Writing Books Like A Well-Oiled Factory

It’s no secret that for authors to be successful, they need to be prolific writers. The myth that you only need one bestselling book to make you famous and rich has been dispelled over and over again by authors who wrote many books before they were able to establish their writing career.
br> Sure there are authors who became famous with their first book, but they are the exception to the rule and not the norm. For aspiring successful authors who are putting their hopes on one book only, their actions are more like playing the lottery than an actual business plan.

And you need a business plan to be able to succeed as an author. You don’t need a business plan if you are just writing because it is your hobby. If writing is your hobby, then you don’t need to think if your book would make money or if you would even publish it.

But for many authors, producing profitable books and novels mean more than the earning of money. It also gives them the satisfaction of knowing that the books and novels they write are so well appreciated by the readers that these readers are willing to spend money on these books and novels.

If you read the title, one of the thing that would surely come to your mind would probably be a dimly lit factory. There would be rows and rows of poorly paid authors writing from morning to evening creating bad manuscripts. All these authors care about is word count and nothing else.

Your vision might be correct. There are indeed writing factories that churn out book after book on a very fast basis and are only interested in mass producing books. Sadly this is a reality in the book publishing business.

If you must know, book and novel ghostwriters are one of the most poorly paid writers around. If freelance bloggers are paid 0.02 cents per word, then the payment of book and novel writers are equal to this rate and even much lower, even half of this rate.

This does not mean there is injustice in the writing industry. It just means that these rates are what the market dictates. The rate of 0.02 cents or lower is a fairly common rate paid by people who want books and novels done.

The concept of the factory becomes clearer now. If you are an author ghostwriting books and novels for someone else, then you are just a worker in a book writing factory. Although arguably it is you that is the one who makes the book writing factory work, you are just a cog in the machine.

The reason you are paid a pittance for your work, especially if you are from a developed country where you do not even meet the minimum wage rate if you are freelancing, is because you do not take all the risks.

The person who commissioned you to write the book or novel is the one gambling that the book or novel you wrote would sell. They also need to pay for the person who is doing the cover art for the book or novel and other expenses.

That is why you could either be contented with the low pay which is not even minimum wage for people in developed countries or you could write for yourself and accept all the responsibilities for writing a book.

Book Cover Art and Illustrations:

But considering the book industry these days, you can start your factory at close to no cost. You can write the book yourself and do your own cover art and illustrations. There are even many free and cheap softwares out there that can assist you to do high quality cover art and illustrations.

For example, Canva is a very popular graphic software for making book covers. Its free version can already produce stunning book covers. It is so popular for making book cover designs that there are many YouTube videos for it.

Images:

But besides free graphics software, there are plenty of free images that you could use for cover art and illustrations. When it comes to images, there is one free tool or website that stands out. It’s Pixabay.

This website has become a byword for free images. If you are an amateur author who don’t have much money to pay for professional book covers and illustrations, you may want to check them out.

Online Book Sellers and Ebook Aggregators

Once you have finished your book, it’s just a matter of uploading it online to the many Online Book Sellers like Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play Books and so on. You just need to setup an account with these online book publishers and upload your book data.

If you want to streamline your uploading and maintenance of the books you upload online to the different online book sellers, you may use Online Ebook Aggregators. These online companies takes care of the uploading of your ebook to the different online book sellers.

All you need to do is to upload your book data once to these books aggregators and they would do the rest. Some of online ebook aggregators are Draft2Digital, Smashwords, and PublishDrive.

As you can see, you don’t need to set up a company or even the help of a publishing company, although they are a big help and would come to you if they find that your books could make them money. All you need is yourself, a laptop and an internet connection.

Your book writing factory could start by producing ebooks first. Ebooks are a great introduction to the book publishing business. They are cheap to produce in terms of money, but just like physical books they take time to write.

Once your ebook sales confirm that there is a market for your books, then you can elect to sell physical books as well as audiobooks. But take heed, these two books forms are not cheap to produce and many aspiring to be well known authors have lost money trying to sell their books in these formats.

If all authors would depend on book industry statistics regarding what genre of books to write, then everyone would only write Romance books or would write novels with a heavy dose of romance in it.

That is why I don’t recommend on depending on book industry statistics when deciding on what books you should write. A good example would be famous millionaire author, Stephen King, and his son, Joe Hill.

These father and son authors write novels in the which is the least profitable genre in novels. If they had followed book industry statistics, they would not have become successful millionaire authors.

