Rachel Aaron's Blog, page 16

Writing Wednesdays: How Long Should Your Story Be?

Woohoo! It's hump day. Time for another Writing Wednesdays post!

Today I'm talking about wordcounts and how I decide how long a book should be. First though, some announcements, starting with the most obvious, which is that the blog has been updated with a new look and features, including the badass Marci art that will soon be a cover for my Heartstriker sequel, ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER. Please let me know what you think or if there's anything else you'd like to see added. I'm in the process of updating my website to be at least 20% cooler, too. We're just upping the cool all around!

Second, awesome Fantasy author Lindsay Buroker asked me to come on the SFF Marketing Podcast, and I did! And it was great! Awesome questions covering 2k to 10k as well as my experiences with marketing my books both from my trad published side and my own efforts with my indie titles. I was also a giant nerd, but what else could you expect? It's me. \_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, you can listen or watch the whole thing for free here: SFFMP 32: Traditional Publishing, Indie Publishing, and Writing More Words Per Day with Rachel Aaron. 

Enjoy!

And now, without further ado, here's what you're actually (hopefully) here to read:

Writing Wednesdays: How Long Should Your Story Be?
Way back in the ancient times when I was first trying to break into publishing, there were hard and fast rules about how long a story should be (70k for Romance and Thrillers, 80-100k for Fantasy with a ceiling of 120k, etc.). The reason for this was because, back when every book was released in print, these were the word counts that let a publisher publish your book inside the acceptable printing cost to cover price ratio needed to make a profit.

Back in the days of print dominance, these strict word counts made a lot of sense even outside of a publisher's profit and loss sheets. Too long, and your book would cost too much to produce, which would in turn force up the cover price past what readers were willing to pay. Too short, and your book would look tiny on the shelf, creating the perception of a rip off (who wants to pay $6 for that pamphlet of a book?!).

But with the rising dominance of ebooks, hard word counts have become far less important. Longer books still cost more to produce since they just take longer to edit and proofread, but the production cost difference between a monster tome and a short quick read is much less of an issue than it used to be, especially if you're covering the cost of the book yourself. Also, since all books are now just links on a eReader, readers can't see them next to each other on the shelf, which eliminates the stigma against overly short or long books. Every book is judged equally by its title, cover, and blurb.

As writers, this shift away from the classic hard and fast rules on novel length gives us enormous freedom. Now, at last, we can focus on telling exactly the story we want in the best way possible without worrying if we're going over or under a limit. By that same turn, though, it's also enough rope to hang ourselves, because even though we don't have to worry so much about print lengths anymore (or at all if you're publishing in ebook only), there is definitely still a perception of how long a novel should be among readers.

This perception of what is or isn't an acceptable length for a novel varies by genre, and failing to fit inside it can lead to some nasty reviews, even from readers who loved your book otherwise. This is especially true with books that run too short, because when a reader pays for something, they expect to get their money's worth.

So how can we as writers avoid this problem? Well, the simplest solution is to just stick to the old word counts, the standardized lengths the publishing industry has been teaching readers to expect for decades. Personally, though, I hate the constraint of hard word counts. I believe that the word count should serve the story, not the other way around. That said, though, I'm a commercial writer. If I want to keep selling books (and I do), I have to write for my market, which means respecting what my readers want and expect when it comes to length.

So how do I balance the book length I want verses the book length they expect? Also, how can you tell if a story is a stand alone of it if needs to be multiple books? These aren't questions that have definitive answers, but, like everything in writing, determining the right balance for your book all comes down to skill, planning, and execution.

Step 1: Figure out how long your book is going to be, and if that's a problem.
When I sit down to write a new story, the very first thing I think about is how long it's going to be. Because I love to world build, I'll often come to a book with enough stuff to write something that's five or ten times larger than what I really need. Determining what belongs and what needs to stay in the background is where the art part of writing comes in. It's not really a question of can, but of should. Sure I can write more, but should I? Is adding more plot or information actually going to help my story, or it just going to drag it down?

These are calls that only I as the author can make, and I've found the best way to decide which of my ideas is worthy of making the cut into the final story is to try and think like a reader. I can't speak to you, but I know that for me, Writer!Rachel and Reader!Rachel have very different priorities. Writer!Rachel thinks all her ideas are awesome and can't wait to cram everything in, while Reader!Rachel just wants the story to move ahead at the speed of maximum excitement.

This is why, when I'm plotting a book, I always try to start at the barest minimum story needed to get from the beginning to the end. I can always add more scenes later, but the bones of the plot don't change. A note here; if you can't figure out which plot line or lines are your main story, that's a warning flag that your book might be rambling. An author has to know better than anyone what story exactly they're trying to tell, otherwise your book will be a mess. So if you're not sure, figure it out. You can always change your mind later.

Once I have the bare bones of my plot down, I try to figure out how many words I think it'll take to write just what I've got to determine the minimum length of my book. Now, obviously, the accounting here will vary enormously from writer to writer just based on style, so if you don't already have a good idea of how long your scenes run, I suggest going back to something you wrote earlier that you're proud of and figuring out your average scene length. Once you've got that, you can look at a plot, make a rough estimation of how many scenes it'll break down into, and then multiply by your average scene word count to get a very ballpark idea of how long the finished book will be. If that number is shorter than 100k, you can most likely fit everything you've got into a single book. If it's higher than 100k, you know you're going to end up with either a long book, or a book that might need to be split in half. Even with ebooks, unless you're writing epic fantasy, most readers are leery of 200k+ books, and publishers are VERY skeptical about taking them on. Even, if you're self publishing, books over 200k, or even 150k, can be a bad bet since you're going to be paying to edit what's essentially two books worth of content for only one title's worth of profit.

Considerations like this are why taking the time to consider your final word count before you start writing is so important. It is infinitely easier to cut/add scenes, or to break what you thought was going to be one book into two, before you've invested months of your time in the text. Even if you're a pantser instead of a plotter, taking a moment to critically think about what you'd like the final form of your story to look like can be the difference between finishing up with a novel that's spot on for where you want to be, and finishing up with a novel that you'll now have to fatten up or drastically cut down.

Step 2: Filling in the rest.
Now that I've got the bare bones of your book, it's time to flesh out the rest of me story. Again, this is a process that involves balancing my reader and writer minds. As always, Writer!Rachel has a million things she wants to add, but while that's exciting, the question I always try to ask is would Reader!Rachel care? Does all this extra stuff make the story more exciting/dramatic/engaging, or is it dead weight?

Again, making the call as to what scenes are writer ego and which are actually awesome is part of the art of being a good writer, and should always be carefully considered. Personally, I try to err on the side of less is more. Like Eli, my motto is "my stones have a 2 bird minimum," which means anything I put in my books has to serve at least two purposes. For example, if I have a character talk at length abut her backstory, those words have to do more than just tell her story. Whatever information she's revealing also needs to help build the larger world of the book, or foreshadow future plot events, or name drop other important characters in the setting. It can't just be a girl talking about her childhood. Or, rather, it can, but again, you've only got so many words in your book. Why waste them doing only one thing?

Help! My book's too long!
If your word count is bloating out of control, but you're not sure why, my advice is to step back and re-focus on the story you're telling right now in this book. Find your main plot line, and make sure it works. Everything else can be added or subtracted later, but your central story has to be coherent, clear, and properly executed if your book is going to be successful. Otherwise it's just a bunch of scenes in a line. Find your main plot and stick to it, cut anything else that's not pulling its weight.

If you do know your main plot, but you're still having trouble making it fit because you need to include way more background information than you have room for, that may be a sign you need to start your book earlier in the story of your world and actually show some of that backstory on the page. Or, if that doesn't work, you could just try starting with at a simpler point for your first book and save the huge complicated stuff for later in the series when your reader is more comfortable/invested.

Finally, if you've got a tight focus on your main story and your book is still larger than you think it should be, you can always go back through and tighten up the individual sentences. Even if you only cut 500 words per chapter, that's still 5k in a ten chapter book/10k from a twenty chapter book, not to mention doing this will often make your writing tighter and therefore better over all. I do this with every book I write.

And if all of those still aren't enough, it might just be time to embrace your larger book. :)

Help! My book's too short! I have to confess, this is an issue I don't generally have. As you might guess from my blog posts, excessive brevity is not my problem. That said, I've read several books that were way shorter than they felt like they should be, and every time, it was because the author made things too easy on their characters.

So if your book is coming in under where you feel it should be, look back and see if you can make life harder on your heroes. Make the bad guy smarter, make the barrier higher, give them bad luck. I'm not saying go overboard into full on sadism, but characters aren't in a book to have a good time. Suffering, struggle, and conflict are the soul of good plots and deep characters, so do whatever you can to make your characters fight for every inch within what's reasonable for your world, and not only will you end up with a better word count, you'll add real depth to your story.

Alternately, you can also expand your book by giving the villain and side characters more development. The trick to this is that the development has to go somewhere. You can't build a character up into someone we're really invested in and then have him go out like a punk. If you're going to get a reader invested, you have to make that investment pay off, or you're just wasting everyone's time. But if you can build up a character and make that pay off at the end (for example, humanizing a villain only to then have his own human weaknesses--such as an inability to let go of anger--be his ultimate downfall at the end), you'll come out with a really great addition to your book.

And again, if you try everything and your book's still too short, maybe you just wrote a novella, which is totally fine.

And that's it!
Thanks for reading! I hope these tricks I've learned help you write the book that's exactly the right length for your story and your market. Ultimately, though, whatever your final word count, the only thing that really matters is that you end up with a book you're proud of and readers will love. Sometimes, books just come out weirdly sized, and no matter what you do, you can't make them fit, and that's okay. So long as the story is good and the writing is tight, the length of the book is ultimately a secondary concern.

And thus concludes this week's Writing Wednesday! Come back next week for a new craft topic, and if you've got a specific issue you'd like me to cover, leave it in the comments below. If you missed a post, you can see them all by clicking the "Writing Wednesday" label (or the general "writing" label, which links to all my writing essays going back to 2012) at the bottom of this post.

Thank you as always for reading, and happy writing!
- Rachel

Writing Wednesdays: My POV on POVs - Whom to Use, and When

So, as you see, we're doing some big work on the blog. New posts, a tag system, more subscription options, all sorts of stuff! But the biggest thing we're adding is Writing Wednesday!

Now, instead of waiting weeks for me to fall out of my novel, I'll have new writing posts going up every Wednesday covering plot, characters, pacing, story structure, and pretty much anything else I've run into as a writer. Have a writing problem you'd like to talk about? Put it in the comments below! Today, by popular request, I'm talking about how I handle POV, so enough business. Let's get started!

Writing Wednesdays: My POV on POVs - Whom to Use, and When

(Note: If you don't know what a POV is, go here for a great breakdown.)

If you've ever read any of my Fantasy (especially my Eli Monpress books), you know I am the queen of multiple POVs. I love them. I love how they let you show the reader different parts of the story at different times to increase tension or give a different point of view. This is why the Paradox books drove me crazy sometimes, because it was in First Person, which felt like being stuck in a canyon. All this amazing stuff was going on in the background, and I couldn't jump over to show it. Let me tell you, it took a lot of narrative acrobatics to figure out how to fit all that stuff in without the luxury of POV switches.

Fortunately for me, third person writing (my favorite style) is all about the POV switch! That said, though, you can't go too crazy. POV switches are a powerful narrative tool, but each perspective you jump to adds a layer of complexity and weight to your novel, and that can get out of hand very quickly. So how do I decide when to jump POVs and when to stay? Or which character gets a POV and which stays to the side?


When I'm deciding on a POV character, my most important considerations are 1) who's got the most interesting viewpoint, and 2) information control. Obviously, you always want to describe a scene through the eyes of the character who's viewpoint is the most exciting for the reader. Think of your scene like a play. Your reader has done you the great honor of going to your show, are you going to stick them in the nosebleed section? Or behind the curtain with the catering? No! You want your reader in the front row, or even on the stage. Whatever POV is the best seat in the house, that's where you want your reader.

But sometimes you can't do this. Sometimes, the character who would otherwise have the most interesting view of a scene is off limits for you narratively because they simply know too much, and if we put the reader in their head, they'll give the whole game away. This is where my second consideration, information control, comes in.

