Indie Author Insights and Advice

And let me introduce you to Anthony Wormeel. He's right here. Wave your hand. I'm the producer of the indie author documentary that Anthony is recording. You'll see him here throughout the week. You've seen him in the group. You've seen him posting and looking for interviews and interviewing people. So just understand, he's around, and this is going to be a documentary on independent authors. Joe Penn. It's that time zone thing in Sked. You come from the UK? Yeah, you thought this was tonight. All right. We have an august panel of guests this year, as we do every year. People who are extremely successful. The pinnacle. But they're not done with their journey. They're here to learn as well. Opportunity to learn, opportunity to climb higher. I know that there's always room to improve. When I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, an ad for it. And I thought, who doesn't know about that book? I've got water. I actually want to talk. Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right, if we go through, we'll have our panelists introduce themselves, and then we'll go on some questions, and we'll leave time at the end for Q&A. And when you ask questions, please come up and use the microphone so everybody in the hall can hear the question so we don't have to repeat it. Please start this in. Hello, I'm Annabel Chase. I write paranormal and urban fantasy books. I'm Joanna Penn. I'm a podcaster and also as JF Penn I write thrillers, fantasy, memoir and other things. Hey, I'm Catherine Amora. I write steamy contemporary romance. Hi everyone, I'm Leanna Morgan and I write small-town romance. Nora Phoenix, I write male-male or gay romance. And we have this panel because we want a diversity of accents. Alright, if you would, tell us how many books you've published. How many books have you written? Close counts. I have published 127. This is why I feel like an underachiever, because I have 45. Okay, I've got 15. I've got 43. 72. What is the highest rank your book has achieved? In which store? We'll go to the Amazon store. Because we have 29 people from Amazon here. Woo, Amazon! 29 people here today, so float their boat. I think my highest was 86. Nice. I wish mine was. My highest ranking was about 3,000 or 4,000 when I had a new release. Mine was number one. Woo! Woo! I think mine was about 75, but that was about a decade ago when I was focusing more on Amazon. I'm more of a diverse publisher these days. Mine is 24. I also want to say, I started in 2011, so it's not like, you know, I didn't write 127 books this year. Great, and since we're talking to probably half the audience, oh thanks Don, half the audience are newcomers and half are, the other half have been more experienced, and probably a quarter of ours are making full-time money. So when you look around, one... person out of every four is making full-time money at this thing called writing. So just understand when you're here, this is the opportunity. You're never going to get another opportunity like this where successful authors are surrounding you. What is the one bit of advice? What is the one thing? that made you realize that you can do this for a living? Annabelle. I'm arrogant. I've just, I don't know. I've had an internal storytelling ability, I feel like, since I was a kid, so it just came naturally, and I just felt as soon as KDP became a thing, basically, I was all up in it. So, and have been ever since. Yeah, for me, I remember it because it was 2006, 2007, and the Kindle launched, the iPhone launched, and there's still a video on YouTube of me going, look at this. this phone I can publish my book on it and I'm so excited about it and I keep the video up it's quite embarrassing but at that moment because I was living in Australia at the time and I was like I can sell to Americans yay and that's when I realized I could do this is that if I could reach a bigger market through technology then I could do this for a living and so I want to encourage you guys because again as Michael said we're in a change of technology and that enables us, it empowers us, we can do more with it. So that's why I'm still excited to be here. I think for me it was actually the first five star review that I got on my very first book. It was one of those moments where I just thought that if I have that one thing, if I have one or two readers that actually believe in me and in my work, I can find a few more. I can learn how to do that. So long as you have that story writing ability, you can learn how to do anything else. And I just kind of figured that I was going to learn. I was going to figure it out, and it was going to be okay. For me it was when I did my tax at the end of the first year of publishing and I earned $54,000 and I thought, wow, I've earned that much money and I had about five books published. And I thought, if I wrote ten books, I would have earned $54,000. books, that's $108,000 and that was way more than I was earning in my day job. So I thought, maybe I could do this. So I thought, I'll just keep writing. So I did and it worked and it multiplied. then it did a bit more and I thought, oh, I like this. So then I gave up my full-time job a few years ago and write full-time now. So keep calculating those multiples of books and you'll do well. I absolutely love this question because I get to give back a little. I started publishing in 2017 and I believed I could do it. And don't underestimate the importance of that part. You have to believe in yourself. And then I attended 20 books in 2018 back in Samstown, the good old days. And I remember the opening talk with Craig and Michael on the stage, and they asked people to raise their hands if they made $5,000 a month, if they made $10,000 a month. And I'm sitting there in the audience, and there's hands going up at $25,000 a month. And I remember vividly sitting there and going like, holy crap, you can make that much? And then Craig said, $50,000. and hands went up and then he said 100,000 and I damn near fainted. So when you talk about the impact of 20 books, 20 books 18 has been such a pivotal moment for me sitting in this audience and feeling at the very core of my being, I can do this and this is what's possible. So thank you for that. You heard all, you heard all, everything there. The feeling that you can do it. The five-star review. I tell people do more of what works. That's a business consultant 101. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't, do less of that. See the money that's coming in. All the good things. So to our newer authors, or those authors who are having a hard time finding traction, who might have eight or ten books out, but they're not selling that well, what kind of advice would you give? We'll start with Nora. I would ask an experienced author in your genre, gently, kindly ask them for their time and ask them for advice. The problem is that you become blind to your own weaknesses and your own faults and sometimes you need an outsider to have a look and tell you where you need to improve. From my experience, most authors, if you ask them nicely and make it a limited commitment, just... Say can I get half an hour of your time? They will do it. I do it regularly when people ask me and I love giving that back to the in the community but that would be my main advice. Get somebody else to look at what you're doing and ask them what do I need to improve to get to that next stage. I agree with that. If you can't find that person, then I would, if you're in a book group, ask your friends to actually compare your cover and your blurb and your keywords you've used with, you could do it as an exercise. a writing exercise, compare it with a best-selling author in your genre, and just see what the differences are between theirs and your book. And I also wouldn't sweat it if it's not working, because you need to be kind to yourself. It's really hard to write, and it's even harder to sell lots of copies of books. So just take a deep breath and do your best and find help, but don't get really anxious about it because life's too short for that. I would say there's two different things here. If you're a new author versus an experienced author that's not getting traction, I would say those are two different scenarios. If you are a new author, I would say don't try to do all the things because you can't and not everything is right for you. What you'll often find is that you'll try to do all the things that you see your peers doing but you're not entirely clear on what your brand is or what your readers want from you. If you can define that first. you will have a lot more direction and you'll know which steps to take that align with your business plan. And yes, of course, ask for advice if you need it, but first decide what it is you write and who your readers are. Then