Been enjoying all your posts, Elle. But I think the authors you're finding that prove these 6 figure models are in the tradition of the dime-store writers of the 60's and 70's, authors who wrote Westerns, Romance, Hard Boiled, Horror, Pulp, etc etc etc under multiple pen names and were insanely prolific. This side of the publishing world is quantity over quality, yes? I get the sense from some of the comments that people looking to write literary fiction or "Game of Thrones" type series are trying to see the correlation between their goals and those of DC, who is serving a very specific type of reader in a very specific way. More power to him, but I suspect for the vast majority of writers this is not why they are writing or sustainable long term.
I think the key phrase there is "for the vast majority of writers this is not why they are writing." Totally agree with you! I actually think about what I do exactly in the way you described it above-- "pulp" writers, although there's an icky, uncomfortable stigma against that idea and your quantity vs quality comment points to it, and I definitely agree that there's some quantity/speed stuff going on here, but that's not to say the books I write are bad books, my readers actually think they're good books and pay money to read them!-- and I don't think the majority of writers can/should/want to emulate what I'm doing. BUT, for those people that want to write books for a living, there are lots and lots of folks doing what I'm doing and having a blast like I am. And like I said in another comment, indie publishing is brand new, so who knows what the models will be, say, 10 years from now. There's lots of space for smart, talented people to hustle, build an audience, write awesome books, and make a living doing it.
One more thing: can you share with us your "origin story" of how you came to write novels in the first place? And how you chose romance as your genre? (I'd love to know more about why you gave up writing the men's adventure fiction too)
Thank you for sharing all of this, DC! I've learned a ton from it. It seems to me that -- and tell me if I'm wrong here -- what you've done is you've really done your homework about the publishing industry and found a genre that matches your interest/passion AND is a viable, lucrative market, and you've really dedicated yourself to serving your readers.
It seems to me that's the key thing that any writer who wants to be financially successful has to keep at the forefront. There's nothing wrong with pursuing either literary fiction or mass-market fiction, each has a place. But if you write more literary fiction, you have to understand the market for it is going to be more limited than for, say, romance.
I have another question for you (actually many questions!) -- how do you write SO MUCH?! I tend to get very precious with my own writing; I'd imagine that with two kids at home and the volume you do in terms of writing, you've found another way. What is it? :)
This is probably going to be a long comment, sorry! I totally agree with what you said about doing your homework-- I forget if I mentioned in the interview, but when I first got started I didn't really know how to write a romance novel, and actually the first romance I ever wrote (still up on Amazon and it’s not very good!) was the first actual novel I ever finished. In those early days, I was reading lots of romance and talking to some other authors that I was coming up with, and we were sort of figuring out the genre together, along with covers and blurbs and the whole publisher side of the business. That’s why I keep insisting community is important. But I had to do a ton of homework in those early days, and it wasn’t until I finally figured out the covers and wrote a book in a very popular trope (stepbrothers, they were enormous in mid-2015) that I had any real success at all.
I guess this is a good spot for my origin story: I did a degree in English, got an MFA in poetry, and thought I’d get a literary PhD. I got into a fully funded program, basically my top choice— but then dropped out for a bunch of reasons. After that I was pretty adrift, working a copyediting job I absolutely hated, and stumbled on a forum thread about self-publishing romance and erotica. The people in that thread were making like shocking amounts of money and I was like, holy crap, they’re writing books and making a living? That’s basically my dream! I want to try that! So in January 2015, I dove in, joined that thread, got active in the community, and wrote my butt off. I started out doing erotica, but didn’t really like it, and quickly dove into romance. I worked from home at this point, which really helped getting the books written—I used to stand in my kitchen and type 2500 words per day and published one book per month. I had a lot of failures (still do) and learned a ton, and I think I succeeded because I refused to give up—and a whole ton of luck. Originally, I chose romance because that was the best way I could make a living and at the time I was really struggling financially. I wasn’t really precious about my artistic vision or whatever—I wanted to write books for a living, and romance is the biggest genre in the world, so I wrote romance. I really fell in love with the genre and the community as a whole over the years, and now I’m writing other stuff on the side, but I don’t think I’d ever have gotten to where I am today without going through the rigors of publishing romance. IMO, romance is where all the exciting stuff is happening in publishing, where authors are pushing boundaries and doing weird and awesome stuff, where readers actually want to read the books and are insanely hungry for them. I doubt I’ll ever stop writing romance—because I think I’d be a way worse author if I did. Also, the more I do this, the more I’m very convinced that the distinctions between “literary” and “genre” are really just about marketing and not at all about what the books actually achieve for readers.
