̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶e̶d̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶k̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶p̶a̶i̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶O̶c̶t̶o̶b̶e̶r̶.̶
EDITED OCTOBER 2019: I’ve decided to have a free version and a paid version. If I had a completely paid version, I’d feel more pressure to produce more content (and feel guilty about missing weeks because, say a kid got sick). I definitely don’t need that pressure, but I do still like having this space. I’m not doing this for the gobs and gobs of money, but more to work out my marketing thoughts and possibly beta a nonfic about some marketing ideas I have. By using a substack, I can avoid having to pay yet more mailing list fees lol.
You can still get most of what I’m working on in the free version but if you want to see exact numbers and sales figures, you’ll have to sign up for the paid version.
Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.
In the meantime, tell your friends!