if you are an experienced author and you're not gaining traction, I'd say that's slightly different. I would probably do what they said and ask for advice because you're probably missing something that you can't see. I would also definitely caution against not having a scarcity mindset. I've definitely seen a mindset shift change a career faster than almost anything else can. I would say, yeah, those are probably my biggest takeaways that I learned as I went through my career. Yeah, I agree with the abundance mindset and also doing different things. But I think my biggest thing is don't be in such a rush. I think one of the wonderful but also difficult things about this community and the indie author community is that we see people doing things and we think we have to get there as fast as them. But like I just said, I started writing in 2006. I said 45 books. I've written a couple of books a year. But the consistency is important. I met yesterday with some authors who, when I first got into this, were the big authors and they're still here. And we were talking about how many people fall by the wayside. And there's nothing wrong with giving. up but the reason a lot of people give up is because they try and do the wrong things like we were saying like Katarina's TikTok is amazing and I will not do TikTok so you know you have you have to choose if I was doing that I would have to quit because you know you have to choose what works for you but don't be in such a rush because if you want to do this and make money this way it also has to be for fun and for the love of it because there's a lot better ways to make money but this is a fun Fantastic way if you love the work, so it's coming back to the process. Why do I love writing? Why do I love creating books and saying I made this I made this and it's still awesome That has to be the thing that gets you through and then you'll still be here in like another 20 years Excuse me. I would also be willing to move on. I feel like I see some newer authors who just constantly are trying to beat a dead horse, like sell a series that just isn't gonna make it. They'll change covers, they change this and a year later they're still trying to sell the same series and I would just try to learn from my mistakes why that series maybe isn't going to work and try another series or a new pen name yeah With all due respect, sometimes when you've tried setting up a pen name and it just doesn't work, the best thing to do is to start fresh with a new pen name because now you can do it right from the start. And especially with Amazon's algorithm, once that's messed up, that's a really hard thing to correct on a current pen name. So sometimes starting fresh is the answer. I love that. I've had four pen names. There you go. What's one thing, say your best-selling series, what's one thing your character does that you think is unique? And I'll answer my first. In my thriller series, my character listens to Rush. He always listens to Rush, so I thought, of course, I would be number one perpetually in the Canadian store. And I am not. However, the Germans, so here's a shout out to the Germans for loving Rush and loving Ian Bragg. But start, Annabelle, what's one unique thing for your character? They all have their quirks. I think quite a number of them tend to name inanimate objects. So, you know, the car has a name, the blender has a name, like everybody gets a name. We know what you're talking about. My character Sienna Farren can walk through maps into other places and for those of you with jet lag this is why I wrote that series my map walker series. I was like I just wish I could walk through that map and get there. I had one character in my latest release that would wear nail polishes that had specific names as kind of like hidden little messages. I thought that was really quite cute. Well, I think I need to kind of increase my imagination a bit because my characters don't have any quirky bits, I'm sure. But I enjoy writing them and they're awesome people. But I have to think about that. I might have to do that for my next book. Most of my characters have weird names. I bought... a baby name book for 50 cents at a yard sale once and it's the best 50 cents I ever spent. The downside is that my narrator never knows how to pronounce them and I'm like they're pronounced however you choose to pronounce them. It's not like I have it in here. So and my characters all drink Coca-Cola because I don't do Pepsi. Oh, we got a lot of time left. Can I just add, sorry, I've had a baby name book since 1984 that I started naming characters and that I still have that baby name book. Works fantastic, right? What's the next big thing that you're going to take advantage of? What's next? Direct sales. Direct sales. I think for me, like, further distribution, but also, yes, direct sales. And guess what? I just opened my direct sales site. So maybe I don't need quite so much imagination. So my next thing is AI-generated audio books. And my mum, yesterday, she's my chief AI editor for audio books. and yesterday she did 10 chapters in the hotel room. So she's very dedicated. So that's what I'm doing and it's amazing. Yeah, I'm going to be the odd one out too. I mean, I do direct sales and it's important, but I just set up a subscription through my own website, kind of like a Patreon or a Reem, except I do it myself and I'm very encouraged by the numbers in the first month and that's really something I'm going to focus on. That's also direct sales. You just had to ruin it, didn't you? That's the key thing about entertainment and how you tap into an audience. You want the same that the audience likes, but different. So it's direct sales, but it's different. We just want their money. You want to entertain them, and they pay for the pleasure. Take them away from the doldrums of the everyday. All right, we've got enough time. Questions from the audience. We have an august panel. I mean, look at who's up here. Oh, you have to come up here. Hi. You mentioned pen names. What's the... I'd love to know a little bit more about... I hear a lot of people have pen names, and I'm trying to decide, is that something I should do? So I'd love to hear your rationale on why you chose to go with a pen name instead of your name. I use my name, but my fiction has initials, and then my non-fiction is Joanna, and my fiction is JF. And the reason originally was the Amazon algorithms, which, you know, the autobots and stuff, the alsobots. But now I feel... I love it because I become a different person when I write as JF Penn That's kind of completely different to Joanna Penn and that helps me. It's also my promise to the reader So again, they know what they're getting with each brand. I only have two so I know some people have more Yeah for me. It was a non-brainer because or no-brainer? No-brainer. Not starter. Sorry. Whatever. Something with a brain. I write gay romance and I have a kid. Kids can be real cruel, so I didn't want him to suffer because of what I write. hard enough when you're in middle school, so let's not add to that. So I found it really important to take on a pen name and protect my real identity. And my reason was really practical. My actual name is Leanne Morgan. and a violinist in New York had taken leanemorgan.com. So when I was at a Romance Writers of New Zealand conference where we had 200 people, and that's like, wow, this is amazing, I talked to an editor, and she said, I can just see it, Leanna Morgan, because I write small-town romance set in Montana. And I thought, ooh, I can too. So when I was looking for a substitute name instead of Leanne Morgan, I went for leanemorgan.com, and now I've got the woo! rainbow so I'm really happy. I think there are different reasons to do different pen names. You would have to think about privacy and your family. Of course if you have kids it's probably a good idea to have a pen name because... you probably don't want your kids'teachers to find out what you write. You could be writing murder mysteries, and it could be a whole thing. I think, for me, privacy was the main reason. My reason is privacy as well. I'm a single mom and I just don't want any weirdos. Good luck with that. Okay, I have a bit of a marketing question. Is Twitter, I guess, now at... still a viable platform for marketing and engagement? Yes. For me it is. That being said, I stubbornly refuse to call it X. It's Twitter, it will always be Twitter, I don't care. I don't know how long it will remain viable with the changes that have been made and the blue check marks, which I also refuse to pay for, but right now I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter and I do sell books through Twitter, which I can track because I use trackable links. So for me, yes. I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter. I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter. I