Okay that was a lot, sorry. To answer your last question, I didn’t start out writing 5k+ per day. I worked up to it, and I’ve been doing this for years now—writing day in and day out. I have my routine, my habits/rituals etc, and I stick to them as rigorously as possible. I have my off days like anyone else, but I think I’ve missed a self-imposed deadline maybe once? Anyway, the advice I always give is, you need to figure out what works for you. That’s obvious, like no kidding, but it’s true. I learned that I need a two-hour block at the same time every day (3pm est to 5pm est) and I need to sit down and do the words no matter what. If I keep up the momentum, turn off WiFi, get off Slack, whatever, I pretty much always hit my goal. Start with a reasonable number of words you want to do every day, like 200, or 500, or whatever, and do that for a while. Learn your routine, establish habits and patterns. Then when you’re chugging along and hitting your goal is easy, add more words, rinse and repeat. It’s a muscle and you have to work at it. I didn’t have kids when I started out, but definitely I’ve had to learn to adapt to them! My wife’s good about giving me my work hours and keeping that space, and I really owe a lot to her, so having a supportive partner helps a whole ton when the kids are involved. They’re also at daycare three days per week! And when I write in the morning, I’m up before them, and I’m done when my 4yo bashes in through my office door and runs over and jumps into my lap, whether I hit my words or not. It’s great, I have my headphones on, I’m in the zone typing away, sun’s coming up and the backyard’s glistening with dew and it’s just lovely, then my kids smash in and wreck shit. I love it.
Oh, and the men’s adventure stuff: long answer short, I didn’t love the books enough to devote more time to them and decided to write other stuff that didn’t quite fit into the genre. Basically just felt like moving on and pursuing other things, and I only have X amount of time in the day and can’t do everything, unfortunately.
That’s probably more thorough than you wanted, oh well.
One last question: what helped you learn how to structure a romance novel? Where did you learn how to do it? And, do you outline your books before you write them?
I basically learned by reading a bunch of them, but there are a few books out there that help-- romancing the beats is probably the most famous one. I spent a lot of time early on just reading popular romance and thinking about structure, beats, tropes, characters, etc.
I do outline, but not as much as I should! I like to be at least a couple days ahead, so when I sit down to write I know exactly where I'm going. I don't waste time staring at the blank page wondering what happens next-- if that happens, I know I'm pretty much not hitting my word count goal for the day. But I rarely outline an entire book before I get started. I like the partial outline because it gives the story a little more flexibility, like I don't need to know everything that's happening in the book beyond some high level stuff, like these are the characters, these are the tropes I'm hitting, here's an idea for the ending, here's an idea for the beginning, then boom, I can outline maybe 6 chapters then dive right in. I highly recommend outlining, especially early on when folks are trying to get into good writing routines, but really it doesn't matter what an individual author's methods are so long as the books get written!
Thank you! Yes, I think I'm actually going to have to look outside of the publishing industry to see if there is market viability for some of the ideas I'm thinking about. I don't know if I'm looking at quality vs. quantity so much as I am looking at niche market vs. mass market.
DC Kalbach is definitely making a mass market play, as many Kindle Unlimited writers are—nevertheless it's helpful for me to understand how Kindle Unlimited and some of these other platforms work, as well as how the market behaves, as I try to figure out what might work/not work for my book.
They definitely exist! But they do tend to write in big/popular genres still. LJ Shen is an example of an INSANELY successful indie author that releases maybe like 4 books a year? Maybe less?
I work extremely hard on my books, go through all the same self-generated book covers, editing, publishing pains, etc. but I have made much, much less. Admittedly, I have taken on controversial topics, but my thrillers are well rated and reviewed on Amazon. It's an extremely tricky thing. I agree with LAeditor, mostly: to make money, the writer must make compromises. And most of us aren't simply trying to make a living from this. To each their own!