Controlling how much the reader knows is vital to keeping the tension in a story. Your secrets (plot, world, and character) are your big reveals as an author. You can't just have characters blabbing about them and spoiling the surprise. Speaking from personal experience, I had a huge problem with this in my Eli Monpress books, and it's the reason Eli is the POV character in only about 40% of the scenes, despite being the titular character of the series. He simply knew too much about the secrets of the world. He was fine for some scenes, but there were situations in the book where, if I wrote them from his perspective, his natural train of thought as a character would give the whole game away, and all the mystery and tension I'd worked so hard to build up over multiple novels would fall flat. His entire thought process was a spoiler, basically, which made it almost impossible to give him the narrative POV in delicate scenes.

Getting around this problem is one of the main reasons The Legend of Eli Monpress employs such an enormous number of POV characters. In the first book alone, I had Eli, Miranda, Josef, both villains, the king, various spirits, a nameless child, and a rat. Oh, and I also had a scene in omniscient 3rd person where the POV watched two very big power players have a conversation like an invisible camera.

So, as you see, you have a lot of lot of options when it comes to POV. Personally, I'm a huge fan of going wherever I need to go to get the best story, which sometimes means picking some pretty weird POVs. I always try to show events from the most interesting light, and I'm not afraid to use out of the box view points to get there.

That said, though, employing multiple POVs, especially weird ones, can be a risky move. If you do it badly and confuse the reader, they'll put your book down faster you can say Stop!, and then you've lost them forever. Fortunately, it's actually pretty easy to write solid POV switches that won't piss off your readers by following a few simple guidelines.
1) Avoid head hopping. 
Seriously, people hate this. When readers gripe about POV, this is usually what they're talking about, and I can totally understand why. Head hopping happens when you shift POV inside a scene without breaking it first or giving the reader some kind of warning. You literally just "hop" into another head. I've read books where the POV was pinging between two characters having a conversation like they were playing tennis, sometimes even within the same paragraph, and it was horrible.

I try to avoid saying never do something in writing, because invariably, the second I say it, I'll read a book where the author pulled that exact thing off in spades. Good writing is entirely about execution, and literally nothing is off limits if you can do it well. THAT SAID, 99.9% of the time, head hopping is a terrible decision that will get you nothing but angry reviews, Not only is jumping back and forth between people's heads super confusing for your audience, it also weakens their personal connection to your characters since it ruins all sense of being inside someone's private thoughts. If you really think you can pull it off, more power to you, but my advice is to stay away.

2) If you're not going back to a POV character, don't give them a name.
I know this seems weird. If we're in someone's head, surely we must need to know who they are, right? But names represent heavy lifting for your audience. Readers feel like they need to remember named characters, which means you have to be careful with them lest your book start feeling like a quiz. Fortunately, very few minor characters actually need names.

For example, let's say you have a scene where a bystander witnesses something important, like a murder. If that character's only job in the book was to be a window for the reader, and they're never coming back except maybe as someone the MC interrogates later, then that character only needs a broad descriptor, like "the fisherwoman" or "the old man in the hat." Something you can give your reader as a quick identifying marker without making them remember yet another name. This sort of shorthand label identification is much easier on your readers, and that, in turn, makes them much more amiable to following your story through multiple POVs.

Of course, you could also just do the witness scene from 3rd person omniscient perspective (ie. the "floating eyeball" or "camera in the sky" perspective) and not worry about characters at all, but 3rd person omniscient is famously one of the hardest writing styles to pull off. It's super easy to mess up and write a movie voiceover of events instead of an actual scene readers will care about. I do employ 3rd omniscient in my novels, but my personal rule is that, if I'm writing more than a few paragraphs, I have to be in someone's head. But, again, this is a personal preference. If you feel you can ace 3rd omniscient, go for it!

3) If you do give a POV character a name, make sure they have at least two POV scenes. 
The logic here is the same as above. If you're going to ask your reader to invest in remembering the name of a POV character, it's a good idea to reward that investment with at least two scenes so they don't feel like they did all that memorization for nothing. The only time I don't follow this rule is when I'm writing POV scenes for very powerful, distant characters that the reader is SUPER EXCITED to learn more about. These POV scenes are rare treats, and if you play them up properly beforehand (and dole them out very infrequently to keep them special), your reader will gobble them up without any extra work on your part.

4) Avoid wild swings in writing style when switching POVs.
Changing your style between POVs is a classic gimmick to create distinct voices for your characters. Like every gimmick, though, it gets tired if you use it too much. This doesn't mean you shouldn't give each character their own distinct voice and personality, obviously, but if you're going to be switching POVs frequently, it's probably a good idea not to do one in a heavy Scottish brogue, one in second person, one in all caps, one in Ye Olde English, and so forth. Just use common sense and think of your reader first and you should be fine.

5) When possible, choose the POV character who knows the least/has the most to lose.
This is more of a trick than a rule, but a great way to feed information to your audience without resorting to an info dump is to choose a POV character who is as ignorant about the scene as the reader is. If you have a scene with two character, and you have a POV choice between a character who knows everything and a character who knows nothing, going with the person who's learning along with the reader is a fantastic, dead easy way to combine exposition with character development.

Likewise, if you want to make sure a scene is super exciting and tense, just tell it from the POV of the character who has the most on the line in the situation (for example, doing an execution scene from the POV of the character being executed). When you put your POV in the head of the character who's got the most to lose in a scene, not only do you get great tension, but that character's anxiety will transfer to the reader, giving you a super intense scene without you really having to do more than set up the stakes.

Both of these tricks are great ways to make your POVs do double duty in your novels. By being smart in your POV choices, you can turn what would otherwise be weighty narrative work (exposition, character introduction, world building) into a natural extension of the POV character's own internal learning and struggles. It's some serious author magic when it comes together. Highly recommended!

6) Save the omniscient POVs for special occasions.
I went over this briefly a few points up, but it bares mention again. Omniscient third person is a POV where you're not in anyone's head. The scene is presented as though we are an invisible eyeball, passively watching events unfold below. It's a great tactic if you want to show something huge that the characters would otherwise be unable to observe, like a fissure opening up beneath the Earth's crust, or a meeting between two gods who rule the universe.

Unfortunately, the very passive, impersonal nature that makes omniscient narration so great for showing big things makes it terrible at showing everything else. There's no investment, no character, and therefore, no engagement. It's a highly detached viewpoint, and that means your reader is detached as well, which can be really bad if pushed for long periods of time. Used wisely and sparingly, though, 3rd person omniscient is a great tool for showing your reader something the characters can't see/don't know, which is a tool every author needs in their arsenal.

And that's how I choose POV! I know all the above seems like a lot, but as one multi-POV addict to another, I've found following these guidelines allows me to employ an enormous range of alternating viewpoints without overloading my reader. As with everything in writing, POV is all about execution, but if you're clever and keep your reader in mind, you can get away with a stupidly enormous number of POVs without ever having a complaint.

And with that, we come to the end. I really hope you enjoyed the first of what (fingers crossed) will be many Writing Wednesdays! Again, if you have a question or a writing topic you'd like me to go into, please post it below. As always, thank you for reading, and happy writing!

- Rachel 

Romantic Times 2015 as a non-Romance writer - Why I went, and was it worth it?

Souvenirs! My husband asked me to bring him back
the most Texas thing I could find. Mission accomplished!If you were anywhere near my Twitter feed last week, you're probably more aware than you'd like to be that I was in Dallas, TX for the Romantic Times Book Lover's Convention, one of the biggest Romance genre conventions in the world. I didn't actually know that before I signed up because, ya know, I'm not a Romance author. Even FORTUNE'S PAWN, the most romantic of all my books, only has romance as a sub-plot, and my covers most definitely do not have pretty dresses, leather pants, or rock hard abs. So why did I, an SFF author, go to RT?

Well, in the beginning, I went because Ilona Andrews (whom I already owed a bar's worth of drinks for giving me a great review of FORTUNE'S PAWN on her blog) asked me to be on her Urban Fantasy panel. At that point, I was only vaguely aware of RT as a place where Romance authors went to have epic parties, but when Ilona Andrews asks you to be on a panel, you say yes. So of course, I accepted instantly, and then I scrambled off to the internet to find out what, exactly, I'd signed myself up for.
The answer was a lot more than I expected. RT started as a reader con, but these days it's more of a giant who's who in the Romance writing and publishing world. Everyone, and I do mean everyone--big NY publishers, small presses, self pubbers, Amazon's KDP team, NY Times mega bestsellers, readers, reviewers, fans, bloggers, book store reps, librarians--who has any connection to the Romance genre was packed into a giant hotel meeting and partying and moving through panels in a giant mass of networking fury. 
As a mid-list author who is only tangentially connected to Romance, this was a pretty intimidating world to dive into. Other than a few Twitter/email interactions, I knew no one there, and I was constantly worried no one would care about me or my books since, again, I'm only a "Romance Author" by the furthest stretch of the definition. Also, like any giant con, RT was expensive. 
Given all that, you can imagine how nervous I was, but I'm happy to report that my RT gamble paid off better than I could have hoped! It was absolutely worth the time and money for me both as an author and a Romance reader. I could gush for hours about all the awesome connections I made and the fun I had, but I think I've fangirled enough for one month, so here's the same information in useful bulleted list format.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO RT (for authors):The panels. I think what surprised me the most about RT was how amazingly awesome the panels were. I mean, most cons have decent panels, but these were absolutely stellar. They had panels for craft, marketing, social media, author branding, business, international rights, and a whole host of other topics all led by some of the biggest names in the business. I've been writing professionally since 2009, and I still took over 50 pages of notes, ten of which were from the Tension panel with Patricia Briggs alone. I can't remember the last time I learned so much in such a short period of time. My only regret is that I could only go to one panel at a time. I can't tell you how many times I wished I could split myself because there were two panels I wanted to go to happening at the same time.The networking. As I said, when I got to RT, I knew no one. This was not the case by the time I left four days later. I'm normally pretty nervous about striking up conversations with random strangers, but RT was hands down the friendliest con I've ever been to. Everyone is there to make new connections, and since most of the attendees are also authors and/or people in the publishing industry, you've got a guaranteed topic of conversation in books. Big pub, small pub, self pub: there was so much shop talk going on at all levels, it was pretty much impossible not to meet someone who was interested in your career. Also, if you've only met someone online, this is a great chance to meet them in person over dinner or drinks, and since most of these ladies are tons of fun, it doesn't even feel like work!Meeting other authors. This technically belongs under networking, but I felt it deserves its own segment because while it was great to meet industry people, the true shine of the con for me was getting to meet other authors socially. Writing can be a very lonely life, but when you go to RT, almost everyone you meet is a writer! Sit down at the bar? Writers everywhere! You can be waiting for an elevator and meet someone who not only has your dream writing career, but is happy to talk to you about it. That is GOLD!Getting to talk to Amazon directly. This probably isn't as exciting if you're not involved in self publishing, but one of my favorite panels was the one run by Amazon's head of author relations. The big A showed up at this con ready to rumble, and they put on an impressive show with six people from corporate representing KDP, CreateSpace, and ACX. They didn't give us any truly juicy information (this is Amazon, after all), but they were clearly listening to author concerns and responded with some surprisingly honest and insightful replies. For example, when I asked why can't Amazon show me life time sales, one of the KDP programmers, who was just siting in the audience, piped up and said they were aware of the issue, that it was their fault, and they were working on it, but that it was a big data problem and probably would not be addressed soon. That might not sound like much, but considering it's Amazon, it was way more info than I was expecting. Also, he'd seen and liked the website my husband built to convert KDP spreadsheets into readable graphs! Nerd out!!The exposure. I did two panels over my 4 days at RT, and I was sitting beside Linnea Sinclair, Ilona Andrews, Kresley Cole, Chloe Neill, and Jennifer Estep among others. At the Urban Fantasy panel, I was literally the only non-NYT Bestseller up there, and it was amazing. First of all, it was fantastic getting to speak to all their fans (who are awesome and I hope would become my fans), but even if I didn't convert a single reader....I was sitting at a table with names from my Kindle! These are the ladies who write the books I read for fun! Getting to be up there with them was one of the single coolest experience of my life, and the fact that everyone was so knowledgeable and funny and smart and nice only made it better. Even if you don't get on a panel yourself, the audiences are pretty small, which gives you the chance to talk to the panelists one on one, It really was great.It's freaking fun. THIS CAN NOT BE OVERSTATED. LOOK AT THIS PICTURE: 

.@SmartBitches invited me for coffee, gave me a tiara & loved Nice Dragons! Pretty sure this means I owe her my life pic.twitter.com/kXoYmyachF— Rachel Aaron/Bach (@Rachel_Aaron) May 16, 2015

Are these the smiles of people at a work convention? YES, YES THEY ARE.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO RT (for readers):Do you read romance? Go. Seriously, go. I'm a big Romance reader in my free time, and the fan girl level was off the hook. Your favorite authors are everywhere. I mean, I went to a signing event just to get some my books signed and ended up eating dinner with Tessa Dare! It does not get cooler than that. 

