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emersonfreepress · 3 years

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What would the ro's be like in a zombie au?

whyyyyy anon whyyy. I'm actually gonna write this in like.. slightly different terms, you'll see. any time I even briefly think of a zombie au I'm just like

I WANNA WRITE IT SO BADDD

i don't even allow myself to entertain it for very long because getting into that would be the worst thing ever for my productivity with the alpha omg 😂😂 so I'll put like the ideas that pop into my head for writing a zombie au, to work some of that creative frustration out 😆

so in this very general, absolutely noncommittal idea of mine, the main cast are older and the setting is in and around a civilian settlement led by the Emersons.

and as a refresher, i like my zombie aus to have fast zombies and fast infections ^ ^ 28 Days Later/Train to Busan style babyyyy, we the Sprinting Dead up in this bitch 😆

= = =

Gabe is, predictably, looking for what's left of his family. Following rumors of safe havens and bunkers and such. Starts the story as someone who tries to be diplomatic, if not outright pacifist, but as times get tougher and resources dwindle, he'd become one of the most cutthroat motherfuckers in the wasteland. Low-key though, low-key. People won't trust you if they know you’re capable of throwing them to a horde for strategic reasons. Like if Rick turned into Shane (for those of us familiar with early Walking Dead--idk did that happen eventually? i gave up before we even met Negan lol). The end justifies the means :) Damn, I can legit see Gabe going full evil in a zombie au omg 😂😂 i want to write it so fucking bad

Preferred weapon for zed encounters: rifle

Preferred weapon for human encounters: handgun

Faith in humanity: fucking zero

Zombie kill count: plenty; the type to kill every zombie he has spare ammo and time for

Human kill policy: When it benefits him or the people he’s looking after

Survival rating: B+; he can make it out of some pretty dire situations through sheer will to live and ruthlessness

- - -

Kile has arrived--clearly, this is the timeline they belong in. They start their journey with Gabe (and their doggo) and stick to him like glue, even reluctantly so when Gabe eventually has them join the settlement. This can only go one way, though: Kile's just too much of a wildcard for the group and hates being told what to do. (Especially now that society has fallen, wtf) They'd make their exit alone and unannounced aside from a brief head’s up to Gabe. It's slightly bittersweet, but also? They get to loot and hunt and sneak around and kill fucking zombies, all by themself. Kile is a loner, a hiker, and a hunter to begin with so they do beyond fine on their own. However, once the inevitable violent human threat comes for the settlement, Gabe is sent out to convince Kile to come out of isolation, just this once please, to be the camp’s super soldier help defend the camp.

Zed weapon: p much anything they can get their hands on, ranged or melee, blunt or sharp, w/e; improvised weapons

Human weapon: hunting knife

Faith in humanity: never had any to begin with

Zombie kill count: lol infinite?? any zed they come across is double-dead if they have the time for it

Human kill policy: at Gabe’s direction or when provoked enough/threatened

Survival rating: A-; they trust no one, live in isolation, and prioritize survival above all else. only reason it’s not higher is they would risk their life for Gabe or their furbaby and also... their own Rambo-esque antics def attracts the occasional horde lmao

- - -

Jack... this poor boy, he doesn't deserve a zombie au 😂 He's one of those people that first believes zombies are just sick people, too squeamish to keep up with TV news coverage at the onset and too upset to consider anything else. He'd hunker down at home, staying holed up even while his neighbors evacuated, and probably be discovered while the main group is looting the same place as him. When people try to tell him the real state of the world, he'd be in denial until he absolutely couldn't be anymore. idk, probably after Kile shooting a bunch of non-lethal holes thru a zombie to make a point (attracting more in the process lol).

He’d almost immediately join the medical team at the settlement and as word spreads about how easy he is to talk to, he quickly becomes the literal on-site therapist. It's a role he embraces but... idk if it's an emotional burden he can bear. He's very emotionally resilient! But he ain't a professional lol imagine a whole settlement of traumatized zombie survivors seeking you out for counseling, yikes. He also can't say no to a person in need, so instead he quietly spirals into a very private depression while continuing to help others!!

Zed weapon: Oh gosh, do I really have to?

Human weapon: ...Kindness?

Faith in humanity: Unrealistically high

Zombie kill count: Single digit

Human kill policy: Not ever, unless completely unavoidable and to defend the defenseless

Survival rating: C...? idk, that feels generous. D+. To be protected at all costs!!

- - -

Jessie also had the initial reaction of hoping zombies could be saved, but she woke up from that dream swiftly. The science-minded person that she is, esp with her interest in biology, leaves her determined to find anybody who's got the intellect, expertise, and resources to start doing actual work toward a treatment, cure, vaccine—anything. Nothing would get her to finally unabashedly embrace her love of science (and innate leadership skills!!) faster than a zombie apocalypse! In fact, it’s thanks to her that the Emerson settlement’s got a small but growing team of scientists doing as much research as humanly possible to best educate the others on the outbreak and zombie behavior. Def no zombie experimentation going on though lol. ...Not yet, at least.

Zed weapon: rifle

Human weapon: rifle

Faith in humanity: High! We’ll find a solution! Don’t give up hope!

Zombie kill count: Double digits, but less than 30

Human kill policy: Only in unavoidable self-defense or defense of others

Survival rating: B! She has experience with ranged weapons, farming and gardening skills, first aid, camping experience, and a can-do attitude with a healthy dose of realism!

- - -

Rain remains cargo as I said in the last post about this 😆 They'd be very good for keeping clothes repaired and making useful modifications in the settlement, but their life up to this point has been very sheltered and privileged. We're talking somebody with a chauffeur and a personal chef before the outbreak! They would contribute to quality of life and homemaking efforts more than anything—an overlooked aspect of these scenarios tbh! After as many months of dragging their feet as possible and being nigh impossible to track down when you need them, they eventually become involved in meal planning and even help out with medical stuff if they're asked.

Zed weapon: how do you reload this thing again?

Human weapon: switchblade or other concealable sharp-pointy

Faith in humanity: Very low

Zombie kill count: 0! Can you believe it!

Human kill policy: Well if it’s you or me, of course I’m choosing me.

Survival rating: C. Being so tiny helps them find good hiding spots and their self-preservation is high enough to keep them from unnecessary risk-taking. Plus they're very stealthy! Self-defense is a major issue though, so hiding is always their best option.

- - -

Rupan/Rohan scouts for and leads scavenging missions and is Curt's right hand on the recruitment team. The two of them together are the perfect combo of diplomacy, debate, and deception--although R is more honorable about the last one and will only deceive for strategic reasons. When they aren’t looting and recruiting, they’re doing peacekeeping inside the settlement. Most social disputes end up getting brought to them for mediation and they’re pretty dang good at making and enforcing calls. One day they’ll wake up to realize they’ve basically become a sheriff and feel the need to puke their guts up and do something, anything, to reassure themself they’re still punk 😂

Zed weapon: SMG

Human weapon: shotgun

Faith in humanity: Believes in fundamental goodness but knows better than to trust first impressions

Zombie kill count: decent, more than 40; you won’t catch them having a field day tho, they’re trying to gtfo of most zed situations

Human kill policy: Violent threats have to be taken out. And they aren’t, at all, immune to a revenge rampage either...

Survival rating: B-. Can handle themself both with humans and zeds but is vulnerable to hostage situations and truly difficult sentimental/interpersonal decisions!