These are great interviews with indie authors. My takeaway: at the heart of their success is writing in a niche genre with lots of readers and releasing many books very quickly.
I'm noticing that too, though there are so few success stories I'm not sure we have a large enough sample size to say that's the only way to do things. I'm currently looking for writers who aren't as prolific to see if there's another way!
There's definitely another way but the "niche genre" thing kind of doesn't go away... the problem is, you need to write/release books into a genre of hungry readers and release that book to where they're reading. Basically, romance readers read ebooks on Kindles and subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, so you can find those readers in those programs. It's harder to make a living doing this via like traditional epic fantasy or something (it has been done though!!!) where readers are trained to buy books from the major imprints. But I mean, self publishing / indie publishing is like the wild west right now, there are legitimately no rules because it's a baby industry!
Yes exactly. In the Kindle Unlimited world it sounds like it's about getting the most amount of eyes on the most amount of pages. But indie publishing IS the wild west and there might still be opportunity for writers who only reach a few eyes, but can monetize them effectively!
PRACTICE. I didn't start out writing that much, but I stuck with writing every single day, even the days when I really, really didn't want to write, I did it anyway. I treated it like a job early on and now getting the words in is WAY easier than it used to be, but I've been doing it for a few years now. I suggest starting with a reasonable number of words you can honestly get done every single day, maybe that's 50 words, or 500, or 1000, but pick a number that's honest and doable, then do it. Hit that word count goal every day for a few weeks. Then add on 50 more words, or 100 more words, or whatever. Hit that wordcount goal for two weeks. Etc etc. It's a muscle, just build it up over time.
Great advice DC, it’s really about Butt in chair and fingers on keyboard isn’t it? But despite plotting and outlining heaps I can still stare at the screen and not type all that much! It’s a huge amount of resistance and I just don’t get it. Did you ever feel this way? And also, how do you manage to turn off the internal editor as you’re writing? I’ve just never been good at pouring words out onto the page. Thanks!
I think you should take a step back and try to identify why you’re not writing. Is it fear of not being good enough? Just don’t think you know what to say? There are solutions to all these issues and I really think it’s about figuring out what’s not working in your process and fixing it. Oh I forgot to mention, early in my career I wrote on a little device called the Alphasmart Neo— it’s basically a keyboard with a small screen, big enough for like 4 lines of text. There’s no internet, so no distractions. I used to print out my outline and sit down with only my Neo and my outline and write. You can’t edit on the Neo, because of the tiny screen, and you can’t even obsess over Twitter because you left all your internet devices in the other room. The Neo was a big help in teaching me to turn off the editor voice. I’ve also worked hard to get my prose to a point where it’s “good enough” and I’m not stressing over perfection— my readers don’t expect it. So long as I’m trying my hardest given the limitations of each release (time, resources) then I’m happy and generally my readers are too. It’s about accepting that you’re not perfect and getting that first draft down— you can fix it later if you want and endlessly tweak, or maybe you’ll find it’s actually pretty good! But yeah look into getting a Neo, it’s very weird at first and you can only find them on eBay at this point, but totally worth it, best writing device ever made IMO.
All great advice thanks so much! And yes, fear of failure, not being good enough, who’s gonna wanna read this - all this shifts around on top of the loud editor. And accepting that the first draft is going to be pretty crap is something I’m learning slowly! I’ll look into the device thanks! It looks interesting and an homage to the old school screens :) Thank you for the insight and the writing! Have you shared your pen name if we’re interested in your books?
Great article, Elle. From what I discovered Kalbach's experience is not unusual. Here are three podcasts that I recommend writers listen to: Six Figure Authors, The Creative Penn, and Novel Marketing.
Great article. I enjoyed it.
Been enjoying all your posts, Elle. But I think the authors you're finding that prove these 6 figure models are in the tradition of the dime-store writers of the 60's and 70's, authors who wrote Westerns, Romance, Hard Boiled, Horror, Pulp, etc etc etc under multiple pen names and were insanely prolific. This side of the publishing world is quantity over quality, yes? I get the sense from some of the comments that people looking to write literary fiction or "Game of Thrones" type series are trying to see the correlation between their goals and those of DC, who is serving a very specific type of reader in a very specific way. More power to him, but I suspect for the vast majority of writers this is not why they are writing or sustainable long term.