have a question from the online audience, from Stephanie who's watching us live. Aside from subscriptions, what kind of direct sales tactics are you focusing on? Oh yeah, I was gonna say, well I'm doing Kickstarter, Shopify and subscription model through Patreon. That's what I'm doing. I'll tell you at the end of the conference. Paperbacks, ebooks, audio books, all through my website, subscription and I have a whole bunch of ideas that I am not going to share. Gotta keep something to myself. So my question is ultimately about longevity and staying in this career as we watch the industry change so rapidly. But I'd specifically like to hear Nora Phoenix's response to this, given when you started. And I know, because I've followed your career, I know you really used that kind of gap in the market to launch your career. And since then, that gap has very much so closed. So I'd love to hear how you have maintained your presence as the market has become more saturated and then how all of you have shifted with time and with the industry. Don't make an assumption during the question that the market has been saturated. Saturated. Well, and that's why I hesitated there, because there are more people writing that now than there used to be. So competition in MM Romance has, I don't know, quadrupled, whatever number you want to give it to, but it's a very different market than it was back in 2017. Obviously, when you jump early into a market, you have an advantage, because once you have that name... established readers know you and it's much harder as a newer author to establish yourself in a market that full or that competitive than it is to remain I think the biggest thing is just consistency and releasing and consistency in giving the audience giving my readers what they want I know exactly what they want from me and that's what I try to give them and my sales have been consistent either growing or remain consistent so I think that's pretty cool in the last six years six years in a niche that small. For me I think writing small-town romance love is love and happy endings are happy endings so it's not so much the inside of the book it's how you present the book so over the last 10 years What authors use on their covers, their images, can change. So change your cover, change your blurb. It won't be expensive to do that in a lot of cases, and so that can actually increase your reach of your books. for a really economical price and you're not having to rewrite an entire box. Okay, so I've only been around for about three and a half years, so I'm probably not qualified to answer that question, but I would say that above all else, what I am focusing on is... having my customer data. If I can reach you in five years the way that I can today, I can probably still sell to you then. So my prime concern is how am I going to get people onto my mailing list? And that's what I'm using direct sales for. If I can get my superfans to buy from me directly and thereby tell me who you are, I can continue to reach you no matter what happens in the industry. That's my personal focus. Yeah, I agree with that. like what's old is new again and email marketing was where I started in 2006 and we're really back there now because with direct sales but in terms of my craft I write all over the shop I've never written to market I write just like my last release this year was a pilgrimage memoir which you can see on the book vault desk but that you know pilgrimage memoir is a very small niche and yet I did a good launch on Kickstarter so I've gone with the more personality branding customer data connecting with people rather than looking at a size of a niche. It's a different business model. I have a high need for novelty and for learning. So I think those are two things that probably serve me well in this business. I'm always willing to learn new things, you know, like direct sales. I'm not even sure. Maybe I'll end up not doing it, but I want to learn as much as I can about it, and then I'll make a decision. I just, I like being able to pivot with the business as it changes. My favorite question to ask authors is, what is one of the most interesting, odd, or disturbing things you found while researching for one of your books? Illustrations of demon sex? I write gay romance. Trust me, you do not want to know. Not suitable for this audience. And I write a lot of dark stuff, so I don't really know what the definition of dark is anymore, but yeah, a lot. I mean, I think I just, I do love going to dark places and researching dark things, so it's just like normal life, really, I suppose. I mean, same. All of it. Yeah. Eliana, you mentioned AI generated voices and I was just wondering what the other authors thought about that and I don't know maybe if we could also take a voting in the crowd who is in favor who is against it. We're not going to do that. Well I've been into AI since 2016 I've got multiple AI narrated audio books I also have my own self narrated audio books and the wonderful Veronica Jaguar is here and she narrates some of my thrillers so I think the point is we we don't see AI is like an either-or I think that we even see it as again an enhancement and amplification of our businesses. So there are cases for each and different kinds of audio. So I'm all for all kinds of audio. Personally, I will use actors for mine now and in the future. Personally, I also only use human voices at this time. I also tend to go for very popular voices because I think from a marketing point of view, it's just an easier thing to do. You can gain a big audio market share if you use voices that are already popular in the market. Another question from the online audience. What is one thing a newer author can do to get visibility? On where? I think that really depends on your genre. I don't think there is one marketing, maybe with the exclusion of newsletters, that works for every genre. Because it so depends on who your readers are. I mean, if you write sweet romance or Christian romance, romance and your readers are 65 plus old church ladies, your, you know, your avenues, your tactics are going to be different from mine. That's all, like, there's no one way of visibility that works for everybody. For me, the bottom line is build. that newsletter list, build those emails, that's going to reach the biggest amount of people and other than that find out where your readers are and hang out there. I just also for the nonfiction people in the audience podcasts Podcasts sell books. Yes. People come on my show and they sell a ton of books. So it really is... Think about podcast tours, specifically non-fiction. I mean, it can work for fiction, but not so much. So it doesn't have to just be... you know, TikTok, like, you know, you choose a thing depending on where you want to reach, and then double down on that, basically. I would say, though, if you're a newer author, you could probably still benefit from collaborations. If you don't have the funds for, for example, like advertising, you could team up with authors who are similar to you and write similar stuff, and expand your reach that way. I think for, especially if you have a limited budget, I think that's probably one of those things that works also for most genres. Hi, I'm short so let me know if you can't hear me. But first of all, thank you so much for speaking today. I had a question on what you might change, like if you could talk to yourself earlier in your career, what you might change with your process. My one wasn't so much the process, it was myself. So I can remember publishing my first book and my finger was actually shaking. In fact, scrap that, it was the whole body. I was terrified because when you write, you put so much of whatever you write... whatever genre, you put so much of yourself into that book. And it wasn't the fear of my book not selling, because my goal was to sell one book to someone that wasn't my mum who enjoyed it. I was a winning before, you know, well, basically. fairly quickly after I published it, but the fear was that not that people wouldn't like my book, that they wouldn't like me, because there was so much in that book of me. My readers didn't know me, but Mum did, and she would have a cry every now and again when she read something that kind of resonated and she knew where that came from. So believing in yourself and just publish the book. I mucked around for about two years on my... first book, changing things because someone said I wrote beautiful dialogue so I put more dialogue, changing things because someone said I did beautiful description so I put more description. I focused my book on Harlequin because in 2014, when I wrote the book 2012, that was, you know, a way to publishing and they changed the word count in the category that I