Write A Book A Month To Earn 100K

The year was 2020. Pandemic had hit. Michelle Kulp, a struggling writer, made a bold announcement on social media.

“I am going to write and publish a book a month.”

The day she started her first book, her daughter moved in with a two-year-old child. She had separated from her husband.

“Have you ever imagined writing a book with a toddler in the house,” moaned Michelle.

But Michelle didn’t let that deter her. She was determined to keep her commitment. Just a few months ago, she had read a blog post by Written Word Media that said that an average self-published author who makes $100K has 28 books published.

Image Source: Written Word Media

She immediately thought, “I need to make a $100K with my books! I’m going to write a book a month and create a 6-figure passive income stream SOLELY from my royalties.”

She had published eight books since 2011, but most of them were old. The information was outdated, and she hadn’t been marketing them. So they were dying a slow death.

In 2018, she had spent more than a year writing the second edition of her book, Quit Your Job and Follow Your Dreams. It was earning a few hundred dollars per month, but considering the time she had invested in writing, editing, publishing, and launching that book, the payoff wasn’t huge.

While she was mulling over her decision, she came across a quote by Seth Godin, author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into over 35 languages. (He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books LinchpinTribesThe Dip, and Purple Cow. He has also been writing a blog post, every day, for 20+ years and has a collection of over 8000 blog posts at his site.)

Seth Godin wrote:

“One of my books took more than a year to write, ten hours a day. Another took three weeks. Both sell for the same price. The quicker one outsold the other 20 to 1.

A $200 bottle of wine costs almost exactly as much to make as a $35 bottle of wine. The cost of something is largely irrelevant, people are paying attention to its value.

Your customers don’t care what it took for you to make something. They care about what it does for them.”

When Michelle read that quote, she realized she didn’t need to spend months or years working on one book. I needed to write short books.

Since writing and teaching were her passion, she knew I could easily do this. So she embarked on her project.

She built herself a system.

She called it BAM! (Book-a-Month)

She would write a book in the first two weeks of the month, get it edited in the second two weeks, and self-publish it on Amazon.

She started writing a book a week.

She had heard the prolific author’s adage, “Nothing sells your first book better than your second book.”

She found that adage to be true. Each new book she released she included references to her previously published titles, which created new readers for those books.

Volume Boosts Visibility!

Today she has 23 books published and is still counting. She is making a four-figure monthly income and is on target to make a six-figure income.

I read her story from her book 28 Books to $100K: A Guide for Ambitious Authors Who Want to Skyrocket Their Passive Income By Writing a Book a Month.

I have adopted her strategy.

For the last two weeks, I have been working on my next book, Eight Steps to Authorpreneurship. It will be done by the end of this month. Next month I will start another one.

To succeed with this strategy, you need to have a few things in place.

  1. Write Shorter books. I write 100-page books which are roughly 20,000 words. Kindle has many short book categories. Since time and attention are in short supply, there is a great demand for quicker reads.
  2. Write Your Book as quickly as possible. I share my process of writing a book in a week in my book How to Write and Publish an eBook in One Week. You can use the same format and extend it to ten days and take the weekend off in between. It is surely doable. I have been doing it since June this year.
  3. Pick a narrow niche and dominate it. The more books you will write in a narrow category, the more authority you will gain in that field. I write books for authors who what to be entrepreneurs. I target ambitious authors and entrepreneurs who have a strong desire to meet their writing goals.
  4. Make a schedule for an entire year. Identify 12 titles you want to write, allocating one to each month. You can change them as you go, but knowing them in advance means you will be able to do research in advance, which will make writing a breeze.
  5. Write each chapter as a Medium post. This way you will write your first draft, test it with the audience and refine it before including it in the book. This article is going to be a chapter in my next book.

Are you intrigued? Are you a game to write a book a month? Write me a note in the comments section and we can buddy up and help each other. It is not a sales pitch. Just a genuine note to meet like-minded aspiring writers.

Photo by Jarek Jordan on Unsplash

Are Self-published Authors, Authors?

A well-meaning reader asked me a question, “Do you consider self-published authors, authors?

I said to him that I would write an article to respond to his question.

The first thing I want to establish is what an author is?

The Oxford dictionary defines an author as “a writer of a book, article, or document.”

That is heartening to know. This means if someone has written a document at work, she is an author too. Author of that document. A creator of a piece of work.

According to Wikipedia, “an author is the creator or originator of any written work such as a book or play. More broadly defined, an author is ‘the person who originated or gave existence to anything,’ and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created.”

In my past life, I was a research scientist. During my (unfinished)doctorate in Biochemistry, I ‘authored’ three papers that were published in scientific journals.

That made me an author, no doubt.

Would I have been an author had the scientific journals not accepted my papers and they kept on sitting in my bottom drawer?