- - -

Vivian/Vincent manages inventory and stock and they run it so efficiently it’s scary! They're the perfect pick: a hawk-eyed tyrant and tattletale 😂 Despite constantly butting heads with just about everyone on every imaginable thing, they quickly become an important part of the inner circle of decision-makers for the settlement at large. Terrible at stealth, jumpy, and squeamish at the sight of blood and gore, they literally never go on missions unless they're 100% needed for their expertise on a supply run. (They would deny all of these shortcomings are that big a problem, meanwhile R is definitely acting as their bodyguard lol.) When they do tag along, they're prone to becoming the damsel in distress. Seriously, it happens near every fucking time. It's like they just attract only the most improbable and perilous zombie attacks and hostage situations 😆

Zed weapon: shotgun

Human weapon: handgun

Faith in humanity: Medium; seeing people work together at the settlement helps restore it a bit

Zombie kill count: Double digits, under 25

Human kill policy: Violent threats have to be taken out. Well, no, not by me! Get one of the ruffians to do it!

Survival rating: C-. They’d be higher if they weren’t such natural zombie bait.

- - -

Heidi is running the settlement, well-organized to the degree of actually managing to bring bureaucracy to a post-zombie apocalypse settlement 😂 People are free to come and go, but getting in if you don't live there requires trading something of value (fuel, med supplies, food, etc), temporary surrender and registry of firearms and explosives, and you gotta GTFO at the time and date specified upon entry! You can stay long-term if you contribute to the community in a tangible way—and each person admitted is approved by Heidi personally. Yes, every individual. No, she has no free time. And she is not known to be lenient with rule breakers—you want rule bending, you’ll have to go to Curt for that. People kind of hate her, but it can't be denied that she runs a tight ship. She kind of throws herself into the work to avoid the harsher reality at large and hasn't left the settlement in a long time. She's out of touch with how bad things have gotten in the wastes, but she knows better than to take reports at anything less than face value--even when she's skeptical.

Zed weapon: rifle

Human weapon: handgun; dagger

Faith in humanity: Medium. It fluctuates, honestly

Zombie kill count: Double digits, less than 20

Human kill policy: Violent threats must be taken out if they can’t be reasoned with. Spare those who surrender, eradicate those who don't, keep an eye on the newbies. Not tryin’ to nurse any vendettas around here lol

Survival rating: B. She's good with a firearm, masterful at persuasion, and savvy enough to calculate risks appropriately. Also far tougher than her prim exterior and demeanor suggests!

- - -

Curt leads the recruitment and reconnaissance teams! When a new person or group shows up in the area, Curt's the one who stalks watches them, decides if they're worth approaching, and if they should be approached with an invitation, a simple acknowledgment/announcement of their presence, or an outright armed warning to leave the area. He also keeps tabs on morale and general confidence inside the settlement, alongside R. When he isn’t leading those efforts, though, he’s flirting with settlers and squirreling his way out of manual labor and other chores. He’s also secretly growing weed at his place--don’t tell Heidi or Vi ‘cause they’ll wanna yell at him and ration it UGH.

Zed weapon: SMG, explosives

Human weapon: handgun, dagger

Faith in humanity: Pft, sorry, what now?

Zombie kill count: ...way more than you’d expect

Human kill policy: I don’t start confrontations, but I sure as fuck end them.

Survival rating: A! He’s good at playing hapless idiot when it suits him to be underestimated, good with firearms, and capable of being ruthless and decisive in life or death situations! Plus he has no qualms about ditching the settlement if he decides it’s not working out for him. Just don’t tell Heidi lol

#the rest are under the cuuuut #had to stop myself from writing too much SEVERAL times #love me a zombie apocalypse #lovely anon #answered #ROs #whoops got carried away lol #spent most of my work day finally finishing this ask because VIVA PROCRASTINATION #someone help ._.#phew #feels good to finally get it out of my system tho #now I can promptly never ever write it 😂#AUs #fave #scenarios

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bma-2020 · 5 years

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Okiedok here’s the delio. I have a list of all the blogs from the last six months who’s actively either responded to a meme i sent, responded to a message ive sent, replied to something regarding mally herself, has actually written with me, written a starter for me from my liking a starter call, has at least liked a starter i wrote for them to awknowedge it exists, all that jazz, i have a lot of open field so it’s not just a possible tumblr didnt let them no option anymore, because i send memes to everyone who posts them that i see. I reply to most peoples ooc posts. I like most starter calls I pass by. I try my darndest to actually interact bc i know how it feels to be ignored and its… i’ve been called one before so i’m using the word, thats fluffing cunty behavior, and honestly if you complain about not being interacted with but never even try when i try with you, ya being cunty, end of. I gotta list. That list only entails Mally because she’s who I care about the most. I’m probably gonna start instilling a new rule in all my blogs that if you ignore Mally and/or Darcy( @tasedandconfused ), since I would say they’re my two main blogs tho darcy gets ignored even more than mally does, probably bc i denied canon and left it entirely we know fandom hates that, if either of them is ignored then… Ya out of luck, I’m gonna unfollow you. I’m debating soft blocking everyone who ignored me on both of them but I don’t want to like be mean and deny the chance to eventually try again but at the same time i shouldnt feel bad for taking a stand and saying this is bullsheet, idk my anxiety says im awful for giving a fluff about myself but also i should give a fluff about myself probably, ive nearly died in the last three months, my brain almost exploded, i just had three root canals on one corner of my face, i have to potentially get surgery on my inner ear which i cant even afford, i dont got time to deal with only being used for like smut memes or like as a resource blog or utter bs like that, i dont got time for it. So new rules here. 1: If Mally or Darcy are not acknowledged, written with, responded to, viewed as more than just their fluffing bodies? ya dropped, im unfollowing, potentially soft blocking, which means blocking and unblocking for those not in the know, on all accounts I follow you on. Every single one. I know most of my muses are on sideblogs but despite not being able to send memes from sideblogs you can block people from sideblogs fun fact, i will do that if i have to. 2: I’m gonna be posting SCs, PCs, memes, etc. I like and respond to plotting calls, starter calls, i send memes, all of that. If I don’t get any response within.. I’m giving one week for people who don’t run on a queue and a month and a half to people on a queue based system, if i dont get anything within that time like at least an im being like ‘its posted’ or ‘its queued i wanted to let you know in case tumblrs a fluffbutt’ (i do this sometimes if i dont get even just a like on the starters i post so i at least know people saw it since i know tumblrs bs, i wait until the day they’re active to do so in case theyre busy yknow) basically i need acknowledgment at all. No you can’t claim this is abt follower count bc when you unfollow someone they inevitably unfollow you too, thats gonna drop my following, not as quickly as soft blocking would but i wanna be fair i guess, which leads to: 3: I’m basing this on your activity too, like if i like a think and you’re gone for a month after that its fine, im not gonna unfollow you unless you never come back or youre online and posting others just not mine because that tells me youre specifically ignoring me and im gonna drop you for that end of. I’m done with the bullsheet im done w the dillish behavior, i love friendship but if im giving and never receiving thats extremely one way and not gonna work. I check through my follow list weekly and i go back about five-10 pages on someones feed before i unfollow them to see their actual activity and see if theyre here or if its a q so. I’m thorough basically. 4: You dont have to be active with me on all your blogs, i mean i’d prefer it but thats hard as fluff so essentially if you have like five blogs and are just like trying w me on two or three thats fine. Ten blogs, four or five with at least a plot formed is cool. Multis just one muse is all I’d need. I’m not gonna unfollow the blogs youre not writing w me on if you at least write w me on some. Again, specifically Mally and/or Darcy. If you ignore both of them, we’re done. I havent been active on darcy because of being ignored and its a huge butt mess and im just tired i wanna use my babies, you don’t get to have my ‘better’ muses like i know a lot of ppl only follow me for my boys or my villains, you don’t get them if you ignore my baby. But, there is a limit there too. 5: If you never respond to a meme or thread even once with Mally or Darcy, or post a starter, i reply, its never replied to again after a month, I’m unfollowing and/or soft blocking for that too. Bc that means youre just raising my hopes to fluff with me or get someone else and honestly, youre even more cunty than than the people just flat out ignoring me if you do that. And this isnt a specific person, this is five of the people actually on my list. Yes, my list is also annotated with specifics again I was very thorough on this yesterday, I hyperfixated I’ll admit it, I’m in a fluffing depressionary bubble and being told to get over it because people want something they dont deserve to have to. I am a believer that people deserve good things but if youre purposefully being cunty… no you dont. 6: No I’m not releasing my list, maybe I will and I’ll omit the urls because I don’t want people being buttholes to each other too but otherwise, yall not seeing it im not giving a callout because… really thats just unnecessary here. I don’t think yall are toxic people or something i just think yall are unintentionally being cunty. And no I don’t mean everyone that follows me i mean the ppl that add up to what i’ve documented so far and fit the bill of butthat that i’ve shown, its behaviors yall gotta check before ya wreck. Yes there will be some people who have priority, everyone has those people, I write w kathryn on other platforms since she doesnt go on here as often but when Kathryn returns from war here (if she does cause she also agrees most ppl on this platform are cunty, i feel really bad saying that word so often but im gonna keep doing it i recently deleted an ask saying I was a huge cunt for not sending someone smut memes when I didn’t even follow them or know they existed so, again the travesty of this place is nutballers) same with owly, alex is here too, my most active partners are always going to be priority because theyre the ones who show the most interest and the most care. I understand that with others as well which is why I have the timeframe set up, because I want to be as open and shizz as possible while atill being firm i guess. I don’t want to have extreme double standards like its impossible for double standards not to exist at least a little bit but I want to avoid a golden chest full of them I guess. 7: I don’t have a seven rn, this was an even number and it bothered me. Seven is nust my warning that I’m bittery writing this on mobile so formatting is not real but i tried my dandest to make this look like something people might actually mind. I dont want to be butty, i dont want to be awful, i dont want to start drama or have drama but that shizz comes around anyways so i might as well make my space as okay for me as i can cause im supposed to avoid stress so my brain doesnt almost explode again, like again i almost fluffing died i dont need ppl fake being my friend or anything, i want stuff to be real and clear. I want to be happy to be on here again and have fun like i used to since my health is plummetting and I’m not allowed to go outside near plants by myself anymore because i welt up. I have plants outside my work place and im surrounded by chemicals all day long I’m welted from here to new york constantly and never comfortable in my own skin because of it and constantly see people online acting like these actual real problems are pretentious because ‘its an excuse’ when, im a fluffing sagittarius, do you know how much i want to magically be a millionaire so i can pay for friends and my own medical stuff and go on traveling and adventures, be outside probably not camping bc as a pagan i know thats a death sentence but like be outside, lay on grass, go back to swimming because i used to swim competitively and due to health reasons i can barely even go in a pool anymore because theres too much sunlight which, bit plot twist i know, im fluffing allergic to vitamin D and the rays of the sun, so go figure, attempts to be healthy kill me more, i also cant eat most plants and am constantly dying from just eating food, they dont know whats wrong with me. i cant fix it by going ve/gan for a month inf act i tried and it almost made my heart stop thanks society. These arent excuses these are the lives of disabled and diseased and to a lesser but still very real point, ethnic lives every fluffing day. This is real shit and its murder and online and gaming? It may be all I have soon since I can’t just go out and make new friends cause, again, I’d fluffing die. I get sick going to the mall or the movie theater, I miss theme parks so much but have to minimize it to weeks i dont have work so i dont get fired for having a welt while working in the beauty industry. I may have to get a degree online and change my field entirely because of my illness that nobody understands. People even make fun of it constantly online and I wish I could just drop online entirely because of how unbelievably ableist the entirety of the world is, i wish i could drop humans in general for their ableism, but i cant. I don’t have choices in most cases, but throwing away people who maybe purposefully maybe unintentionally thats why i’m giving you this warning and will be repeating this warning for awhile, this is where i have choice. I have to use what little choice I have in life while I can since everytime i go to movies or a concert or a theme park i almost die because of not having an immune system that functions or being in certain air qualities pr being near plants or unclean people, I may not have much time and I gotta do whats best for what little mental health I have, and if that means dropping people i care about and really want to write with and do things with but who ignore me then, i guess so be it.

