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.

Character Quirks and Tics Are Important (But Don't Overdo Them)

Building characters who feel real is one of the greatest challenges that any writer faces. To paraphrase Stephen King's novel Bag of Bones, the most in-depth and intriguing character you will ever come up with is little more than a bag of bones compared with even the most boring and shallow person in the real world. And while a lot of us focus on the sweeping arcs, their history, their goals, and their drives, sometimes we leave the finer details out. It's those little details that can make a character feel organic, though, and which really stick in a reader's mind once they close the cover.

So take a moment to consider what quirks and tics your characters have, and how you're going to slip those details into your narrative.

No, you can't see the lower half of my face. It's... too intimate.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Quirks, And What They Add To Your Character

By definition, a quirk is a peculiarity of action or behavior. We all have them, and they can be caused by a variety of things that can inform little parts of a character's past. As an example, does a character always sit with their back to a wall facing the room? Do they do this because they're paranoid? Because they've been a criminal? Or simply because they know they still have enemies out there who wouldn't hesitate to sneak up on them? As a different example, does a character have a particular catchphrase people associate with them? Is it something they picked up from their family, does it clue in a listener about which branch of the military a character served with, or is it just something unique to this character and their experience?

For folks who need more examples, I'd highly recommend my recent publication Finishing Touches - 100 Quirks For Your Characters.

So how do you make character quirks work?

Obviously, the first step in this journey is to figure out which quirks your characters have, and to decide if the quirks means anything, or if they're just part of who your characters are. After all, someone who bounces their legs when they're nervous, or who has a terrible poker face, might not have really interesting stories behind those quirks. Generally speaking, I'd recommend not giving a character more than 1-2 main quirks, with perhaps 1-2 secondary quirks... anything more than that and it's going to feel like you're just gluing on extra bits, and they'll get distracting.

For example, let's return to our reformed criminal who still sits with his back to the wall. Does he also have a habit of fidgeting? If so does he walk a coin across his knuckles, play with a Zippo lighter, or idly do tricks with a butterfly knife? Does his eye twitch when he gets angry? Does he coordinate his shirt with the day of the week, or always dress in outdated fashion? All of those things paint a picture of him as a person, but if you stack too many more quirks onto this list it's going to feel like you've got too many balls in the air. You don't want to give your readers too much to try to keep track of.

By the same token, you don't want to constantly remind your readers of a character's quirks every time they show up... and this goes double for your protagonist. Even if the quirk is part of the character's appearance (heterochromia, double-jointed, ambidexterous, etc.), there's no need to bring it up every time they show up, or to tag it onto every action they take. Because unless the quirk has some kind of meaning the audience is supposed to pick up (such as a brawler who always cracks their knuckles right before they start throwing punches), then constantly mentioning the same, repetitive action is going to start to annoy the reader. Mention it every now and again so the reader doesn't forget, but don't make a big deal out of it.

However, when a character is not performing their quirk (or it isn't physically present, if it's something unusual about their physicality) that is often a good tip off to the audience that something has changed. Just a little recommendation for folks writing stories about shapeshifters, face stealers, and body snatchers.

Lastly, if you want more inspiration for your characters, consider picking up some of the following supplements, also written by yours truly:

- 100 Character Goals and Motivations

- 100 Questions To Ask About Your Characters

- 100 Dark Secrets

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft 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. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Take A Moment And Check Out My New Publisher Misti Media (If You Haven't Yet)

I mentioned a while back in So My Novels Have Been Unpublished (For Now) that 3 of my novels have been taken off the market, but I have a new publisher that's picked them up and loaded them into the magazine for release. At time of last check, though, they probably aren't going to pull the trigger on re-releasing my books until January of 2027... there were a lot of us that got swept up in the Histria Books purge, and there's plenty of titles that will be coming out in the new year along with me.

But since we're drawing close to the shopping season, and a lot of folks like to give books as gifts, I figured I'd mention some of the Misti Media titles to whet folks' appetites for the re-release of Old Soldiers, and my Hardboiled Cat series of books!

There's a lot of mysteries out there... so why wait?

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!

So What Sort of Titles Do They Have?

Misti Media has been around for a hot minute, and they currently have 72 titles on the market, all of which are available on Drive Thru Fiction (as well as a few other places, if you find a title you want to get from a different outlet). And while there's a pretty good variety of options out there, they've got quite a lot of mysteries and thrillers out there, which I'd definitely recommend checking out.

Two of the titles that most caught my attention (and this was before I signed my current contract) were (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight: Crime Fiction Inspired By One-Hit Wonders, as well as Gag Me With A Spoon: Crime Fiction Inspired By The Music of The 80s. These books were the reason I was pretty sure that Leo and his tales were going to fit in pretty well over at Misti Media. I also have a soft spot for anthologies, and since they're hard as hell to move copies of, I figured I'd give them a shout out this week!

Seriously, give it a look if you haven't!

However, if you're someone who is more in the mood for a novel instead of a bunch of bite-sized stories, and you'd like something on the cozier end of things, consider checking out Gone To The Dogs (The Gumshoe Chicks Mystery #1). There's a murder, a dog show, and a group of old high school friends who get together to find a killer. For those who prefer something more of a thriller, though, the alternate history novel Russian Amerika is definitely worth giving more than a cursory glance. In a 1980s where Russia still owns Alaska, this novel deals with a terrifying scenario that could leave bodies floating in the ocean, and international tensions rising higher than ever before.