Went out to dinner w/ @TessaDare!! Another fangirl life goal achieved!! (at this rate, my plane home will crash) pic.twitter.com/1f1QEtyTXM— Rachel Aaron/Bach (@Rachel_Aaron) May 16, 2015

Now, of course, all of the above assumes you write/are interested in Romantic Fiction. If you don't, I'm sure all of this isn't as exciting to you as it was for me. So, in the spirit of fairness, let's talk about some of the downsides of RT.
WHY RT MIGHT NOT BE FOR YOU:If you don't write love stories, you're probably wasting your time. This isn't to say you have to write Romance capital R to enjoy RT. Like I said, my books are love stories in subplot alone. Still, this is a Romance convention, and Romance readers, though amazingly open in their reading choices, generally want a love story of some sort, so if that's not you, you won't get as much out of RT as an author who writes in the Romance spectrum.It's expensive. This was the #1 complaint I heard about RT. Since it's a professional convention, everyone, even the big names, has to pay to attend. They give you a discount if you're on a panel, but it's still not cheap at a few hundred bucks. Add in airfare, food, and multiple nights at a nice hotel, and the cost adds up quick. I still think it's money well spent, but if you're on a budget, this could definitely be an issue.It's very very VERY social. To get the most out of the networking side of RT, you have to be willing to take the initiative and strike up conversations. Now, I'm an extrovert who talks all the time, so I had no problem with this, but if you're shy or if the thought of meeting lots of people terrifies you, RT will be extremely stressful. I'm not saying you still won't enjoy the panels, but the social half of RT might be more pain than it's worth in your case.It's not really a reader/fan con. There are readers and fans in attendance, but from what I saw, 75% of the people at the con were authors or aspiring authors. That's great for networking and meeting new industry friends, but not so good if your primary goal is to meet or make fans. I don't really think this is a problem since there are plenty of other, non-industry conventions that focus exclusively on readers, but I was surprised by just how writer focused RT was. So, you know, keep that in mind. (That said, if you are going as a Reader/Blogger/Reviewer, this means the con is even more amazing since everyone wants to talk to you and give you free stuff!!)So that's the skinny on RT from the perspective of a mid-list, non-Romance writer. As someone who has her toes in both the self-pub and trad-pub ponds, I think I was in the absolute perfect position to get the most out of this con. The Romance genre is about five years ahead of the rest of the industry when it comes to self publishing, and I learned a lot from listening to the authors there. Smart, smart ladies.
I started this blog in the spirit of sharing my experiences in the hopes that what I learn can help other authors down the line, and that's what this is, too. Whether or not conventions are worth the time and money they take to attend is a question every author has to answer eventually. For me, though, RT was a win. Will I go again? Absolutely. Should you pay to go? Well, selfishly I'd say yes since, if you read my blog, I want to meet you!! Really, though, whether or not RT works for you depends on your situation. If you're a reader who doesn't care about Romance, obviously it's a waste of time. But if you're an author who, like me, writes books with crossover potential into Romance, it could be an amazing experience.
I hope all of this gushing helps you make an informed decision, or at least gets you excited about a freaking fun convention! Good luck to you all, and happy writing/reading!
Yours,Rachel

Heartstrikers #2 is FINISHED! (Plus where to find me at RT 2015 and other announcements)

First things first, ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER, the sequel to NICE DRAGONS FINISH LAST, is finally done and with the editor!


I still have to actually get the edited manuscript back, make my changes, send it back for copy edits, and then send it to beta readers before the book is ready to come out, but the hard part is over! My aim is to have the book out before the end of summer. I'll post a real date as soon as I know.

I really can not tell you all how excited I am to finally be done with this book. After a YEAR of failing forward, I finally have a novel I am proud of and I know you guys are gonna love. Also, Marci is MVP of the year in this. GO MARCI!

Yes, those cats are plot. Are you excited? CAUSE I'M EXCITED!
In other news, I'm going to be at Romantic Times 2015!
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but with RT just around the corner (as in Wednesday), I thought I'd be good to remind everyone that I'm going to be a guest! Here are the two panels I'm doing:

SCI-FI: COOTIES IN SPACE — How to Keep the Romance Without Losing the Rocketships!
Does sexual tension negate the science? Or can passion and physics coexist? How can authors create intimate relationships in the midst of high-tech, otherworldly science fiction settings — and keep readers of both genres turning pages? Beam up to this panel and find out!

Event Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2015 - 1:15pm to 2:15pm
Captain: Linnea Sinclair
Panelist(s): Rachel Aaron (aka Rachel Bach), Donna Frelick, Monette Michaels (aka Rae Morgan), Sabine Priestley, M. D. Waters
Location: Atrium Level (2nd Floor)
Room: Bryan-Beeman B


PARANORMAL: Happily Forever After — Writing Beyond the Kiss
We all know the story: the hero and heroine fall in love and overcome impossible odds. Finally their love triumphs, they kiss — and then what? With supernatural creatures having such long lifespans, and in some cases being immortal, how do you keep relationships and adventures fresh after that big kiss?

Event Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2015 - 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Captain: Ilona Andrews (aka Ilona and Gordon Andrews)
Panelist(s): Rachel Aaron (aka Rachel Bach), Kresley Cole, Jennifer Estep, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Chloe Neill, Kerrelyn Sparks
Location: Atrium Level (2nd Floor)
Room: Gaston

Why yes, that is me doing a panel with FREAKING IILONA ANDREWS AND KRESLEY COLE! It will be a struggle to talk through the epic fangirl meltdown I'll be having, but I'm going to try.

In addition to these two big official events, I'm also going to be at the book sale and doing one of the meet and greet sessions (UPDATE: I'll be at Fan-Tastic Day on Saturday from 6:15pm to 6:50pm).

I'll also be just, you know, going to the con! So if you're there as well, and you'd like to hang out and have fun/talk shop/whatever, just tweet me and we'll find each other! I'm going to be at the con from Weds to Sunday, so I'll probably be lost and alone. Come be my friend!

And finally, our online tool for making monthly KDP reports actually readable, KDP Plus, has been upgraded and now has its own website!

This was originally a tool my programmer husband made for himself so he could translate my KDP spreadsheets into a format we could actually read/use. It worked so well that we decided to put it online so others could use it, too!

We're still adding features, but right now KDP Plus lets you upload the monthly report spreadsheets you get from Amazon and then see all those numbers translated into readable, interactive graphs that show you things like total lifetime sales by title and how much total money you've made. You know, all that VITAL INFORMATION Amazon should just give you.

So if you're an author who publishes through Amazon, give it a try and let us know what you think! It's free and you don't even have to make an account, so why not?



And that's it for updates! I'm finally free of writing crisis mode, so expect a lot of blog posts in the future. See you all at RT!

Where to Start Your Story

FINALLY! A craft post! Allons-y!



Way way back in the halcyon days of last November, someone on my yearly NaNo thread asked me "where do you start your story?" I love this question for a lot of reasons, but mostly because 1) there are so many different places to start any story, and 2) different starts can create entirely different reading experiences, even if the basic plot is the same.
One of the first things I think about when I sit down to actually plot a book is where I'm going to start. As a general rule, the best place to start your story is always wherever things get interesting,  BUT (and here's where it gets cool), "where things get interesting" can vary enormously depending on your audience/genre.
Take this plot I just made up:
When she was nine, Mary's family was eaten in a dragon raid. Swearing revenge, she tracks down a knight of the Sacred Order of Dragon Hunters and demands to join. After saying no many times, the knight eventually gives in and agrees to train her. Many years later, Mary has become an amazing Dragon Hunter and is ready to avenge her parents. But when she finally enters the cave of the dragon who took her family so long ago, she discovers everything she thought she knew is wrong, and the real monsters are the ones she never suspected.
Exciting stuff! Now, where would you start this story? There are a lot of good, exciting spots, many of which could work, but which spot is best depends entirely on what kind of story you want to tell.
For example, if I wanted to write a YA, I'd start when the wounded and determined child Mary approaches the knight and demands he teach her to hunt dragons, and then show how she never gives up even when he says no. Once he eventually gives in, I'd show her training and have her finally get to the dragon cave for the mid-book climax, where I'd turn everything on it's head.
On the other hand, if I wanted to write a gritty, dark fantasy about a woman on a path of bloody revenge, I would jump way ahead and start when Mary is already a professional Dragon Hunter doing her final prep for the hunt she's been training her whole life for, only to get in and realize that everything she's assumed up until now is wrong, and things are much darker and more dangerous than simple dragon killing.
Or, if I wanted to play this plot as a straight up Fantasy romance, I could even start the book at the moment when she enters the dragon cave and discovers the dragon she's been training her whole life to kill is actually a super hot dude who's never even heard of her parents and the whole thing was a set up and now they have to work together to find the true killers.
All of these stories would have the same basic set-up plot: girl loses parents to dragon, girl learns dragon hunting for revenge, girl goes to kill dragon and things go wrong. In execution, however, these stories are in fact wildly different in everything from tone to the end secret. All of the above are valid entry points for their particular versions of the story, but what I'm really trying to get across here is that the beginning of a story is not a fixed point. Where you enter a novel depends as much on your audience and what kind of story you're trying to tell as it does on plot.
This isn't to say opening with a hook isn't important. It's vital! Think of the last time you picked up an unknown book. Did you keep reading if the opening page was boring? What about the opening paragraph? Of course not. You put that sucker down, and rightfully so, because the author failed to hook you. This is why asking questions like "where should I start my novel?" is so important, because if you can't keep a reader past the first page, they're not going to be your reader.
Again, though, see above. Not all hooks are the same for all genres and readers. A young girl struggling with the impotent rage of seeing her parents eaten by dragons is a powerful opening, but only if that's the tone you're going for in your book. What's gripping for a gritty Fantasy might turn off readers who're here for a lighthearted dragon/dragon hunter romance and vice-versa. This is another reason why it's so important to know your genre before you start writing. Being published means writing for an audience, and the more you know about how to entertain and hook that audience, the more successful and happy your career will be.
I know all of this seems like a lot to think about for something as simple as an opening scene. Personally, I didn't really start thinking about this stuff until I was multiple novels into my career. I simply wrote what felt like a natural beginning and worked from there. That's not a bad way to write, especially if you have good story instincts, but it can't possibly match the level of control and finesse that comes from actually knowing and thinking about what you're doing.
Good novels don't happen by accident. They are a string of conscious, considered choices. Writing is work, and like any work, the more thought and finesse and skill you put into it, the better the end product becomes.
I hope this post helps you find new ways to think about how best to begin your own books! As always, thank you for reading, and I wish you nothing but the best of luck in your writing journey!
Yours,Rachel 

NICE DRAGONS FINISH LAST now available in print!

You asked and, after a lot of fudging around to make it look as perfect as possible, I delivered! Nice Dragons Finish Last is now available as a print edition!

Click to see in full glory! (And thank you to my husband for being the hand model!)As you can see, these are trade paperback sized with a smooth matte cover and clean black printing on white pages for maximum readability. They came out even better than I expected and I absolutely love them! (And I hope you will, too!)

Also, for fans of my Legend of Eli Monpress series, the final book, Spirit's End , is now available in audio! I know, I know, that cover. Still, the narration is amazing (as always) and I can't tell you how delighted I am to finally have the audio book version of the series complete.

As always, thank you all so much for reading. I hope you enjoy these new versions, and fingers crossed I'll be able to announce the release of the second Heartstriker book, One Good Dragon Deserves Another, soon!

Until next time, I remain your friendly neighborhood Spiderman author,
Rachel Aaron/Bach

PS: For those of you wondering where the blog content has gone, it's been eaten by dragons! Getting Heartstrikers #2 out ASAP is my first priority at the moment, but I am in the home stretch. Once I get the book out to my editor/betas, I promise the writing articles will flow again!