I think the key phrase there is "for the vast majority of writers this is not why they are writing." Totally agree with you! I actually think about what I do exactly in the way you described it above-- "pulp" writers, although there's an icky, uncomfortable stigma against that idea and your quantity vs quality comment points to it, and I definitely agree that there's some quantity/speed stuff going on here, but that's not to say the books I write are bad books, my readers actually think they're good books and pay money to read them!-- and I don't think the majority of writers can/should/want to emulate what I'm doing. BUT, for those people that want to write books for a living, there are lots and lots of folks doing what I'm doing and having a blast like I am. And like I said in another comment, indie publishing is brand new, so who knows what the models will be, say, 10 years from now. There's lots of space for smart, talented people to hustle, build an audience, write awesome books, and make a living doing it.
One more thing: can you share with us your "origin story" of how you came to write novels in the first place? And how you chose romance as your genre? (I'd love to know more about why you gave up writing the men's adventure fiction too)
Thank you for sharing all of this, DC! I've learned a ton from it. It seems to me that -- and tell me if I'm wrong here -- what you've done is you've really done your homework about the publishing industry and found a genre that matches your interest/passion AND is a viable, lucrative market, and you've really dedicated yourself to serving your readers.
It seems to me that's the key thing that any writer who wants to be financially successful has to keep at the forefront. There's nothing wrong with pursuing either literary fiction or mass-market fiction, each has a place. But if you write more literary fiction, you have to understand the market for it is going to be more limited than for, say, romance.
Catherine Baab-Muguira wrote a great, great post about the travails of Edgar Allan Poe's struggles to get his work read that feels to me like it mirrors some of this discussion we're having here: https://poecansaveyourlife.substack.com/p/how-to-become-a-bestselling-writer
I have another question for you (actually many questions!) -- how do you write SO MUCH?! I tend to get very precious with my own writing; I'd imagine that with two kids at home and the volume you do in terms of writing, you've found another way. What is it? :)
This is probably going to be a long comment, sorry! I totally agree with what you said about doing your homework-- I forget if I mentioned in the interview, but when I first got started I didn't really know how to write a romance novel, and actually the first romance I ever wrote (still up on Amazon and it’s not very good!) was the first actual novel I ever finished. In those early days, I was reading lots of romance and talking to some other authors that I was coming up with, and we were sort of figuring out the genre together, along with covers and blurbs and the whole publisher side of the business. That’s why I keep insisting community is important. But I had to do a ton of homework in those early days, and it wasn’t until I finally figured out the covers and wrote a book in a very popular trope (stepbrothers, they were enormous in mid-2015) that I had any real success at all.
I guess this is a good spot for my origin story: I did a degree in English, got an MFA in poetry, and thought I’d get a literary PhD. I got into a fully funded program, basically my top choice— but then dropped out for a bunch of reasons. After that I was pretty adrift, working a copyediting job I absolutely hated, and stumbled on a forum thread about self-publishing romance and erotica. The people in that thread were making like shocking amounts of money and I was like, holy crap, they’re writing books and making a living? That’s basically my dream! I want to try that! So in January 2015, I dove in, joined that thread, got active in the community, and wrote my butt off. I started out doing erotica, but didn’t really like it, and quickly dove into romance. I worked from home at this point, which really helped getting the books written—I used to stand in my kitchen and type 2500 words per day and published one book per month. I had a lot of failures (still do) and learned a ton, and I think I succeeded because I refused to give up—and a whole ton of luck. Originally, I chose romance because that was the best way I could make a living and at the time I was really struggling financially. I wasn’t really precious about my artistic vision or whatever—I wanted to write books for a living, and romance is the biggest genre in the world, so I wrote romance. I really fell in love with the genre and the community as a whole over the years, and now I’m writing other stuff on the side, but I don’t think I’d ever have gotten to where I am today without going through the rigors of publishing romance. IMO, romance is where all the exciting stuff is happening in publishing, where authors are pushing boundaries and doing weird and awesome stuff, where readers actually want to read the books and are insanely hungry for them. I doubt I’ll ever stop writing romance—because I think I’d be a way worse author if I did. Also, the more I do this, the more I’m very convinced that the distinctions between “literary” and “genre” are really just about marketing and not at all about what the books actually achieve for readers.
