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Here's what I love about writing ebooks: you write them once, and they keep on selling forever.
I know several writers who've taken to the Kindle platform like the proverbial ducks to water. One writer friend turns out a new Kindle ebook every month, like clockwork. The last time we spoke, she had 11 ebooks selling -- and her income is rising month by month.
Another writer friend mixes writing her own ebooks, with writing ebooks for others. Currently she's been commissioned to write a biography, and a family history, for the same client. She's finding it huge fun, and she's making more money than she's ever made.
The benefit of writing and selling ebooks is that once written, they can keep on selling forever. Would you trade eight hours for an income stream?
Whatever your current income from your writing, you can make more, much more. But first you need to know what's possible, and you need to be aware that the easy advertised writing "opportunities" are quicksand.
In my new Writing For The Web: Make Money Today program, I discuss what pays the most in Web writing, and what pays YOU the most. I explain why, if you're charging just $40 an hour, you're not making enough to survive.
Discover why writing for the Web is the best thing that's ever happened to me... and to you.
With each book, their sales climbed higher. Then this spring, a romance called "Falling Into You" -- about a girl whose first love dies suddenly -- jumped onto the New York Times Best Seller list. Jasinda was out driving with her kids the day it hit #1 on Amazon.
"I was crying hysterically," Jasinda said.
via www.cbsnews.com
Lovely story. :-)
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So look, no one can make you share your work if you don't want to. I share bits and pieces of my work pretty regularly — I am notorious for dropping a paragraph of the day into a Gchat window — and I also have someone who reads my work on a daily basis, which is a great luxury to have. But I also have friends who will write for years and years, entire drafts of books, that they won't show to anyone at all, and if you ask them how they're doing, they'll just say vaguely that they're working. So everyone's got a different strategy.
via www.powells.com
I never share early drafts. I can't see the point. If I don't know what I want the writing to say, how could anyone else's input be relevant?
That's my take on it. For me, early drafts are discovery drafts.
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A simple remedy to forgetfulness is to read novels more than once. A professor I had in college would often, to the point of irony, cite Nabokov’s statement that there is no reading, only rereading. Yet he was teaching a class in modern fiction, and assigned books that are generally known as “slim” contemporary classics. They were short, and we were being tested on them—we’d be foolish to read them only once. I read them at least twice, and now remember them.
I've found that. Once I finish a novel, I just remember a few scenes. Once I reread it however, I remember much more.
Memory is weird. :-)
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Stop over-thinking your first draft, start editing your second draft
Will resisting the urge to over-think produce a better first draft? Yes. Will it produce a perfect first draft? No. But that’s what editing is for.
via www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com
If you're anything like me, you need to learn the "stop thinking so much" lesson over and over again.
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Authors’ biggest mistake is that nothing much happens on the first page. People talk. There’s some info dumping, but nothing HAPPENS. When something does happen, it’s weird. For example, one First Page entry had a woman on her own in a snowbound cabin. A stranger comes to her door. She welcomes him, and gets fussy about some potato crisps which were past their use-by date. You might well think HUH?! Undeniably, this novel’s heroine was TSTL (Too Stupid to Live)… she’s alone, miles from anywhere, in a snowbound cabin and she drags a strange man into the cabin… This could have been set up well, if she’d been nervous.. But she was worried about potato crisps.
You're writing a novel. Make stuff happen -- on every page.
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Many years ago, my father pointed out to me that writing books for a living made racehorse gambling look like a sane, steady business. Amazon changed all that. Nowadays, if you’re keen and dedicated, you CAN make money writing books.
When writers ask me Can you really, truly, honestly make money writing ebooks?, they want to know whether ebook-writing is a viable option – are “normal” writers making money, or just the bestselling authors?
I've had several questions about money and ebooks this week. The above article offers the attributes of successful ebook writers.
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I wish my job was as easy as yours.
- Please, have a seat. Write something. Not much, just 500 words that are good enough to satisfy the Bills. I.Dare.You.
Love this list. We writers have it SO easy...
