Writing Books And Selling Books Are Two Completely Different Skills (And You Need To Be Able To Do Both)

I've said this before, but it's always been in passing. Because of that I thought I would dedicate this week's entry to addressing this misconception that a lot of people seem to have. Because being able to write good books does not actually give you any insight whatsoever on being able to actually sell books, good or otherwise.

These are two separate skills... and while you can make money with the latter by itself, writing a book no one buys isn't exactly helpful if you're hoping to buy yourself some time to write more books. Or tacos. Or a house. Or anything else, really.

This is just a daydream, if you don't have a plan to make it happen.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Addressing Some False Beliefs (So You Can Avoid These Pitfalls)

First of all, right out of the gate, you need to accept that the quality of your book has precisely dick all to do with how well it sells. Good books can go completely undiscovered and ignored, and absolute drek can achieve bestseller status and make the author fat stacks of cash. So before you do anything else, put the idea out of your head that writing a quality, entertaining book will magically guarantee you sales. It won't, and if we're all honest, it never has.

Alice went into a little more detail than I did, and you should subscribe to her channel at Alice The Author.

Secondly, if you're an author you need to realize that sales isn't just going to get "taken care of" by someone else. Unless you have so much disposable income that you can hire a publicist and a PR team (or at least a social media manager to run everything on your behalf), then you're going to have to get stuck in to do things yourself. Trust me, none of us want to do this part of the job, but it's kind of necessary if you actually want to sell books and make money.

Thirdly, sales isn't something you can just fire off in a few minutes before going on about the rest of your day. Honestly, the first half of my day is generally spent making social media posts for promotional purposes, and then a lot of my blogs, videos, etc. are made to get my books and other projects in front of readers. It's an exhausting process that's a never-ending wheel that you have to keep pushing like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Conan film.

I have a video on this very topic over on The Azukail Games YouTube channel, in fact. I'd subscribe there, if you haven't.

You Need A Plan (And You Need To Be Realistic)

You know how the advice in writing books is that random chance can always make things worse, but it can never make things better? Yeah, that's the mindset you need to go into when it comes to actually selling books. To that end you need to figure out what you can do, and what you can afford, to ensure that you are doing everything in your power to sell as many books as you can... and that you are never expecting to just "get lucky" so you can come out ahead.

Now, I live in poverty, and I'm an author. So, I do not have a budget to throw at anyone, nor do I have a team of people from any of my publishers who handle sales and marketing for me. So, I will tell you all what I do, because I feel it's a solid basis for those who are starting from nothing.

- Social media posting (I use FB, Reddit, MeWe, and Discord as my primaries, with a few extras thrown in from time to time)

- Blogging (I write about a lot of my books on here and my gaming blog Improved Initiative)

- YouTube (I contribute to Azukail Games and The A.L.I.C.E. Files, and have appeared on other channels as well)

- Bi-weekly newsletter (every 2 weeks I put out a newsletter with all my latest releases)

In addition to those regular marketing efforts, I've also taken my books to a dozen regional conventions, and appeared on several podcasts and YouTube channels for interviews. What I have not done is taken out website ads, or paid for a book tour... and not because those things can't work, but because I just don't have the money to gamble on them.

If you can't afford to lose it, don't risk it.

This is the central thing to remember when it comes to selling books... everything is a gamble. You never know what will work, because things that look like a waste of time might net you big gains, and options that looked like certain moneymakers might end up leaving you with a bunch of extra bills and a big, fat goose egg on your earnings.

As an example, I could make a post on Reddit today, telling people to go buy copies of my tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, and that post could just lead to a landslide of sales. Maybe it was a veterans' day celebration that I wasn't aware of. Maybe someone famous saw my post and thought the game was cool so they boosted the signal. Maybe I just so happened to start a flame war in the comments that kept my post relevant for days on-end, but whatever it was it got seen, and people bought copies. Or, alternatively, the post just vanished into oblivion, and no one saw it.

In the case of the former, a few minutes of work and zero up-front cost just netted me a big win. In the case of the latter, I didn't make any money, but I didn't lose anything except half a dozen minutes of time and effort, either.