Thank you all, and hearts forever!
-R

Kindle Big Deal vs Bookbub

Good news, everyone!

Yesterday, I got an email from Amazon offering Nice Dragons Finish Last a potential spot in the upcoming Kindle Big Deal. I participated once before in November, and we were generally happy with the results, so I was excited to do it again. BUT (you knew that was coming, right?) there was a catch this time, because with the second dragons book nearly ready to go (yay!), I'd been aiming to apply for a Bookbub ad during this same period.

At the moment, Bookbub is considered the gold standard in book advertising if you're self-published, or even traditionally published given how many NY titles they feature, but it's expensive and tricky to get in. There are no guarantees they'll accept you. Also, if you're going to do a Bookbub ad, your book can't have gone on sale for a lower price during a set period of time before your Bookbub ad, which would pretty much write out participating in the Kindle Big Deal.

Now, I realize of course that this situation is an embarrassment of riches. I am exceedingly lucky to have a good chance at participating in either of these promotions, let alone both. Luck aside, though, I still had to make a decision, so I did what I always do in times of overwhelming detail: I turned to my husband, business manager, and all around amazing dude Travis and asked him to look at the numbers and figure out the best strategy.

I expected a simple yes or no answer. As usual, though, Travis blew me away, sending me an amazing email chock full of information and graphs! (Can you see why I married him?!) The email was actually so good, I asked him to turn it into a guest blog post because 1) I thought you guys would be interested to see some real world book advertising results/decisions, and 2) the post I was going to write on managing multiple POVs in a novel is only a third done and it's already Thursday.

I know the blog has been pretty business heavy of late, but hey! Writing is a business. I promise we'll get back to the craft posts soon, but for now, here is Travis to give you an inside look at the kind of business decisions you have to make as a working author (and save my blogging bacon).

Take it away, love!



First, thank you for all the concern and well-wishing for my health. Its been a harsh winter of hospital visits for me. I'm getting better, though! Definitely hoping for no more ER visits this year. Any more and we're going to start wondering if I'm under a gypsy curse or something. I didn't withhold my bread from any old women in forests, I swear!

Anyway, today Rachel told me that she's been offered participation in the April Kindle Big Deal. This is pretty awesome, but I've been wanting to try out Bookbub as well. So, in the spirit of this blog (showing how the sausage is made), I'd like to share with you all the business analysis and decision making process Rachel and I went through and which marketing venue we ultimately decided to go with. No details will be spared, you've been warned ^_^.

First consideration - Can we have our cake and eat it too?I think doing both Bookbub and the Big Deal at the same time is a bad idea. It would be super hard or impossible to set things up such that we could tell how many sales were contributed from the one or the other. Since we have never done Bookbub, this would make it so that we get almost no data and waste a precious evaluation chance. The next time I wanted to promote, I'd have no idea if Bookbub had worked or not.

And....that's pretty much the death of attempting to do both simultaneously, or even close together. To get good data, I need prices to be regular for at least a month before running a sale. Also, I don't think it's good for a book to be on sale all the time. Its not fair to people who buy at regular price and it calls into question the true price of the book.

So, its gonna have to be one or the other. For spring anyway.

Second Consideration - Basic Pros and Cons
Kindle Big Deal Pros: FREE, huge audience, long duration (1 month), done it before (ie.. we have real data)
Cons: Possible audience saturation, offer of participation does not guarantee actual acceptance in the sale, past performance doesn't determine future performance, we're locked into KDP that much longer, we don't set the pricing, happens at a specific time (April which might be awkward)

Bookbub
Pros: We set pricing, we have influence over the promotion window, fairly solid known results, hopefully reaches some new people than our usual Amazon audience.
Cons: Might not get accepted, costs money (there's risk), never done it before (no data)

This comparison is what made me question whether or not we should do the Kindle Big Deal this time around. My gut feeling was the Bookbub might be a better use of our time. I've heard so many great things about it, after all. In the end, though, a pro and con list isn't very objective since even one great pro could outweigh many small cons. Its hard to tell which are going to be which.

At this point, Rachel and I needed to talk strategy. Were we cool with staying in KDP until summer? Turns out the answer is, "yes". We both agree that KU borrows are still too important for the book's sales rank to lose. We'd give up about $500/month if we gave up KU. Given that B&N + Kobo amounted for only about $150/month (during release month, no less), it doesn't seem wise to go there yet.

(I feel that eventually we will need to pay the price of cultivating a solid selling presence on the other venues like Barnes and Nobel, Kobo, iBookstore, etc. I resent it, though. I personally feel that those markets should do a better job of promoting books.)

We also discussed sale pricing. Amazon could mark the book down to $0.99 or $1.99 or whatever. The lack of control there is an element of risk. If Amazon puts the book for $0.99, we'd have to sell almost 5x the volume lest we lose money on the deal. With Bookbub, we don't have this worry as we would pick the sale price that would get us the best return on investment.

Sadly, I don't have good data yet on how a sale on book #1 affects books #2 and so on. Its hard for me to determine the long tail effect and that's the kind of info I want going into a situation where we might lose money. Ultimately though, the sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last will hopefully be out by April and we will care more about the volume of books sold by a sale than by how much it earned.

So what about the volume potential of each? Time for NUMBERS! (My favorite)

Third Consideration - How many books do we think each sale will move?After the above, it's clear the question of "How many books did the last Kindle Big Deal sell?" has become critical to the discussion.

This is right up my alley, fortunately. First, I looked at our KDP reports (using a handy free KDP graph making tool some awesome programmer built ^_~). The last Kindle Big Deal ran from Nov 7th to Nov 23rd.

(click to enlarge)
You can easily see that November is not like the other months. This is great, but I wanted to know how many more books we sold because of the KBD. I noticed that each month, sales were generally falling by ~50%. This is a nice, predictable, curve and I used it to get my number. So, I came up with a simple extrapolation to remove the sale's benefits.

Is this perfect? Well, no, but it shows two interesting things.
1) KBD resulted in roughly 2700 additional net sales and borrows than we would have otherwise not made.
2) The extra visibility generated by the sale provided a faint, but tangible, overall boost in sales for the two months following.

These are the kinds of relationships that you just can't get without rolling around in the numbers and looking at everything you can. I'm very pleased to have found this tid-bit.

Lastly, I brought up the day-by-day sales data that I'd saved back then. Here's the rather interesting chart that came out of it.
This made me all big-eyed O_O. Normally KU borrows run about 50% of total volume. Here we could see that borrows barely went up at all during the sale. Its safe to say that nearly all (80-90%) of those 2700 extra books were sales, not borrows! Though, at $1.99 the difference between a sale and a borrow is about $0.09 depending on Amazon's whimsical KDP payout system.

Still, fascinating stuff!

On to Bookbub!Since we don't have any personal data from Bookbub yet, we were forced to use what they so kindly provide. I can't tell you how badly I wish that this kind of info was standard issue for every book promotion site. But ALAS, there's no urban fantasy category.... So I decided to run the numbers on a Science Fiction promotion. I hope I'm not horribly wrong!
We're looking at a $1.99 promotion for our comparison. The important numbers provided by Bookbub for this are,

Listing Cost: $600
Average Number of Books Sold: 1,620
Range of Books Sold: 260 to 4,200

Now, I figure that Bookbub promotions might have a higher KU borrow rate since it reaches a more diverse audience than the Kindle Big Deal does. This is just a guess, I could be really wrong. For our scenario, though, the borrow rate doesn't make a very big difference, so I'm not worried.

What I really want to know is how many books are 'lost' to the listing cost for getting onto Bookbub (ie, how many books would we have to sell to cover the $600 cost and still net out). If I know this number, then I can determine how it'll stack up to KBD. Though things are already not looking good.

Here's my logic,
So an estimated 441 books to break even when running a $1.99 sale. In order for Boobbub to be 'better' than KBD, it needs to present a solid chance at selling more books. Since it starts at -441 books just to cover the fees, that's basically 2700 + 441 = 3141 books just to be "as effective" as the free to participate Kindle Big Deal.

I'm pretty sure the ranges given by Bookbub are statistical bell curves. This means that probably only 2-4% of people sell only 260 books or 4200 books. People who sell less than 260 or more than 4200 are likely in the less than 1% range. (Remember, this isn't a free book Bookbub promotion, those can move tens of thousands of books).

Remember, for Bookbub to compete with the KBD, we need to sell at least 3141 books. If we assume Nice Dragons is not a special snowflake (always a good assumption) and will perform along the "average" curve of a Bookbub promoted title, that means we have a less than 10% of selling enough books to beat out the KBD. Statistically speaking, it's not looking good.

Rachel Note: One thing Trav doesn't mention here is the Amazon rank advantage of Bookbub, which gives you all your sales in one day, thus spiking your rank, vs. the KBD, which spreads sales out over a month. Given this, my gut instinct is that Bookbub actually sells more books than is reported above given the visibility boost of a low rank. I've seen plenty of books who got to the top 100 thanks to a Bookbub promo and just stayed there thanks to the power of the Amazon algos. But these stories are anecdotal and I have no data to back them up, so we can't really use them in a numbers analysis. Still, just wanted to throw that out there!

The Last Consideration - Duration and EarningsEach Bookbub ad email is only sent out once, but there's also an ad that hangs around for some time on the Bookbub website. We're comparing the sale effectiveness from a 21 day promotion vs a 1-shot + some days promotion. Bookbub sells more per day than KBD probably can, that much seems evident in our data.
Duration of the individual sale doesn't really matter so much to us right now, though. Most avertising sites require 60-days since the last sale to consider you for promotion. This large time blocking is what started this whole analysis in the first place.
There is one concern, though. There's a big earnings difference between $1.99 for 7 days and $1.99 for 21 days. Despite extra volume, its pretty easy to lose money when royalties go from $3.49 per sale to $1.39 per sale. As I mentioned before, I want to know what I'm paying for and, possibly, what it bought. At this point, I think I've figured out what I'm paying for, so the last consideration would be the hidden costs of running these promotions.
Unfortunately, I've not really been able to figure this part out. Thankfully, in this case, I don't really need to.
What I do know is that in November 2014, Nice Dragons earned about $2500 more than it should have. Our monthly Nice Dragon's earnings chart looks just like that KDPplus chart I showed you earlier. There's this smooth downward curve and then - BUMP - up shoots November.
That KBD is profitable is not a question to me. What IS a question is do I think Bookbub can do better? (ie, what's the opportunity cost of choosing one over the other?)
Again, I compare what is likely to happen and see how I feel about the odds. Will KBD earn another $2500 profit? I don't know. Will Bookbub earn what I guess it will earn? I don't know. But what I can calculate is what we'd have to sell. The Bookbub promotion has to make up for 3 costs:

$600 listing cost~$200 lost to regular sales that are discounted for a week$2500 as our hopeful earning potential for a KBD promotion.
That's ~2600 extra books, which is close-ish to the 1600 books Bookbub's site lists as the average number of sales for the SF genre. Even so, we'd have to outperform the average pretty solidly to make Bookbub better, and while I believe in Rachel's books, statistically speaking it's just unlikely to happen, which is a pity.

The Final DecisionIn the end, we've decided to go with another Kindle Big Deal this time. Do I lament waiting longer to try Bookbub? Of course. Right now, though, we can't really afford to gamble. There's so many "mights" and "possiblies" and "if things go really well" with the Bookbub scenario compared to the KBD scenario that it just can't hold up.

Maybe we're giving up on something that would have been really awesome. Maybe, if we try and get into Bookbub in the summer or fall, we'll get crazy sales and discover we were fools to make this post and these decisions. I can only hope.

In the meantime, though, we've thoroughly weighed all our options and we've combed through as much data to make the best educated guesses we possibly can. I feel confident that, even if we don't make the optimal decision, we're still making an informed and well-considered one, which is the best we can hope for.

Rachel again! Thanks to Travis for writing all this and thanks to you for reading it! I hope you enjoyed the numbers and analysis. I'll be back next week with that post on POV management (one of my favorite topics, as anyone who's read my books can tell you). 

Until then, I remain your friendly neighborhood writer,
Rachel 

Writers and Money Part 3

Sorry for the long delay! I really meant to push these out in a series, but my writing's been going really well lately, so I was loathe to leave the writing cave. BUT, I'm back now, so let's talk mon-neh!