One of the advice given by many successful authors is to write books that interest you. If science fiction stories interest you for example, then write about it. If you want to write inspiring stories and words, then write about it.

Writing books take a long time and your brain must be attuned to what you are writing. Your brain is the main machine in your factory. You cannot expect a brain that is best suited to writing fiction produce a nonfiction book and vice versa.

The same goes for writing in different story genres. There would be a particular book genre that your brain is best suited for. You will know it when you start writing. The thoughts in your brain seems to flow naturally as you write. This means you would produce faster and more high quality writings.

Just like a real factory producing real physical goods with actual daily output quota requirements, you also need a writing quota usually measured in the number of words that you have written.

As has been said before, most of the successful authors are prolific writers. If you don’t produce a lot of books or writing, it is highly likely that you would not succeed as a professional author.

For example, the queen of romance authors, Barbara Cartland, produces approximately 8,000 words per day! According to her son, she was able to do this incredible feat by dictating to her assistants who wrote the words she said.

And the result speak for themselves, she has authored more than 700 books in her lifetime. Another famous prolific author is Agatha Christie, the queen of detective stories.

She would often write two books at the same time and to make things for her faster, she would dictate to her secretary although she still writes her books herself. She has written 71 books which does not include her other writings.

Stephen King himself is a more modern example of a prolific author. Although now a millionaire hundreds of time over, he still writes his own novels. He has more than 82 novels and this does not include his other writings.

Stephen King and some other authors claim that they write at least 2,000 words a day. In 10 days this would be 20,000 words. In 100 days this would 100,000 words. Safe to say that if you follow this schedule, you could write 3 long novels a year.

But let us go back to Barbara Cartland. She has written more than 700 books in her lifetime. If we assume that she produced books for 70 years of her lifetime, it means that she produced more than 10 books a year or almost one book a month.

I am also experimenting if I can write a book in one month’s time. So far it seems to be working for me. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to mass produce a book just for the sake of mass producing books. But if Barbara Cartland can be successful with a monthly one book quota, I think it is also possible for others.

As Barbara Cartland and some other authors have demonstrated, you could write a quality book even if you just write it for a short time. But let’s define the word ‘Quality’ as it is used in this article.

When I mean quality I am not being subjective and is using my own judgement. I am using the judgement of the crowd of readers all throughout the world through history itself. This means that at least formally, books that are bestsellers are considered quality books.

There is an interesting YouTube video that shows a few bestselling books as related to the time they were written. It is interesting to note that this video proves that the length of writing a book is not directly correlated to its success.

YouTube Video: How Long It Took 40 Writers to Finish Their Famous Novels

It is interesting to note that some of the novels in the list in the video were written in a week or less. Some of the books are familiar to many. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde for example is a well known novel throughout the world, yet it was only written in 6 days.

It’s hard to imagine that a such a well known novel that has been translated into so many languages and have been translated into many movies throughout the decades was only written in a week’s time.

A somewhat more modern novel is another example. Stephen King wrote the novel the “Running Man” in only a week’s time. This was because it was all the time he had for writing since he was still doing odd jobs trying to support his family.

So these examples dispel the myth that you need to write a novel for a very long time if you want to create a novel that readers would want to buy and read. The more important question is not whether or not you need a long time to write a novel, but will your novel be liked by readers?

But which one of your books would readers like? This is the big question. Though it’s hard, the answer to this question is to be prolific and write as many books as possible. This would ensure that you maximize your chance of readers actually finding a book they like from you.

To be prolific does not mean writing non-stop until you are exhausted. Everyone needs also to relax. Just like a factory that opens and closes, you need also to have a schedule where all you do is writing. After this, you can do the other things you want or need to do.

To ensure that you can become prolific, you need a deadline. It doesn’t have to be a rigid deadline, but one that is attainable. You could for example have a deadline that you would finish writing a book each month or every other month or whatever is your deadline.

It is important that you are consistent. You are like a well-oiled factory now churning in regular work. But it does not mean that your work is boring or monotonous because you are doing the work you like.

Though it is possible to become famous and make a lot of money writing one book, not many authors are able to do this. For one to become a successful or even just to become a professional author, one needs to be a prolific author and write a lot of books.

To be a prolific author, one needs to have a deadline always. This is the only way an author can measure how prolific they are. It doesn’t matter if an author writes a book in just a weekend or for a couple of months, what is important is that they are consistent in their book number output.

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