was looking for and it went up by 20,000 words. So what did I do? I added 20,000 words to the story and mum said just publish the book so I did and I never stopped so thank you mum I wanted to say about people telling you you can't do it. So again when I first self-published like 2007 I took a lot of flack. I was in Australia and I took a lot of flack for self-publishing. Back then some of you were around. It was vanity. People said you were a pile of crap. They wouldn't include us in events. And I kind of wish I could go back. But I was really certain that this was the way to go. I always wanted to make a six figure income. And I knew that this is the only way to do it was being my own. business I was around my own businesses and yet people said to me you're really damaging your career you're never gonna get anywhere you're never gonna get a publisher you're never gonna you know do whatever and I was like but I'm gonna I will manage this somehow and now I look out at this and and and I mean I had no author friends I thought I was ostracized back then and some of you might feel that now and like why are you self-publishing that much that's really bad people still say it it's crazy but look at this look at this community and this is just a small part of it you know it's a huge community so if you feel like oh maybe I shouldn't do this or whatever then just remember that lots of us are doing this and have done for years and are doing really well in many ways so yeah hold on to that if people say it can't be done whatever that is I mean again I hear it now about things that I'm now doing direct sales people like oh it's mad but you know there are things we're doing just always think you can do it Hi, I'm Kate, and Leanna, you mentioned, you know, you just got to get the book out. Well, my question for each of you, just as kind of a fun question, is do you write clean first drafts, or do you write those really ugly, shameful first drafts that you would be terrified if anyone came to light? Mine are, for the most part, pretty clean, except... I also use dictation and because of my accent I get some really funny typos which amuses my subscribers to no end. They get the early chapters and I've made typos in there that live in infamy forevermore. I basically have a really clean last copy. I write the book and read it and that's probably, apart from running it through Grammarly and ProWritingAid, that goes on to mum and then to three other people to look at and then it's published. I add it as I go so by the time the book's done it's a pretty clean draft. I'm super messy, I'm a discovery writer so it's a total mess but it's fun to clean it up. I write out of order, but it still ends up being pretty clean. I don't know how that happens, but it does. Super nervous. So this is regarding a podcast interview with Joe Solari on Joanna Penn's podcast about three months ago. Joe made the observation that I thought was kind of shocking that most... authors are making, they're taking home about 15% of what they spend. That was really surprising to me, 15 cents on the dollar, and I actually do about 50 cents on the dollar. I've always been really embarrassed of that. I've been ashamed to ever mention it because I thought I was doing horribly. So I feel it's important to talk about to set expectations for people. If they're making $50,000 a year and taking home 15%, that's not a living wage in most parts of America. And it's just setting an expectation thing. I understand if you don't want to answer, but I'd really be curious to know how many cents on the dollar do you guys each take home? I don't run ads, so for me it's pretty high. I'm also one of Joe's clients, so that makes it. I'm definitely, I don't know where I am exactly, but my guess would be 65 to 70 cents on the dollar. give or take? I spend about 10% of my income on advertising, so everything else is profit. But I do love being able to write off some of my home expenses and travel and all kinds of things. It's wonderful. Quick comment, advertising and production, like all costs, because I mean audio production and layout and covers, like the true take home before tax money, not just advertising. 65 to 70 cents. And mine, to produce a book, it cost me $80 for my e-book cover, $400 for my edit, and that's it. And then 10% a year overall for all books for advertising. So you're essentially asking... about profit margins mine after taxes and everything else is 65 to 70 percent yeah I just think it's the wrong question and the wrong framing given it was on my podcast I've been running a multi six-figure business for since like 2015 and every year everything's different and so it depends on what you do so my latest Kickstarter which raised over $40,000 I spent $200 on ads ads the ads ads are just a thing in the business but say for example uh you know you buy a piece of software or you hire um you know i did pierre janty's accelerator you know that every year we're learning different things we're investing in the business so i think that the question is around kind of the wrong thing it's like if you have a business you invest in your business you pay yourself you invest so i pay my superannuation i pay my salary we pay our freelancers what you have to think think with money is it's a flow. It's a flow. It comes in, it goes out. You invest, more money comes in. So I think you have to think bigger if you want to run a scalable business. So breaking it down by book to a P&L can be complicated. So I don't want us to get fixated on that kind of thing. The most important thing is if you're running a full-time author business is can you pay yourself, can you pay your freelancers? And that is one of the problems in publishing is when a publisher can't pay their authors. and that we're all paying ourselves and our people. So I think it's a case of looking at a broader topic than just the P&L per book. I don't drill down to that level. I make a lot of money and I keep a lot of money. And that's... Two more questions. Almost out of time. Just two more questions. Nora, I know that you said that sometimes because of Amazon algorithms, it's good to start over with a new pen name. How do you really gauge and determine when it's a good idea to start over? I think if you've been publishing for a couple of years and you have more than, I don't know, 15, 20 books out and they are not gaining traction and your books are within the same sub-genre and you're not getting that. traction, it might be time to start that new pen name. The thing is you have to figure out what you got wrong with that pen name before you can start a new one. Starting over only makes sense if you can get it right the second time. time. I know there's a good friend of mine and an author in my genre who did it. She was publishing when I got started then had to stop for I think close to two years because of all kinds of problems and then when she started again she could get no traction whatsoever. So she decided to do a new pen name and she is now absolutely killing it and the reason is that because she was inactive for so long she could not recover from that. I'm not saying it's always the right answer. I'm saying if you can figure out what you got wrong the first time, you might want to start over and do it right from the start. So everybody's talking about the fact that the industry at the moment is in a really exciting place, there's lots of changes, it's maturing, like we're pretty much in a, we're reaching a point where we're in a mature industry and I'd love to hear from each of you like what would you say is a key mindset or mindset shift to navigate because we also we have all these new technologies like there's just a lot of changes and so what would you say is a key mindset or mindset shift to be able to navigate the way the industry is developing? For me, it's follow the energy that you feel towards something, because there are so many options. And so, if you're excited about something, then follow that energy, because that will sustain you. And then you'll have to learn new things, but don't learn the things you don't know. things that turn you off and make you miserable or make you angry, don't do that. Do the stuff that lights you up. That's what I would say. I would say keep writing because you can get so overwhelmed with all the options around. Just write a great book. book and do the basics and then build on that but always keep time to write the next book I just spent three months building Shopify sites and doing all kinds of amazing things that didn't involve writing my next book that I'm up for I have to publish on the 29th of November for a pre-order so now I feel a bit stressed so write your books first and then worry about everything else after it all right thank you very much this was the high powered author panel.

