If that's the case it means that you've considered writing professionally. Ask any writer though, and they'll tell you if you can do anything else, you should. The reason for that is how impossibly difficult it can seem to break out, and the borderline insane dedication it requires to make that happen.
86% of all books fail and 95% of all fiction writers never make any money. Even those who do happen to procure an advance from a publishing house only do so after showing how they'll use that money to advertise. Advances are NOT your money, and often must be paid back.
There's nothing more crushing to your dream than putting your soul into 60-100,000 words and years of your life into a manuscript, actually getting it published, only to end up spending more money advertising it than you make back in sales. And yet, that's exactly what what happens to the majority of us.
Does that mean you should pack it in and give up? NEVER!
It just means you have to change your approach.
It's a proven fact that people don't buy your books, they buy your name. Even Stephen King had a hard time selling under the name Richard Bachman until people found out Bachman was Stephen King. You have to get people to know who you are BEFORE your novel hits the stands. King sold short stories to magazines.
Take a moment to think about what's popular out there right now. AMC and HBO have HUGE hits and followings with shows like The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and so on. FX has American Horror Story and Sons of Anarchy; Showtime Shameless....
Rather than pour everything you've got into the crap shoot that is novel writing, wouldn't it be more constructive to develop your characters and skill in small monthly installments, all while practicing your marketing techniques and building your fan base?
The first modern detective story was "Murders in the Rue Morgue", a short story with two sequels that later became the basis for Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes tales themselves were short stories, as were the radio serials and comic strips that launched other iconic characters such as The Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon. No Flash Gordon, no Star Wars.
You don't even have to write a full story to pull it off, Pulp Fiction was a bunch of disjointed, bad ass scenes. Let's face it, if you can't put down one bad ass scene a month then you probably shouldn't be doing this, should you?
We publish the book for Kindle and set the price at $0.99, of which you get 2% per sale for each of your stories that we select. Upon release, you market your work. Sell yourself. No one but yourself. Sell to your friends, go on podcasts and radio shows, practice all the techniques it takes to get the word out for when you DO drop that novel. While you're doing that, each author in the collection will be doing the same, bringing THEIR audience to YOUR work by doing nothing but selling themselves.
Now, before you scoff at that 2%, here's the part that makes it enticing for you. The average royalty for a novel is 6%. At $7 per book that's $0.42 per sale. Even at the low end, 60,000 words for a novel, that equates to 20 entries our way, which comes to $0.40 for the same amount of work, except that you'll have been marketing your work for 20 months, with a number of other authors SELLING FOR YOU, in the time it would take to put that novel out.
We create multiple streams of income, multiple avenues for finding new fans, all while providing quality entertainment to those fans at a low, low price. And all you have to do is the minimum amount of what you SHOULD be doing if you want to write for a living. Build up your fans and bounce so we can help bring along more talent. It's a win-win for everyone involved.
All it takes is one short story a month.
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