#out.#illness cw #health cw #food mention #ive been writing this since noon and its now two pm so this is great #i’s usually put this under a read more but... maybe most people dont deserve a read more rn lol #their behavior will keep being awful if its not pointed out to them so #im done im gonna go welt up from hugging my cat and cry for a bit because i feel mean

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rainbow-hatted1 · 5 years

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What Boredom looks like

1. You just opened up a web browser. What is the first site you visit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/

Yeah, that’s sort of my jam. Reddit in general but that is my go to.

vv more below if you wanna deep dive. vv

2. You just walked into a bookstore. What section do you go to first?

The local published section. If it’s a good bookshop they usually have one. Usually it’s poetry, or short essay compilations or local history books but I tend to like the offerings and you’re supporting people who don’t have a big platform yet.

Otherwise, comics and fantasy are my next first stops.

3. You are hanging with your closest friends. What are you most likely doing?

Lately, not much of anything. Arguing… not talking… depressing things.

Ideally, though, there’s a good meal. Either we’ve cobbled it together on our own or it’s a decent take out option and video/board games. Quidditch if it’s a nice day. Basically, where we can sit and bullshit and laugh a lot. That’s the best time with my mates.

4. You just turned your car on. What station is the radio tuned to?

The independent/alt/rock station. In spite making pop music myself I don’t listen to it a lot. Which is probably weird.

5. You have just woken up for the morning. What is the first things you do?

Try to go back to sleep.

6. Complete this phrase: You cannot buy happiness, but you can buy____.

Tacos

7. What would you do if you woke up as the opposite gender?

Probably touch my boobs entirely too much. Liz calls them boob checks… well, if they’re quick and random, this would probably be fondling. I am ashamed of this answer but it’s likely what I’d do.

8. Are you more likely to cook for yourself or buy food from a restaurant?

I’m prone to laziness but I actually find cooking relaxing so cook for myself. Saves money too. It’s just a good practice to have in general.

9. If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you rather lose?

Smell, probably. I enjoy food too much to lose taste. And between sight and hearing, I’d miss not having those senses and touch is just kind of important as a human being.

10. If you could relive any one year of your life, how old would you be?

Dunno

11. Would you take a bullet for anyone you know?

A few someones

12. Would you rather be rich and dumb or poor and extremely intelligent?

Poor and intelligent. Better chances of bettering my situation with that one.

13. What TV character do you most relate to?

Sam Gardner from Atypical.

14. You just walked into a supermarket. What section do you first go to?

Produce. Yeah, you all thought I’d go for the bakery and desserts. Don’t lie.

15. Is sex before marriage wrong?

No. It’s human. So is waiting. It shouldn’t be as polarizing as it is. Sex is part of life and how you want to experience it is entirely up to you.

16. You just won the lottery. What is the first thing you do with your winnings?

Get a lawyer and not tell anyone I won. People get shitty when you have a lot of money. They expect you to make it rain and I wouldn’t. I’d also take the weekly installments. More money overall and you are far less likely to tank yourself with the winnings. Just saying.

17. If your best friend admitted that they have a crush on you, how would you react?

I would be awkward as fuck. Love him, not like that and he has a girlfriend so yeah… it’d be fucked up.

18. Will the USA ever have a female president?

At this point in time: no. Again, this is a polarizing question that shouldn’t be. A woman could run the country I’m not women in charge by that answer. Don’t read into it. I’m merely saying, that with the way the country appears to be currently they will not vote for that. I’m sorry. It’s stupid.

19. You are carpooling with your friends. Are you more likely to be the driver or a passenger?

Passenger. I don’t drive.

20. How short is too short for skirts and dresses?

I’m not ancient or wearing a skirt so I don’t think it matters, but I tend to prefer more modest options on girls.

21. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, without any consequences, what food would you choose?

Pizza.

22. It’s Saturday night. What are you most likely doing?

Sleeping.

23. You go on a blind date. Your date is extremely beautiful and physically captivating, but you hate their personality. Would you want a second date?

No.

24. How strict should gun laws be?

I think Australia had the right reaction to a massacre

25. Would you rather be the worst player on the best team or the best player on the worst team?

Best player on the worst team. Hopefully, they wouldn’t resent me and we could have a good 90’s style underdog story.

26. How well do you work with others?

Not well.

27. You have the ability to cure only one fatal disease and eradicate it forever. What disease do you choose?

I don’t want that power. Either way people are gonna die and wonder why I couldn’t cure all cancer or something else that’s just as bad…and inevitably another disease will surface that’s worse. There will always be disease even if we don’t like it.

28. If you could go back to college and choose a different degree to study, would you?

Well, considering I’m not in college yet I can still change my mind on that one, but I probably wouldn’t. Care of Magical Creatures but I haven’t zoned in on the specific avenue I want to go in that field yet.

29. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?

Er… traveling the countryside looking for magical creatures and documenting them in the wild. It’d be cool if my friends joined once in a while.

30. Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

Pro-choice isn’t anti-life, for fucks sake people.

31. Would you attend a same sex wedding if invited?

Yeah. If my mates fell in love and get married, I’m gonna be at the party regardless of sexes involved.

32. So far, what has been the greatest day of your life?

The first time HM played to a sold out crowd. That was pretty shocking. We’ve done it since and Nik has carried on doing it on his own but that day was scary and humbling and epic.

33. Has anyone you know ever been arrested?

Yeah, wrongly so but they saw what they wanted and went that’s our guy. Luckily, he didn’t get sent away for good.

34. If it could be one season year-round, what season do would you want it to be?

Fall. But like warm fall not close to winter fall. That fall sucks.

35. What is your biggest regret in life?

Saying such shit things about Anna and Charlie’s mum because I was mad at him. We’ve never recovered from it and it was a stupid in the moment blind rage bullshit thing I can’t ever take back.

36. If you could bring one celebrity back from the dead, who would it be?

John Lennon, probably. But the thing is, not everyone is upset their deaths were untimely. That’s more the livings problem than the dead, I’ve come to learn.

37. What offends you the most?

When people assume how I’m feeling. I’m not exactly easy to read, I know that, and I have a hard time wrapping my own head around my thoughts and feelings. So when I am feeling something and someone says I’m feeling another way because my face doesn’t wash with an emotion or my reaction doesn’t match like it allegedly should it’s really upsetting to me and just makes things worse.

38. Would you rather have an ugly hairstyle or be bald?

Do what you want. It’s just hair

39. At what age did you have your first alcoholic beverage?

16. Yeah, I think that’s right.

40. What do you think happens to us when we die?

Ideally, you move on to another plane. Kind of like a multiverse but one for endings. For a bit you can linger between the here as we know it and there but eventually you either stay and become a ghost or a poltergeist (which depends solely on your continued mental state on the matter of your death) but most move on beyond the veil.

41. What do you think is the best way to quit smoking?

I don’t know.

42. If you could take home any one animal from the zoo, which animal would you choose?

A bear of some sort. Polar, Grizzly, Black…. Whatever they’ve got. Not all zoos have the same bears.

43. Were humans created or did we evolve from earlier species?

I’m gonna go out and say something that pisses people off but I don’t see why it can’t be both. Something came out of nothing which is creating, right? The act of creating something is taking elements and making them something or straight up creating an element. What did that, I don’t know. But at one point there was a creation moment. From there everything on this planet has changed and adapted to the situations and surroundings they came into. Life is change, you don’t change you can’t survive. So both. Both sound right to me.

44. What scares you the most?

Losing everyone I care about… and bugs. Fuck bugs

45. What personality trait turns you off the most?

I hate when people play dumb.

46. You got offered a job to do something you hate, but the pay will make you rich. Do you take it?

No.

47. If today you only had what you were thankful for yesterday, how much would you have?

Sadly, not very much probably.

48. How often do you get mad or upset at yourself?

Everyday.

49. If you could choose one celebrity to be your parent, who would you choose?

I’ll keep my parents, thanks but to answer the question: Reign. At least I’d still have family.

50. If you could only listen to one musical artist for the rest of you life, who would you be listening to?

I would probably choose not to listen to music after a bit. I like variety and I’m not always in the mood for an artist of one flavor but the Beatles? At least their breadth of music is pretty wide.

51. Have you ever used you cell phone while driving?

52. Has anyone you were close to die way too young?

Yes.

53. Is world peace possible?

No, I don’t believe it is. It’d be great if it could be. There’s no reason for all this hate but people are always going to clash. We get on for a bit and then boom, it’s done. Peace is an impossibility but we should still strive for it regardless.

54. You go on a blind date. You date is extremely ugly and physically appalling, but you are madly in love with their personality. Would you want a second date?

I don’t know. I want to say yes, be that guy who doesn’t care. Looks really are not everything but ultimately, you should be attracted to your partner. If you aren’t it isn’t likely to work even if their personality is the most beautiful thing in the world.

55. How did you discover that Santa Claus isn’t real?

My little brother told me and I was devastated.

56. Do you believe in God, or some form of higher deity?

I honestly want to but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how things can be the way they are if a loving god is out there watching us. I think the Futurama episode where Bender gets life on his ass is a great example of how my brain wants to look at it.

And then I read the Bible and get to stories like Zechariah and I’m just left thinking that guy probably had a stroke while praying and the rest is a coincidence.

57. If you could save someone you deeply cared about, but it meant breaking a law, would you do it?

Fuck yes. Without hesitation

58. What is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done for money?

Sold my soul for a sickle once.

59. If you were to make a YouTube video about what you know most about, what would the subject be?

Magical Creatures. I could go on for a very long time about that topic.

60. What do you think is your greatest personality flaw?

I’m rigid. I have a hard time shifting directions when I get going.

61. If your friends spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, would you still want them as friend?

I haven’t got many actual friends so maybe. Better than being alone, I suppose.

62. Have you ever “woke up like this”?

No one has ever “woke up like this”. It’s a lie. It’s always a lie. Even if they look good, that caption shows intent and planning: don’t fall for it.

63. You got offered a job to do something you love, but the pay is one of the worst out there. Do you take it?

If I really fucking love it, yes. But I’m also in a position where I can have a shit paying or no paying job and basically be fine.

64. What do you think is your best physical feature?

My lips?

65. What do you think is your worst physical feature.

My nose is big.

66. Do you know anyone who has committed suicide?

Not suicide no. But I know people who have considered it. Glad they didn’t follow through.

67. What is the nicest thing you’ve ever done for someone you don’t know?

I dunno. I have a habit of giving my bus ticket away if it still has time on it. I know it’s not much but as for random acts of kindness that weren’t really put on display for charities or a fluff news story, that’s the one I’ve got.

68. Have you ever had a night’s dream come true?

No, can’t say that I have.

69. Would you reject a date offer from someone you didn’t like?

yes

70. Which do you think is worse: Failure, or never trying at all?

This is one of those what I say is not really what I do things. I think the second is worse but I often freeze when it comes to choices like this. When I’m by myself: I freeze.

#random #asks #questions #bored #mild entertainment

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rjcauthor · 6 years

Text

How to Make a Living as an Indie Author

[Author Note: Originally published on my website in 2014. The basics remain the same.]

I thought about titling this post, "My Advice to Writers 2014 - 150,000 Books Later," [2018 Update - 1,000,000+ sold and counting] but it'd be disingenuous. I'm not speaking to all writers here. There are plenty of advice guides/blog posts for basic writers, for the hobbyist, for the person who wants to get their book queried and submitted, etc, etc.