The more a marketing endeavor costs you, the more pressure there is on it to succeed, and the more money you're going to lose if it doesn't. And you should always go in assuming that this isn't going to work, because if you start telling yourself that you're going to make bank, then you're going to start justifying expenses that you can't afford because it will be okay when you make all the sales that only exist in your head.

Don't pay a bunch of money to someone claiming they'll get you a lot of sales. Don't go into debt to attend a convention in the hopes that you can sell books. Don't blow a bunch of money on Amazon ads when you don't know how to build a campaign. And even if you are familiar with a convention crowd, an advertising platform, or anything else, you need to always have that voice in your head asking what happens if this flops... because sooner or later something is going to flop. And it's probably going to be sooner instead of later.

The advice I would close with is to start small, and build up. If your book is traditionally published, then contact your publisher and ask if they have any resources to help you market your book. Reach out to author communities online and start making connections. See if there are local events you could attend to a small fee, or no fee (I'd check your local library and farmer's markets). Reach out to your local newspapers and radio stations and send them a press briefing to see if they'll interview you about your book. Become active in any existing social groups you have, and stretch out to others as you can.

Marketing your book and making sales is not easy. It's grueling, often repetitive work, and it can feel like you're swinging a sledgehammer as you try to mine out a hidden vein of gold. You can't just throw money at the problem and fast-forward to being a bestselling author, though. Or, if you have that much money, you probably aren't concerned with your books paying your bills.

In the end, do the work, and approach selling your book with the same seriousness and purpose that you approached writing it in the first place. After all, you did the work to make it, now do the work to get people to read it.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

I'm Not Paying That Much For Something I Could Make! (A Common Refrain of Fake Outrage)

If you've ever attended a convention or a craft show, you've heard some variety of the following exchange. Maybe you were a person working a booth, or maybe you were just walking by in the aisle, but at some point in time you likely heard someone ask a creator how much something was, be quoted a number, and then that someone scoffed at the price like they'd misheard. And at some point in the exchange, they said some variety of the following.

"That's ridiculous, I could make this."

And let's give this mysterious person the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they could draw that drawing, crochet that stuffed animal, write that novel, or pen that tabletop RPG. It's not out of the realm of possibility. But they didn't... and if you can do it yourself, and you don't want to pay someone else for what they made, then go do it yourself.

But they won't. And if you ever hear someone say this to you, understand that they're trying to make you think your work is worth less than it is.

Perhaps you can. But you didn't. So either pay the fee, or walk.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

If You Can, Then Go Do It

I've made this comparison before, but at the risk of overstepping a line, authors, artists, and creators of all stripes hear a lot of the same indignant arguments that sex workers do from people... and it's usually for the same reason. Whether it's, "Oh, I could never charge people for doing that," or, "What am I paying you for? I could probably do this at least as well as you are," these statements are insults designed to make you lower your prices, or give the person something for free. And for some reason, a lot of us will cave, and do just that.

Maybe you think this person will enjoy the thing you made so much that they'll see how wrong they were. Maybe you're trying to be the bigger person. Whatever the reason though, if someone tries to use any of these lines on you, then show them the door, because they aren't a customer. They aren't even a potential customer. They're just trying to browbeat you into giving them something for nothing. Period.

And if you do it, all they'll remember is that you cave to being bullied.

You could kick them down a dark hole. That works too.

Now, you should absolutely charge a fair rate for the art you make. You should also ensure that you aren't spending more money than you're making just to get copies out to people. However, when someone comes up to you and insults your work (even if they veil the insult as something self-deprecating, or they try to make it out to be a joke) there is no further conversation to be had. The price is what it says on the tag... or it should go up just for them. They wanted special treatment, after all, and you can give it to them!

If you're an author, you're going to experience this behavior a lot. You're going to get random "book reviewers" sliding into your DMs and demanding you mail them physical copies of your manuscript, then getting angry when you tell them no, you aren't interested. You're going to have people at conventions lowball your books, as if the price isn't clearly marked. You're going to run into people on social media who demand free copies, then accuse you of using AI to write your books (even if the publication date predates modern generative AI programs, and they're clearly marked with No AI).

