The practical steps.
So I can only tell you what has worked for me. I can’t speak for anyone else. This is my opinion and there is a rant or two lol. and I do not have a proofreader for these posts so if it’s full of typos, my bad.
Anywho, something to keep in mind because I think it’s very important, is that I’d written over 11 full length novels before I wrote BBTEQ as well as a bunch of half novels.
I’d attended critique groups for years, learned from some great writers, learned the basics of novel writing, and read A LOT of books! Hundreds.
In my opinion you MUST be a reader to be a good writer.
I think it’s rare that your very first book is good enough to sell well, but it happens. My first book at 18 certainly wasn’t great. As with everything, it takes practice to get good at something. So if you need to write a book or two or even more before you have a hit, that’s okay.
This is a long game, a marathon. I think Brandon Sanderson says it takes about 10 years of writing to be what he calls publishable. I don’t entirely agree since I’ve seen teenagers get a publishing deal, but ten years or so is probably the average. I was writing for over 10 years before I had a hit.
If you’re just starting out, this may sound daunting. You won’t want to wait ten years, just because me and Brandon had to wait ten years doesn’t mean you have to. Take the time to learn story/plot structure, learn everything you can about the craft, be open to critique and editing, write, write write, and you’ll be ahead of most people who just start with an idea and go.
This will hopefully help you cut down years and years of frustrations, for both newbies and writers who’ve been at this for years with lackluster results.
When I took a step back from my mediocre sales to figure out what I needed to change, I asked myself if I was going to write a breakout massive bestseller, what would I do?
- I’d believe it was possible for me so I’d learn from the best and implement what they teach.
2. Do my research on what’s selling and read books in the genre
3. Figure out the tropes and what readers want in my genre, then make my story the same BUT different.
4. LOVE my book and my characters. This is HUGE. You have to love your story too.
5. Take the time needed to write and edit but be consistent in writing almost daily.
6. Get feedback from beta readers and make changes as necessary, but trust my gut. It’s my story.
7. PROOFREADING
8. Market like it was already a bestselling book which means treat my book like a product to sell to a hungry market, not like my baby.
9. Have faith!
1.The first thing I did was get back to craft so I bought David Farland’s Super Writer’s Bundle from mystorydoctor.com and it was WELL worth the price. What I learned from Dave made me a ton of money in 2022. If I had learned the stuff he taught years before, I’d be way ahead, but a few years ago I thought what I knew was good enough and I didn’t need to learn anymore. An arrogant, stupid mistake and I learned the hard way.
So I recommend you check out his courses and blog and at least read Million Dollar Outlines. Or find another teacher, such as Brandon Sanderson’s lectures free on youtube. (although Dave’s was more in depth in my opinion but I watched both)
I will not be teaching you how to write or how to plot. There are plenty of great teachers for that. If you’re a beginning writer or even advanced, I got some good nuggets from it, Lee Child’s course (He writes the Jack Reacher novels and has sold over 100 million copies) on the BBC website is good and at an affordable price.
Another book that helped me with blurb writing and adding the juicy butter that makes books sell was T. Taylor’s 7 Figure Fiction. Game changer!
Secrets of Story by Matt Bird is another book that has the must haves of bestsellers.
Write to Market by Chris Fox is another good one.
Get great at craft. Always be willing to learn more and improve. This is how you become a bestseller and be an author worth talking about.
You can’t skip this part.
If you want word of mouth to spread, which is the best form of marketing, you MUST know story structure and what people love. Give them something worth talking about. BE SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU.
2. Doing research on what’s selling and using tropes to sell.
One thing to keep in mind is readers of popular genre fiction want the SAME but DIFFERENT.
People read in your genre for a reason. If it’s too different they won’t like it, but if it’s too similar to other popular books, they’ll say you’re copying them.
When I set out to plot my bestseller I read Christ Fox’s book Write to Market. The basic concept is to search the Amazon listings of possible genres I could write in with hungry readers but not overly saturated so my book wouldn’t get lost among the already big time authors.
