Successful Author Diaries – (Part 1)

AUTHOR DIARIES part 1

From flops to bestselling six figure author!

(PS I have nothing to sell you. No courses or anything)

For me, the road to being a bestselling author started with mindset. Hear me out– I know you might be thinking, don’t give me the woo woo mindset stuff. I want the goods. I want the actionable steps! How do I become a six figure author too?

We’ll get there, just be patient.

For credentials (you probably know this) I am JM Kearl and I wrote the bestselling fantasy romance books Bow Before the Elf Queen and Long Live the Elf Queen. BBTEQ hit Amazon Top 19 Bestseller and number 1 in 5 Amazon categories!

#1 Romantic Fantasy

#1 Mythology

#1 Fairy Tales

#1 Folklore

#1 Nordic Myth & Legends Fantasy eBooks

My second book in the Elf Queen series reached the top 40’s on Amazon during release week in October 2022 without ad spend. 

And I’ve made six figures on those two books in just 8 months, and that keeps up going every day! This was without much on ad spend. Surprisingly to me, the popularity of this series didn’t spill over to my others as much as I thought. But some.

Anyway, I got a Bookish Box book of the month deal for December 2022. I’ve been contacted by an editor who loved my book at Del Rey (an imprint of Penguin Random House.) A deal wasn’t made but I enjoy the control and $ of indie publishing. It would take a lot for me to sign with a big publisher.

BUT this success wasn’t always the case for me. I had 3 years of flops where with 8 books I never made more than 16k in a year. So, keep reading to see what I did differently and what changed in 2022 for me.

Am I JK Rowling level? Not even close. I’m not even among the most successful indie authors but I get asked how I got to where I am, so I’ll answer as best I can.

I want to give back to my community because I was once the newbie author just trying to figure this all out and then I was the author who’d been doing this for a couple years without much success.

I can give you the best books on writing craft I’ve read (and I will) and direct you toward great courses that helped me on my way to being a good writer/storyteller.

I can tell you about some Facebook ads, and Amazon Ads courses that may help, and how to find influencers on Instagram and TikTok, and those things still might not work for you, and your book could still flounder in the dark abyss of Amazon figuratively collecting dust.

 Because I ran ads with those 8 books, and they did not make me six figures.

You could post every day on TikTok and never break the top 100 on Amazon. Hell, the top 10,000.

You know how I know that? 

Because I see authors saying they’ve tried everything (all the above) and nothing works. Every. Single. Day.

And I’ve been one of them myself. I’m going to tell you how I changed that, but first a bit about my publishing journey.

Almost nobody gets into novel publishing to get rich. If they do, they’ll most likely quit when they realize how much work it actually is. If you’re in it just for money, there are easier ways.

Writers get into book publishing because writing is a part of our soul and there is something deep inside that drives us to write about the characters and stories in our heads. If I never made a dime, I’d write books. I wrote books for fun for thirteen years.

But at some point, you’ll want to publish and get your work out into the world AND make money.

And if you don’t want to make money then why are you reading this? I’m not for the starving artist mentality. Creatives deserve to be abundant and wealthy as much as any other profession with the ability to affect thousands, if not millions of people.

When I started out writing with the intention to publish, my goals and desires were small. 

I thought, If I can just make like an extra thousand dollars a month to help my husband pay the bills, that will be great. And if I get more, that will be great too.

I was a dreamer being realistic. 

Sure, I had wishes of being a bestselling author, being the next Stephanie Meyer with Twilight craze level books, but I didn’t actually believe that could happen. She’s one in a billion. And I believed things like that didn’t happen for people like me.

After I decided I wanted to self-publish, I found the 20booksto50k group on Facebook and heard the words “rapid release” for the first time, and “back-list” and other terms that required writing a lot of books. 

The founder of the group Michael Anderle had some success right out the gate it seemed, and he was pumping full length novels out in weeks. He admits they weren’t well edited or edited at all really, but he wanted to test the waters and see if his story could gain traction.

So, I thought well, I better get to writing and writing fast!

I picked up an older book I’d been working on for two years and delved in and finished my book that had sat a quarter of the way done forever, then did a ton of editing, found someone to help me proofread but she instead helped me with some developmental stuff (didn’t get a proofreader). Did more editing until I couldn’t look at the book anymore. Then I made my own cover in Photoshop and released RISE out into the world.

 I was thrilled! My first published book! I’d been dreaming of this day since I was 18 years old. I did no promotion because I needed a back-list to make money (they said). 