Perhaps not.

But if I had taken the same papers and published them in my University’s journal, I would still have been an author.

Wouldn’t I?

University’s publication may not be as reputed as an international publication. Nonetheless, it is still a publication. And my work is available for reading and citation.

So publishing in a lesser know publication will still make me an author.

I am sure you will agree with me so far.

Now let’s talk about articles.

Once upon a time, the only way to publish an article was in a newspaper or a magazine.

You had to write what that publication was looking for or was interested in publishing at a point in time. If your work land on the right desk at the right time, you might find your name in small font under a big, bold heading. If you are lucky, you might receive a check of $50 or so.

But then the times changed. Blogging started. Lots of online publications started publishing the work of bloggers on their sites.

Can they call themselves authors, or were they mere bloggers?

Fast forward to 2012. Medium started. Bloggers started publishing their articles on the platform in droves. Anyone can open an account and write a story or an opinion.

Are they authors or mere hobby writers?

By Oxford dictionary definition and Wikipedia’s broad definition, they too are authors.

Let’s move on to books.

Since the advent of the printing press in 1450 and the establishment of publishing houses, the publishing industry changed a little between then and the end of the last millennium.

If you were a writer and want to publish a book, you must go through a publishing house. You would send the manuscript to several publishers to find one who would be interested in publishing yours.

The whole process was frustrating. The publishing houses were more interested in protecting their own interest (i.e., their profit) that many writers would give up and bury their books in the bottom drawers forever.

With the advent of digital technology and smartphones as reading devices, a new form of publishing became available.

Digital publishing.

For digital publishing, no gatekeepers are required.

In November 2007, the Kindle was born. Integrated with the largest online bookstore in the world and the remarkable self-publishing ability for anyone who wanted to publish. It redefined the publishing industry.

By 2011, self-publishing and the rise of e-books were fully established. Many books dismissed by traditional publishers went on to become extremely successful as author-published books.

Some examples:

  • Andy Weir self-published his sci-fi thriller The Martian. It was adapted into a movie in 2015 directed by Ridley Scot starring Matt Damon. The film grossed $630m worldwide.
  • E.L. James blogged her fan fiction of Twilight and later turned it into the Fifty Shades Of Grey, which at one point out-sold Harry Potter and led to $150 million budget movies that topped $1 billion at the global box office.
  • Lisa Genova’s moving story about Alzheimer’s Disease and how it affects relationships, Still Alice, was self-published in 2007, having spent a year on the pitch-and-rejection cycle. The last agent who looked at the manuscript warned the author not to self-publish, telling her that it would kill her career forever. Genova ignored the agent and went ahead, selling the book out of the trunk of her car. She invested in a PR agent, and Still Alice won a lucrative publishing rights deal, including a movie starring Julianne Moore.

Self-published authors are selling their books in 190 countries.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is not the only platform. Apple, Barnes & Noble (Nook), Google, IngramSpark, and Kobo are taking self-publishing to every country in the world.

Indie authors (this is how self-published authors are known in the industry) continue to increase their global sales at a staggering rate.

In his latest publication, The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know (2019), the veteran publishing commentator Mike Shatzkin points out that between 2011 and 2013, the non-traditional share expanded rapidly from nearly 0% to almost 30% of the book units sold in the US.

Not only that but the overall size of the e-book market itself is growing rapidly.

Within five years of going mainstream, in 2014, digital self-publishing accounted for more than 30% of all recorded book sales in the US

Not only the publishing industry has changed, but readers have changed too.

The emergence of smart devices, e-books, and online subscription models has transformed the reading behavior of readers.

Readers are buying more ebooks than ever before, a behavior that accelerated during the pandemic and continuing.

They are also buying more and more audiobooks.

And they don’t care whether a book is self-published or traditionally published.

  • One in every four books that sell on Kobo comes from their self-publishing platform, Kobo Writing Life.
  • Self-published authors produce 85 percent of Kindle Unlimited ebooks.
  • Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited paid out over a quarter of a billion dollars to indie authors in 2019, apart from regular sales.

Vanity publishers are losing their market share.

According to Bowker records, Amazon’s market share of self-published print books in the US increased from 6% in 2007 to 92% as of 2018.

Vanity press publishers dropped their share from 73% of all books published in 2007 to just 6% during the same period. Today, it is just 1%.

The better options available to authors are making a difference.

The turning point came between 2011 and 2012 when Amazon “absolutely crushed their competitors.”

Self-published authors are earning more and more reliably

The average traditionally published author earns approximately 5–15% of their book’s cover price. Those with agents lose a further 15% of that.

Self-publishing platforms like Amazon, Apple Books, Ingram Spark, and Kobo pay up to 70% of each book sold to authors. However, those indie authors who sell direct to readers from their own websites take in up to 96% of the book’s value.

