How Much Content Do You Need To Make A Living?

The Internet is full of seemingly contradictory advice regarding exactly how much stuff you need to write before you'll accumulate an archive large enough to make a living. So whether you're trying for that 20-books-to-easy-street, or you're trying to peg exactly how big your audience has to be in order for you to make a living, I want to take a moment to throw a particularly large bucket of water right in your face.

 

Because the answer is very simple... you have to make as much as it takes.

It is, unfortunately, the answer no one wants to hear.

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!

No Man Knows The Day (And Only Liars Say They Do)

There's a reference to the end of days in the Bible that tells readers no man knows when that time draws nigh. Anyone who claims they know is either a liar, or a charlatan. This is something all the folks panicking on rapture-tok should have kept in mind, but it's also worth remembering for when it comes to making a living as a writer, artist, or professional creator of any stripe.

 

Because there is no guarantee. Your success could come with your next release, or the one after that, or the one after that. It might not come until you've been rotting in the grave for 20 years, and people rediscover your work. It might never come at all. There's no way to know.

 

Buy from living authors. In case you had doubts for some reason.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, the more swings you take, the more likely you are to be successful. The more books you write, the more videos you make, the more articles you compose, the better and better your chances are of finding an audience. That is not what's in dispute here. What is in dispute, though, are people who claim they have a system, that they can tell you exactly what you need to do to be successful, and that they know exactly how much stuff you need to make in order for you to get paid.

 

And that's a lie for two reasons.

 

The first, and most obvious, is that not every author is going to create the same kind of work. Everyone is writing their own books in their own style, and just because one author managed to finally start cashing checks when they released their 5th, or 10th, or 20th book, that's no guarantee that someone else is going to achieve the same feat.

 

The second reason, though, is that the environment has likely shifted between when one author managed a particular feat, and them giving this advice. The world is constantly changing, and what worked yesterday isn't going to work today, and by tomorrow it will actively harm you. It's the same reason you can't use the same social media strategy today that you would have used 5 years ago, why email newsletters haven't been a viable strategy for a decade, and why you can't just write another book and trust your publisher to handle the rest... the world has moved on since then.

These promises have taken all sorts of forms over the years. When I started off this blog, it was that you needed 400 posts before you had enough regular traffic to generate ad revenue. And guess what? The entire ad structure of the Internet shifted so badly that making money from ads became impossible. I've seen folks swear by the 20 novels formula, saying that if you get 20 books out on the market that will give you enough penetration that you'll build a following. Alice Liddell, who runs the YouTube channel Alice The Author, has over 30 books on the market, and she's scraping by just as hard as I am, if not harder some months. There are people who swear that once you hit 10,000 followers on Instagram it's all easy street from there, or that if you can build your YouTube archive to 100 videos and 5,000 subscribers or more that you'll be able to start coasting.

 

We need to recognize all these promises for what they are... piss in the wind.

 

Just like how crash diets and bro science swear up and down that if you do this cleanse, or adopt that workout routine that you're guaranteed to hit your goals, you should be extremely suspicious of anyone promising that once you release a certain number of projects that you'll be able to kick up your feet and relax.

 

Because as of right now I have half a dozen books on the market. I have over 200 roleplaying game supplements, including the full RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic. I've made over a hundred videos for YouTube over the past several years. I've put out over 300 articles in my Vocal.Media archive, and thousands of posts on my two blogs. It's a rather impressive amount of work, in my opinion, but when it comes to coin of the realm, it's all just barely enough to scrape by on rent in government housing. With a roommate.

If You Want Us To Succeed, We Need Your Help

I've said this a dozen times or more before, but it's worth repeating. You, as the creator, cannot force your own success. You can write dozens of books, produce massive series of stories, or put together several long-running podcasts... but if no one watches them, reads them, or buys them, then you won't earn anything for them.

The only thing that gets authors paid is audience effort and interaction. Period. Because if 10,000 people all went out today and bought my cat noir books Marked Territory and Painted Cats, that would give me a bigger payday than I've had in 15 years. I would be able to rest, relax, and slow down for the first time in a decade. And if 25,000 people all decided to go and check out The A.L.I.C.E. Files and watch the episodes we have up so far? That would monetize the channel with a finger snap, and get money rolling in to help with expansions.

 

If people decided to keep buying my books and RPG supplements, and watching my videos even if I stopped making things tomorrow, I would still get paid for that consumption. And if I keep making things at a fever pace until I drop dead, but no one reads it, watches it, or buys copies, then I'm never going to get paid.

 

It doesn't matter how much you make... it matters what people interact with. No audience, no money. But for most of us it's a lot easier to focus on writing X number of books, or making Y number of videos, than it is to actually try to expand our audience. But if you want money, you don't need more books; you need people to read the ones you've already written while you work on the sequels.

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 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. 

Obstacles and Problems in Your Stories

When we think about our stories, we often ask ourselves, "What is the problem?" However, as the Storm Writing School points out, there is something of a differentiation we can use to get more nuance out of this question. I was recently reading Problems Vs. Obstacles, and it really caught my attention.