For those of you just tuning in, this is the final installment of a three part series about writers and money. In Part 1, I talked about how authors make money in the traditional, advance paying publishing system. In Part 2, I talked about self-publishing money. Now, for Part 3, we're going to talk about what you actually need to do with that income, wherever it comes from, in order to make a full time living as a writer. So, without further ado, here's

Writers and Money Part 3: Taxes, Quitting the Day Job, and the Realities of Making a Living as a Full Time Writer


As the meme dog would suggest, here are some DISCLAIMERS!

1) Everything below is written in the spirit of sharing information, not as iron clad rules. I'm not actually a financial adviser (or a dog), and as such I can only speak from my own experience, which is almost certainly going to be different from yours. With that in mind, PLEASE don't make any major financial, career, or tax decisions based purely off what you read here.

2) All the tax advice below is written from the American perspective, and as such might not be relevant in your country. That said, wherever you live, if you are making any sort of significant income off your creative work and you have a specific tax question, TALK TO AN ACCOUNTANT. Yes, they're expensive, but knowing this stuff is their job, and that's worth paying for.

Okay, now that we've established that you're not going to run off and reorder your financial future based off a single blog post, let's get to the good stuff.


As we discussed in parts 1 and 2 of this series, it's totally possible to make a living as a writer. I've been doing so off a mix of traditional and self-publishing income since 2008, and am now the sole income earner in my family. How did I get to this point? Planning. Lots and lots of planning.

As we've discussed previously, writing money isn't like other forms of income. Depending on how you choose to publish, when your books come out, and how your sales are doing, it's completely possible to have a year where you make a hundred thousand dollars followed by a year where you make nothing at all. I have had years since I went pro where I made $0 because of how the advance schedule worked out. Needless to say, those years were terrifying, but you can make it work with proper preparation. Here's how:

Step 1: Think Yearly, not Monthly
Unlike normal jobs with regular paychecks, writing money comes in like confetti. Most of the time you don't even know how much you're getting paid until the check/deposit comes in. This irregularity can be insanely frustrating if you're trying to support a household, but my husband and I have found that thinking about your budget in terms of the whole year, rather than month to month, makes a huge difference in our ability to weather the feast and famine nature of writing income.

For example, say you get a $20,000 advance check. If you're thinking monthly, that feels like SO MUCH MONEY!! If you're thinking yearly, though, it puts that check in the proper perspective, because chances are you're going to have to make that $20,000 last, which leads us to step 2.

Step 2: Know How Much You Spend
This is the first step of any financial planning. In order to know how to handle your money, you need to know how much you spend. We're not talking bare bones, "I could live on this if I had to" either. Realistic financial planing requires realistic expectations, so I suggest going to your online banking and taking an average of the last year to see what a normal year looks like for you and your family financially.

Also, since we're thinking yearly, not monthly, you're going to want to include large, one time expenditures like car/house repairs and emergencies in your yearly estimates. Disasters might not seem like something you can budget for, but chances are that something is going to happen in a year, and you don't want one emergency to torpedo your entire year, which leads us to step 3.

Step 3: Create an Emergency Fund
How big an emergency fund will depend on your personal circumstances, but the number one way to keep little emergencies from becoming crushing debts is to set money aside just for covering all of life's unexpected expenses -- medical bills, car repairs, emergency trips to see relatives, and so on.

If you're living on the edge already, an emergency fund might feel like a luxury, especially since credit cards can cover just about anything unexpected, but trust me on this. My emergency fund has saved my writing career at least twice now. If I'd put those costs on my credit card, the extra burden of paying it back with interest would have sent me back to my day job.

But Rachel, I'm not making a living off my writing yet. Do I still have to do all this stuff?
YES. Unless you write a runaway bestseller that makes millions (the writing equivalent of winning the lottery), how well prepared you are financially is the make or break factor in becoming a full time writer. If your dream is to work for yourself and make a living off your stories, then you have to treat your writing like a business, and every successful business has a budget.

Even if you're only making a tiny amount off your stories right now, using those dollars to make yourself more financially stable instead of just spending them is making a real investment in your career. It's all part of taking yourself seriously as a writer.

Thinking Like a Business Owner

All writers, whether you're self-published or being paid by a publisher, are essentially small businesses. Even if your books are bought by a publisher, that publisher is not your employer. They are under no obligation to pay your insurance, your taxes, or your unemployment. Legally, you're an independent contractor selling the rights to a product you created.

This is a very important way of thinking for a writer, and not just financially. I know plenty of writers who consider their editor as their boss, but your editor is NOT your boss. They're your client. You are selling them the right to your product, which they are buying to refine and resell. Because of this, it's often in your best interest to try and make your editor happy, but at the end of the day, you are your own boss. You determine your schedule, how many hours you work, and how you use your time. You determine the quality of your end product and what you create next. This self-employed mindset only gets more important when you're self-publishing and you have to take on even more boss-like aspects like budgeting to hire an artist to do your covers or paying for advertising.

If all that sounds a little overwhelming, that's because it is. Working for yourself is a marvelous and terrifying freedom, but--unless you're lucky enough to be independently wealthy already or have a spouse who totally supports you--it's a skill you have to master if your dream is to be a full time writer. That said, if you're mature enough to complete a novel, you're mature enough to learn how to be your own boss. It does take some learning, though, especially if you've always worked for others.

Probably the hardest transition for me was going from a workplace where I had a boss holding me accountable to working at home. I don't have to tell you how easy it is to piss the hours away when you're home alone, but you can't let that happen. Now more than ever, you have to remember your great dream of being a real, full time writer, and real, full time writers write. They might not write all the time, being your own business also means doing your own business overhead, like emails and so forth, but a successful writer always makes the time to write.  

One of the biggest pieces of advice new writers get is "be professional" and "treat your writing like a business." Important as this advice is at the beginning, it only gets more critical as writing really does become your profession. So if your dream is to be a full time writer, or if you already are a full time writer and you're struggling like I was, the best advice I can give you is the same advice you heard when you were starting out: be professional. Treat your writing like a business. You wouldn't take a five hour break to play Warcraft in the middle of your office job, don't do it at your writing job. Treat your time like you're still getting paid by the hour, and don't let others take it away. Friends and relatives might think you have a lot of free time since you're working from home, but it's up to you to protect your writing time more viciously than ever. Your dream career depends on it.

Writing Money and Taxes
Now that we've established that writers are basically small businesses, it's time for that most business-y topic of all: taxes. Fortunately, my advice on this topic is so short, it can be summed up in two bullet points:

Save 50% of your writing income for taxes.If you can possibly afford one, hire an accountant.
I know it sounds crazy, but "save 50% of your writing income for taxes" is the single best piece of writing advice I've ever received. The reason you have to save so much, even if your tax bracket is low, is because, once again, you are a small business. You don't have a boss withholding your taxes, or paying half of your unemployment/social security. When writing money comes in, that's gross income, which means you're going to have to pay taxes on it.

For example, I had one year where I had to write a check to the US government for $14,000. FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, in ONE CHECK! If I hadn't known ahead of time to save that money, I'd still be paying that tax bill with interest. This is why you save, because you never know what those taxes will be until you get your forms. Saving 50% is a sure fire way make sure you have enough, and it's not like that money's gone forever. Once April is over and your taxes are paid, any left over money is yours to spend as you like. Until then, though, keeping it off limits will make sure you don't accidentally spend your tax money and screw yourself.

So, that's why you save, but why do you need an accountant? Well, as you might have guessed from the above, paying taxes as a person who works for herself is a lot more complicated than filling out a W2. Even if all your money is coming from a single publisher, or just Amazon, it will probably still fall under multiple different sections of the tax code. So, if you don't want to have to learn the tax code inside and out yourself, you are going to need a professional to help you out.

Now, obviously, you don't want to hire an accountant if your writing money isn't enough yet to cover their fee. Paying $400 to an accountant to handle $150 worth of writing income is just silly. But if you are making significant writing money, a knowledgeable accountant is worth their weight in gold. As a small business, there are a lot of tax options and deductions available to you that individuals can't claim. Your accountant might advise you to pay quarterly taxes instead of yearly, or they might suggest you form a one person corporation if the corporate tax rate in your state is better than the individual income rate.

If all of that made your head swim, congratulations. You now see the value of a good accountant! If you've never had an accountant before, don't be afraid to visit several offices until you find one that you're comfortable with. An accountant is a business asset, don't use one you don't like or trust. You can always switch accountants next year if you don't like him or her, or ditch the accountant all together if you're confident you know what you're doing. But if you're a new author just starting to make real money on your work, it really is worth it to hire a competent professional.

When Can You Quit Your Day Job?
Okay, so let's say you've gotten a book deal and you're chomping at the bit to get to get out of your crappy day job and dive into the wild life of the full time writer. How do you know if you can really quit?

This is actually a question I get a lot, and one I had to answer for myself. I can't speak to your specific situation, of course, but here are the guideline I used to know when it was time to quit.

1) I knew how much money I spent in a year, and I felt comfortable covering that with my writing money.
Remember at the top of this post when we talked about making a budget and emergency funds and all that stuff? Here's where it comes back again. If you want to know when you can quit your job, the simplest answer is to look at your expenses, look at your expecting writing income (less the 50% you're setting aside for taxes), and see if they match. If they don't, and you still REALLY want to quit, this is also the time when you can look at sizing down your lifestyle. Maybe move somewhere cheaper, or cancel a gym membership, whatever it takes to shave your average spending down until your writing income is enough to cover it.

That said, though, I would not suggest making a drastic change in your lifestyle. Tempting as the picture of living in genteel poverty for the freedom of being a full time writer might be, we are creatures of habit. If you're used to one lifestyle, trying to suddenly jump down to a much lower one will inevitably cost more than you think because you'll still want the things you had when you were making more money.  This is a very personal balance, and I can't tell you where yours will be. The important thing to remember, though, is that you are making a life decision here, which means whatever you choose, you'll be doing it for a long time. Trying to force yourself into a lifestyle you can't live in comfortably for the sake of stretching writing income is setting yourself up for failure. Avoid if at all possible.

2) I made sure my insurance was taken care of.
In America, most people get their health insurance through their employers. Writers, being self employed, don't have this option. If you are leaving a job that provides your health insurance to write full time, you're going to have to make up that difference.

Back when I first quit, this was a huge pain, especially with a child who has special needs. Thankfully, the passage of the Affordable Care Act has made it enormously easier to get affordable individual insurance. I don't care what your politics is, if you're an American writer who has to buy her own insurance, Obamacare was a huge boon for you. Use it well and make sure you've lined up a plan before you quit so you don't have a gap in coverage.

3) I had a back up fund.
As I've said many times, writing money is unpredictable. Sometimes you get giant windfalls, other times you go months without a check. Saving during times of plenty to cover the lean years is a vital part of being a full time writer, but what happens if the writing money dries up unexpectedly? What if you have a personal crisis and can't write for five months? What if your publisher suddenly goes under and can't pay your contract, or maybe you put out a new book and it bombs?

All of these things are pitfalls that writers will probably have to face at some point in their careers, and the only way we get through them without abandoning our great dreams and  going back to the first job that will have us is with a back up fund: a savings account specifically for times of crisis.

How much you save will depend on your situation and your risk tolerance. Personally, I saved up six months worth of expenses before I quit my job. This way, I knew that even if disaster struck, I'd have six months to fix it, or, in the absolute worst case scenario, find a new career.

I know six months worth of expenses sounds like a lot, and it is. Some people feel comfortable with keeping only two months in savings, others prefer having a year's worth in the bank. The exact amount depends on you, your family, and your needs, but even if your book is selling like gangbusters, you need to have some money in the bank when you turn in your notice. Again, writing money is fickle. It can dry up at a moment's notice, and the only way you get through that drought without declaring failure and crawling back to your job is by thinking ahead and saving.

And That's How You Avoid Being a Starving Artist!
Thus concludes my series about writers and money.

I know I probably sound like the most risk-adverse, boring person on the planet right now, but in money as in writing: preparation will set you free. The more you know and the more prepared you are, the easier, happier, and more likely your transition from hobby writer to full time author will be. Thank you for reading, and I really hope my experiences with writing and money help you live the dream and make the jump to the best career in the world!