Of course, publishing costs have to be deducted from this income, but there’s no question that over the life of a book, self-published authors earn more.

Self-publishing authors are now a growing part of the publishing ecosystem.

In 2016, Enders Analysis found that 40% of the top-selling ebooks on Amazon were self-published. The analysis concluded that the option was “only going to grow more attractive.”

They are proving right.

More and more authors are choosing to self-publish.

So, are self-published authors are authors?

I think self-published authors are more authors than traditionally published authors. For once, they are more versatile. They are not only developing their writing skill but learning publishing and marketing skills as well.

They are promoting their work and are directly in touch with their readers.

They are market savvy. They know what their readers want and fulfill their needs.

Yes, you might say their work is less mature initially. Or it has not gone through the rigor of several edits.

But you can see them as those who practice in public. They are not sitting in a dark room in their homes, learning their craft, and never letting their unpolished work see the light of the day. That was the older model.

With the new model, the wanna-be writers put their work out there and learn in public. It is not to say they are careless and don’t want to do the hard work. Instead, they are not shy to share their best work at the time. They don’t wait for the day when it will be perfect. They hone their craft as they go. As a result, they get better with each book they publish.

Dear Reader, I hope I have answered your question. Your opinion might differ from mine, and I would love to hear it.

Credit: Many facts and figures in this article came from the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Advice Centre article Facts and Figures about Self Publishing: The Impact and Influence of Indie Authors

Writing eBooks Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Do A Print Version

It means you test the market before you start spending money on your book.

I love physical books. I love the feel, the smell, the texture of them. I love the way they sit on my bookshelf, on my bedside, and between the covers. I sleep with them. And I wake up with them.

I bought my Kindle seven years ago; all this time, I only downloaded free eBooks. My rationale was if I was to spend money, why spend them on ebooks when I can buy print books.

It was not until last year, during the lockdown when was not frequenting the book stores, that bought some digital books. It was convenient, I didn’t have to wait for many weeks for the books to arrive, and I didn’t have to pay the shipment fee (which is substantial since I live in Australia).

The books were on all my devices within a minute, and I could read them on any device — my phone, iPhone, computer, or Kindle.

Now I am buying a lot of books as digital books. In fact, just today I bought in last two weeks I have bought seven books and before that, eight last week.

Now, this was from a reader’s perspective.

Let have a look at it from the writer’s perspective.

Advantages of launching your book as an ebook first.

Test the market.

Printed books cost a lot of money. You would need to get the book formatted, typeset, and proofread. You also need to invest in a professional book cover, book description, and back cover blurb. All these efforts cost a lot of money.

Since Amazon changed the whole book industry by introducing Kindle in November 2007, the option to publish your book as an ebook has enabled writers to test the market before spending money on their books.

E. L. James published her book Fifty Shades of Grey as an ebook before getting picked by Vintage Books and sold over 125 million copies. After being rejected by literary agents, Andy Weir put The Martian online for free, one chapter at a time.

Launch your book at zero cost.

This is even better than traditional publishing. You can keep all the rights to your book, have complete creative control, and still can launch your book at zero cost. Amazon doesn’t charge you anything, neither does any other platform to put your book out there.

Sell directly from your website.

Publish your book as a digital book allows you to sell it directly from your website, eliminating the need to go through any platform. Many authors are doing that now. Particularly non-fiction authors.

You can sell your book at a much lower price than Amazon or other platforms, and money appears in your account straight away.

Many professionals use their books as a free giveaway to establish their creditability and build their mailing lists. While it could be expensive with physical books, it can be done at zero cost.

But of course, you can launch your book as a print version at the same time.

Print-on-demand has changed the landscape of physical books, just like Kindle changed the digital books.

Gone are the days when you have to empty your garage to store 5000 copies of your book. I know the stories of many authors who did just that. Needless to say, they were not able to sell their books and ended up dumping them in recycling bins.

Print-on-demand service means your book can be printed one book at a time. They are a bit expensive than the eBooks, but you as an author do not have to put in any money upfront.

Of course, you will have to invest in getting your book ready for publishing (professional book cover, formatting, and typeset). Once you have done all that, you can upload your files, and your book can be available to order within 24 hours. It is incredibly quick to get your books up for sale.

Amazon runs an awesome print-on-demand service. Many authors are impressed with their quality.

If you want to go wide (which means not exclusive to Kindle and available on other platforms), IngramSpark and Draft2Digital are the companies you can go through.

In Nutshell

Penguin Random House chairman and CEO Markus Dohle recently stated that it is the best time for publishing. Global book marketing is growing every year. People are spending more money on books than ever before. Industry revenue is growing, and there is a stable, robust business model for both physical and digital distribution and a healthy coexistence between digital and physical formats.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash