How To Make Money As An Indie Author

Or, On The Quantity-Quality Axis In The Writing of (Genre) Fiction

Or,

‘The Plan’

So you want to write (genre) fiction, and you want to make money from it.

The first objective in that sentence is completely and gloriously open and available to you, assuming you have any free time in your day at all:

You want to write? Awesome. Write! You are free to do so.

Here’s an obstacle to the fulfilment of the second objective, though:

If you want to be traditionally published, the traditional way to make money from writing fiction, your writing needs to be of an extremely high quality.

Less than 1% of manuscript submissions to literary agents (the process you will almost always need to take part in if you want to be traditionally published) are successful.

The quality of traditionally published manuscripts is extremely high. How couldn’t it be?

Each traditionally published book has to first be accepted by an agent to be represented, then will be heavily edited with that agent, then be heavily edited with an editor at a publishing house if it gets taken on by an actual publisher, and then be copy-edited.

That’s a lot of editing, and a lot of checkpoints to clear. And even the very first checkpoint, getting accepted for representation by a literary agent, is very hard to clear, and by all accounts requires writing a manuscript of the highest quality, dogged persistence, and a healthy dose of right-place-right-time luck.

I have been slogging away at this objective for about fifteen years (part-time, on and off!), had a near miss or two with personalised rejection letters from agents saying they almost went for my stuff, but not succeeded (yet?).

I’ve written seven manuscripts and secured representation with none of them (though to be fair, I’ve only tried submitting three of them to agents so far, since one I was commissioned to write, and three I wrote just for myself).

It's hard. Shouldn’t I just give up?

Never!

I write because I love to write, I love to tell stories, and I have things to say. I’m not going to stop writing.

And I’m not going to stop working on my writing craft either—reading books about how to write well and attending writing courses when I can find and afford them.

(By the way, I have already had short stories traditionally published and done a mentorship with a published author who really enjoyed my stuff, through The Literary Consultancy. But getting a novel traditionally published has alas eluded me thus far.)

However, all this difficulty in making money from traditionally published fiction does mean that when another avenue appears to me it looks highly appealing.

And what avenue would that be?

‘Indie.’

I have also actually already indie-published some books: At present four, to be precise—the three that didn’t get taken on by an agent, plus one more. They are all standalone books that could potentially be the first in a series.

Have I made money from indie-publishing these books?

Yes; some.

Have I made a lot of money?

No.

But that’s because, I’ve finally realised, I’ve been going about it the wrong way.

How I did indie before was that I just took my lovingly written, re-written and self-edited manuscript, uploaded it to Kindle Direct Publishing, slapped a crappy self-made cover on it (in one case designed to imitate the cheap Kindle versions of classics that were available at the time!), did zero marketing for it, and expected it to make a load of money.

How naïve.

But now, I’ve finally learned how to do indie properly, from research, by reading books like Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sterling and Stone and How to Become A Successful Indie Author by Craig Martelle.

Here’s a distillation of what I have learned about how to make money as an indie author from my research, to save you some time in case you are interested.

Steps to making money as an indie author:

1. Write the best possible book you can, within a genre or niche that is popular. Obviously.

2. Ideally, pay for the book to be professionally line-edited (some indie authors get away without this, but it is recommended).

3. Commission a professional cover.

4. Market the book using indie author newsletter swaps and group promotions, and ideally facebook and amazon ads too.

5. Build an email list with a free short story / prequel ‘reader magnets’, and get fans you find through this to post reviews of your book when you publish it.

6. Publish more books IN THE SAME SERIES. This has been the biggest area where I have gone wrong so far.

7. Ideally, write so many books in the same series so fast that you can rapid release them about a month apart, for as many books as you can.

There are other things to do, and lots more to be said about each point of course, but those are the basics.

And the more books of more quality in the same series you can write as fast possible and the more you rapid release them, the more money you make.  

Looks difficult, doesn’t it?

But here’s the thing—it’s potentially easier than getting traditionally published!

And the beautiful thing about it is that if your book meets a certain quality threshold, according to those who practice it this method works very reliably for making money, removing the element of luck from making money as an author.

And people do it!

Let me give you just one case study. There’s an indie fantasy author called Christopher Mitchell. He worked for years in IT, and wrote four fantasy books in a series.

He tried to get them traditionally published and wasn’t successful. So in the end with his wife he indie published them close together, and he was very successful.

Mitchell continued in this vein and started writing more books very fast, rapid-releasing them. He is insanely prolific, publishing at least one book every three months. And this has allowed him to quit his job and write full-time.

He now has about forty books published. I get his author newsletter because I am interested in how he pulls this all off, and he reports regularly clocking 10,000 words a day! That’s more than Blandon Blanderson! And he’s extremely successful.

Here’s my problem though, which you may share:

I cannot write that fast. I also really believe it is harder to write high-quality manuscripts that fast (for me at least, from experience) and I don’t want to compromise on quality.

So, here’s my plan. And if you want to copy it, borrow it, or steal it, you are welcome…

The Plan

I will continue to write genre fiction.

I will continue to hone and progress in my craft, reading books about writing, taking courses, receiving editorial feedback on my work, and practicing, in the gaps between working my day job and taking care of my family.

Because I love writing.

And maybe, just maybe, one day I will write something that is high enough quality, and that gets lucky and lands in just the right inbox at just the right time, that it will get traditionally published.

That would be amazing.

But until that day comes, if it ever comes, I will also be slowly accumulating a quantity of manuscripts.

That was always going to be the case anyway. But the difference is, now, that I will also accumulate a quantity of manuscripts in series.

I will stop exclusively writing standalone / first-in-series novels in the exclusive hope of getting them traditionally published, and also write follow-up sequels to books I have already written, in series.

Of course, I am sure I will still occasionally write standalone / first-in-series novels focused purely on quality in the hope of getting them traditionally published. But I will intersperse these conservatively between novels-in-series.

Why?

Because then, one day, I will have the backup option of pressing the ‘rapid-release’ button and going full-on Indie.

Just now, in this season of life, from my day job and my wife’s day job we have a house to live in, and enough money to get by and live reasonably comfortably.

But if I ever need to quit my day job, or if I ever desperately need to bring in another income stream, or if I simply decide I have accumulated enough of a quantity of in-series manuscripts to reach critical mass, I will hit the rapid-release button and go full-on Indie.

I will take all of the in-series manuscripts that I have accumulated while writing at the same time as having a day job, and I will rapid-release them with professionally designed covers, having had them professionally edited (these are the only other major obstacles here, but that’s where those day job earnings come in useful again! Also Patreon and substack revenue…).

The only difference between me and a full-time pro Indie is that I will have written these manuscripts part-time over a very long period of time, rather than churning them out in extremely quick succession working full-time.

So there’s my Plan.

As I say, if you like it and want to copy it, borrow it, or steal it, you are welcome.