I'm not really an expert in any of those fields, so why spend my day off writing a blog post about it? (Why spend my day off writing a blog post at all, honestly? Fuck if I know. I should be on the couch partaking of the last day of the Titanfall beta or rewatching a few of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray. Instead, I'm doing this. I must be mental.) Anyway, I'm writing this because I want to speak to a certain segment of the writing population, and that's the person who wants to make a living as an indie author.

I've written advice posts before, and a lot of them were filled with caveats that were designed to protect people's feelings and avoid controversy, and also protect my ass from anyone who might get upset. Let me get those out of the way ahead of time: I'm assuming if you're going to read further you're:

a) Looking to make a living as an indie author, and are unwilling to accept any other means of making a living long-term.

b) Are smart enough to decide after reading my advice if the methods I describe are a fit for you.

c) Are willing to work for 100 hours per week for a sustained period of time if that's what it takes.

d) Are smart enough to know that I'm too busy to personally mentor anyone beyond this post. You're going to need to figure out the rest for yourself. Find some author friends, some like minded people you can talk to. It'll help a lot.

(As an aside, my harsh words here in this post are going to be the least of the slings and arrows you'll have to deal with if you go down this road, so maybe take it as a warning to look for surer footing elsewhere.)

Some quick background:

In March of 2011 I had been in financial services for seven years. It wasn't going terribly well, and I was spending all my free time working on a story idea that was absolutely haunting me. It kept me up at night writing, and I was having my friends read it and waiting anxiously for their feedback. I loved it - loved writing it, loved hearing what they had to say about it, loved every part of it enough that I was forgoing all my other hobbies just to write.

That was a unique experience for me. I'd gotten a degree in Creative Writing with the intent of becoming a novelist, but gave up on that dream by the time graduation had rolled around. I hated writing after getting my degree, my love of it all ground out of me by years of being forced to write about subjects I did not give two fucks and a shit about. I'd started half a hundred novels from the time I was in fourth grade until college; after college I didn't write anything for eight years.

I had started writing again in the summer of 2010. I kept writing for a few months during that summer, in spite of everything that was going on - work demands, a toddler running around the house, a pregnant wife, a house that we were doing a ton of work on to sell, selling said house, moving in with my in-laws, and a hell of a lot more.

I wrote in spite of all of this. I wrote DURING all of this. I kept coming up with ideas to advance my plot, ideas for interactions between my characters, ideas, ideas and more ideas. I'd sit at work and write ideas down during meetings - whole chunks of scenes and dialogue. I was a financial services salesperson and trainer; I was supposed to be paying attention.

It got bad. I didn't care about my financial services business anymore, all I cared about was writing. So I started trying to figure out how to become a full-time writer, and looked into traditional publishing (which was the only game I had heard of back then). It wasn't a happy answer I came back with. The short version: Good fucking luck, kid, and don't quit your day job.

A little depressed, I put aside my writing for a few months and redoubled my efforts in financial services in preparation for the upcoming baby. By the time January rolled around, I was twice as frustrated, and I was back on the writing again. I looked for answers to the question of, "How do I become a full-time author?" again, and this time I found something different.

Self-publishing. Amanda Hocking. Joe Konrath. They told tales of copious sales, of massive amounts of money, and of working hard, but being in charge of your own destiny. I found a few other names like David Dalglish and B.V. Larson, and I started studying up to figure out how I could do just a fraction of what they were doing. It took me about a month or so to figure it all out, but I came up with a plan, and on March 5, 2011, I told my wife I wanted to quit financial services and stay home with the baby so I could write in every available moment.

I'll spare you the argument and say that eventually she went for it. So I stayed home with our youngest and wrote obsessively during naps and after bedtime, defraying daycare expenditures for the first year and releasing two books with a third finished by the end of the year. After that, we put both kids in daycare all-day, every-day and I started writing full-time as of January 1st, 2012. I was making a living by the end of September, just after my sixth book came out.

And here's what it took to do it.

1. Be calculating

Whenever I talk about what I do/did as an indie author, I inevitably hear people in the background say, "Ehh, he just got lucky, that's all."

To them I say: I planned for both failure and success, understanding that as long as I did not yield, I could work until some level of success was inevitable. Luck may have vaulted me to way above what I'd planned for, but I didn't count on it and it wasn't required to be able to making a living, which is what I wanted - and what I planned for.

I worked my ever-loving ass off in ways that no one ever saw, spent most of my off-hours in analysis, took mighty risks, gambled a lot of money, time and basically my entire future on my own success, and then watched things work ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE I PLANNED FOR IT TO BEFORE I EVEN FINISHED MY FIRST NOVEL.

You need to constantly assess the landscape by reading about your industry. You need to know about what's going on in the world of publishing, the world of craft, everything about your industry that you can soak up. Even if it sounds stupid, even if you violently disagree with it, the time you spend learning these things can all weigh in the formulation of your game plan.

Watch the people who are doing it, and try to distill the common denominators of their success. I heard some motivational coach say, "Success leaves clues." No successful author is doing it exactly the same way, but a lot of them are doing similar things.

A lot of people speak of planning like it's something you do once and forget about.

Are you fucking kidding me? Planning is an ongoing process. Like Sun-Tzu said, your plan ain't gonna survive contact with the enemy (pretty much everything is your enemy, btw, this publishing environment is like Australia) so you have to revise it constantly. Throw out what isn't working, make new plans, revise old ones. My overarching plan (strategy) was this:

i) Write a shitload of books

ii) Get them in people's hands somehow

iii) ?????*

iv) PROFIT!

*(Step iii is actually, "Get them to pay for the next ones.")

It's the little plans (the tactics) - how to get those steps done - that needed changing. And you must assess where you are CONSTANTLY. And it cannot get in the way of your writing. (Starting to see why obsession - #5 - is important?)

I had this basic strategy/plan when I came to my wife on that day in March, and frankly, the strategy hasn't changed in the (nearly) three years since. What has changed are the tactics - the little ways I carried out said plan. Back then the way you carried out ii was through 99 cent pricing. That no longer works the way it once did, so now it's permafree or box sets (or the nuclear option, permafree box sets). (See points #2 and #7).

Caveats/Pitfalls for Point #1:

a) You will need to spend your off hours studying this business the way a horny teenage boy studies every line of the pretty girl in front of him's body while he's bored in math class. (See point #5, re:obsession.) You will need to read articles, journals, blogs, books and possible advice scrawled on rest area bathroom walls. (Jenny - 867-5309 and other assorted bathroom stall wisdom is probably not going to help you, but collect it anyway. Better to have it than not.)

b) If you have no experience running a business of any kind, things will be more difficult for you. I don't know how much. I spent eight years running a business in financial services before taking on this responsibility, and it was like an internship that prepared me for being an indie author. I learned to manage my time, I learned about marketing and sales, about loss leaders, and about picking up the shovel and doing unpleasant work I didn't want to do in the name of staving off working for someone else. I hate the thought of working for someone else. It's a powerful motivator for me. If you don't have motivation to drive yourself, this is going to be tough for you.

2. Write fast

Ingredient number one in the souffle of success is hard work. But simple hard work is not enough; results are key here.

In fact, this is probably the biggest caveat to the whole equation, because if you can't write fast (and a lot of people can't, no shame in that) it might not work for you like it worked for me. I wrote 140,000 words of fiction in my evenings over the course of a couple months while I was still running my financial services business because I was so obsessed with the story I had to tell.

Some things that *might* help you write faster - writing sprints of 15-60 minutes, reinforced by taking your laptop computer somewhere that has no internet/distractions or using an internet blocking program like Anti-Social or Freedom. Still, if you can't write fast enough to get out four books per year...again, this might not be the plan for you. I'm not dogging on you, I just know what it took for me to get to my present level of success, and I'm not sure what it will take below that level of output. Is it still possible? I'm sure it is. I just didn't plan that way so I can't really advise you.

