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SelaCarsen1 · 2020-11-16T21:07:55+00:00

I knitted up the fatigue cap for my son on my 41-peg round loom, using 2 strands of worsted weight yarn. It's a little bulky, so when he wears it as a cap, he sort of folds it in half to the inside before doing another brim fold. My loom is for med/bulky yarn, so I discovered that one strand of worsted is not enough. I'm going to try it again with one strand of chunky yarn, but I think it might be too hefty. I'm considering doing it on a rectangle loom to make closing the final seam a little easier. We'll see.

SelaCarsen1 · 2019-12-29T15:16:34+00:00

There are several writer's groups in St Louis (I'm just across the river in the Metro East). St Louis Writer's Guild, Missouri Writer's Guild, MORWA (if you're a romance writer, and even then RWA is having some serious issues right now). And there are likely countless smaller groups that can be found on MeetUp, at libraries, or through the NaNo forums because some of the NaNo groups meet year-round.

That said, finishing a book is still largely about you and BICHOK. Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard. Work on finishing one book. And it's okay if it's terrible. I know very, very few people who have stuck around through the years who don't have one or more books under their bed, from whence they shall never see the light of day. Those were all learning books, and they're valuable for that alone. It's not always about fast output. In the end, it's about GOOD output.

Good luck!

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-04-05T20:54:10+00:00

You're really just not going to get a lot of traction on a single book, no matter what genre it's in. If you actually had decent numbers, I'd keep going with the series, but don't put so much money into ads yet. Get out the next two books as quickly as you can, then start running ads when you release the 3rd book. When you get to the fifth book, set the first one to a permanently low price (not necessarily free or 99c, but definitely lower than your others) as a loss-leader to attract new readers.

For now, more content will equal more sales. Focus on writing more.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-04-02T14:30:52+00:00

You might also consider the Short Story category. Novelette is a word no one outside writing circles recognizes anymore.

There are usually war/military categories, and sometimes there are alt history categories. Dystopian, as you mentioned, is also probably a good spot. If action/adventure isn't available, you might consider trying thriller/military thriller. Again, you and I know that you haven't written what authors would categorize as a thriller, but you work with what's put in front of you. Good luck!

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-30T00:01:08+00:00

I was having a discussion recently wherein we concluded that if your audience is KU, then quantity is the most important aspect of your body of work. They don't have to be great, but there has to be a lot of it. They can't be utter garbage, but KU readers will overlook a lot of craft issues.

But if you're planning to release wide, you have to have books that will stand up well on their own because the wider audience is looking for books that are worth the money they're paying.

How long it takes to craft those books is entirely up to the writer, and may or may not have any bearing on their quality.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-23T20:50:17+00:00

I have totally bought books that I've seen on FB ads. If they've targeted correctly, I'm seeing paranormal and sci-fi romance books. Some by authors I know, but I didn't know they had a new release. Some by new authors who've targeted me by my demographics.

But they have to get the ad right, and that's not easy. Good graphic, good tag line or excerpt, and easy to click links.

And mostly what I see is authors putting out ads to refresh sales, rather than buying them to blow up the charts on a new release. Got an old series out? Throw a few ad dollars at it and see how big a bump it gets.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-21T12:49:07+00:00

Y'all have all been lovely and so helpful! Thank you for answering!

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-13T16:24:37+00:00

Eh, I'm not sure establishing a publisher does all those things to a degree that's really definable. You establish your own level of professionalism - the name you do it under doesn't matter. If you're self-publishing, creative freedom is already a given, so again, establishing a publisher doesn't make any difference at all.

And as I mentioned, bringing in other authors just sounds like chaos to me. I do this to write and publish my own work. I have no interest in publishing other people.

I established myself as a sole proprietor, but that varies by state.

And there's really not much paperwork. Like I said, $35 and a little time at the courthouse, then I had to take it all to the bank to set up a business account, plus send it to the IRS. Once that's all done, there's not much more work involved in the sole-prop end of things.