I knew I wanted to write fantasy romance but I needed to go deeper than that. I watched a lot of tik tok/Booktok to see what readers enjoyed and what they talked about. And I read a lot of the books they talked about.
One thing I noticed was popular on Tiktok were fairy tale retellings and fae in my genre. Now the Fae are popular but it’s also very saturated, and so is Beauty and the Beast retellings, so I went with something a little different.
Elves and mythology: Hades and Persephone inspired. I knew that Amazon’s new Rings of Power was coming out within the year and thought that readers might be looking for more elf entertainment around the time I’d release my book. Plus I love elves. Legolas, is all that need be said.
I also had to think how I was going to make my hook different but similar enough that it would draw interest from readers who love Hades & Persephone. The cliff notes version of their story that I took inspiration from is Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnaps Persephone the goddess of spring, to be his wife and take her to his home. It’s basically the stolen brides trope.
So I’d have Thane, the high king of the elves, said to be wicked and deadly, come to take Layala, the last elven mage, for his bride BUT she knew he would come for her and trained her entire life to kill him. BOOM. the familiar trope with a new twist. From there I had to come up with a reason why she’d want to kill him and I did.
One thing I highly recommend is to write the book description before you write the book. So you know the idea itself is exciting enough to get people to read the book. You don’t want to write 100k words and then think, ok how can I say what this huge book is about in a few hundred words, and how can I get people to read it? (I’ve done that too. It’s a nightmare.)
When you go to write what’s popular some writers might think they’re selling out. And you should just write your muse, what inspires you. But when you’re writing for popular fiction you give people what they want. Go ahead and write whatever you feel like, and keep being stuck where you are.
The beauty of this though, is you can marry the two. Write what you love but also for the masses.
If you want to be a trendsetter, you’d probably have to be a mega star like Stephanie Meyer with a big publisher to back you.
So my advice and what I did was to write what’s already popular, write it great, the same but different enough to be your own.
3. Using tropes but making them different. The best place to find popular tropes is Tiktok and Instagram. You can also browse reviews on popular books to see what people loved about it or a particular scene they can’t stop thinking about, and check out reader groups with your genre, but
I found TikTok and instagram to be most helpful to identify these. Before I went to see what people actually wanted to read about I didn’t even consider the tropes. I just knew what I liked.
I didn’t know that say, a woman putting a knife to a man’s throat, (the love interest to be exact) was popular in books. I just knew I found that exciting, but didn’t recognize that it was a trope or trending in my genre.
Hell a few years ago I didn’t even know what a trope was. I knew I loved soul mates or mates in general, the idea of two beings devoted forever or meant for each other, but I didn’t think it was something that could get a reader to buy a book based solely on that fact. I should have because it would have sold me.
Tropes will sell your book from a marketing standpoint. I learned to think of the content of the book as a marketing tool itself. Which meant, I needed to add things to it that would get them interested.
Don’t go overboard with this though and DO NOT copy another authors scenes or work. Take inspiration but make it your own. And if you just throw tropey scenes in at random that don’t make sense to add, people will know. The readers are smart. They’ll sniff that shit out from a mile away. Weave it seamlessly into your story, only if it makes sense to the plot.
Here was my process for writing Elf Queen.
After researching and deciding I wanted to do elves and Hades and Persephone inspired which if you break it down the trope is an “arranged marriage”. But to make it more delicious, I added in the trope of fated mates too
I had my MC’s forcefully betrothed by Thane’s father (the elf king) as children, and bound them together as mates WITH magic (not the typical by fate or soulmates) marked on their skin with a mate rune. A familiar and beloved mate trope but slightly different.
Another popular trope with romance novels in general is the man is quite often a womanizer and very experienced in bed while the woman is a virgin or inexperienced. So I made Thane a virgin who waited for Layala, and Layala had already been in love once and lost her virginity. (though admittedly, she’s not experienced)
You can go with the popular, it’s popular for a reason. I just decided this was one to twist.
Many times the heroine is naive and has no idea what’s going to hit her. A completely oblivious girl just going about her day (or his day), and bam, something magical happens. I believe that’s a trope in itself but I wanted to add my own twist to that because it can feel overdone so Layala knew Thane would come for her and she trained to be an assassin for that day specifically.