Additional caveats/pitfalls of fast writing -

a) Make sure you have an error correction process in place. Spellcheck alone is not going to do it. Professional editing would be a great idea.You have to decide what your Quality Assurance process will be, but you need to have SOMETHING in place. Not every reader is turned off by tons of errors in a manuscript, but a lot of them are. These errors take away from your story. They're a distraction. You're fighting the wind instead of using it. Don't get me wrong, there's such a thing as TOO MUCH when it comes to time spent on error correction, but you need to find this balance for yourself.

b) You can write crap to get the words out, but you damned sure better edit/rewrite it until it's professional-grade. I can fix words on a page that suck, but I can't edit a blank page. Make sure your stories are good (See point #4), that they're engaging, that they keep the reader moving through. Get beta reader feedback to tell you where people are putting your books down and try to figure out WHY they're doing it. HINT: They may not know the reason why, exactly. Study craft to narrow it down.

3. Learn business

There's a lot of bullshit out there. Tons of it. Enough to fertilize the entire world. In your opinion, maybe this post is filled with it. It doesn't really bother me if that's what you think, because once I write this post, I'm done with it. I'm not an advice guru, I'm a full-time independent author who derives all his income from selling books, not writing advice posts. So if you don't like the material herein and think it's bullshit, you know what to do with it - fertilize something.

What does this have to do with business? Everything. If you're going to be a full-time independent author, you have to fill your time with things an indie author would do. You also have to develop a really exceptional bullshit filter. You need to seek WISDOM (publishing information) from a variety of sources and develop the DISCRETION (bullshit filter) to decide what to apply and what not to. Some of the things you decide not to apply may not be bullshit; they just may not be a fit for the direction you want to take your career.

For example, discounting. Lots of people run sales on books, run specials on books. I haven't done hardly any of this, with a couple recent exceptions. This particular strategy is NOT bullshit, it just doesn't fit for the direction I want to go with my career. It's a perfectly reasonable business plan that works, just not one I want to employ.

Another thing about business - if you're not able to understand basics of profit and loss, contracts and how they affect you, the concept and application of loss leaders, basics of time management - okay, this is going to be a problem. The indie authoring industry is a place of shifting sands, where things are changing rapidly and what worked yesterday isn't necessarily going to work tomorrow.

What else goes into the business end of things? Tracking sales, choosing vendors, figuring out your budget, figuring out how to grow top-line sales while improving the bottom line by controlling costs, and dealing with the ten thousand assorted land mines that could crop up on a daily basis. Other business activities could include trawling through the data on your bit.ly or smartURL links to determine where you sales are coming from, figuring out which the best venues are for adbuys (I have no comment on this) or networking with other writers and talking shop.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) This is probably the least clearly delineated subject in this post. The reason why is because I don't really know how fast you can learn what you need to know. Maybe you've already got all the business experience you need to start with the basics. Maybe you have no business experience and are starting from scratch. I'm not even sure what all I've learned along the way from my previous career and how much it helped me, at least not in quantifiable terms. I just know it's helped a TON.

b) If you don't know anything about business, that doesn't mean it's GAME OVER, MAN. You can learn. I highly recommend constantly trying to assess your weaknesses and figuring out how to shore those up. A couple areas I think authors struggle with - Time Management/Procrastination and Self-Discipline. If you've got those areas down, good for you. A few books I think might help if you feel out of control or unsure are Kris Rusch's Freelancer's Survival Guide and Brian Tracy's Eat that Frog! (which is a time management/priority setting book). Actually, I've read a lot of books by Brian Tracy and they've all helped. The Freelancer's Guide is a good starting point, though, for general business basics.

4. Learn your craft

I'm not talking about grammar and spelling. Spellcheck can save you in one of these regards. You do need some basic knowledge of sentence structure, syntax, etc, but a good editor can help you if you're close on that. Grammar and spelling aren't really elements of craft.

Here I'm talking about descriptions, narrative voice, all the components that allow you to take the reader from beginning to end without losing them. There are a LOT of pieces to this particular puzzle, and you'll spend a lifetime working on this if you're serious about it because there's always something new to learn. Still, some fundamentals:

a) Openings

b) Cliffhangers

c) Pacing

d) Character Voice and Setting

Classes on all these topics (and more) can be found online. Make sure you use your bullshit filter to determine whether the person you’re learning from is actually worth learning from.

If you can't afford classes, let me suggest you at least read heavily in these and other areas of craft. There are tons of books on craft from experts out there. I'll try and compile a list to place at the bottom of this post in the comments, but I don't have time for it right now.

Be deliberate, as Joe Konrath would say, considering how best to improve and giving all due thought to how you can employ what you've learned in your next work to make your writing better.

All craft exercises boil down to one purpose and one alone: HOOK YOUR READER FROM THE FIRST WORD AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT FUCKING LET THEM GO UNTIL YOU'RE DONE.

Everything you learn in craft, from characterization to plotting to whatever is essentially boiled down to the essential storytelling skill of keeping them interested in what you're saying. Find the obstacles in your writing that are knocking people out of your work and shave the rough edges off them as fast as your peppy little fingers can figure out which keys to punch to do so.

Some things that can help you build your audience - write in a series. Same characters when possible (not EXACTLY possible in romance to keep the same main characters book after book, but in mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc, you should do this). Can you build a career writing standalone novels? Yeah, but I don't know how to do it so go find someone who can instruct you in this manner. (see point #7 for more on the benefits of writing in a series.)

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Your first million words is (probably) going to suck. I had an advantage here in that I've been writing books since grade school so I expelled a lot of these crappy words during my teens/early twenties the way White Castle hamburgers are expelled from your digestive tract - violently and messily, with much disgust from anyone who witnesses this spectacle.

b) Taken alongside the first caveat, realize that sometimes you're better off jumping series as your craft/ability to hold the reader improves. My first series did not take off the way my second series has (probably because the first book isn't as strongly written/well-crafted with hooks in the first as the second). It doesn't mean I abandoned my first series (in fact it's doing quite well now) but I did put it on the back-burner for the last couple years as I focused on the one that was paying my bills. The first book of my first series was...my first book. Ever. I was still learning to write a damned novel. My craft got stronger and my second series did much better.

5. Be obsessed

To quote Bree Bridges (half of the Kit Rocha writing duo of hilarity and awesomeness), "When I say it's possible to make money in publishing, I'm assuming you've tried the easier things like digging for pirate treasure."

This does not mean it's impossible. It does not mean you can't do it. It just means that if you're just looking to make a living, it's easier to get a job that works you 40 hours a week that allows you to shut off your brain afterward.

You CANNOT do that in self-publishing and expect to have it work. You will need to think about it all the time. Wanting to make your living telling stories has to be the thing you get up for in the morning and the thing you go to sleep at night thinking about.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life telling stories and getting paid for it. I wanted no boss, no schedule but that I set for myself, and I was willing to work 100 hours per week for myself so I didn't have to work 40 for someone else (thanks to L.T. Ryan for that quote).

6. Market

Lots of people have different definitions for this. I have only one - help people who are looking for a book like yours to find your damned book. You can call it visibility, you can call it discoverability, you can call it the gorram hillbilly rock for all the fucks I give on the subject.

How did I market? One way, and one way only, pretty much. I wrote in a series that had an overarching story, and I set my first book in said series to free. Permanently. That's right, you can read the first book in my two series for absolutely nothing in e-reader formats. (More on this in point #7.)

But wait, you say! It's now 2017 and that doesn't work anymore. Amazon has come along and killed the permafrees to death using an algorithm attached to a death ray.

