Keeping Your Head Above Water - Part 1

Yes, money's down for a lot of writers when it comes to fiction. I know I can't just put out a book and make some dosh anymore, but I expected that with a maturing system. A lot of folks seem to think the gold rush should have kept going forever. Those writers with business experience realized it wasn't going to and made adjustments. Those who haven't have seen a sharp decline in sales.

I'm in a weird position in that I've had to start over with my career this year. My sales gradually fell from 2014 through 2018 simply because I was lucky if I got one book out a year. When I did manage to publish, it was at random times during the year.

I can honestly say there are two things that work:

1) A new release triggers interest in all our other works.

2) Publish on a consistent schedule.

New books doesn't mean a new novel. It can be a novella or a short story. The new release doesn't have to be for sale either.

I posted a short story on my website about Justice's lead character's grandmother between the releases of A Modicum of Truth and A Matter of Death to keep readers interest.

Also, a consistent schedule doesn't mean releasing a novel every week or every day. (Yeah, I've heard of people doing that.) First, that's only going to fry your brain. A fried brain means no books.

Can you produce that often by hiring ghostwriters? Yeah, you can, but there's a couple of things to consider:

1) Can your ghostwriters match your quality? Or are you going to spend too much of your time managing them?

2) Are you going to burn out your readers? As much as readers love a series, there can be a point of diminishing returns. Either the readers get tired of the same thing over and over. Or the readers' attention or pocketbooks can't keep up with everything you release.

One of the cool things to come out of Amazon is being able to schedule preorders for your releases up to a year in the future. If you're a slow writer like me, it's reassuring for the readers to see when your next release in their favorite series is coming out.

On Wednesday, I'll talk about some of the issue with Kindle Unlimited and other changes on the Amazon retail store.