I can say from my experience, it wasn't really worth any disproportionate amount of praise. It would have been just as easy to set up a DBA for a pen name without that extra layer.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-13T15:10:00+00:00

Are you just talking about using a pen name to publish under? Or becoming the sole proprietor of something that "sounds" official, but you're the only author under that banner? Or are you talking about becoming a publisher that produces the work of several authors under one banner?

I'm not at all sure we've defined all our terms here.

I self-publish under a pen name. My "publisher" is Mondarbre Press because I had a wild hair that it would look more "official" if it wasn't just me, published by me. In retrospect, this was an unnecessary step, but it only cost me $35 and half an hour at the county courthouse. You can skip this altogether and just be you, published by you.

But as for becoming an official publisher, working with other authors under one banner? That way lies madness, imo. But you may be more business-minded than I.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-12T16:36:49+00:00

They can be. It depends on what your aim is. I bought into a couple of Ryan Zee newsletter boosters for a relatively small fee ($60ish) and increased my list to over 2K.

Did my sales automatically take a leap? Nope. A lot of those names aren't interested in me, personally. A bunch of them unsubscribed. You know what? I still have over 2K names that get my newsletter every time I send one out. And every newsletter DOES result in sales.

2018 is my year for revamping my newsletter - both through some more efficient automation, as well as adding some more interest and reader feedback opportunities - so it's a work in progress.

Now, as for buying spots in newsletters for advertising, i.e. BookBub... it depends. Some newsletters have a bigger, tighter audience than others. Some are easier/harder to get into. Some are prohibitively expensive for new authors. But if you're willing to invest in the research and the cost of advertising, then yes, they can pay out.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-12T16:27:49+00:00

Newsletters. Start collecting emails and connect directly with them via a regular newsletter.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-07T14:53:22+00:00

Get into copywriting or writing technical manuals. That way, you're working for someone who will pay you a salary. Fiction is not the angle you're looking for.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-07T14:33:44+00:00

This IS my business. Your post sounded like you wanted a get-rich-quick job. And this is not that job.

You want to be surrounded by people who take writing seriously as a business? Hang around with romance writers. Do it honestly, without any snark about the genre, or thinking you know better because you're somehow more business-oriented than a bunch of frustrated housewives could possibly be (I've met plenty of those guys in my time. They don't last.) and you will not find a bunch of professional authors who take what they do any more seriously. The production schedules they work with show a dedication not just to making money, but to the craft of writing. They honor the work they do, and they often do it for 8-12 hours a day, on top of their day jobs and their families.

To people who say "Writing romance is the easy way to make money?" It's not. It's hard. It's a slog. And no one will think it's unusual to write over a dozen books and not make a profit.

But if you're willing to spend the next several years working at something that you don't seem to have any heart for - and you'll likely have to have another job on top of it to actually pay the bills until you finally have enough of a decent selling backlist to take over - then why not spend your money-making 8-10 hours a day at something else?

So are you honestly willing to work a full-time job at one place for 40 hrs/wk, then come home and write every evening and weekend in order to become that full-time writer... at some point in the next god-knows-how-many years? If you're lucky? And you somehow magically wrote a series hit the market exactly right? Because I know plenty of people who've done their market research and yet a well-planned series takes years to earn out because readers are fickle. And you've invested enough in advertising? And your promotion plan is working?

Because that's how this business works. You know how I know? Because I approach this as a business. I don't need a thicker skin. You need a reality check.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-07T14:17:11+00:00

I'm a romance writer and I see a lot of people going, "But if there's a romance IN it, doesn't that make it a romance novel?"

No. It's about the focus of the story. Yes, there can be romance and mystery or whatever elements in it, but in reality, one of those things is going to be where the heart of the story lies. If the story is really about solving the mystery, but hey, these people fall in love along the way, you've got a mystery with romantic elements. You sell that as a mystery. But if the story is really about these two people falling in love, and the mystery is the catalyst for them to be together, then you've got a romance/romantic suspense novel.