Fine. What's the lowest possible price you can get as many of your books to? Do that and see how many copies you can give away. No, I don't care if you've got a ten book series and you're selling 9 for 99 cents in order to collect full price for that last one. If that's what it takes to move some fucking books, you'll find me there doing it, too. I will race you to the damned bottom, and I feel confident that I can whip the ass off most of the other people there because I'm obsessed, I'm a fast writer, and I have no problem with discounting ridiculous amounts of my backlist in order to get people to TRY - JUST TRY - my writing. I dare you not to read on.

And really, this is all marketing is. I'm trying to expose the readers who will LOVE my books to...MY BOOKS. Some will merely like them, but keep reading. Some readers will get caught up along the way and only somewhat enjoy my books. Maybe they'll read more, maybe not. A certain percentage will dislike my books. A certain percentage (hopefully small, if I've done my craft job correctly) will absolutely DESPISE my books and want to flame them in perpetuity with bad reviews and bad word of mouth. This number is baked into the cake of success, so get used to it. I want AS MANY OF THOSE HATERS to read my book as possible, because if they're reading it, so are the people who will love it.

Marketing is just finding ways to get those people exposed to your books. I don't do interviews, blog tours, (or blog posts, really), Twitter spamming, etc. I did it my way - permafree and having enough reviews to get the big sites like Pixel of Ink, E-reader News Today, Bookbub, Indie Book Bargains in the UK - to give me some signal boost so my books could go up the freebie charts. Kobo has given me a helping hand before as well, getting visibility on their site. I didn't ask for it, they just gave (and I'm grateful for it). Ultimately, though, none of these things would help me if I hadn't set the damned books free and gotten enough positive exposure to push them up to where people could find them.

Exposure. That's the magic word. And I don't mean the kind that gets you sent to jail for indecency, so put your pants back on. (Until you're a full-time writer, then pants are optional.)

7. Don't be afraid to give your work away for free

Between 11 April 2012 when I released my book Alone: The Girl in the Box, Book 1 and when I set it free in September 2012 some five months later, I sold 42 copies of it through all channels. In August I released books 2 and 3 in that series, ended up making four figures that month for the first time, five figures in November, and I've never even come close to a four-figure month since.

Would that have happened if I hadn't set Alone to permanently free? I doubt it. Sales weren't even moving in the right direction on it before I set it free to boost its exposure. The month before it went free it sold 3 copies. Since then it's been downloaded some 320,000 times for free and generated some 100,000+ paid sales for the rest of the series (almost all at $4.99 or the foreign equivalent).

There are two ways to look at those numbers - the first is to say, MY GOD, YOU MISSED OUT ON 320,000 SALES, ARE YOU MAD?! The answer is no, not really, because I've probably only missed out on the 3 sales a month I'd have generated without the additional visibility brought on by Alone being free, and I traded it for a boatload of money in the form of subsequent sales. That's not even counting all the people who finish reading the Girl in the Box series and move on to the other books I've written, because there are those people, too. (And I love them. My truest fans.)

That's the second way to look at it. The thought that follows is, "if only I could give away MORE copies for free, I'd be able to push that paid number to 200k+ or 300k+." (Which I'm working on).

Let's talk about the emotion of this for a moment. It hurts to set your beloved book free. It's painful to drop it to a low price. But a recent survey of successful indie authors found that something like 85% of those making over $500k per year had at least one permafree. Look for commonalities, right?

Whatever promotion hurts you the most will be most appealing to your readers. (That's according to one of the most awesome gurus of the indie movement, Edward W. Robertson.) I agree with that statement wholeheartedly, which is why this morning I started the process of setting my two biggest sellers - Untouched and Soulless, books 2 and 3 in my Girl in the Box series - to FREE. Why would I do that? Because I'm thinking even if I go from 3:1 freebie to sale ratio, if I could give away a million of those free (because of the added appeal of 3 BOOKS FOR FREE OMG DEAL) and it drops to a 5:1, I've still sold 200,000 more books. Boom.

It hurt when I set my first two books free, but it gets easier every time. And yes, it even hurt when I was selling a couple books a month, because I put blood, sweat and tears into those books, making them as good as I possibly could. However, their true value is not in the price on their cover; it's in how much money they're making for the author. After all, I'm not in this to make $10 per book; I'm in this to make a living. Free is just another tool in the toolbox for making that happen.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Maybe your book isn't appealing to readers (NOTE: I DID NOT SAY YOUR BOOK SUCKS. Though it may. I don't rule that out, having not read your book. It may be sucking the balls of every donkey in the shire, for all I know. But maybe not.)

If this is the case, a few things will happen - once you get to about thirty reviews, you'll probablyknow it it's not appealing to readers because your review average will be low. What's low? If you're below 3.5 on 30 reviews on Amazon.com, it's not a good sign. (Caveat to the caveat: Whatever you do, don't read the reviews for your work on Goodreads. This will not be helpful to your career - or your mental health, in all probability. And definitely don't base any judgments about what to do in your career on Goodreads reviews. Goodreads reviews skew much lower than Amazon, and as far as I'm concerned, anything above 0.1 on Goodreads means I'm doing aight.)

Again, just to be plain, for bad reviews - does it mean your book SUCKS? No, not necessarily. It means that for whatever reason, it's not CONNECTING WITH READERS. Which is the name of the game to make a living. Creating pure and beautiful art is the province of people who don't have any outside concerns (and don't write genre fiction). Us lesser mortals (aka Genre writers) have to get by on the time, energy and money we have.

I would never tell you to base your career decisions on one or two reviews, but if you've got 30 reviews on Amazon and half of them are 1-stars...you're going to have a hell of time getting even a permafree enough exposure. It may be time to jump ship to another series, and possibly another pen name depending on how bad it looks.

Writers are terrible judges of their own work, and the authors who most need to be told their work sucks would still think it's awesome even if they're running a 1-star average on 5000 reviews while an author who writes amazing work tends to bash their own brains in because they got their first 1-star after 9 5-stars in a row. (Another point, which I'm going to say only once here - In the words of Troy McClure, "Get confident, stupid.")

b) Maybe you're in a genre that's not selling. Maybe it's awesome, but it's in a genre that Bookbub is ignoring. (Sorry, Bria!) That can happen. If you can, pick a popular genre. I'm not telling you to defile your art (or whatever), but I was fortunate in that the stories I wanted to tell more or less fit into a reasonably decent-selling genre (Fantasy). If you write second-person POV octopus mysteries, your mileage won't just vary - it will suck. Even if your book is awesome.

8. Never stop learning

Things change rapidly. If you're not constantly paying attention and reading industry blogs/keeping up with the goings on through some form of peer group with its ear to the ground, you will miss opportunities. You will miss landscape changes. These can be subtle (the slow death of Amazon Select - actually, know what what? That wasn't all that subtle) or obvious (I dunno. The caffeine is wearing off. Find an example on your own.) Either way, you'll lose out.

I had my plan, I had my basic strategy, and I started to make money in September 2012. I could have coasted, thinking I had my shit together. Instead, around October or November, I made an enormous change, one that felt like a pain in the ass to implement, but that has made enormous difference in my career.

I implemented a mailing list with links in the back of my books.

I didn't fully finish implementing this until February 2013 (and I kick myself for failing to do so) but HOLY CRAP does it make a different. If you're wondering what I'm talking about with a mailing list, go read THIS POST on Kboards by my friend SM Reine. I'll wait for you here until you get back. Make sure you read her follow-up posts as well, down the thread.

This single change is revolutionary. If you're waiting for your audience to come find you every time you release a book, you're basically throwing your baby into the waiting wolves of the Amazon algorithms. Want to make a bigger splash? Want to "game" the system? Get your damned fans to all buy your book at once. It'll make a bigger splash. If you have half a dozen cherry bombs and you light them one at a time, it's like launching a book with only social media to inform your audience. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop!