If you've ever worked retail, you recognize these folks. They're the loud, abrasive people who demand you honor expired coupons, or who want their meals comped because they deigned to come into the dump you run. They're the people who throw fits when they aren't catered to, and who storm out claiming you just lost a customer, even though they've never bought anything from you.

Now, I don't know why so many people feel so entitled to treat creators this way... but I see it happening more and more often. Not only that, but the most common excuse is that they could do the same thing you did, so they shouldn't have to pay the price you're asking.

But at the end of the day, you made something and they didn't. If they're willing to put in the time, sweat, and grueling effort it took you, they're welcome to do so. But if they want your book, your art, your game, etc., then they have to pay the same price as everybody else for it.

Don't budge. Give them an inch, and they will absolutely take a mile!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Anything CAN Happen With Your Book (But That Doesn't Mean It WILL)

When you create something, it's possible that this is the one that breaks big. Maybe your novel gets people to really pay attention to you as a writer, and it becomes a major sensation. Perhaps the next video you put out goes viral, and you end up with millions of views, and an overnight audience. Maybe this episode of your podcast, or audio drama, just happens to explode, and it puts a lot of cash in your pocket.

However, the keyword here is possible. The problem arises when you, as a creator, operate on the belief that just because something can happen, then it's going to happen. Because that is where you start getting tripped up, and running into serious problems.

17 Black... what were the odds?

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Better To Have A Plan You Don't Need

We've all had those daydreams where we imagine ourselves as massive successes. We contemplate how many copies we could move at a convention, and we fantasize about how nice it would be to just write all day without worrying about bills. Those of us who treat our writing as a job will take it a step further and research keywords, marketing strategies, trends in the genre, and we'll put together plans for how we're going to reach our target audience. And a lot of us will try to build momentum by putting out small samples of our work, building our audience, and trying to snowball interest.

But even if you workshop your plan, massage your metrics, and come up with a plan that looks perfect on paper, that's no guarantee that it's going to work. And that is important for you to acknowledge.

Well, it's not quite what I was expecting...

Just because you have an interview with a prominent YouTuber or TikToker, that's no guarantee their audience is going to buy your book. Just because you have a large newsletter, that doesn't mean it will translate to large sales. You could have amazing artwork on your cover, a prominent booth space at a convention, and so on, and so forth... none of these things will guarantee that your creation is going to find the audience you need, or that you'll make enough sales to turn this into your career.

As such, it's important to use the Cheese Cloth Method when it comes to actually selling your book.

Think back to when Covid first became a pandemic. Social distancing was one of the first methods to avoid transmission and spread. However, it wasn't always possible, and even then there were people who still got infected. Masking was also used as a way to prevent the spread of the disease, as well, stopping the infected from exhaling germs, and preventing the uninfected from taking in a viral load with their next breath. When the vaccine came out, it represented another way to prevent people from getting infected in the first place.

Individually, any one of these things might fail. But the more layers of protection that were put in place, the more defenses one had against the sickness. Consider your marketing strategy the same way. Because any one aspect of your strategy may fail, or simply not get the results you want. However, if you put together a layered approach then you're more likely to get the results you want.

But it's important to remember that more likely is also not the same as guaranteed. Even if you put in the work, and do your best to come up with all the possible angles, there's still a chance that you don't get the results you wanted... but you've got a better chance of getting there if you have a plan.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

"Just Write Another Book" Is Not A Marketing Strategy

 If you spend any amount of time on writing forums, social media pages dedicated to helping writers, or if you go to writing and fiction conventions, you are bound to see an old head out there who is giving the same advice to every, single marketing-related question out there. And like so many pieces of advice, it might look good on the surface, until you stop and think about it. That advice

"The best advertisement for your current book is your next book!"

This might sound good. It might feel motivating to you. If you just keep writing, then success will eventually come your way! However, in the modern day where we're trying to write and sell books, it's pure horseshit... worse, it can make you dig yourself into a hole that you can't dig out of.