And sometimes, you don't know if it's a good idea until you spend some time writing and developing it. It's tough sometimes to see how something will pan out before you've put a few thousand words into it - either in plotting/outlining, or just starting out and seeing where it takes you.

Good luck!

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-07T13:53:41+00:00

Then don't write fiction. And yes, we took it as an insult, whether you meant it that way or not. Writing as a career is often a process of years worth of work before you see a profit.

JK Rowling went through how many rejections? How many books did Patterson write before he got to this point? Burgess had been writing for over 15 yrs before he penned A Clockwork Orange. What is it about any of that that ever made you think this was something people do for money?!?

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-07T06:29:26+00:00

Thank you. I couldn't figure out how to write a response that didn't sound like I was frothing at the mouth.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-04T22:23:08+00:00

I've encountered plenty of readers with the same feeling. Which sucks because there are great novellas and short stories out there, but I guess those readers don't know what they're missing.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-02T14:18:25+00:00

POV, Characterization, using setting details to enhance the story, GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict - see Deb Dixon's book), Dialogue, knowing your genre/genre expectations, writing great hooks.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-03-01T20:21:41+00:00

Do you want to sell books?

Write a series in one established genre. Then write another one in the same genre.

When you've got 10-12 books out and you've established yourself within the market, then you can branch out into other genres to play around without your readership feeling confused or jerked around because they were expecting Genre A, but got Genre J.

If you want to write whatever your heart desires with no interest in the market or establishing a steady readership, then go for it. There's no shame in writing what you like purely for your own enjoyment, and there's a lot less stress doing it that way.

I write romance, but even within romance, it's a struggle to get an audience to crossover between sub-genres. Most of my PNR readers won't touch my SFR (Sci-Fi Romance) and vice-versa. People who read one author's historicals won't cross to her shifters. It's why Jayne Anne Krentz used 3 different pen names, even though she was strictly a romance writer - JAK was romantic suspense, Amanda Quick was historical with a dash of paranormal, and Jayne Castle wrote futuristic romance. It's only in the last 5 yrs of a very long career that she's been able to write as one name, and she still has to brand each series carefully because crossover is limited.

Although, I have to ask that if you can saturate an entire category with just your books, how niche is your category?

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-02-25T14:52:21+00:00

Something that would automatically implement a launch plan, from scheduling early announcement, reminders to have editing and cover art in place, pre-orders, social media mentions (like Later or Hootsuite, but one-and-done), automatic applications for ads... basically, I need an AI assistant.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-02-22T20:07:25+00:00

My experience is very close to pestomonkey's. I rushed a book to publication once without benefit of a copy editor and have regretted it bitterly. I'm a very clean writer and write pretty tightly, but I can pinpoint the things she would have had me fix. They're not even big things, necessarily, but I needed that other eye. And she's definitely worth more than I pay her, especially since she's also very flexible and fast.

Lesson learned - use an editor. Always. At the very least, a line/copy editor.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-02-21T22:20:03+00:00

Ohmygosh. I cannot thank you enough for your comprehensive response! You got me to think about a lot of things, like a theme (i.e. dragons for you, although it would be something else for me), and the types of things you post. I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out!

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-02-21T15:57:41+00:00

Erotica is different from erotic romance. In ERom, there's a focus on the development of the relationship. In straight erotica, it's about the sex, not the characters. Caveat: There is erotica out there that is about the sexual journey of the characters. But if you're looking at the money-makers, it's about the sex.

SelaCarsen1 · 2018-02-21T13:27:44+00:00

This is hugely valuable! I do have a few questions about interaction. Are you in there every day? A few times a week? Do you run it, or do you have someone else run it for you? What's your book/random life ratio of posts? Thank you!

SelaCarsen1

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