Get a mailing list together and send that puppy while you're informing your Facebook and Twitter, and it's like wrapping those cherry bombs together to create a stick of dynamite. It can help you push your new release up the genre list and garner you exposure for your entire series. "Oh, look, book #9 of this series looks interesting. I should go back and read book #1." Boom, you hooked a new reader. And best of all, once they sign up for your mailing list, they're added to the dynamite for future launches.

If you're going to go to the hard work of writing and releasing books for a living while you're trying to build an audience, don't be yutz by skipping the last steps to success. Find a way to make it easier for readers to hand you money. Make it simple for them to know you've got a new book out.

Don't get stuck in marketing like it's 2009 and you can just format a warm turd into a .mobi, price it at 99 cents and have an Amazon Bestseller. ( #1in the Fiction -> Fantasy -> Turds & Burglars category! Oops, sorry, they eliminated that category in the great 2013 category shuffle. Which you would know if you were paying attention.)

Never stop learning. Or you'll get your ass beaten by someone who's figured out something you haven't.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Honestly, no matter how much you're learning, you're going to get caught flatfooted by big changes every now and again. Try and limit how often this happens by keeping your fingers on the pulse of the indie author world (and off other places - you will go blind, dammit, STOP THAT).

b) You're probably going to get your ass beaten by people anyway, so you might as well be a good sport about it. Be honest: from where you're sitting right now, if you were suddenly selling a million books per month at $2.99, would you be happy? What if you were selling that many but you were still #1,987 on your category's Author Ranking?

Put another way, who cares what your peers are doing if you're meeting your goals? Focus on you, because you can't control what others are doing, you can only learn from it and apply it to your own career if it fits.

9. Don't be afraid to fail BIG - and find a way to use it as a stepping stone for future success

My first year as an indie author (2011) I made $12.25. I actually earned more than that, but because of the limitations on how big your earnings need to be before they cut a check, that's all I made. I never cashed that check, and it's still sitting on my desk right now (which is how I knew the specific amount).

That's kind of a big failure, isn't it? Would you be happy earning that much for your year's labor? Whatever your answer (please say no), realize that I was expecting that, so I didn't get disappointed when it happened. The game I was playing was long term, and I was aiming more for growth than anything. I was excited when I went up to 25 sales in a month, and I didn't get all bummed out and pissed off and demotivated when I sagged the next month. New releases and promotions help push you up, but there's a natural sag given time.

Another "failure": I launched a book last month, a collection of short stories in my Sanctuary Series. Thus far it's sold 468 copies, and at a lower price than I usually price my work. Whoops. I wrote a short story collection in my lesser-selling series and it bombed. This isn't a huge surprise or anything, but it's a failure. I'm not going to go crying over it, but you can bet I'll think long and hard before I spend my time writing another short story collection.

Of course, here's the biggest one of all: Every month before I started making a living was a failure, really. It was a calculated failure, but it was a failure nonetheless. We were sinking money into daycare costs, losing time for me to go get a degree in something that would pay me (with an English degree and financial services experience, I don't have a great resume). I was willing to accept as many of those failures as it took to cross through to success. My wife, however, was not going to wait forever.

Every month (even now) I do an autopsy on my calendar. What did I do right this month? What did I do wrong? What can I improve? (I also track my wordcount, sales, and number of books presently for sale.) My entire career in finance ended up as a failure, but that doesn't mean I didn't take away a ton of salvage for use in this one.

Comb through your fuckups. Often times you'll learn more from those than your successes.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) When you start to see some success, don't be a fucking idiot and stop working. Work twice as hard, because now you know your strategy is doable. I worked even more in 2013 than I did in 2012 because now I was 100% sure I was on the right track. I'm going to see if I can beat what I did in 2013 this year.

b) I think this probably goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway in case any of you are morons): don't go into something TRYING to fail. Unless it's low risk/low loss. Assess the amount of time/energy/money you're going to sink into something before you commit to it if it's got a high failure rate. Don't waste your time doing stuff you're almost certain is doomed unless it's like five seconds of your time. And don't get bummed when it goes to shit, expect that in advance and be pleasantly surprised if you get anything out of it.

10. Keep writing

I think I'm exhausted and the caffeine is wearing off, so I'm going to make this as quick as I can. If you're the type of person who's easily discouraged, this is going to be tough on you. If you're the type of person who flits from job to job always looking for the "better deal" or the "next thing"...you're probably not going to have much success here, either. If you're not okay with spending ten hours per day hammering at your writing career on various fronts for a while without much of a vacation or break...I don't think I can help you. If you're not bursting with excitement at the stories you have inside that SIMPLY MUST BE TOLD, I'm not sure this career thing is going to be the right fit.

But if you're dedicated beyond the capacities of most humans, if you're obsessed, and you're smart, and you're willing to learn and do whatever it takes (on this side of the legal and ethical bounds please, you Frank Underwood, you) to build a backlist and get your books in front of people, you can make a living as an indie author. Will it be huge? Maybe. Will it be minimal? Maybe. I don't know. There's some definite variance in mileage between writers, but I've seen enough of them MAKE A LIVING to know it's possible if you approach it correctly and you're willing to work hard enough to make a one-armed paperhanger look idle.

Once you've got all these other points down, it's really down to you to keep writing. Keep putting books on your bookshelf. Take the hits that will come and do not stop tapping keys on that keyboard. I don't know how long it will take you to get there, I honestly don't. Personally, I didn't care how long it took. The eighteen months it took for me passed like nothing because I was having the time of my life.

This isn't the lottery; there's not just one winning ticket. There's really no luck involved either, just an obscene number of things that are outside your direct control. There are so many things you can do to influence these events, though, and I've outlined as many of them for you as I could here. I probably missed some; I'm kinda tired by now, and it's my day off.

The bottom line is that if you *really* want to be a full-time indie author, I think you can do it. Will it be easy? FUCK NO. If you're looking for easy, scroll back to that paragraph with Jenny's phone number. This will be a lot of "nose to the grindstone."

But will it be worth it?

In every year of my financial services career, I interviewed people looking to hire them. I'd listen to their stories, hear them talk about their work lives. Every day I did that, I put myself in their shoes and imagined what my life would be like if I had their career. Sometimes I'd shudder, sometimes I'd wonder what it'd be like if I'd made the choice to do what they did. Sometimes I'd wish I had. A lot of times I wished I had. Especially when things got bad.

Since the day I started to write full-time, I have never once imagined myself as anything other than a writer. I have never wanted anyone else's life or job for my own, and I have never wanted to be anyone but me. I've maybe wanted to have other authors sales numbers if they're doing better than me, but I've never wanted to swap anything else.

I don't want to do anything else but what I'm doing. I love this gig. It's the best job I've ever had. Last year I went to England for a week to research a novel and meet some fans. Had one of the best times of my life. In January, it got damned cold here so I picked up and took the kids to Florida for a week to hang out with my parents and go to Disney. Sure, they just went last October, but you only live once, right? (I also wrote something like 12,000 words on a book while I was on "vacation" so...)

For me, it was worth it. It was everything I'd ever wanted and when I got here, it was everything I'd dreamed of plus more. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're the kind of person who wants it that badly, who's willing to do what it takes to do it, I hope this helps you.

Keep writing. That's the last key. Through the bad times, and the good - hopefully it'll mostly be good, but you better plan for the other. If you want it bad enough that you're willing to put in effort in these areas, you can do it. If you're hating every day of it, though, then it's probably not for you, and there's no shame in that.

What being a full-time indie author basically boils down to is that you keep writing, because you love it so much you can't stop. No caveats. No pitfalls. Just a love of writing that won't ever let you quit.

(Editor's Note: There is no editor and I'm sure this post is riddled with errors. Fuck off and go write, okay? I'm going to go play Titanfall.)

#writing #writers #writeblr

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