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There’s nothing more likely to get him interested in doing something than to be told it couldn’t be done. If you were to meet with someone who said, ‘Oh, that can’t be done,’ you’d probably say, ‘Okay, I won’t do it then.’ Richard would say that those people wouldn’t succeed in business.
If they tell you "it can't be done" -- people are always telling writers this -- do it anyway.
I'm a huge fan of WIGs: Wildly Improbable Goals.
Set a WIG today. Show them it can be done by doing it.
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Don't sweat the small stuff
There's always going to be some sort of altercation in any team effort that's worth doing, but it's vital to know when to let things go. "But I really love the zombie scarecrows" isn't going to cut it if this doesn't fit in with the book as a whole. You must be prepared to shelve your ego and listen to your co-writer's opinion; if she really hates it, she could well have a point
Is collaboration for you?
I've "collaborated" with other writers when I was commissioned by publishers, and wrote a section or a couple of chapters of a book. The projects were fine, and paid well. One of the (few) benefits of traditional publishing is that you pick up these kinds of projects.
I've never considered a "Lily Herne" kind of collaboration, it sounds like fun.
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Unlike cumbersome word processing applications, text written in Markdown can be easily shared between computers, mobile phones, and people. It's quickly becoming the writing standard for academics, scientists, and creative people. Websites like GitHub and reddit use Markdown to style their comments.
Markdown is a format that requires a very gentle learning curve. It doesn't control the font size, color, or type. All you have control over is the display of the text—stuff like making things bold, creating headers, and organizing lists.
via learn-markdown.herokuapp.com
I adore Markdown. It's the easiest way to write for the Web, because your simple plain-text documents can be instantly converted to HTML, RTF (ready for Word), or PDF.
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Even fifteen minutes is long enough to write. For years I told myself, “If I don’t have three or four hours clear, there’s no point in starting.” Now I realize that if I’m deep in a project (see #1), even a short bit of time is long enough to get something done.
When my students tell me that they have "no time to write", I ask them whether they can spare 20 minutes a day.
How much can you write in 20 minutes? Can you write 250 words? If you can, that's page, and that's a book, over the course of a year.
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The basic process: get paid for your content and make $500 a day and more
Decide what you want to write
Write samples – post them on your own site
Look for companies which need the kind of content you’re writing
Approach those companies
via www.fabfreelancewriting.com
Here's the latest article on writing for the Web on our freelance writing blog.
You'll find links to previous articles at the end of the post.
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As a new fan of How I Met Your Mother, I was thrilled when Ted pulled out a yellow legal pad (and backup yellow legal pad) in P.S. I Love You in order to work out a big problem. Let’s start with the science behind using a yellow legal pad: studies show that color helps us remember things – hence why many teachers encouraged us to use colored index cards to make flash cards when we were younger.
via campfirechic.com
Great post. I use all those methods of capturing ideas, and adore yellow legal pads. They're great for working out ideas -- extending them. A single page on a yellow pad has turned into a book for me, more than once.
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I also think writers should stop worrying about writing a novel. They envision three hundred pages to go, and it frightens them. It’s a long and daunting road to travel.
Instead, they should be interested only in telling a good story. If that story happens to take a couple of hundred pages to tell, so much the better.
When you tell yourself you're just telling a story, writing your novel becomes much easier.
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We’ve talked about the Kindle ebooks survey. Brenda Hiatt surveyed 60 Kindle authors, and found that “2012 indie-only earnings per author averaged $137,940 (yes, you read that right) with the median earnings figure at $51,211 per author.”
Would you be happy with a six-figure income? Can you make that kind of money at your day job, without working for 16 hours a day?
via www.fabfreelancewriting.com
These days, you can make great money as a writer. If you're hesitating about going freelance, consider that freelancers tend to be happier.
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Writing jobs are everywhere. If you want to make $5 for writing 500 words, you can get these jobs all day long. No searching necessary. These gigs are plentiful because the Web's built on words. If you can string a few words together, you can make money.
I've got nothing against these jobs. Sadly however, there are two major challenges with these kinds of gigs: you'll burn out, and they're a dead end...
You can write less than you're writing now, and get paid much more. Get the dream writing jobs you want, at top rates.
Want to sell your writing services? Here's how. Everything you need to know to get started today.
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