So, while I'm sure at least a few folks out there are waiting for my books to get what I hope is their final re-release, consider looking through the rest of the Misti Media catalog for something to tide you over until Pollux and Leo are once again available... especially if you're one of those readers who likes to collect all the different editions of an author's work for your shelves!.

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.

When You Should (And Shouldn't) Sexualize Characters In Your Stories

There is a particularly distasteful trend that I've seen time and time again in books, and it seems to show up particularly in thrillers and mysteries, though no genre is truly safe from it. And while this isn't solely a male author problem, my fellow men are largely the ones I see doing this time and time again.

What is it, you ask? Sexualizing the descriptions of characters (and particularly femme characters) when that is not the point of the scene, and it often goes completely counter to the impression you want your reader to have of what's going on. It's the equivalent of watching a thriller, seeing an interrogation start in a dimly-lit police station, and instead of the tense soundtrack you'd expect to hear, cheesy funk from a porn movie starts playing.

It undercuts the story you're trying to tell, is what I'm saying.

Seriously, guys... you need to paint the right picture with the proper colors, here.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

What Perspective Are You Showing Us?

Full disclaimer here, I am in no way against sexy, spicy content in stories. I got my start on the current leg of my career writing romance and erotica, after all. However, it's important that you use the right tool for the right job, and that the words you're putting on the page are done so with specific intent.

And this isn't just Men Writing Women... but a particular subset where anything involving femme characters is inherently sexual, and that is always front-loaded in a way that undermines the surrounding story.

As an example of what I'm talking about, femme fatales are a staple of the mystery genre. Whether it's the beautiful client who walks into the private eye's office one hip at a time before trying to wrap him around her finger, or the stunning Hollywood widow who clings to our detective in a way that feels more amorous than scared, we see that sort of thing in a lot of stories. However, the role of the seduction in these stories is often a double-edged sword, meant to cloud the investigator's judgment, and to make the reader second-guess what's happening. Are these women actually interested in him, or are they trying to manipulate him? Or is it some combination of both? How can we know where the truth ends, and performance begins?

However, there are stories in this genre where every time a femme character is described, it's done so with rigorous attention to her body, and the thoughts of the male character (or sometimes just the narrator) being projected onto her. Now, perhaps this is being done to show the inner workings of a character's mind, but when this particular method of description doesn't have a greater purpose in the story, it feels exploitative. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is when we get a Tolkien-esque description of a woman's body that just goes on and on, only for us to find out she's dead, and these are the thoughts of the investigator looking at her corpse.

This sounds like an obvious no-no, but it's cropped up more than once in published novels I've held in my own hands. Because unless you're revealing that the character observing the corpse is a closet necrophiliac who is trying to do his job without letting anyone around him figure out what's going on inside his head, this is just tasteless. The same is true when we have our attention drawn to every waitress, secretary, and passing young woman on the sidewalk, getting a description that focuses only on their physical attributes, and how desirable they are in the eyes of the observer, usually breaking away from the rest of the scene entirely just to let the reader know that if this were a movie, all the background extras would be very attractive.

At best, this is distracting. At worst, it reduces your cast of characters to nothing but a collection of body parts, making it hard for readers to actually grow attached to anyone in the story they're trying to read.

She was getting handsy with me... too handsy... I lost count after seven.

They key to avoiding this is to go more than just skin deep, and to try to paint a portrait of characters we see in a way that really sticks with the reader, and that is more than just a collection of physical features and a list of their current wardrobe. Does this character have a commanding presence, are they soft-spoken, or do they have any physical tics? Do they have an accent, do they move in a way that suggests a background in dance, martial arts, or the military? Are there prominent scars, tattoos, or other things that might give a hint about who they are, and where they've come from? Are they abnormally large, or unusually small?

Most importantly, however, authors should avoid what I'm going to dub Selkie Descriptions. For those not familiar with the myth of the selkie, it's a shapechanging seal that can take on the form of a beautiful woman (there's another version of the myth where she's a swan, as well). When a man sees the selkie discard her animal skin, he steals it, and forces her to marry him. The similarity with dozens of other myths of supernatural creatures who look like beautiful women is this; they're by themselves, minding their own business, and then a man decides that her existing while being attractive is clearly meant as a temptation for him, and everything is in service to their beauty, his desire for it, and nothing else.

None of this is to say you cannot have characters, scenes, or descriptions which are sexy... but they need to be intentionally sexy. You need to decide that this is how you want your readers to experience a particular character, a particular scene, or even a particular piece of dialogue. Not only that, but often there's going to be contrast as we find out more about a character, or see them in other situations. As an example, finding out that the quiet librarian is a stripper on the weekends, and seeing the difference between her onstage persona and who she is in her regular life, should have a contrast in feeling and description, whichever side of her we meet first.

People, and stories, tend to have multiple facets. You can shape and carve them however you want to best tell the story... but consider what you're writing, and the way you're writing it, especially when it comes to the femme characters in your cast. Because no matter how solid your action, or how intriguing your mystery, if it reads like a fan service comic script, your story is going to suffer for it.

You can still do it, if that's the vision you have. Hell, you might even lean into it as a parody, or a spoof of genre conventions. But you need to be doing it on purpose, with both eyes open, rather than just falling back on sexualized descriptions and stereotypes that are just going to be sour notes in your story.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft 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. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well.