I needed her to be badass and I refused to have her just suddenly become a naturally good fighter overnight. To have talent and potential, ok, but to be great right out the gate? That’s so lame and unrealistic,and I hate that it is becoming a trend. It’s not a good one. (keep notes to tropes you don’t like too and do the opposite! lol)
This may or may not be controversial but take Rey from the new star wars for example. Now its been years since I’ve seen this but I remember when she picked up the lightsaber for the first time to battle with Kylo Ren, and was automatically good, she could compete with him, someone who’d trained his entire life and was a master at it– I was like NO WAY! She can’t be as good as him. What a joke. I hated it. You can suspend reality in a fantasy/ sci fi in so many ways but not that one. Make her work for it like any good character! Ugh. End rant. And that’s one of the reasons the old Star Wars are better.
In my book, Layala is a good fighter but she still has a lot to learn about combat and war. She isn’t a master, ends up not being as good as she thought she was, and she still needs to hone her magic skills which takes practice and work. She has room to grow.
Enemies-to-lovers: she hates him and wants him dead. The enemies bit is mostly on her part because he’s had a thing for her most of his life. He falls in love first, another trope that I didn’t change 🙂. Enemies to lovers is such a good one because of the initial conflict. It makes it more exciting and you know there will be no insta-love. (a trope that I hate)
& there are more. But as I said you can use tropes in your marketing to sell the book. Don’t be afraid to spoil some scenes!
I used to be like “but I don’t want to ruin the book for people!” I was afraid to talk about anything that happened in the book because I didn’t want to ruin it for them and I had a hard time selling my books.
Spoil that shit. It’s what gets people excited. At least the tropey bits. Don’t spoil anything that is supposed to be a mystery. I’ve had millions of Tiktok views telling very short hooky scenes in my books.
Think of a movie trailer. They show exciting parts to get movie goers excited to see the show. Oftentimes we go to see the movie based on one really cool scene.
You can repeat this process for your own genre. Find what’s popular then make it your own, give it your own twist.
I saw another author do this with her Alpha Queen series. What if the wolf pack Alpha was a female? What if she was stronger than all the males? A popular trope in werewolf books is having a big bad alpha werewolf the female MC’s probably going to fall for, but this author instead of her being dominated by him, changed that. What if she was actually stranger and tougher than him or them(its a reverse harem)– the alpha? They are all strong too or it wouldn’t be a competition or impressive. I thought it was brilliant.
Probably not popular among men but her target audience, which is women, ate it up.
Know your audience.
Personally, for my taste, the love interest has to at least rival the FMC in power and combat or is badass in his own right. He has to be strong too or at least equal in many ways or I won’t like it. If she holds a great deal more power over him and she’s more masculine, he’s less appealing in my eyes. Especially if she hasn’t earned it.
I’m all for badass women, but I never fall for a weak man. Don’t make him weak. He should have flaws but in romance land, never make the male lead unappealing to straight women, which is who will likely be reading your romance novel. We all secretly, if not openly, want a big strong man who’s obsessed with us and only us and will protect us with his life.
I’ve read books where the male love interest is weak physically and belittled and outsmarted by the FMC and to me that makes him unappealing and immediately I become uninterested. If it was his POV and he wasn’t the love interest it might have been ok to see him struggle but as a love interest– no. Now, other people may like a book like but for me that is one flipped trope that flops.
So also be careful on which tropes you flip around. Not all of them will sit well with your target market. sometimes you want to keep the trope exactly as is. like the hot brooding love interest who’s only obsessed with her.
Layala is strong, but so is Thane. On the power scale they rival one another, in hand to hand combat, he wins every time. And he’d stand in the way of anyone who wanted to hurt her. These are tropes I would NOT change.
There are even more in-depth tropes like 1 horse (they have to share a horse)
1 bed (they get to a hotel and there is only 1 bed so they must share it) if they get to the hotel or inn or whatever and there is only one bed and they don’t share it– like he volunteers to sleep on the floor and there’s no tension, people will be disappointed lol
keep things like this in mind.
