Novel Writing Made Less Impossible -- Planning your Self-Publishing Career
- Brian K. Morris
- Mar 14, 2018
- 4 min read
This blog makes a lot of assumptions and as Samuel L. Jackson said in THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, that makes an ass out of you and umption.
One major assumption is that you want to make money at this gig. Yes, there are some who write for fun or just to see if they can do it. But I'm going to assume you are every bit the mercenary that I am ... or is that "entrepreneur?" PoTAYto, poTAHto.
Anyway, when I started doing this six years ago, I wanted to make money in the quickest way I could. Once I learned about the current state of self-publishing, I explored how to build my business FAST.
That's why I initially published with Kindle Worlds. For those of you who don't know, Amazon licenses around 75+ different properties from different writers and publishers. These properties include, but are not limited to, the Silo Saga, Veronica Mars, Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, GI Joe, and the Valiant Comics line.
Each I.P. has different rules and if you want to write that Snake Eyes and Duke slash fiction, this won't be that place. However, a number of writers, some of whom you may have heard of*, have done these books. *Writers like Buzz Dixon, Jim Beard, Tom King, Stuart Moore, Robert Rodi, Mel Odum, Barry Reese, and more.
When I lost my job in 2012, I wanted to tap into a pre-existing fan base to launch my writing career. Fortunately, I discovered Kindle Worlds and it just so happened that I liked Bloodshot. So I studied the current comics and wrote a story that could fit into the continuity. Thus was born Bloodshot: The Coldest Warrior.
They had online help that gave me confidence in my formatting, a previewer that helped me locate the errors I made when I thought I knew more than the experts did (and it took me five hours to find them all), and a set of pre-existing graphics for my cover. With the click of a button, I became a published author. Next I worked on Santastein, but that's a story for another day.
Just decide that you're going to create a work. It can be a novel or just a short story. But START WRITING (you should have been doing that a long time ago, but it probably bears repeating)! Don't worry about marketing or sales yet. Until you create the product, you have nothing to sell. So get busy!
Whether you want to tag on to someone else's I.P., or you want to blaze the trail with your own concepts, plan your attack from the start. If you fail to plan, then you're planning to fail, so do the research and know there's a LOT of it out there.
NEXT WEDNESDAY: How To Parlay Those Credits You Probably Don't Have
TOMORROW: Waiting For Your Inspiration
NEXT APPEARANCE: On March 24th, I will be at the ART IN EQUALITY CON at the Savoy Recreation Center, 402 Graham Drive, Savoy, Illinois. In addition to my own publications, I'll be joined by former wrestler/actor Bishop Stevens, cosplayer Alexa Heart, animator Philo Barnhart, Silver Phoenix Entertainment's Creative Director Charles D. Moisant, writers Monica O'Leary, Austin Malcome, Ariana R. Cherry, and J.W. Wright, artist Candice Comelieri, and great friends such as Sage Stafford, Zitania and Amaris Moon, and Action Jackson Comics.
For more information and tickets, go HERE!
SPECIAL NOTE: My newest book, The Haunting Scripts of Bachelors Grove, is currently on sale. It's part memoir, part grimoire. The first half deals with my entry into writing indie comics and joining Silver Phoenix Entertainment. I print four of my comic scripts for The Haunting Tales of Bachelors Grove, three of which have not been produced yet. Then I add four horror prose tales, three of which are NEW. All this behind a great cover by my Art Sherpa, Trevor Erick Hawkins, over 300 pages of terror and history for only $19.95 in paperback, $2.99 in e-book (FREE if you belong to Amazon Prime). If you have any questions for me, write to me at Brian@RisingTide.pub. No attachments, please, for security reasons.
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