So, let's talk about the differences between problem and obstacles in your stories, shall we?

It's a rather interesting question, it turns out.

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!

Obstacles and Problems... What's The Difference?

Before we get into the difference between these two things, we need to focus on an objective. Because the important difference between these two things is that both of them are connected to your story's objective, but they interact with it in different ways.

As an example, let's take the well-known story of Lord of The Rings.

The objective in the story is that our protagonists want to destroy the One Ring, and as a result destroy Sauron. The reason for this is that Sauron and his finger jewelry are the problem in our story, because a problem (by the definition we're using) is something that comes before the character's objective. And, just as importantly, the problem is what leads to the objective. Your lord of all evil exists, and he's being a problem that has to be taken care of.

Obstacles, by contrast, are things that get in the way of your protagonists actually achieving their objective. The distance to Mordor, that is an obstacle. So are the crows that spy on them, the storm that stops them from taking the mountain pass, the pursuit of the ring wraiths... these are things that arise to make it harder for the protagonists to get from where they started, to the point where the problem is solved.

While the difference between these two things is not always germaine to your story, it can help to have specific language to discuss the various moving parts of your tale... particularly when you're in the blueprinting phase of things. So if this isn't something you've put words to before, consider thinking things through using these terms to see where it gets you!

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- 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 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 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. 

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!

In Media Res- Get Stuck Into Your Story!

Gregory's fist came swinging for my face. I managed to duck, his knuckles glancing off my forehead. I kept my momentum, going into a low crouch and shooting forward. I rammed my shoulder up into his stomach, driving with my legs and wrapping both hands around the back of his knee. He folded under me, his breath rushing out of him as I rode him to the ground, slamming into his solar plexus. He struggled, lashing out, but he'd lost his coordination. I snatched his wrist and pulled, locking my legs around him in an arm bar. I pulled until I felt every tendon in his arm go stiff.

The sound of the whistle was piercing, and I immediately released my hold in an almost Pavlovian response.

No orders were given. I pushed myself to my feet, and offered my hand. Gregory took it, and I pulled him to his feet. We didn't exchange words as we changed partners. Mikhail stepped into Gregory's place. The whistle came again, and my heart started racing. Everything ceased to exist except for me, my opponent, and application of clinical violence.

Have you ever come across a story or a film like this? Where you're thrust into the middle of a high-speed car chase, a pulse-pounding shootout, or a violent street brawl, with zero context of what is going on? You don't know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what the inciting incident is... you just got thrown into the deep end, and you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The term for this storytelling method is called in medias res, a Latin phrase that means "into the middle of things," and if you haven't used it, it's something I would highly recommend.

Who doesn't want to stay and watch the fireworks?

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!

The Advantage of Jumping In With Both Feet

The major advantage of starting your story in the middle of the action like this is that it immediately throws your readers into an exciting situation. No matter the nature of the situation, whether it be a steamy encounter in an underground rave or a rooftop battle against a vampire, bringing your readers in like this provides an immediate hook that is likely to grab their interest. This is particularly true because it allows them to establish context as the story goes along, likely getting up to speed by the end of the first chaper (or the introductory scene if this is a short story).

The other advantage of an in media res opening is that it often allows you to do some literary sleight of hand that you couldn't get away with in other storytelling styles. For example, you could have a bloody shootout between a squad of cops and a gang of cartel enforcers with gunfire ringing out, and blood fountaining from wounds, only for a director to scream, "Cut!" so that you can reveal all of this took place on a film set, and the heroic, iron-jawed detective we were following is actually a Hollywood stuntman-turned-action star. You could also pull a time skip, showing that this scene is the ending of your book, before you rewind back to the start of events, with the audience wondering how you got to that opening scene, or even pulling a bait-and-switch with the scene your audience came in on being a scene from a novel the protagonist is actually writing. There are a lot of different advantages of this strategy.

However, as with any tool in your box, it's important to understand when to use it, and when not to.

Sometimes this isn't what you want to open up with.

Not every story is best with an in media res beginning. Some stories are more deliberately paced, or they benefit from a slow start that leads into the story as it goes. Whether it's a cloak and dagger spy story that wants to start with tension and lead up instead of smash mouth action, or a mystery where a slow ratcheting of danger is more of a benefit to the case as it unfolds, this isn't a tool that every story and every writing style will benefit from. Not only that, but this tool follows the same rules as monsters in horror movies... the less you see of it, the more effective it is. Because if the book starts off with an in media res scene, that can be an effective hook to snag your audience with... but if every chapter starts off that way, it reduces it to a gimmick. While there are always exceptions (such as an action comedy story where part of the joke is the unconventional nature of the writing), generally speaking this isn't a great strategy.

As with all advice, take this with a grain of salt, and remain true to what feels right for your story. But if you want to have a sharp slap in the face to start your story with, and you haven't given this particular method a try yet, play around with it! It may just be the thing that sparks the progress you want.

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- 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 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 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. 

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!