I'll be back soon with more actual writing posts, plus (hopefully) my experiences with Amazon's new paid book advertising service. Until then, I remain your friendly neighborhood Spiderman writer,

Rachel

Writers and Money Part 2

I didn't meant to take such a long break between these. Husband got out of the hospital unable to do much except lie in bed and look pathetic just in time for the holidays, so, naturally, life became a whirlpool of insanity. But now I'm back more or less, so let's talk money!

Writers and Money Part 2: Self Publishing

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial expert. All of the advice in this column is given to the best of my personal knowledge and experience and is meant for informational purposes only. Also, while all of the below is, to the best of my knowledge, accurate as of January 2015, this may not be the case for those of you reading in the future. If you're serious about writing as a career, please make sure to draw your knowledge from a wide spread of verified sources, and don't make important financial decisions based off any single post you read on the internet, not even mine ;).

DISCLAIMER #2: This is a post about self publishing and money, not a how-to guide. If you want to learn how to self-publish your book, Life Hacker has a quick, non-scammy guide to the basics. On a personal note, I've posted here about the cost and process of self-publishing my own book and my reasons for doing so if you want the Rachel side of things.

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about how authors earn money from traditional, advance paying publishing, also known as "Trad" or "New York" publishing. Self-publishing income is the flip side of the publishing coin, and though is not nearly as complicated as its traditional counterpart, its methods of payment can still be unnerving, especially if you're an established author who's used to the advance system or, for that matter, a worker who's used to getting a regular paycheck. But before we get into the individual oddities, let's take a look at all different ways self-publishers have to earn their living.
Income Stream #1: Ebook SalesOnline bookstores (Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, iBookstore, Google Play, all the places that sell your book to readers) represent the lion's share of self-publishing money. Amazon in particular is king when it comes to actually earning an income from the sale of your self published titles. There are slight variations between the online sellers, but generally speaking, all the online stores pay via the same basic percent-of-sales price model.
For example, let's say have a book up for sale at Amazon.com for $2.99. Every time a reader buys that book, Amazon will pay you 70% of that $2.99 cover price (about $2.03, minus the cost of actually transferring the file, which is usually fractions of a penny for books without illustrations), and keep the remaining 30% for itself as its commission. On the other hand, if your book is priced below $2.99 or above $9.99, the numbers flip, and Amazon.com will pay you a 30% royalty rate while keeping 70% of the cover price to itself. The reason for this is because Amazon's business model works best when book prices live between these two prices, and so Amazon incentives royalties accordingly to encourage authors to price the way that makes them the most money.

There are a few other variations in the model depending on factors like what country you're selling in/to and whether or not you're in Kindle Select (you can read all the fine print here), but GENERALLY SPEAKING, the 30/70 cover price split is where it's at. For example, each sale of my book,  Nice Dragons Finish Last , which is currently priced at $4.99, earns me approximately $3.49 (70% of $4.99) while Amazon keeps the rest (30% of $4.99, or $1.49). By contrast, each sale of 2k to 10k, which is priced at $0.99, earns me $0.33 (30% of the $0.99 cover price) while Amazon keeps the rest.
Now, some self-pub authors, particularly short story writers whose works aren't long enough to command a price higher than $2.99, take great umbrage to this ring-in-the-nose royalty structure. As a novelist, however, I've never really had a problem with it. Also, non-Amazon retailers don't have these rate variations at all. Smashwords, for example, pays a flat 85% of cover price no matter what. That said, though, even the lowest rate of 30% of retail is still worlds better than anything you see in the traditional publishing world.

To put this in perspective, let's look again at the table showing traditional royalty earnings for print books I posted back in Part 1.
Traditional Publisher Payments to Authors for Print Distribution (Retail Price vs Net)Retail PriceNetCover Price$15.00$15.00Discount to Bookseller50%50%Wholesale Price$7.50$7.50Printing Cost$3.50$3.50Net Income to Publisher
(Wholesale Price - Printing Cost)$4.00$4.00Royalty Rate8%8%Royalty Calculation0.08 x $15.000.08 x $4.00Royalty paid to Author$1.20$0.32
As you can see from the royalty rate I've highlighted, Amazon's lowest 30% royalty rate is still 3.75 times higher than the standard traditional publishing royalty for paperbacks. But, then again, we're comparing apples to oranges here. Paper books have a lot more overhead than ebooks. So, for comparison's sake, let's review how traditional publishers pay authors for ebook sales.

Unlike print royalty rates, which vary from publisher to publisher (especially when you get into hardbacks, where royalty rates scale with sales, sometimes up to 30% for the really big names), ebook royalty rates are in lockstep throughout the industry at 25% of net. Now, 25% is much better than 6-8%, especially since the publisher's net revenue is much higher since they don't have to pay those printing costs. You're basically getting 25% of the wholesale cost, which, on the example $15.00 list price book above, means 25% of $7.50, or $1.87.

So, in the absolute, best case scenario for Traditional Publishing, a $15 ebook paying the industry standard 25% of net ebook royalty would earn its author about $1.87 per sale. By contrast, a self published ebook uploaded to Amazon and priced at $4.99 for the 70% royalty would earn its author $3.49 per sale.

This enormous difference in earning potential is the crux of the Trad Pub vs Self Pub debate when it comes to money. The hard truth, and the main reason self-publishing is exploding right now, is that a self-published novel can be priced at less than half the cost of its traditionally published competition and STILL earn its author nearly three times as much per sale.

Say you're an author, and you need $30,000 in royalties a year to quit your job and live off your writing income. If you went with a traditional publishing, you would have to sell 16,042 ebooks with a cover price of $15.00 to earn that in a year. But if you decided to self publish that book instead, you would only have to sell 8595 copies at $4.99 to earn the same amount. This means a self-pub author only has to sell 1/2 as many books at 1/3 the price of her traditionally published competition to earn the same yearly income.

As you can see, the mathematical advantage of self-publishing is pretty staggering. Also, unlike Traditional Publishers who pay every six months via a check in the mail, Amazon and the other online retailers pay monthly via direct deposit to your bank account. Being paid regularly and quickly might not seem like that big a deal, but let me tell you, as someone who's spent the majority of her writing career planning around a bi-yearly paycheck, getting money deposited automatically in my bank account every month is a life changer.

But awesome as all that is, ebook sales aren't the only way self-published authors make money!

Income Stream #2: Subscription Services 
Book subscription services like Kindle Unlimited, where readers pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited reading, are a relatively new thing in the self-pub world. The fee structure is not nearly as straight forward as the basic sales model above, but in a nutshell, authors with books in a subscription service get paid a flat amount every time a reader downloads their book and reads to a certain percent. I can't speak to independent subscription services like Oyster since I've never enrolled a book, but Kindle Unlimited pays when a reader reaches 10%, and the funds come out of a global pool that is divided equally each month, which means every borrow every author gets each month pays the same amount regardless of book length or illustrations. But, because the total number of borrows in the program and the amount in the global pool changes from month to month, the KU payout per borrow also varies. At the beginning of KU, authors were getting close to $2 a borrow. Now the average payout has settled around $1.30, but even that could change any month.

As you might expect, this variance payments has caused many self-pub authors to give KU the hairy eyeball. Also, enrolling your book in KU means making it exclusive to Amazon, so you sacrifice sales you could have been getting from other stores. That's a lot to ask of authors, and many big self-pub sellers are vehemently against KU for exactly these reasons. Other authors like myself, however, have had great success in KU, mostly because readers subscribed to the service see our books as costing $0.00 when they're browsing the Amazon marketplace. Now, of course, they're not actually getting the book for free since they're paying $9.99 a month to be in KU, but that's not how human rationality works. They see that $0.00 and think they're getting something for nothing, and that "free" mentality makes them far more likely to take a chance a relatively unknown author like myself, AND I still get paid! True, $1.30 per borrow is less than the $3.49 I'd make off a sale, but there's no guarantee that KU subscriber would have even seen my book without the visibility boost from KU.

It might not be optimal, but $1.30 and a new reader who might go on to buy my other books is much than nothing. Then again, this is just my opinion based on my current position as an author (and some solid numbers, which I've laid out here if you're interested). If you write long books that command a high price and sell well on multiple channels, KU would be a terrible decision. It's up to you to look at your own career, or what you want that career to be, and make your own call.

Hold up a second, Rachel. For an informational blog post about self-published writers and money, you sure seem to be hedging your language. What gives?!

Welcome to the "self" part of self-publishing!

In my trad publishing post, I was able to say a lot of things for certain because authors don't have a choice to do it another way. I can't suggest you choose a big trad publisher who pays monthly because none of them do. Same for finding a different ebook royalty rate or even a publisher who will guarantee advertising your book. Trad publishing is a set game, and unless you're a giant seller, there's not much you can change about the payment portion of your contract.

Self-publishing, by contrast, is ENTIRELY self-determined. You can choose to put your book on every retailer/subscription service that will take it, or you can slap it up on Amazon and never look at it again. It's up to you. EVERYTHING is up to you, that's why it's called "self" publishing. When you upload a book to sell, you are basically beginning your own small business. You wouldn't open up a coffee shop without researching how to do it, would you? The business of being an author is no different. If you want to be successful, or at least give yourself the best shot at it, you have to do your research. Not just at the beginning either, but always, because the business of self-publishing is constantly changing, and part of your job as a self-published author is to keep up.

Fortunately, this is not nearly as hard as it sounds. If you read my blog, chances are you already enjoy reading industry shop talk, which means self-pub research will be fun for you! Of course, if you hate shop talk or anything involving the money side of writing, then self-publishing will probably make you miserable. (Also, why are you reading this post?)

This is what I mean when I say self-publishing isn't for everyone. Some self-publishing pundits argue that, because of the incredibly advantageous money situation I mentioned above, self-publishing is the only intelligent way to put out your book. I vehemently disagree. To point out the money and ignore the rest is to say that money is the only thing that matters, and we all know that's not true. Every author wants to be paid, of course, but there are other factors in this business that are equally important, like happiness and aptitude. If you're the sort of person who hates the idea of running a business, or if you would rather be famous and well respected than rich, then self-publishing will probably be stressful and unrewarding for you no matter how much money you make, and that's no good at all. What's the point of living the dream if doing so makes you miserable?

I realize all this happiness talk is a bit of a tangent from the money angle of self-pub, but with so much of the positive press around self-publishing centered on authors laughing all the way to the bank, I feel the other aspects of authorship, the perks and pitfalls that have nothing to do with income, need to be highlighed extra bright. That said, I've been over this ground before. So, if you want to know more about the non-monetary differences between self and trad pub, please read my previous post on the topic. For the rest of us, let's get back to the money!

Income Stream #3: Alternate Editions 
It's no secret that, for most authors, the biggest chunk of self publishing income comes from book sales and, more recently for some, subscription services, but these are by no means the only way a self-pub book earns money. Just as traditional publishers offer their titles up in a variety of alternative formats like print, audio, and even graphic novels, self-publishers are doing the same. Gone are the days of paying thousands of dollars to a printer just to have a garage full of books. Services like CreateSpace let you create and sell print editions of your books on Amazon, and they'll print and ship the titles for you for a small cut of the sale price. Not a bad deal!

Even audio book studios are courting self-published titles now. My own Nice Dragons Finish Last was picked up by Audible.com, not to mention services like ACX that hook indie authors up with narrators to produce high quality, relatively low cost audio editions.

Now, both CreateSpace and ACX are owned by Amazon, as is Audible for that matter, but before you call me an Amazon fangirl, please note that these companies were already the indisputable front runners in their respective areas, which is why Amazon bought them. Amazon was the first big company to see the money in self-publishing, and they've ruthlessly maintained their position at the crest of the wave ever since. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a very nuanced conversation that changes depending on whom you talk to, but no matter which direction your Amazon love/hate meter points, the truth remains that self-published authors now have access to alternate formats that were exclusively available to big publishers only a few years ago thanks in large part to Amazon's investments. It's a new frontier to be sure, but just like selling rights in trad pub can bring in extra income, diversifying your sales as a self-pub author can widen your income stream enormously. Plus, every new market you enter is a new chance for your book to take off!

Finally, and I'm going to stick this on the end since I've yet to try it personally, the foreign translation market for self-pub books has really taken off. Best Selling Romance author Courtney Milan in particular has had great success in getting making her self-pub books available to the international market, so I'll defer to her on the topic.

