Steve Higgs: A Successful Author That Deviates From The Norm

Author Steve Higgs might not be famous enough yet to warrant his own Wikipedia page, but his writing career and style is worth a study even if you are a seasoned or a new author.

I spend a good deal watching YouTube videos. I especially make it a point to watch videos about the book publishing industry including author podcasts. And I have heard the name ‘Steve Higgs’ a few times already.

Some of the authors who know him says that he’s quite a character. He’s well known for his well built muscle which is a result of his regular muscle building exercises. He’s well known in the author community as the soldier from the UK who became a writer.

And the discipline instilled in him by the army has definitely affected how he conducts his writing career. He for example is a very prolific author who can write more than one novel a month.

Steve Higgs began self publishing his books in 2017 while still holding a job where according to him, he spends about 70 hours a week. By 2018, his monthly book sales have reached over $1,000.

By 2020, he is already earning more than $40,000 a month. By the end of 2020, he has earned nearly half a million dollars. As you can see, he has become a self publishing success in just four short years. Not many authors can claim this much self publishing success.

Let me make myself clear, I’m not being paid to promote Steve Higgs. I’m also not in any way related to him even as a distant friend. As far as Steve Higgs might be concerned, I do not even exist at all.

Honestly, the best source of information I got about Steve Higgs and his writing career was from a YouTube video I accidentally found from the Self Publishing Formula Channel which in my opinion, is one of the best YouTube Channels for aspiring authors.

Anyway, here is the link to the YouTube Video:

YouTube Video: Strength in Numbers: How to Write 2 Books a Month - (The Self Publishing Show, episode 242)

This YouTube video about Steve Higgs is more than an hour long but is worth watching. But if you do not have an hour, this article would just give the important highlights of the interview with Steve Higgs.

This might be one of the most interesting thing about him. According to him, he has read only a few books in his life. Since he became an author, he has never read any book. Of course this goes against the conventional thinking that authors should read regularly.

Many famous authors like Stephen King advise that to be a good author, you have to regularly read books even if you are already a successful author. Even George RR Martin advises the same thing.

Steve Higgs for example writes Cozy Mysteries but stated that he has never read any cozy mysteries before. He doesn’t even know that the type of books he was writing was cozy mysteries until someone informed him.

Besides writing articles related to the army, he has no other experience writing. He also has no formal training in writing except for some creative writing courses when he was still in school and aged less than 16 years old.

My opinion is that Steve Higgs likes writing more than reading. He has boldly proclaimed that he has hundreds of story ideas running through his head at any one time. So don’t be disappointed if you have no desire to read books but have a great desire to write.

Personally, I like writing more than I do reading. So I can relate to him. I might only have a small desire to read books because of my hectic schedule, but I still listen to audiobooks and other stories in audio format.

As I have mentioned before, being an ex-soldier has greatly helped his writing career. But you don’t have to be an ex-soldier to be a successful author, all you need to do is to know and probably emulate Steve Higgs’ disciplined writing routine.

He works five to six days a week and when he’s working, he wakes up at five in the morning and sleeps when it’s midnight. I don’t know if you can follow this grueling schedule of sleeping only five hours a day when it’s your work day.

But one thing is sure. It can be done. Steve Higgs is an example of this person. Let’s now discuss his writing hours. According to him, he start writing from nine in the morning and works until lunch time. He then takes a break for lunch.

In the afternoon, if he can, he continues to write until it’s dinner time. Then after his family has retired for the night which is about ten in the evening, he writes until midnight taking only a short break to exercise by lifting weights.

So at a minimum, he writes about five hours a day excluding his noon and afternoon writing schedule. Though we can’t get a hold on how many hours exactly he usually works during his workdays, what is clear is that he spends a good time with his family.

What we can learn from this is that it really takes discipline to become a successful author. You really have to spend a lot of time writing or marketing your books. You may sacrifice other things like leisure activities, but don’t sacrifice family time.

He started writing books in 2017. This article was written in August, 2021. By this time, he has already written at least 68 books. So, he writes more than 14 books a year or more than two books a month based from his latest output.

He goes against conventional thinking that books that sell well need a long time to be written like several months. There are many authors out there that firmly believe in this way of thinking. As he has proven, this is not true always.

In a way, I relate to him. I was able to finish writing a few of my novels which are more than 80,000 words each in less than a month. Even Stephen King has been able to write some of his novels in less than a month.

As you can see, being very prolific has played a part in his success. He doesn’t depend only on a small number of books for his income. He knows that with the era of self publishing, you need to produce a lot of books to be able to have a high probability of reaching book readers.

He is so prolific that he regularly writes between 6,000 to 10,000 words a day. This is really a very fast pace. The only successful author I know who can write as fast as him is Michael Crichton who can also write 10,000 words a day.

To have a clear idea how prolific this pace is, consider this. Most authors are considered prolific if they regularly write 5,000 words a day. Stephen King is considered a prolific author because he has a daily quota of 5,000 written words.

This is another way he differs from the rest of many authors. This is one of the reasons he can publish a book so fast. Many authors are sure to raise their eyebrows to him. This is because the popular thinking is that you need to have several drafts of your book for it to be ready for publishing.

I once read about an aspiring author who was female and still young who stated that books take more than one year to get published because they need to have several drafts to become ready for publishing.

I would sure like to see aspiring authors like her know that successful books can be published even though you only have one draft of it. He also stated that he does his own editing. This is good news for aspiring authors who do not have the funds to pay editors and proofreaders.

He is proof that you can become a successful self-published author even though you have a small budget.

This is old news already. But he is an example of an author who likes to write books in series. Unlike other authors who have a mixed bag of standalone books and book series, he has concentrated on writing only book series only.

Perhaps it would be a good time to look at his books on his website:

Link: Steve Higgs Books

If you have actually checked his website especially his book list, you would know that he has 5 book series of different genres. Some are cozy mysteries, paranormal, and so on. By concentrating in making book series only, he has managed to gain familiarity among his audience.

This is not out of the ordinary as many authors do this, even the very successful ones. So he doesn’t go against convention by doing this. But it is still important to emphasize this point. Sooner or later, any aspiring author would realize that they need to market their books.

This is now the age of self-publishing. There are more and more people deciding to become authors and while this is good news, competition for the attention of the limited number of book readers is becoming more and more intense.

And this is the reason why many authors have turned to advertising and marketing their books to get noticed in the sea of authors. Steve Higgs is one example. He may be already earning $40,000 a month, but he still spends 25% of his monthly earnings in advertising and marketing.

This is probably one of his greatest success secrets. According to his research, people who buy his books uses his name as well as the name of his characters when searching for his books. This is a proof that his marketing strategy is working.

One of the first things he did was to join facebook groups of authors so he can learn how to properly market his books. And this has worked for him. This might be a good time to decide if you would join author groups.

In case you are already interested in his books and may have even read one, you might want to know the kind of readers who buys his books. According to him, his readers are predominantly American women who are aged 53 years old and above.

That is why he never advertises to anyone who is below 50 years old. His strategy is to play on his strength. He knows that he is successful with these group of people and he would continue to market to them because they are a ready market for him.

This goes against the grain of trying to market to all kinds of readers. Many authors want their books to be read by as many people as possible and plans their marketing strategies as such. Trying to overextend one’s marketing can be very counterproductive.

Steve Higgs is an unconventional author. Not many authors come from a military background and writes cozy mysteries for example. But as we know now, the discipline instilled in him by the military is a part of his success.

Not following the conventional norm like having multiple book drafts and using editors have also not hindered his success. If you are an aspiring author and feel uneasy because you’re breaking the conventional norms of book publishing, just study Steve Higgs.

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