Okay that was a lot, sorry. To answer your last question, I didn’t start out writing 5k+ per day. I worked up to it, and I’ve been doing this for years now—writing day in and day out. I have my routine, my habits/rituals etc, and I stick to them as rigorously as possible. I have my off days like anyone else, but I think I’ve missed a self-imposed deadline maybe once? Anyway, the advice I always give is, you need to figure out what works for you. That’s obvious, like no kidding, but it’s true. I learned that I need a two-hour block at the same time every day (3pm est to 5pm est) and I need to sit down and do the words no matter what. If I keep up the momentum, turn off WiFi, get off Slack, whatever, I pretty much always hit my goal. Start with a reasonable number of words you want to do every day, like 200, or 500, or whatever, and do that for a while. Learn your routine, establish habits and patterns. Then when you’re chugging along and hitting your goal is easy, add more words, rinse and repeat. It’s a muscle and you have to work at it. I didn’t have kids when I started out, but definitely I’ve had to learn to adapt to them! My wife’s good about giving me my work hours and keeping that space, and I really owe a lot to her, so having a supportive partner helps a whole ton when the kids are involved. They’re also at daycare three days per week! And when I write in the morning, I’m up before them, and I’m done when my 4yo bashes in through my office door and runs over and jumps into my lap, whether I hit my words or not. It’s great, I have my headphones on, I’m in the zone typing away, sun’s coming up and the backyard’s glistening with dew and it’s just lovely, then my kids smash in and wreck shit. I love it.
Oh, and the men’s adventure stuff: long answer short, I didn’t love the books enough to devote more time to them and decided to write other stuff that didn’t quite fit into the genre. Basically just felt like moving on and pursuing other things, and I only have X amount of time in the day and can’t do everything, unfortunately.
That’s probably more thorough than you wanted, oh well.
That was so insanely helpful. Thank you!
One last question: what helped you learn how to structure a romance novel? Where did you learn how to do it? And, do you outline your books before you write them?
I basically learned by reading a bunch of them, but there are a few books out there that help-- romancing the beats is probably the most famous one. I spent a lot of time early on just reading popular romance and thinking about structure, beats, tropes, characters, etc.
I do outline, but not as much as I should! I like to be at least a couple days ahead, so when I sit down to write I know exactly where I'm going. I don't waste time staring at the blank page wondering what happens next-- if that happens, I know I'm pretty much not hitting my word count goal for the day. But I rarely outline an entire book before I get started. I like the partial outline because it gives the story a little more flexibility, like I don't need to know everything that's happening in the book beyond some high level stuff, like these are the characters, these are the tropes I'm hitting, here's an idea for the ending, here's an idea for the beginning, then boom, I can outline maybe 6 chapters then dive right in. I highly recommend outlining, especially early on when folks are trying to get into good writing routines, but really it doesn't matter what an individual author's methods are so long as the books get written!
Not at all! This was fantastic. Thank you SO much for sharing it all.
Thank you! Yes, I think I'm actually going to have to look outside of the publishing industry to see if there is market viability for some of the ideas I'm thinking about. I don't know if I'm looking at quality vs. quantity so much as I am looking at niche market vs. mass market.
DC Kalbach is definitely making a mass market play, as many Kindle Unlimited writers are—nevertheless it's helpful for me to understand how Kindle Unlimited and some of these other platforms work, as well as how the market behaves, as I try to figure out what might work/not work for my book.
I am waiting for “The one where writers who aren’t insanely prolific make six figures.” 😉
They definitely exist! But they do tend to write in big/popular genres still. LJ Shen is an example of an INSANELY successful indie author that releases maybe like 4 books a year? Maybe less?
Hope remains alive. 🤓
Haha! Looking for those now......
I work extremely hard on my books, go through all the same self-generated book covers, editing, publishing pains, etc. but I have made much, much less. Admittedly, I have taken on controversial topics, but my thrillers are well rated and reviewed on Amazon. It's an extremely tricky thing. I agree with LAeditor, mostly: to make money, the writer must make compromises. And most of us aren't simply trying to make a living from this. To each their own!