4. Love what you write. Don’t write something just because it’s popular. Like reverse harem also known as Why Choose, for example. If you write in something just because it’s popular but don’t read or like the genre, it will come through in your writing. If you love that genre, go for it. If you want to start there because you think it’s easy to sell, don’t. You’re writing for greatness.
You want to love your book. Be engrossed in the characters. Let the energy flow through your fingertips and onto the page. Be obsessed with it. That will shine through!
5.Take your time. Make it great! Don’t rush the book because someone told you rapid release was the only way to go. It’s not. If your goal is rapid release, I recommend you follow other authors who do that and get their advice.
One book can change your life. So take your time on it.
Also I think that the anticipation of waiting for the next book can make them more memorable. I remember being incredibly excited waiting for the next Twilight book and Harry Potter book. If I had just binge read the entire series in a week or something I’m not sure I would feel the same way I do about those books.
BUT as an indie author you have the advantage of being able to release faster than a typical trad publisher which is probably a book a year if not longer. If you can do 2 books a year you can do well. You don’t want readers to have to wait too long or they might forget about your books. Imagine writing a 5 book series and the person read the first book 5 years before the last. The enthusiasm might run out.
6. Beta readers and editing. It’s essential for me to get feedback from readers before I publish. It’s like doing market research and a test audience. What do they like? What do they dislike? Is a character annoying them? Is there anything confusing? You want feedback on the big stuff, like the romance, and are they bored anywhere? Things like that.
A couple of my beta readers got incredibly frustrated and annoyed with my main character Layala in the early drafts. She was too mean and harsh and became unlikable even though they were supposed to be enemies. I had to make big changes to the beginning of the book, soften her up a bit but still give her an edge. You as the author need to know how your characters come across to other people and you can’t know that unless other people read it.
Also know when not to take advice. Another one of my beta readers didn’t like Thane. She had a lot of issues with him and that’s completely fine, but he is well loved by most readers and my target audience. I didn’t change him.
I found my beta readers from readers of my previous books and from my local critique group. Sometimes it’s hard to find readers to give honest feedback. You don’t typically want family or friends. They’ll probably sugar coat it and you need real critique because trust me, the readers won’t hold back in reviews.
You can check Facebook groups for your genre or even on Fiverr for paid beta readers who could be worth paying for. Just check their reviews. You could also go for a developmental editor. Know it will be expensive. I don’t use developmental editors but I’ve been writing for years, and I use a team of beta readers for feedback.
I use google docs so we can respond to each other in comments within the document.
7. After all the edits and changes, get it proofread. And then you may even want another person to go through and look for typos. Trust me, they’ll be there. And readers won’t hold back complaining about those either. You want to be a bestseller. You need to be professional.
8. Market it like a product. That means you need an amazing cover. Do research on bestselling covers in your genre and do something the same but different. It needs to be eye-catching and professional. I personally like my books to look like TRAD published books not indie books. Usually indie covers in my genre have characters on the front. You’ll see what I mean when you look at the lists. However, that is starting to shift. At this time, a lot more indies are doing symbol covers or big text to go with a more traditional published look.
I do this because I want readers to look at my book and not know it’s self published. Many people have ideas in their head that self published books aren’t as good as traditional published books. While I don’t agree with that, there are reasons for people to think that way.
For my elf queen books I hired an artist “luciano.fleitas.art” on Instragram to draw my elf queen and I designed the rest in Photoshop. I do all my own covers but I don’t recommend that unless you know what you’re doing.
Be excited about your book when you share it and others will be too. Learn marketing, things like hooks and pretty graphics etc. Get obsessed with getting your book in front of as many readers as you can. Get obsessed with marketing! Follow marketing gurus for all kinds of businesses and get savvy. You’re a business owner now, not just an author.
I used paid Instagram influencers to help me promote my book before and during release. I used Book of Matches Media, and The Book Tour gals, but there are others too. It was worth the exposure but I can’t say how much was directly related to sales.