And let me introduce you to Anthony Wormeel. He's right here. Wave your hand. I'm the producer of the indie author documentary that Anthony is recording. You'll see him here throughout the week.

You've seen him in the group. You've seen him posting and looking for interviews and interviewing people. So just understand, he's around, and this is going to be a documentary on independent authors. Joe Penn.

It's that time zone thing in Sked. You come from the UK? Yeah, you thought this was tonight.

All right. We have an august panel of guests this year, as we do every year. People who are extremely successful.

The pinnacle. But they're not done with their journey. They're here to learn as well. Opportunity to learn, opportunity to climb higher. I know that there's always room to improve.

When I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, an ad for it. And I thought, who doesn't know about that book? I've got water.

I actually want to talk. Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right, if we go through, we'll have our panelists introduce themselves, and then we'll go on some questions, and we'll leave time at the end for Q&A. And when you ask questions, please come up and use the microphone so everybody in the hall can hear the question so we don't have to repeat it. Please start this in.

Hello, I'm Annabel Chase. I write paranormal and urban fantasy books. I'm Joanna Penn. I'm a podcaster and also as JF Penn I write thrillers, fantasy, memoir and other things. Hey, I'm Catherine Amora.

I write steamy contemporary romance. Hi everyone, I'm Leanna Morgan and I write small-town romance. Nora Phoenix, I write male-male or gay romance. And we have this panel because we want a diversity of accents.

Alright, if you would, tell us how many books you've published. How many books have you written? Close counts.

I have published 127. This is why I feel like an underachiever, because I have 45. Okay, I've got 15. I've got 43. 72. What is the highest rank your book has achieved? In which store? We'll go to the Amazon store.

Because we have 29 people from Amazon here. Woo, Amazon! 29 people here today, so float their boat.

I think my highest was 86. Nice. I wish mine was. My highest ranking was about 3,000 or 4,000 when I had a new release. Mine was number one. Woo!

Woo! I think mine was about 75, but that was about a decade ago when I was focusing more on Amazon. I'm more of a diverse publisher these days. Mine is 24. I also want to say, I started in 2011, so it's not like, you know, I didn't write 127 books this year. Great, and since we're talking to probably half the audience, oh thanks Don, half the audience are newcomers and half are, the other half have been more experienced, and probably a quarter of ours are making full-time money.

So when you look around, one... person out of every four is making full-time money at this thing called writing. So just understand when you're here, this is the opportunity. You're never going to get another opportunity like this where successful authors are surrounding you.

What is the one bit of advice? What is the one thing? that made you realize that you can do this for a living? Annabelle. I'm arrogant.

I've just, I don't know. I've had an internal storytelling ability, I feel like, since I was a kid, so it just came naturally, and I just felt as soon as KDP became a thing, basically, I was all up in it. So, and have been ever since. Yeah, for me, I remember it because it was 2006, 2007, and the Kindle launched, the iPhone launched, and there's still a video on YouTube of me going, look at this.

this phone I can publish my book on it and I'm so excited about it and I keep the video up it's quite embarrassing but at that moment because I was living in Australia at the time and I was like I can sell to Americans yay and that's when I realized I could do this is that if I could reach a bigger market through technology then I could do this for a living and so I want to encourage you guys because again as Michael said we're in a change of technology and that enables us, it empowers us, we can do more with it. So that's why I'm still excited to be here. I think for me it was actually the first five star review that I got on my very first book.

It was one of those moments where I just thought that if I have that one thing, if I have one or two readers that actually believe in me and in my work, I can find a few more. I can learn how to do that. So long as you have that story writing ability, you can learn how to do anything else. And I just kind of figured that I was going to learn. I was going to figure it out, and it was going to be okay.

For me it was when I did my tax at the end of the first year of publishing and I earned $54,000 and I thought, wow, I've earned that much money and I had about five books published. And I thought, if I wrote ten books, I would have earned $54,000. books, that's $108,000 and that was way more than I was earning in my day job. So I thought, maybe I could do this.

So I thought, I'll just keep writing. So I did and it worked and it multiplied. then it did a bit more and I thought, oh, I like this. So then I gave up my full-time job a few years ago and write full-time now. So keep calculating those multiples of books and you'll do well.

I absolutely love this question because I get to give back a little. I started publishing in 2017 and I believed I could do it. And don't underestimate the importance of that part. You have to believe in yourself.

And then I attended 20 books in 2018 back in Samstown, the good old days. And I remember the opening talk with Craig and Michael on the stage, and they asked people to raise their hands if they made $5,000 a month, if they made $10,000 a month. And I'm sitting there in the audience, and there's hands going up at $25,000 a month. And I remember vividly sitting there and going like, holy crap, you can make that much?

And then Craig said, $50,000. and hands went up and then he said 100,000 and I damn near fainted. So when you talk about the impact of 20 books, 20 books 18 has been such a pivotal moment for me sitting in this audience and feeling at the very core of my being, I can do this and this is what's possible. So thank you for that.

You heard all, you heard all, everything there. The feeling that you can do it. The five-star review. I tell people do more of what works.

That's a business consultant 101. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't, do less of that. See the money that's coming in.

All the good things. So to our newer authors, or those authors who are having a hard time finding traction, who might have eight or ten books out, but they're not selling that well, what kind of advice would you give? We'll start with Nora.

I would ask an experienced author in your genre, gently, kindly ask them for their time and ask them for advice. The problem is that you become blind to your own weaknesses and your own faults and sometimes you need an outsider to have a look and tell you where you need to improve. From my experience, most authors, if you ask them nicely and make it a limited commitment, just...

Say can I get half an hour of your time? They will do it. I do it regularly when people ask me and I love giving that back to the in the community but that would be my main advice.

Get somebody else to look at what you're doing and ask them what do I need to improve to get to that next stage. I agree with that. If you can't find that person, then I would, if you're in a book group, ask your friends to actually compare your cover and your blurb and your keywords you've used with, you could do it as an exercise.

a writing exercise, compare it with a best-selling author in your genre, and just see what the differences are between theirs and your book. And I also wouldn't sweat it if it's not working, because you need to be kind to yourself. It's really hard to write, and it's even harder to sell lots of copies of books. So just take a deep breath and do your best and find help, but don't get really anxious about it because life's too short for that. I would say there's two different things here.

If you're a new author versus an experienced author that's not getting traction, I would say those are two different scenarios. If you are a new author, I would say don't try to do all the things because you can't and not everything is right for you. What you'll often find is that you'll try to do all the things that you see your peers doing but you're not entirely clear on what your brand is or what your readers want from you.

If you can define that first. you will have a lot more direction and you'll know which steps to take that align with your business plan. And yes, of course, ask for advice if you need it, but first decide what it is you write and who your readers are.

Then if you are an experienced author and you're not gaining traction, I'd say that's slightly different. I would probably do what they said and ask for advice because you're probably missing something that you can't see. I would also definitely caution against not having a scarcity mindset.