Then I wrote book 2 (120k words) in 6 weeks during my daughter’s nap time. I was motivated–on a roll! Once I’d done my self-edits, I found a couple beta readers who were great. Once that was published, (again, no proofreader) I ran a couple $5 a day Facebook ads going against the advice to wait for at least three books some people even said five books. And the feedback came in. I needed a proofreader, but the story was promising. 

I rushed to get better editing and by the time I released book 3 it had been almost a year, but I made some $, not much and I put most of it back into the business, but hey I was making money as an author! My dream since I was a teenager, and I kept plugging along, trying to write as fast as I could…

There are a few things wrong with this plan of rapid release for me. I’m a mother to two small children and they’re a lot of work so it’s not like I could write a book a month. And I write long, epic fantasies which require world building and a lot of thought, and you guessed it– time. 

There’s also life and creative burnout when one takes no breaks.

But I was determined to make this work. No one makes it big in anything without determination and the ability to keep going even when you want to quit. 

Even when it looks like you’ll never succeed.

Quitters don’t become six figure authors or millionaire authors.

Quitters don’t become bestselling authors.

I’m a dedicated person and when I set my mind to something, not much will stop me. Not hard pregnancies and postpartum depression that literally almost killed me, not two small kids, not floundering in the abyss of low sales, nothing.

But in 2021 I was starting to get frustrated with mediocre results. Things in 2020 with covid had been crazy as we all know, and I was blaming covid for my sales slump. Truth was, I was 8 books in after three years, and my income with 8 books was the same as it was with my first 4 books.

What the hell?

But I could not blame covid or anything else. Blaming outside circumstances on why you aren’t succeeding will only keep you stuck in the suck.

I faced the fact that there was a problem. Other authors were still selling and making it.

I took step back. More books were supposed to mean more money. Was it because I wasn’t releasing fast enough? I thought.

I wrote semi fast. Not a book every six weeks but much faster than trad publishing.

I did the ads. I posted on social media. 

I tried different on-genre covers.

Found a good proofreader.

Thought I was writing what people wanted.

Hired someone to help me with blurbs for better hooks.

I was building my email list with newsletter builders and swaps.

I was doing everything right. 

So why wasn’t I making more money and selling more books?! 

Why was I busting my ass writing as fast as I could, sacrificing time away from my kids, trying to promote without much traction, practically begging for reviews, giving my books away for free, like pleeeaaasse can I get to fifty reviews?! I need it for Amazon to promote me! 

I looked like a failure to husband no doubt. Although he supported me the entire time.

All this for like five thousand dollars a year profit? My most profitable year was (I think) 16k but half of that was spent on Facebook ads and that didn’t include other expenses.

So, in 2021 I had to figure out what I was doing wrong.

I asked myself a few questions. Why aren’t people talking about my books online? I’d just joined TikTok and was seeing a pattern of popular books and none of mine were among them.

Why don’t I get rave reviews? People like my books but no one said they were their favorite books ever or even in their top ten. No one raved about them. No one posted about them in Facebook groups. 

They were enjoyable… 

…They were good, not great. 

They also weren’t written to a specific market.

And that’s the difference. All my marketing efforts, the TikTok posts, the Instagram influencers didn’t make my other books popular. See, I thought I was writing stories readers would love but I’d never actually taken the time to research.

Marketing books becomes easier if they are somewhat tailored to the tropes and story structures that people want. You obviously have to love the book too but writing popular fiction is hitting what’s popular then making it your own and making it great!

One thing I’d forgotten in my quest to publish fast and make an income was the readers.

My job as an author is to entertain and to make the story and characters so good, they’ll beg for the next and leave them with a feeling that they might never find another series like this again, or that will, at the very least, stick with them for a while. 

I’m not saying rapid release doesn’t work, because it can and does for many authors, and that’s something you have to trust your gut on and test, but for me it’s not the way. I had to find another way, and that was striving for greatness and knowing exactly what my readers wanted and delivering.

 I knew I needed to get back into craft and take my time on my writing to make my books the best I could. Because the truth is, 1 book can change your life. Little did I know God was just waiting for me to see that and He’d show me the way. Everything changed when I changed my mindset from settling to play small to allowing myself to be something great.

Doors started opening. Things just started happening and its like I was suddenly lucky. I trusted my gut and guidance and started to believe in myself, because believing my novels could be so much more than what I’d settled for changed everything I did.

Stay tuned for Part 2!