I didn’t do ARCs with BBTEQ outside the Instagram book tours. But I didn’t need to. The reviews just poured in organically because people love the book. At the time of writing this there are 5,650 reviews on Amazon. I don’t know how many on Goodreads. I don’t look there. It’s the dark shadowy place.
I only had 50 ARC copies for book 2 and they only went to readers who absolutely loved book 1. They had to fill out a form and show that they left a 5 star review on the first book. You don’t get to be on my ARC team if you don’t give my book 5 stars.
I posted everyday on Tiktok 3 weeks before the release of BBTEQ and got over 800 preorders. This was with teasers from the book. Basically just me pointing at text on the screen. I did not have a following prior to that. I kept posting for the following weeks and had several videos go “viral”. One month I made 50k from posting on Tiktok.
Facebook ads and Amazon ads. This is something I’m still working on. I’ve had a successful auto ad going on Amazon that spends about $125 a month. so nothing crazy. I don’t know a lot about AMS ads but the average ACOS is 29.6% maybe that’s good, maybe not? lol All I know is I’m making a profit.
Facebook used to work well for me before the pandemic and then my cost per click went to like .30+ and I shut them down. I attempted to run ads with Elf Queen but the conversion and clicks were too much and I turned them off after a week. Just about a week ago I tried running a popular Tiktok I created as a Facebook ad and chose my audience but I let Facebook choose the placement (advice I’ve always heard is newsfeed only) but I thought, why not just try something new because the other way wasn’t working for me. Anyway, the click costs are like .3-.4c and my rank jumped from 2k to 500/600 in week or so and my income doubled. So I’m assuming it’s working. That’s with starting at $5 a day then slowly bumping it up by a couple dollars and It’s now spending $30 a day. Not sure how long this will last but FB ads always seem to require changing and testing.
I’m currently taking Brain Cohen’s ads for authors challenge so we’ll see how that goes.
9. Have faith! I acted and thought I was a bestseller before I ever published BBTEQ. wrote in my journal almost every day months before I even published BBTEQ being grateful that it was a bestseller. Yes, I wrote things like, “I am so grateful that Bow Before the Elf Queen is a huge bestselling novel. I’m so thankful that readers message me everyday to tell me how much they love my book. I am so thankful readers love my characters and feel joy and happiness when reading my books.”
I wrote down my goals as if they’d already happened before they happened. I was living in my desires already fulfilled, and at first it was weird. It felt like lies but then after a few days I started to get excited. I would write it and feel PUMPED! Like yes it’s happening!
And guess what? It happened! People do message me all the time and say they love my books! People have told me my books are their favorite books EVER! I’ve even had a reader get full arm sleeve tattoos based on my book cover and the contents within. WILD!
Once I got my book printed and in my hands I hugged it and felt so much gratitude and joy for it. I walked around my house holding it up like a trophy and had positive thoughts of this is a bestseller. I just knew it was going to change my life. I knew people were going to love it. My family thought I was nuts. They don’t now! haha
There is something called quantum physics that goes into detail about this. There’s a great book on it by Dr Joe Dispenza. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. That book changed my life.
There really is something to people acting and believing they’re already successful and living like they already have what they want before it happens. It changes your energy and how you show up.
This new confidence from journaling and feeling excited about my book changed my attitude when it came to telling other people about it. I went from thinking it was self centered to talk about my book and pitch it to people, to “of course it’s great!” And that energy shows in my marketing. It’s like people can feel it through the screen in my videos or in my written words. That is what I believe is the main difference. The positive thinking changes my actions for the better!
And when you’re living in this elevated, excited state, ideas flow better. Things are just easier. It doesn’t mean there aren’t bad days or times when things don’t go your way. This doesn’t mean there aren’t haters on my books. I have them, but I don’t let them affect me. I recommend not reading reviews that aren’t 5 stars so you can’t get brought down by the negativity that will happen when you get popular enough. Trolls love to hate on popular books.
Lastly, pay attention most to the good things in your days. I often say “everything goes my way. I’m so lucky. God blesses me every single day. Good things happen to me every day.” and I take the time to be grateful for those things. I hope this was helpful. And good luck on your own writing journey.
JM Kearl
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