Suburban Indie Writer

  They say there is a time and place for everything. Sadly no just isn't the right time to chase this dream. Hopefully the economy will get better and I will be able to have the free time again to work on my writing. Right now I need to pick up a second job on top of everything I am already doing to help cover expenses. Ideally this only last for about six months, but I don't know for sure. The dream is there. It isn't dead it is just on hold once again. 

  The first seven days of writing my new story I put down 23,000 words. Then a lot of life happened and I had four straight days of 0 words. Thankfully I had been crushing it that first week and am still where I need to be a with the stretched goal pass of 1,500 words a day.  Before I was excited by just how much I was able to get done and was even think that I may be able to finish faster than the 54 day stretch goal. That was always a miracle goal though. My reasonable deadline for myself is 90 days. This way I can write three books a year and use the remaining days on editing and marketing.  I am learning to be patient with myself and that my production isn't always going to be linear. 

  Recently I was struggling worried,  Am I Cut Out to be an Indie Author?   Last week I started writing a new story since I was really struggling with the last concept that I had. In my first week of writing I wrote 20,000 words! That is insane, I didn't even know I was capable of putting up those types of numbers.  I doubt this pace is maintainable but maybe I can get my number of books released per year up to four after all and cut the time to get to 20 books down from 10 year to 5 years.  I am going to keep pushing through and try not to stress too much. I still think waiting until I have a few books ready to release before putting anything out is a good idea. That way I get into the habit and mindset of written without an expectation of return on investment. 

After realizing there was merit to the 20 Book Theory , I started to wonder if this was the right path for me. I have always loved writer and have wanted to be a publish author ever since grade school. The types of books I have wanted to publish has evolved over the years but the desire has always been there.  As a mom who works full time I don't want to take too much time away from my kids while they are still small. When they are older and want nothing to do with me it will be a different story.  Right now I have a goal to average 1,000 words a day which takes about an hour to write. I am expecting proofreading and editing to take about the same amount of time; 1,000 words per hour. That puts me at 160 hours of work per book. This doesn't account for cover design and marketing because I have no base line to go off of with those. If we say I put in ten hours a piece on those that brings the total up to 180 hours to get write, edit, cover, and market a book.  We will see ...

  As I have been doing more research into the logistics of self publishing. I have seen this phrase in some variation come up in several different places 'you don't start making money until your 20th book'. According to Kindleprenuer the rough average to publish a book is $3,000. If you do that 20 times that is $60,000 dollars. I can see why so many writers are discouraged when their books don't do well enough to even net zero.  It seems that getting started out most books are priced anywhere from $0.00-$2.99. You have to have your booked priced at a minimum at $2.99 to get the 70% royalties on Amazon but they subtract delivery fees from that so it isn't a true 70%.   To help myself figure out how many books I would need to sell to hit the $3,000 mark at each price point with the 35% royalty I made the below chart.  List Price      $0.99     $1.99     $2.99 Royalty        $0.35     $0.70   ...

  I have been doing a lot of research lately about what to expect financially when self publishing your book. As part of my 7 Step Plan I have made for myself I have been putting together the expected start up cost. I have currently estimated $1,200 in cost but a lot of people on line have been saying that have spent around $5,000.  I do not know about you, but I do not have $5,000 laying around to drop on anything really.  The biggest expenses people seem to have marketing and cover designs. Theses are things that I can invest my time on instead of my money. I know if I create my own cover that it will not be as good as a professional one. My hope is that I can get the story out there enough and then if it does well do a second edition with a "proper" cover.  I have a marketing back ground so the social media marketing isn't as daunting to me as it may be for some other people. I plan on utilizes multiple platforms to see which ones garner the best results and then...