I've definitely seen a mindset shift change a career faster than almost anything else can. I would say, yeah, those are probably my biggest takeaways that I learned as I went through my career. Yeah, I agree with the abundance mindset and also doing different things. But I think my biggest thing is don't be in such a rush.

I think one of the wonderful but also difficult things about this community and the indie author community is that we see people doing things and we think we have to get there as fast as them. But like I just said, I started writing in 2006. I said 45 books. I've written a couple of books a year. But the consistency is important.

I met yesterday with some authors who, when I first got into this, were the big authors and they're still here. And we were talking about how many people fall by the wayside. And there's nothing wrong with giving. up but the reason a lot of people give up is because they try and do the wrong things like we were saying like Katarina's TikTok is amazing and I will not do TikTok so you know you have you have to choose if I was doing that I would have to quit because you know you have to choose what works for you but don't be in such a rush because if you want to do this and make money this way it also has to be for fun and for the love of it because there's a lot better ways to make money but this is a fun Fantastic way if you love the work, so it's coming back to the process.

Why do I love writing? Why do I love creating books and saying I made this I made this and it's still awesome That has to be the thing that gets you through and then you'll still be here in like another 20 years Excuse me. I would also be willing to move on.

I feel like I see some newer authors who just constantly are trying to beat a dead horse, like sell a series that just isn't gonna make it. They'll change covers, they change this and a year later they're still trying to sell the same series and I would just try to learn from my mistakes why that series maybe isn't going to work and try another series or a new pen name yeah With all due respect, sometimes when you've tried setting up a pen name and it just doesn't work, the best thing to do is to start fresh with a new pen name because now you can do it right from the start. And especially with Amazon's algorithm, once that's messed up, that's a really hard thing to correct on a current pen name. So sometimes starting fresh is the answer. I love that.

I've had four pen names. There you go. What's one thing, say your best-selling series, what's one thing your character does that you think is unique? And I'll answer my first. In my thriller series, my character listens to Rush.

He always listens to Rush, so I thought, of course, I would be number one perpetually in the Canadian store. And I am not. However, the Germans, so here's a shout out to the Germans for loving Rush and loving Ian Bragg. But start, Annabelle, what's one unique thing for your character? They all have their quirks.

I think quite a number of them tend to name inanimate objects. So, you know, the car has a name, the blender has a name, like everybody gets a name. We know what you're talking about. My character Sienna Farren can walk through maps into other places and for those of you with jet lag this is why I wrote that series my map walker series.

I was like I just wish I could walk through that map and get there. I had one character in my latest release that would wear nail polishes that had specific names as kind of like hidden little messages. I thought that was really quite cute.

Well, I think I need to kind of increase my imagination a bit because my characters don't have any quirky bits, I'm sure. But I enjoy writing them and they're awesome people. But I have to think about that. I might have to do that for my next book. Most of my characters have weird names.

I bought... a baby name book for 50 cents at a yard sale once and it's the best 50 cents I ever spent. The downside is that my narrator never knows how to pronounce them and I'm like they're pronounced however you choose to pronounce them. It's not like I have it in here.

So and my characters all drink Coca-Cola because I don't do Pepsi. Oh, we got a lot of time left. Can I just add, sorry, I've had a baby name book since 1984 that I started naming characters and that I still have that baby name book. Works fantastic, right?

What's the next big thing that you're going to take advantage of? What's next? Direct sales. Direct sales. I think for me, like, further distribution, but also, yes, direct sales.

And guess what? I just opened my direct sales site. So maybe I don't need quite so much imagination. So my next thing is AI-generated audio books. And my mum, yesterday, she's my chief AI editor for audio books.

and yesterday she did 10 chapters in the hotel room. So she's very dedicated. So that's what I'm doing and it's amazing.

Yeah, I'm going to be the odd one out too. I mean, I do direct sales and it's important, but I just set up a subscription through my own website, kind of like a Patreon or a Reem, except I do it myself and I'm very encouraged by the numbers in the first month and that's really something I'm going to focus on. That's also direct sales.

You just had to ruin it, didn't you? That's the key thing about entertainment and how you tap into an audience. You want the same that the audience likes, but different.

So it's direct sales, but it's different. We just want their money. You want to entertain them, and they pay for the pleasure. Take them away from the doldrums of the everyday. All right, we've got enough time.

Questions from the audience. We have an august panel. I mean, look at who's up here. Oh, you have to come up here.

Hi. You mentioned pen names. What's the...

I'd love to know a little bit more about... I hear a lot of people have pen names, and I'm trying to decide, is that something I should do? So I'd love to hear your rationale on why you chose to go with a pen name instead of your name.

I use my name, but my fiction has initials, and then my non-fiction is Joanna, and my fiction is JF. And the reason originally was the Amazon algorithms, which, you know, the autobots and stuff, the alsobots. But now I feel...

I love it because I become a different person when I write as JF Penn That's kind of completely different to Joanna Penn and that helps me. It's also my promise to the reader So again, they know what they're getting with each brand. I only have two so I know some people have more Yeah for me.

It was a non-brainer because or no-brainer? No-brainer. Not starter. Sorry. Whatever.

Something with a brain. I write gay romance and I have a kid. Kids can be real cruel, so I didn't want him to suffer because of what I write. hard enough when you're in middle school, so let's not add to that. So I found it really important to take on a pen name and protect my real identity.

And my reason was really practical. My actual name is Leanne Morgan. and a violinist in New York had taken leanemorgan.com.

So when I was at a Romance Writers of New Zealand conference where we had 200 people, and that's like, wow, this is amazing, I talked to an editor, and she said, I can just see it, Leanna Morgan, because I write small-town romance set in Montana. And I thought, ooh, I can too. So when I was looking for a substitute name instead of Leanne Morgan, I went for leanemorgan.com, and now I've got the woo! rainbow so I'm really happy.

I think there are different reasons to do different pen names. You would have to think about privacy and your family. Of course if you have kids it's probably a good idea to have a pen name because... you probably don't want your kids'teachers to find out what you write. You could be writing murder mysteries, and it could be a whole thing.

I think, for me, privacy was the main reason. My reason is privacy as well. I'm a single mom and I just don't want any weirdos. Good luck with that.

Okay, I have a bit of a marketing question. Is Twitter, I guess, now at... still a viable platform for marketing and engagement? Yes.

For me it is. That being said, I stubbornly refuse to call it X. It's Twitter, it will always be Twitter, I don't care.