Another great interview!
These are great interviews with indie authors. My takeaway: at the heart of their success is writing in a niche genre with lots of readers and releasing many books very quickly.
I'm noticing that too, though there are so few success stories I'm not sure we have a large enough sample size to say that's the only way to do things. I'm currently looking for writers who aren't as prolific to see if there's another way!
There's definitely another way but the "niche genre" thing kind of doesn't go away... the problem is, you need to write/release books into a genre of hungry readers and release that book to where they're reading. Basically, romance readers read ebooks on Kindles and subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, so you can find those readers in those programs. It's harder to make a living doing this via like traditional epic fantasy or something (it has been done though!!!) where readers are trained to buy books from the major imprints. But I mean, self publishing / indie publishing is like the wild west right now, there are legitimately no rules because it's a baby industry!
Yes exactly. In the Kindle Unlimited world it sounds like it's about getting the most amount of eyes on the most amount of pages. But indie publishing IS the wild west and there might still be opportunity for writers who only reach a few eyes, but can monetize them effectively!
How do you write ~9k words a day?!! I consider 2k a great day! 😅
PRACTICE. I didn't start out writing that much, but I stuck with writing every single day, even the days when I really, really didn't want to write, I did it anyway. I treated it like a job early on and now getting the words in is WAY easier than it used to be, but I've been doing it for a few years now. I suggest starting with a reasonable number of words you can honestly get done every single day, maybe that's 50 words, or 500, or 1000, but pick a number that's honest and doable, then do it. Hit that word count goal every day for a few weeks. Then add on 50 more words, or 100 more words, or whatever. Hit that wordcount goal for two weeks. Etc etc. It's a muscle, just build it up over time.
Great advice DC, it’s really about Butt in chair and fingers on keyboard isn’t it? But despite plotting and outlining heaps I can still stare at the screen and not type all that much! It’s a huge amount of resistance and I just don’t get it. Did you ever feel this way? And also, how do you manage to turn off the internal editor as you’re writing? I’ve just never been good at pouring words out onto the page. Thanks!
I think you should take a step back and try to identify why you’re not writing. Is it fear of not being good enough? Just don’t think you know what to say? There are solutions to all these issues and I really think it’s about figuring out what’s not working in your process and fixing it. Oh I forgot to mention, early in my career I wrote on a little device called the Alphasmart Neo— it’s basically a keyboard with a small screen, big enough for like 4 lines of text. There’s no internet, so no distractions. I used to print out my outline and sit down with only my Neo and my outline and write. You can’t edit on the Neo, because of the tiny screen, and you can’t even obsess over Twitter because you left all your internet devices in the other room. The Neo was a big help in teaching me to turn off the editor voice. I’ve also worked hard to get my prose to a point where it’s “good enough” and I’m not stressing over perfection— my readers don’t expect it. So long as I’m trying my hardest given the limitations of each release (time, resources) then I’m happy and generally my readers are too. It’s about accepting that you’re not perfect and getting that first draft down— you can fix it later if you want and endlessly tweak, or maybe you’ll find it’s actually pretty good! But yeah look into getting a Neo, it’s very weird at first and you can only find them on eBay at this point, but totally worth it, best writing device ever made IMO.
All great advice thanks so much! And yes, fear of failure, not being good enough, who’s gonna wanna read this - all this shifts around on top of the loud editor. And accepting that the first draft is going to be pretty crap is something I’m learning slowly! I’ll look into the device thanks! It looks interesting and an homage to the old school screens :) Thank you for the insight and the writing! Have you shared your pen name if we’re interested in your books?
Thank you for responding! I'm not sure I can make my fingers move that quickly but I'll try your method!
Me too. If I’m reading correctly, the author writes several thousand words in 2 hours a day!
Great article, Elle. From what I discovered Kalbach's experience is not unusual. Here are three podcasts that I recommend writers listen to: Six Figure Authors, The Creative Penn, and Novel Marketing.
Thank you for the recommendations!
I have a cover designer. I'm legitimately bad at design, like very bad, so I stick to what I'm good at.