Making a Living as a Self-Published Author
We've now gone over some of the major ways self-published authors make money. Not all--if I've learned anything from self pub, it's that there's always another way to make money--but a fair sample. All of this said, though, the question remains: can you make a living as a self-published author? And the answer is...it depends.

Before you get up in arms, let me explain! It is obviously entirely possible to make an enormous amount of money as a self-published author. Many of the new book millionaires are self-published, and even on the more moderate end of the scale, I made over $42.000 in four months from sales and borrows of Nice Dragons Finish Last. That's not chump change, but it's also not typical. Grand as the math behind self-publishing sales can be, not everyone gets those sales.

Unlike getting a traditional book deal, which generally guarantees you some kind of payment in the form of an advance, there are no guarantees of profit in self-publishing. It's completely possible to write the best book you can, give it the best cover, editor, and blurb you can manage, and still sell nothing. Also, you have to pay for all those covers and editors out of your own pocket, which means you can easily end up operating at a loss if sales don't meet your expectations. When a publisher buys your book, they are taking on these risks for you, which is how they justify keeping the lion's share of the profit. When you go it alone, though, all of these costs are on you.

For example, it cost me $3000 to put Nice Dragons together. This is money I paid just to edit and package the book, it doesn't include the months I spent doing the actual writing. If you factor in the lost income from those months when I could have been working on something else, Nice Dragons probably cost me about $15,000 all together. I knew this number going into the project, and I went forward knowing full well that was money I might never get back.

That might sound scary, but with great risk comes great reward. In exchange for taking on these cost burdens yourself rather than relying on a publisher to shelter you, your income potential as a self-published author eclipses that of your traditionally published brethren. Also, costs are a truth of any business, and the few thousand it takes to put out a pro-quality book is chicken scratch compared to the expense of starting another small business, like a restaurant. That said, putting down thousands of dollars on a dream of being a writer is not a risk everyone is in a position to take. Self-publishing, like any business, is not without cost or risk, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

But even if you do have the money available to put out a quality title, the costs of self publishing aren't all monetary. As I mentioned earlier, success in publishing is not a set value. Everyone has different dreams, and while self-publishing wins the money game hands down, not all dreams are made of money. For example, even if you're super successful best seller, your chances of becoming a household name as a self-pub author are next to zero. You will never receive the automatic respect and legitimacy even the newest of traditionally published authors receive, and unless you get a print deal with a traditional publisher, chances are you'll never see your book on a bookstore shelf, either. No matter how fantastic your book is, your chances of being nominated for a major industry award like the Hugo or the Nebula are close to zero (the exception here being Romance, where self-pub books have won RITAs, though even here, the nomination rate is still heavily weighted toward trad books).

These are not small costs, and they should not be paid lightly. On the other hand, though, every self-published author enjoy a level of freedom in their careers that even the most successful traditionally published authors can't reach. At any point, I can decide to change my prices or my covers, even my titles. I can take a book down, edit it again, and put it back up. I can bundle my books in value-priced collections, or put the first of my series in a multi-author bundle to reach new readers.

Any one of these would take months to arrange at a New York publishing house, if it could be arranged at all, but these are all things self-published authors do all the time on the fly. But best of all, being self-published means you have the freedom to write in whatever genre, or mish-mash of genres, that strikes your fancy, and if the book doesn't sell, you can change it. There's no contract to lock you down, no one telling you to change your name or your title, no one making decisions about your book for you.

For some authors, this is enough rope to hang themselves. For others, it's open sky. How you see it will be largely a matter of personality, but for bossy people like myself who prefer to do things themselves, self-publishing is like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia, only we don't have to fight the White Witch for our crowns. We're kings and queens of our own careers from the moment we hit publish, and for those who like that sort of thing, that's a feeling that's worth more than money.

Overblown rhetoric aside, all of this is to say that the question of "Can you make a living in self publishing?" has a lot in common with "Can you survive in the wilderness alone?" Some thrive on the challenge, others balk and run back to safety and comfort. Both are valid options based on personal temperament, and the choice between them should never be played off as easy or obvious. Even if you've been rejected by everyone and are going to self-publishing as a last resort, you're still making a major business decision. You could choose to trunk that book and write another instead of publishing. You could choose to forget traditional publishing all together and jump whole hog into self pub. You could land somewhere in between.

Whatever you decide to do with your book, never doubt that you are making a momentous decision about how to leverage a project that represents thousands of hours of your time. That's the sort of choice that should be approached with thought and care both for your current situation and your dreams for the future...but, then again, there's no reason it has to be a binary one.

The Hybrid Author
A hybrid author is a write who, like myself, has both traditionally published and self-published novels. We enjoy the best and worst of both worlds, which can be a bit of a balancing act since the publishing community doesn't really know what to do with hybrid authors yet. For example, I had to get special permission from my publisher, Orbit, to publish Nice Dragons even though they had nothing to do with that book. The reason for this was that my contract for the Paradox novels, books I wrote under a completely different name, had a non-compete clause that prevented me from publishing anything for a full six months after the last Devi book came out.

Thankfully, Orbit was willing to work with me on this (because they are FABULOUS PEOPLE) and I got the book out only a few months late, but this is a good example of the shenanigans you have to go through if you want to eat the grass on both sides of the fence. That said, though, if you can manage it, being a hybrid author is pretty amazing. You get the automatic respect of being a traditionally published author, and your New York books provide a built in audience for your independent titles. The same applies in reverse for authors like Michael Sullivan who start out self published and then go to New York. They bring a ready made audience to the table when it's time for contracts, which is a much stronger negotiation position than most authors show up with.

Whether the hybrid life is right for you is something you probably won't know until you try it, but if you're an author who wants the legitimacy and recognition that comes from being backed by a major house and the freedom and money of self-pub, being a hybrid author will get you there. As with everything that touches traditional publishing, a good agent is invaluable in this, so if you're thinking of doing anything involving New York, getting a good agent is your first step. If you're already self-published, or thinking of doing so first, that might seem daunting, but again, times are changing. Gone are the days where self-publishing was seen as the last refuge of the desperate. These days, coming to an agent with a solid sales record can be a huge mark in your favor, provided, of course, that you have a good new book to back it up.

As the stigma of self-publishing fades further and further into the past, the option to have the best of both traditional publishing and self-publishing is only becoming more valid. Some agents and publishers are dragging their heels, but the forward looking ones are already seeing opportunities. Like so many other parts of publishing, the idea that self-pub and trad pub are binary opposites is being disrupted, and I for one am all for it. Anything that gives authors more leverage and choice is A-OK with me! The important thing is that you're doing whatever is best for you and your career. Everything else is details.

I hope you found this discussion on self-pub money interesting and informative. Come back soon for the final Writers and Money installment when I talk about the most terrifying aspect of self-employment: taxes and money management. A BLOG POST ABOUT TAXES, GUYS! I'M A LAUGH A MINUTE!

It'll be cool, I swear. Until then, I remain your friendly neighborhood Spider Man author,
Rachel Aaron

Writers and Money Part 1

Not to start this post off on a downer, but my husband (the Travis whom all my books are dedicated to) is in the hospital. It's no longer life threatening, but I'm spending most of my days this week waiting in hospital rooms with beeping machines and occasional massive interruptions. Naturally, this makes fiction writing challenging to nigh impossible, so, in the spirit of feeling like I'm still getting work done and to distract myself, I thought I'd do a series of posts on the non-writing author topic I get questions about the most: money.

Money is one of those gauche topics everyone is curious about but no one likes to discuss. I can understand why. In a culture where people are more likely to tell you about their sex life and medications in casual conversation than their financial situation, money talk, especially money talk in public, can feel almost obscene. At the same time, though, one of the most popular mantras in author circles is that, if you want to succeed, you have to treat your writing like a business, but how can you really do that if the most business-like aspect of the whole affair--the money--is couched behind euphemisms and shame?
So, in keeping with the open spirit of my blog, I'm going to spend the next three posts talk openly and candidly about my experiences with the money-side of being an author. Because this is such a broad topic, I'm going to be breaking the subject down into three parts: traditional, advance paying publishing, self-publishing, and how to manage taxes/writing income. For today, we're going to talk about the most obfuscated and confusing of the three, Traditional Publishing.
Enjoy, and please let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to know about money and authorship in the comments below.
Writers and Money Part 1: Traditional Publishing


DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial expert. All advice in the column is given to the best of my personal knowledge and experience and is meant for general information purposes only. Also, while all of this information is, to the best of my knowledge, accurate as of December 2014, this may not be the case for those of you reading in the future. If you're serious about writing as a career, please make sure to draw your knowledge from a wide spread of verified sources, and don't make financial decisions based off any single post you read on the internet, not even mine ;).
Before we talk about anything, let's define what, exactly, we'll be talking about. When I say "traditional publishing," I am referring to the publishing house system that has been the dominant way books have reached readers for the last century. These include the Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Simon and Schuster, and my own publisher, Hachette) as well as dozens to hundreds of small and medium presses who pay their authors via the traditional advance on royalties method. When you hear authors talk about book deals or "selling their book", they're almost certainly talking about signing a contract with a traditional, advance paying publisher.

Because I myself am published by a Big Five house, that's the experience I'll be talking about today. I'm reasonably certain these experiences are similar to all advance paying publishing houses on the basic level, but if you're published by a small, medium, or even large house, and you've had a different experience than what I describe, please let me know in the comments!

So, how does the advance system work?When a publishing house "buys" your book, also known as the coveted book deal, they're not actually buying the book. You still own all the rights to your book. Instead, what's actually happening here is that you are leasing the publishing company the rights to make your book available for sale to the public in particular format, usually paper or ebook, for a set period of time/circumstances. In return for the right to publish your work, the publisher will pay you an advance.
Note that the word here is "advance" and not "payment." An advance is NOT free money, it's advance on future earnings based on how well the publisher thinks your book, or books, will do. Every penny of that advance comes out of your royalty earnings after the book is published, which means you won't see any money from actual sales on your book until you've earned that $20,000 back.
For example, let's say you sold your novel to a big publisher for a $20,000 advance. A year later, your novel comes out to rave reviews and sells quite well, earning $15,000 in royalties (the slice of money you get every time one of your books sells) during the first six months it's on sale. Since most publishers pay every six months, this is when you'll get your first royalty statement, which is a document that shows how many books you sold and how much you got paid for them. BUT, despite the figure showing you earned $15,000 in royalties, you won't actually get any more money until you've earned back that $20,000 advance the publisher paid you at the beginning. 
This is called "earning out," and a great many books never actually achieve it. This is because you have to earn back that advance not in raw sales, but from your royalty percent of those sales. For example, if you have an 8% royalty for paperback print book sales, and your book has a retail price of $9.99, you're only earning $0.80 per book. To earn the aforementioned $15,000 in royalties, you'd have to sell 18,750 copies at $0.80 cents royalty each. 
That's a LOT of books to move in six months! Not an impossible amount, but a lot. On the upside, though, you still get to keep the advance even if you never earn out. This is one of the advantages of advances and why so many authors still covet them. Advances might not be free money, but they are guaranteed money that's completely detached from sales. If a publisher pays you a $100,000 advance and your book sells zero copies, that hundred grand is still yours to keep. The publisher eats the loss, not you. Of course, you'll probably never sell another book again since  you now represent a $100,000 loss, but hey, at least you got paid!
Is a bigger advance always better?One of my biggest gripes about the modern publishing industry is the focus on large advances. I'm sure you've read about so-and-so author selling her first book for millions of dollars. These big figures make great headlines, and given what I just said about advances being yours to keep no matter what, it might make sense to shoot for the biggest advance you can get. BUT (you knew there was a but, right?), if you're looking to make writing your career, a big advance can actually be a millstone around your neck.
Let's take the $100,000 advance, zero sales example I mentioned above. Sure, the author got to keep the money, but the publisher got burned. Not only did they have to pay the author that $100,000 advance, they also paid for the editing, the cover art, the distribution, the marketing, and all the other costs of putting out a big title, and they got nothing in return. Publishers don't forget that, and they don't keep the loss secret. That author might be $100,000 richer, but the next time she and her agent go around to publishing houses trying to sell another book, all they're going to get is doors slamming in their faces. It doesn't matter if she's written the next Fight Club, no one is going to want to take a risk on an author whose last book lost her publisher so much money.
Now, of course, this is hideously unfair. It wasn't the author's fault that her book didn't meet publisher expectations. They projected the sales, they read the book and decided to pay $100,000 for it, they decided to invest the money in packaging and distributing, why should the author have to bear the blame for those bad decisions? Unfortunately, this is one of the universal truths of money in publishing: when a book does well, it's because of everyone's hard work. Go team! When a book does poorly, it's the author's fault. You'll never work in this town again. 
I'm not saying things crash and burn to this extent every time a book performs below expectations, but it definitely happens, and the bigger the advance, the further you have to fall. So while it might be really tempting to go for the big paycheck, my advice would actually be to hedge your bets low, especially if you can negotiate to accept a lower advance in return for something that will pay off bigger in the long run, like a higher royalty rate on ebooks. This is definitely something you should at least talk about with your agent (and if you're dealing with any of the major publishing houses, you NEED an agent. More on that in a moment). 
Overall, your goal should always be to shoot for the right advance for your career. You want it to be small enough that you fell confident you can earn out. Earning out not only means you'll get royalty checks for years to come, it also shows that you're a money maker for the publishers, ensuring you more contracts as your career continues. On the other hand, you don't want to accept an advance that's smaller than you're worth, or you risk undervaluing yourself or your work.
Again, a good agent should already know all of this and be able to discuss your options with you, but it is always always ALWAYS good to be knowledgeable yourself. Leaving the big decisions of your career up to others is a huge risk you could end up paying for forever. Publishing moves very slowly. Never let anyone rush you into a contract before you know exactly what you're getting into.
Okay, so that's advances. What about these mythical royalties you keep talking about? How do those work?Royalties is the catch all term for the portion of a book's sale that goes to the author. The exact amount varies by publisher, but generally speaking you're paid a fixed percent of a book's sales based on either the retail price (the sticker price of the book), or net (your publisher's net profit on the book after costs are taken out).

Which type of royalty you get, retail or net, makes a HUGE difference in how much money you make per sale, as shown below in a modified version of this graph I got off the publishing royalties section of Wikipedia.

Retail PriceNetCover Price$15.00$15.00Discount to Bookseller50%50%Wholesale Price$7.50$7.50Printing Cost$3.50$3.50Net Income to Publisher
(Wholesale Price - Printing Cost)$4.00$4.00Royalty Rate8%8%Royalty Calculation0.08 x $15.000.08 x $4.00Royalty paid to Author$1.20$0.32
The original graph had a 20% royalty, but I don't know a genre author anywhere getting 20% on anything other than hardbacks. Most paper sales in my genre, SFF, are in Trade Paperback format, and royalties for those are usually between 6-8%. As you can see, whether this 6-8% is applied to the retail price or the net cost of the book makes a HUGE difference in how much, or how little, you get paid.

Ebooks are much the same, but with a few key differences. Unlike print royalty rates, which vary from publisher to publisher (especially when you get into hardbacks, where royalty rates scale with sales, sometimes up to 30% for the really big names), ebook royalty rates are in lockstep throughout the industry at 25% of net. Now, 25% is much better than 6-8%, especially since the publisher's net revenue is much higher since they don't have to pay those printing costs. You're basically getting 25% of the wholesale cost, which, on the example $15.00 list price book above, means 25% of $7.50, or $1.87.

Now do you see why most books never earn out their advances? :P

But despite the seemingly low numbers, plenty of books (including all of mine! Thank you readers!) do sell well enough to earn out their advances and start paying regular royalties. Authors receive these payments, and all corresponding documentation, twice a year in the form of bi-annual royalty statements.
Yes, you read that right. Bi-annual.

Unlike advance payments, which are typically paid on milestones like turning in your manuscript or the day your book goes on sales, most traditional publishers pay royalties only twice per year. The reasons for this insanely slow, antiquated payment schedule are murky at best, but they usually have something to do with the insanely slow, antiquated way bookstores tally sales and pay the publishers themselves. If you have book sales in foreign countries that need to be accounted as well, it's not unusual to wait upwards of a year or more to be paid.

In addition to this insanely slow schedule, publisher royalty statements are frustratingly vague. For example, they might report that you sold 1000 ebooks over the last sixth months, but not how many you sold per month, or where, what format, or at what price. This might not sound like a big deal, unless you want to determine something specific, like how effective a promotional effort was. Further more, since the royalty data is so vague, it's impossible for you as the author to double check the veracity and accuracy of the numbers presented without demanding a full audit, which is costly, lengthy, and tends to make your publisher royally pissed at you.
Both of these are TERRIBLE options for an author. Fortunately, publishers know this, and some, to their credit, are trying to change the system. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Joint/Basket Accounting and the Reserve Against Returns
If you've paid any attention to publishing deal announcements in recent history, you've probably noticed that almost every single one is a multi-book deal. The three book deal is the bread and butter of the trad pub world. They're good for everyone--agents, authors, publishers. Everyone loves a three book deal, until we get to the inevitable Basket Accounting clause that comes with it.

Joint Accounting or Basket Accounting is the practice of accounting for multiple titles as a single unit for the purposes of earning out advances. For example, let's say you signed a three book deal with a $10,000 advance for each of the three books. If this was a normal, non-Basket Accounted deal, the advance for each book would be accounted separately. So if Book 1 sold like gangbusters and earned out that $10k in its first royalty statement, you'd start getting royalties for that title immediately regardless of how the other two books sold.

In Basket Accounting, though, all three titles are tied together, meaning that your sales have to earn out the total advance of the contract, or $30,000 for 3 $10,000 books, before you start seeing any royalties. Now, this is fine and dandy if all three books are doing well and come out quickly, but if you've got three books coming out over a period of three years and they're all selling moderately, it may take years of sales after the publication of Book 1 before you see a penny in royalties. This is especially true if the three books are a series, because the first book in a series is always the best seller (after all, who starts reading a series at book 2?). So, if a trilogy is accounted jointly, that first book could have earned out ages ago, but you still won't see royalties for it because that first title is working overtime earning money to cover the advances of the other two books, which aren't performing as well yet, or might not even be out.

At its core, Joint/Basket Accounting is just an accounting trick publishers use to cover their butts. After all, they'd still have to pay that $30k in advances for three books, but with joint accounting, they can at least make sure they get all that money back before they have to pay you more in royalties. From the authors' perspective, Joint/Basket Accounting isn't the worst thing in the world by any means--you do still get paid eventually--but it definitely slows down your income stream, which can be a bitter pill when you're broke, starting your career, have a book that's selling fantastically, and not seeing any money from it.

Finally, the last thing you need to understand about royalty payments is the dreaded Reserve Against Returns. This is a big chunk of earned royalty money that your publisher holds back in case bookstores can't sell your book and opt to return it. This is because bookstores don't have to actually buy your book to sell it. They work on what basically amounts to a consignment system. The bookstore buys a bunch of books from a publisher and puts them on the shelves. After a set period of time, they take down the books that haven't sold, the "remainder" and send those books back to the publisher for full credit (ie, they get their money back). But, because it would cost way too much to mail all those unsellable books all the way back to some warehouse, bookstores don't actually return the book. They just strip the cover off, send that back to the publisher, and pulp the rest.

This process is called "remaindering" and it sucks on a lot of levels, but it especially sucks for authors. You see, that royalty rate we just went into in detail above? That's paid when the bookstore orders the book, not when the customer buys the book. This means you have "sales" accounted that might not actually ever sell. Unfortunately, publishers don't know how many of your books will be returned until a year or more has gone by, so they keep a hefty chunk of your earned royalties back to cover the unknown return amount. This process is called the Reserve Against Returns, and if you get a print book deal, you will learn to despise it.

Fortunately, these days printing and inventory management technology has advanced enough to allow publishers to do both smaller print runs and to restock bookstores more quickly, which vastly decreases the amount of orphaned books left on shelves, vulnerable to being remaindered. This means that far fewer books get returned now than even five years ago. Unfortunately, Reserve Against Returns accounting remains in place as firmly as ever, so while you might not actually have to give up as much of the money they're holding back due to the now much smaller percent of remaindered books, your money is still tied up for a long, long time while the bookstores sort everything out.
Other Sources of Author Income - Subsidiary Rights
Despite the insane amount of pixels I just spent talking about print and ebooks rights, those are only two of the ways your book can earn money. If your agent is on the ball, there are all sorts of other rights they can sell to bring in both advances and additional royalties, including audio book rights, foreign translation rights, book club rights, even film and television rights. These rights can also be sold for self-published books, of course, but it should be noted that having your story traditionally published, and the implied prestige that goes along that, makes these other rights much more valuable to these secondary markets. Everyone wants to buy the rights to the lastest Big 5 blockbuster book. Indie books have to work a lot harder to get that kind of market recognition.
Agents
You probably already guessed this from the number of times I mentioned them above, but having a literary agent is VITAL to the traditional publishing process. The stuff I talk about here is only the surface of the vast and complex world that is the publishing industrial complex, and your agent's job is to help you come out on top of the confusing morass. Ideally, your agent is your champion. They vet your contracts, drum up hype about your upcoming titles, and handle all your legal stuff. They also help sell those subsidiary rights I mentioned above.

For all of this work, your agent takes 15% off the top of your advances and royalties, and a good agent is worth every penny. The key, however, is that you have to find a GOOD agent.

When you're looking for an agent, it's easy to get desperate. After months of waiting and rejections, I know the desperate urge to just latch on to whomever says they want to represent you. For you own good, though, you must resist.

Agents are not uniformly awesome. There are plenty of people out there who'll sell your book and take their cut, but won't actually act as your representative if push comes to shove. You want an agent who will fight for you, an agent who wants what's best for your career in the long term, not just what will earn them the biggest cut now. Ideally, you'll want an agent whose clients not only have great deals with choice publishing houses, but also have tons of other subsidiary rights sales. You want an agent who understands that publishing is changing and wants to take advantage of that, not someone with their head in the sand.

In short, you have to be picky. Even though the query process makes it feel the other way around, the truth is that you're the one hiring the agent. They make their money off the sale of your work, which means they are your business partner. "She's the only one who would have me" is a TERRIBLE reason to start any relationship, including a business one. So even though it's hard, when you get that call from an agent offering representation, don't say yes right away. Instead, ask them questions. If you can't think of any questions right then, tell them you have to think about it, schedule a call for later, and research like crazy. This is a great list to get you started.

Also, it's not rude at all for you to ask them if it's okay for you to contact one of their current clients as a reference. Remember, even though they called you, YOU are actually the employer here. Be polite and respectful, of course, but don't roll over and say yes to everything right away. Just like authors, not all agents are created equal. Even though it can feel like pulling teeth at the time, doing your due diligence to make sure you've found a good one is one of the smartest choices you can make for your career in the long term.

ETA: I forgot the best part! Can you making a living in Traditional Publishing?
In the flurry of tests and doctors, (Travis is going to be fine by the way, thank you all so much for the well wishes!), I completely forgot to add the entire point of this post, which is that, contrary to what some critics of the industry might have you believe, it is entirely possible to make a perfectly good living as an author with a traditional publishing contract without being a big bestseller. I, myself, have made my living off my Orbit books since 2009, and I am by no means a big name.

That said, it's not easy. Publishing money doesn't pay monthly. Sometimes it comes in in huge lumps, other times you'll have months of nothing. That's a very different pay structure than the rest of the world, and you have to have a lot of discipline and forethought with your money to make sure the fat months cover the lean. I won't get into more than that since I'm actually doing an entire post on this exact topic for the third part of my Writers and Money series, but I hope this helps calm your fears and answers some questions about the viability of getting a publishing contract and making a living.

For what its worth, I've very much enjoyed being part of a big publishing house. Thanks to Orbit, I've worked with great people and gotten to meet a huge host of talented and sometimes very famous authors, and while that doesn't actually have anything to do with Writing and Money and therefore doesn't belong in this post, not everything's about money, There are some opportunities money just can't buy, and getting to publish through a big, flagship SFF publishing house is one of them. The dream of being published by the Big Five is still a worthy one, and if it's yours, don't ever let anyone tell you different.

And that's about it for Traditional Publishing! 
I hope I haven't bored you all to tears. Tune in next time when I talk about money and Self Publishing!

Until then, happy writing!

Yours,
Rachel