I don't know how long it will remain viable with the changes that have been made and the blue check marks, which I also refuse to pay for, but right now I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter and I do sell books through Twitter, which I can track because I use trackable links. So for me, yes. I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter. I'm still seeing engagement on Twitter. I have a question from the online audience, from Stephanie who's watching us live.

Aside from subscriptions, what kind of direct sales tactics are you focusing on? Oh yeah, I was gonna say, well I'm doing Kickstarter, Shopify and subscription model through Patreon. That's what I'm doing.

I'll tell you at the end of the conference. Paperbacks, ebooks, audio books, all through my website, subscription and I have a whole bunch of ideas that I am not going to share. Gotta keep something to myself.

So my question is ultimately about longevity and staying in this career as we watch the industry change so rapidly. But I'd specifically like to hear Nora Phoenix's response to this, given when you started. And I know, because I've followed your career, I know you really used that kind of gap in the market to launch your career. And since then, that gap has very much so closed. So I'd love to hear how you have maintained your presence as the market has become more saturated and then how all of you have shifted with time and with the industry.

Don't make an assumption during the question that the market has been saturated. Saturated. Well, and that's why I hesitated there, because there are more people writing that now than there used to be. So competition in MM Romance has, I don't know, quadrupled, whatever number you want to give it to, but it's a very different market than it was back in 2017. Obviously, when you jump early into a market, you have an advantage, because once you have that name...

established readers know you and it's much harder as a newer author to establish yourself in a market that full or that competitive than it is to remain I think the biggest thing is just consistency and releasing and consistency in giving the audience giving my readers what they want I know exactly what they want from me and that's what I try to give them and my sales have been consistent either growing or remain consistent so I think that's pretty cool in the last six years six years in a niche that small. For me I think writing small-town romance love is love and happy endings are happy endings so it's not so much the inside of the book it's how you present the book so over the last 10 years What authors use on their covers, their images, can change. So change your cover, change your blurb. It won't be expensive to do that in a lot of cases, and so that can actually increase your reach of your books.

for a really economical price and you're not having to rewrite an entire box. Okay, so I've only been around for about three and a half years, so I'm probably not qualified to answer that question, but I would say that above all else, what I am focusing on is... having my customer data. If I can reach you in five years the way that I can today, I can probably still sell to you then.

So my prime concern is how am I going to get people onto my mailing list? And that's what I'm using direct sales for. If I can get my superfans to buy from me directly and thereby tell me who you are, I can continue to reach you no matter what happens in the industry. That's my personal focus. Yeah, I agree with that.

like what's old is new again and email marketing was where I started in 2006 and we're really back there now because with direct sales but in terms of my craft I write all over the shop I've never written to market I write just like my last release this year was a pilgrimage memoir which you can see on the book vault desk but that you know pilgrimage memoir is a very small niche and yet I did a good launch on Kickstarter so I've gone with the more personality branding customer data connecting with people rather than looking at a size of a niche. It's a different business model. I have a high need for novelty and for learning. So I think those are two things that probably serve me well in this business.

I'm always willing to learn new things, you know, like direct sales. I'm not even sure. Maybe I'll end up not doing it, but I want to learn as much as I can about it, and then I'll make a decision. I just, I like being able to pivot with the business as it changes.

My favorite question to ask authors is, what is one of the most interesting, odd, or disturbing things you found while researching for one of your books? Illustrations of demon sex? I write gay romance. Trust me, you do not want to know. Not suitable for this audience.

And I write a lot of dark stuff, so I don't really know what the definition of dark is anymore, but yeah, a lot. I mean, I think I just, I do love going to dark places and researching dark things, so it's just like normal life, really, I suppose. I mean, same. All of it. Yeah.

Eliana, you mentioned AI generated voices and I was just wondering what the other authors thought about that and I don't know maybe if we could also take a voting in the crowd who is in favor who is against it. We're not going to do that. Well I've been into AI since 2016 I've got multiple AI narrated audio books I also have my own self narrated audio books and the wonderful Veronica Jaguar is here and she narrates some of my thrillers so I think the point is we we don't see AI is like an either-or I think that we even see it as again an enhancement and amplification of our businesses.

So there are cases for each and different kinds of audio. So I'm all for all kinds of audio. Personally, I will use actors for mine now and in the future. Personally, I also only use human voices at this time.

I also tend to go for very popular voices because I think from a marketing point of view, it's just an easier thing to do. You can gain a big audio market share if you use voices that are already popular in the market. Another question from the online audience.

What is one thing a newer author can do to get visibility? On where? I think that really depends on your genre.

I don't think there is one marketing, maybe with the exclusion of newsletters, that works for every genre. Because it so depends on who your readers are. I mean, if you write sweet romance or Christian romance, romance and your readers are 65 plus old church ladies, your, you know, your avenues, your tactics are going to be different from mine.

That's all, like, there's no one way of visibility that works for everybody. For me, the bottom line is build. that newsletter list, build those emails, that's going to reach the biggest amount of people and other than that find out where your readers are and hang out there.

I just also for the nonfiction people in the audience podcasts Podcasts sell books. Yes. People come on my show and they sell a ton of books. So it really is...

Think about podcast tours, specifically non-fiction. I mean, it can work for fiction, but not so much. So it doesn't have to just be... you know, TikTok, like, you know, you choose a thing depending on where you want to reach, and then double down on that, basically. I would say, though, if you're a newer author, you could probably still benefit from collaborations.

If you don't have the funds for, for example, like advertising, you could team up with authors who are similar to you and write similar stuff, and expand your reach that way. I think for, especially if you have a limited budget, I think that's probably one of those things that works also for most genres. Hi, I'm short so let me know if you can't hear me.

But first of all, thank you so much for speaking today. I had a question on what you might change, like if you could talk to yourself earlier in your career, what you might change with your process. My one wasn't so much the process, it was myself.

So I can remember publishing my first book and my finger was actually shaking. In fact, scrap that, it was the whole body. I was terrified because when you write, you put so much of whatever you write... whatever genre, you put so much of yourself into that book. And it wasn't the fear of my book not selling, because my goal was to sell one book to someone that wasn't my mum who enjoyed it.

I was a winning before, you know, well, basically. fairly quickly after I published it, but the fear was that not that people wouldn't like my book, that they wouldn't like me, because there was so much in that book of me. My readers didn't know me, but Mum did, and she would have a cry every now and again when she read something that kind of resonated and she knew where that came from.

So believing in yourself and just publish the book. I mucked around for about two years on my... first book, changing things because someone said I wrote beautiful dialogue so I put more dialogue, changing things because someone said I did beautiful description so I put more description.

I focused my book on Harlequin because in 2014, when I wrote the book 2012, that was, you know, a way to publishing and they changed the word count in the category that I was looking for and it went up by 20,000 words. So what did I do? I added 20,000 words to the story and mum said just publish the book so I did and I never stopped so thank you mum I wanted to say about people telling you you can't do it.