Take an entire spoonful of salt whenever you hear this.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Some Reasons They Say This

The reason this advice always seems to come from older folks is that this advice was sort of viable when many of them started their writing careers. If you were a novelist several decades ago, for example, it wasn't uncommon for you to receive an advance on your book if you had a mid-sized or larger publisher. So even if you never sold a copy, or you only sold enough copies to cover your advance, you still got paid. Not only that, but you got paid when you handed in the manuscript and it was approved for going into production. So if you were a good writer with a fast turnaround, you could (at least in theory) earn yourself a pretty fat check at least once a year for a new book, even if your last book was sagging in sales. And if you did that often enough, usually royalties would start stacking up sooner or later.

Additionally, a lot of them come from an era where the marketing landscape was very different than today. Some of the really old writers (or those who worked with major publishers), actually had companies that marketed their books on their behalf. They would set authors up with interviews in magazines, or on radio and TV shows. They would run ads for new books, and ensure that periodicals talking about new releases mentioned their books. And even writers who only go back a few decades into the 90s remember a time when you could have a newsletter with a few thousand people on it, or a mildly active social media presence, and that ensured you had a vibrant, growing fan base. It wasn't a full time job that got in the way of you actually working on your next manuscript.

And in those worlds, yeah, adding a new title into the mix might just be what you needed to stir up the waters, and get people coming back to you. But not only do those worlds not exist anymore, writing another book was never a viable plan for selling something you already have on the market.

Why It's Full of Shit

Firstly, we need to talk about the gambler's fallacy. For those who aren't familiar with it, the idea is that if an event has happened less frequently in the past than average, then surely it will occur more frequently in the future to balance out the odds. Put another way, if your current book should have sold well according to projections, but didn't, then surely your next book will overperform, and that will be a net positive for you!

Unfortunately, it's a fallacy. If your odds of a book being successful are 1 in 10,000, and your first book didn't come up a winner, the odds for your second book aren't any better. More to the point, though, even if your second book does sell better, there's no guarantee that anyone who reads your second book will go back and buy your first book. So you could follow this advice, write a really successful second book, and then the needle doesn't budge at all for titles you already have in your archive.

More to the point, though, you already have a book you're trying to sell!

I need sales NOW, not in 1-3 years!

At the end of the day, this whole idea of writing another book to get attention on your first book is just hope. That's all it is. There's no data to back it up, there's no numbers to it, it's just a piece of homespun wisdom that worked out for a handful of people, so they decided to keep touting it. And even if it didn't work for them, they know it worked for other people, so clearly it's a, "60% of the time it works every time," kind of situation.

A real marketing strategy is a plan. It has steps, it has verifiable things you can do, and most importantly it is focused on selling the book you already wrote and have available on the market!

Some aspects of an actual marketing strategy might include things like:

- Run a digital giveaway to get attention on the title.

- Buying limited Amazon ads the first month of release.

- Getting your book into the hands of reviewers who will tell their audiences about it.

- Plugging it on social media, in blogs, or in videos that you make.

- Bringing the book to conventions, particularly if you are going to be on panels as an author.

Now, there is no guarantee that these steps will make your book a bestseller either. Perhaps the convention you go to is a bust, and the audience just isn't into your genre. Maybe your Amazon ads target the wrong keywords, or your book came out at a time when there was a boycott on. Maybe the reviewers you picked didn't like your book, or their audiences had a lukewarm response. Maybe the social media algorithm suppressed your signal so only a handful of your friends and family actually saw you post about your new book.

Nothing is guaranteed. However, think of your marketing plan as the cheese cloth method. While there are gaps in every individual layer, the more layers you have, the more likely you are to have some kind of success. Because each thing you do is likely ro reach someone, and if you reach enough someones, then your book will find an audience who will buy it, review it, and talk about it with their friends.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't get to work on writing your next book, or working on your next project, as soon as possible. But acknowledge that if you didn't do the marketing for your first book, writing a second book that you aren't going to do the marketing for just looks like you're doubling down on a losing proposal.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.