Now I know I have said before that there is no one thing a writer can do to guarantee success as an independent author. However, after listening to countless hours of Indie Publishing podcasts and reading every publishing and promotions blog I could find, I have determined that I was completely wrong. There are in fact three things you can do. Any one of these three steps would be helpful on their own, but if you can accomplish all of them, there is no reason you shouldn’t be finding success as an author.
Grazing through the endless supply of material online concerning Indie publishing, book marketing, and promotions, it is clear to see that most of the writers out there who are now working full time on their books have found success in many different ways. It is also clear that what works for one book or genre may not be the best route for another book or genre. Some authors are writing in short serialized formulas while others are knocking out 150,000 word epic fantasy novels, and they are each finding success with their different approaches. The ways to successfully sell a book in today’s market is limited only by your imagination. So if the routes to success are so varied, how do we pin down these three important steps to get us there? We look at the common denominators. No matter what genre, style, formula, or marketing technique they use, nearly every successful indie author in the field today seems to have these three key factors in common. Find a way to achieve them all and your dreams of pulling in a full time salary as an indie author will be within your grasp.
Step One
Content
This step is of course the most important one of all. Your content must be worthy of readers. Clearly you have a story to tell and a passion to tell it, but if it is poorly written or poorly edited it will never make it to readers. This means writing, editing, Beta reads, revisions, and repeat as needed until your work is up to scratch. Now you may be able to cover up your poorly written content with a fancy well designed cover (which is also important by the way). However, if you rope a reader in based on a good cover and then disappoint them with your content, not only are they not likely to buy any of your future books, they are very likely to tell there reader friends to avoid your books as well. Catching readers with flashy promos and gimmicks may sell a few copies of your current book, but in order to maintain a steady income as an Indie author you need to build a reliable fan base that will continue buying your books. Of course this is assuming that you have more books. This brings us to step two.
Step Two
Content
Yeah, I know it looks the same, but trust me. The first content was all about quality. This content concerns quantity. And your library needs both. The success of an indie author is built on their ability to put a book out in a fraction of the time a traditionally published author can. This allows you to continually be writing and publishing new works. Trying to market a single book with no other works to your name is an extremely difficult battle. And even if you are able to get a reasonable response to your first book and generate some new fans, readers still can’t buy what doesn’t exist. And in order to make a career out of your writing you need a continual sales stream. Your heavy marketing push shouldn’t really start until you have at least 2 books available and more coming down the line. One of the best marketing formulas an indie author has at his/her disposal is the zero entry sales funnel. With eBooks and indie publishing you have the ability to give away your first book to rope in your readers with your stellar content. Then once they have dedicated the time to read your first book they will be willing to pay for your subsequent books. (That’s assuming of course that your content is a worthy read. See Step One) And your sales funnel works in both directions. Once you have established yourself with 3 or 4 books in a series, when you release a new book and run some promotions for it, all the books in the series will see a sales spike as a result. This is why the vast majority of indie authors today are writing books in a long series rather than stand-alone stories. Some authors have reached a pace where they are putting out a new book every couple of months, some are still only putting out one or two books a year, but the important thing is to keep writing and keep the new works coming. And that bring us to step three.
Step Three
Wait for it… Content!
So we have established that we need quality content and we need plenty of it. So this third content is the stuff that comes between. If you are one of those indie authors releasing a new book every 6-8 weeks this one is pretty much covered by your launches. If you are, however, one of those epic historical fiction authors that requires a massive amount of research for accuracy and as such are only releasing a book or two each year, this content concerns you. The challenge for these writers is maintaining the engagement of their readers between releases. You have put out a quality series and fans have loved it, but in order to ensure that they will remember that book by the time the next one is release you have to cultivate your author reader relationship. The content that achieves this can be your website, your Facebook page, for many it is an author’s blog, and increasingly it is a newsletter sent out to your e-mail list of readers. This is where the back-matter of your book is an important tool to connect with your readers after they finished the book. (This is also a great tool for your sales funnel, but that is a different post all together) This is the content that continually reminds your readers that new stuff is coming. Cover teases, Title releases, Chapter previews, etc. Give them something that keeps you in the front of their mind until the next book. This should be increasingly easier as you build a library of works and a community of readers.
So there you have it. Content...Content...Content. Three steps to guarantee success as an indie writer. Okay, so guarantee is a strong word and of course we offer no refunds. But come on, if you are producing good quality material, on a regular basis, and working to build a dedicated community of readers, how could you not be successful. Good luck! And as always, let us know what you think. Are you covering all of these steps? Are there steps you have missed? Are there steps I have totally overlooked? Am I completely wrong and this entire blog was a worthless waste of everyone’s time? It’s possible. Leave us a comment and keep writing!
