 So what on god's earth possessed me to go from mattresses to a fictional novel?
Opportunity. See, once you have published a piece of literature, whether it be self published or published with a publisher, you begin to generate buzz about your work. People will start searching you out online. You will have people purchase your products, recommend your book to others, and you will begin to make some money for all your hard work. How much money? Well that depends on a lot of different factors and it's a completely separate article for another day. So what do I mean by opportunity? Opportunity presents itself in being either highly rated or highly purchased. Ideally, your book will be both. Both of my previous books are highly rated, but they don't sell many copies. I want my new book to be highly purchased and highly rated. In order to accomplish my goals with my new book, Tempting Ginger, I have to write a book that has a higher probability of selling, AND I have to write a book that appeals to a larger percentage of the population. For both of those reasons, I have chosen to write a fictional novel that revolves around a love story. What will become of Tempting Ginger? Only time will tell. Donnie  Hint: Just so I can piss off my old English teachers. How many times have you heard these phrases in your life? You can't, you won't, you shouldn't, no one will... Did I have all those doubts about writing and publishing a book for the first time? HELL YES! I had all those specific thoughts and plenty more negative things running through my head at the time. In fact, I almost gave up and quit part way through the book. So if you remember back to last week's post, I was talking about how my first book lit a fire inside me and then my second book failed miserably. What did I learn about writing that made me keep writing and producing content after such a major set back? The short answer is marketing. You see, my second book was a book about finance. But who in the world is going to buy a book about money and finance when no one knows who the author is? The answer to that is no one, or at least, next to no one (thanks mom!).  See, not only do you have to write something that most people can relate to, but you also have to be someone that people look to for expertise in that field. Who in the hell was Donnie Masters to give financial advice? No one, that's who.
So I learned a lot about marketing after that. I learned that my little book on mattresses dominated the rankings because there wasn't that many people interested in reading about mattresses. When they looked into the subject, my book was the most reviewed and valued opinion on the subject. But of those that did read the book, Mattress Buying 101, I was the first major contributor to a different type of book about bedding. I set the bar, so to speak. Maybe I was catering to a small, niche audience, but I was doing a good job for them. To this day, that book is still highly reviewed amongst the mattress community. And although it doesn't sell a lot of copies each month, I am still the biggest name in my respective category. All of this almost 3 years from the date it was first available for purchase. Next time, I will answer some questions about how I came to fiction as my next opportunity.  If I am being completely honest, I never thought that this little book on mattresses would start a career in writing for me. I really thought the whole book thing was just something that I was going to check off my bucket list and then I would move along with my life.
But something magical happened when I published this book. People from all over the world started to purchase it, and then the positive reviews slowly started to trickle in. Before long, I was the most recommended and most purchased book about mattresses on Amazon. To this day, I am still Top 10 in multiple categories.
So I kept writing books and articles. And you know what happened? The next book I released was an utter failure. Why didn't I quit when I failed? Why did I keep working long days and putting in all the extra hours for writing? Find out next week. |
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