So again when I first self-published like 2007 I took a lot of flack. I was in Australia and I took a lot of flack for self-publishing. Back then some of you were around.

It was vanity. People said you were a pile of crap. They wouldn't include us in events.

And I kind of wish I could go back. But I was really certain that this was the way to go. I always wanted to make a six figure income. And I knew that this is the only way to do it was being my own. business I was around my own businesses and yet people said to me you're really damaging your career you're never gonna get anywhere you're never gonna get a publisher you're never gonna you know do whatever and I was like but I'm gonna I will manage this somehow and now I look out at this and and and I mean I had no author friends I thought I was ostracized back then and some of you might feel that now and like why are you self-publishing that much that's really bad people still say it it's crazy but look at this look at this community and this is just a small part of it you know it's a huge community so if you feel like oh maybe I shouldn't do this or whatever then just remember that lots of us are doing this and have done for years and are doing really well in many ways so yeah hold on to that if people say it can't be done whatever that is I mean again I hear it now about things that I'm now doing direct sales people like oh it's mad but you know there are things we're doing just always think you can do it Hi, I'm Kate, and Leanna, you mentioned, you know, you just got to get the book out.

Well, my question for each of you, just as kind of a fun question, is do you write clean first drafts, or do you write those really ugly, shameful first drafts that you would be terrified if anyone came to light? Mine are, for the most part, pretty clean, except... I also use dictation and because of my accent I get some really funny typos which amuses my subscribers to no end.

They get the early chapters and I've made typos in there that live in infamy forevermore. I basically have a really clean last copy. I write the book and read it and that's probably, apart from running it through Grammarly and ProWritingAid, that goes on to mum and then to three other people to look at and then it's published.

I add it as I go so by the time the book's done it's a pretty clean draft. I'm super messy, I'm a discovery writer so it's a total mess but it's fun to clean it up. I write out of order, but it still ends up being pretty clean.

I don't know how that happens, but it does. Super nervous. So this is regarding a podcast interview with Joe Solari on Joanna Penn's podcast about three months ago. Joe made the observation that I thought was kind of shocking that most... authors are making, they're taking home about 15% of what they spend.

That was really surprising to me, 15 cents on the dollar, and I actually do about 50 cents on the dollar. I've always been really embarrassed of that. I've been ashamed to ever mention it because I thought I was doing horribly.

So I feel it's important to talk about to set expectations for people. If they're making $50,000 a year and taking home 15%, that's not a living wage in most parts of America. And it's just setting an expectation thing. I understand if you don't want to answer, but I'd really be curious to know how many cents on the dollar do you guys each take home?

I don't run ads, so for me it's pretty high. I'm also one of Joe's clients, so that makes it. I'm definitely, I don't know where I am exactly, but my guess would be 65 to 70 cents on the dollar. give or take?

I spend about 10% of my income on advertising, so everything else is profit. But I do love being able to write off some of my home expenses and travel and all kinds of things. It's wonderful. Quick comment, advertising and production, like all costs, because I mean audio production and layout and covers, like the true take home before tax money, not just advertising. 65 to 70 cents.

And mine, to produce a book, it cost me $80 for my e-book cover, $400 for my edit, and that's it. And then 10% a year overall for all books for advertising. So you're essentially asking... about profit margins mine after taxes and everything else is 65 to 70 percent yeah I just think it's the wrong question and the wrong framing given it was on my podcast I've been running a multi six-figure business for since like 2015 and every year everything's different and so it depends on what you do so my latest Kickstarter which raised over $40,000 I spent $200 on ads ads the ads ads are just a thing in the business but say for example uh you know you buy a piece of software or you hire um you know i did pierre janty's accelerator you know that every year we're learning different things we're investing in the business so i think that the question is around kind of the wrong thing it's like if you have a business you invest in your business you pay yourself you invest so i pay my superannuation i pay my salary we pay our freelancers what you have to think think with money is it's a flow. It's a flow.

It comes in, it goes out. You invest, more money comes in. So I think you have to think bigger if you want to run a scalable business.

So breaking it down by book to a P&L can be complicated. So I don't want us to get fixated on that kind of thing. The most important thing is if you're running a full-time author business is can you pay yourself, can you pay your freelancers?

And that is one of the problems in publishing is when a publisher can't pay their authors. and that we're all paying ourselves and our people. So I think it's a case of looking at a broader topic than just the P&L per book. I don't drill down to that level. I make a lot of money and I keep a lot of money.

And that's... Two more questions. Almost out of time.

Just two more questions. Nora, I know that you said that sometimes because of Amazon algorithms, it's good to start over with a new pen name. How do you really gauge and determine when it's a good idea to start over?

I think if you've been publishing for a couple of years and you have more than, I don't know, 15, 20 books out and they are not gaining traction and your books are within the same sub-genre and you're not getting that. traction, it might be time to start that new pen name. The thing is you have to figure out what you got wrong with that pen name before you can start a new one. Starting over only makes sense if you can get it right the second time. time.

I know there's a good friend of mine and an author in my genre who did it. She was publishing when I got started then had to stop for I think close to two years because of all kinds of problems and then when she started again she could get no traction whatsoever. So she decided to do a new pen name and she is now absolutely killing it and the reason is that because she was inactive for so long she could not recover from that. I'm not saying it's always the right answer.

I'm saying if you can figure out what you got wrong the first time, you might want to start over and do it right from the start. So everybody's talking about the fact that the industry at the moment is in a really exciting place, there's lots of changes, it's maturing, like we're pretty much in a, we're reaching a point where we're in a mature industry and I'd love to hear from each of you like what would you say is a key mindset or mindset shift to navigate because we also we have all these new technologies like there's just a lot of changes and so what would you say is a key mindset or mindset shift to be able to navigate the way the industry is developing? For me, it's follow the energy that you feel towards something, because there are so many options.

And so, if you're excited about something, then follow that energy, because that will sustain you. And then you'll have to learn new things, but don't learn the things you don't know. things that turn you off and make you miserable or make you angry, don't do that. Do the stuff that lights you up. That's what I would say.

I would say keep writing because you can get so overwhelmed with all the options around. Just write a great book. book and do the basics and then build on that but always keep time to write the next book I just spent three months building Shopify sites and doing all kinds of amazing things that didn't involve writing my next book that I'm up for I have to publish on the 29th of November for a pre-order so now I feel a bit stressed so write your books first and then worry about everything else after it all right thank you very much this was the high powered author panel.

Transcript for:Indie Author Insights and Advice

Transcript for:
Indie Author Insights and Advice