January, 2012
Adjusting To Being A Full-Time Author – Part 3
In part 3 of this little series, let’s talk a bit about keeping yourself on track!
The Virtue of Self-Discipline
Our day jobs provide (or inflict upon) us some degree of structure. Some people have jobs that are very flexible in many ways, others not so much. But as a general rule, we’re expected to show up a certain amount of time and do or produce something for our pay. Bosses are there to yell at us if we don’t.
When you shift over to writing full-time, just as with many other self-owned businesses, that boss goes away. Poof. You can now do just about anything you want, as long as it’s legal. Don’t feel like rolling out of bed until noon? No problem! Just want to wear PJs and bunny slippers all day? You can do that.
Writing? Well, yeah, I do need to get back to work on that book, but I feel like playing Call of Duty on the PS3 today. All day. And all night. I’ll do some writing later. Oh, wait, somebody just mentioned me on Twitter. Or maybe someone posted something on a forum that has you all fired up, and you spent half a dozen hours during the day voicing your opinion. The fact that you just wrote as many words as you usually need for a chapter in your latest book escapes you…
You can see where I’m going, right? When you start working at home for the first time, your enemies will become the distractions that (presumably) you were largely insulated from while at your day job. It’s up to you to build an insulating layer and give yourself enough structure to be successful. And, at least in the beginning, you may have to be absolutely merciless on yourself to develop success-oriented habits.
Make no mistake: being a self-published author, with your royalties as your primary or sole source of income, can be scary. It’s all on you. Your creativity. Your ability to market your work. Your ability to run a business. There are times when you have to be ruthless on yourself, when you can’t let yourself go to bed until you’ve finished that next chapter or you’ll blow your self-imposed deadline. Or maybe you’ll run out of money.
So, one of the first things you have to do is establish whatever structure and self-discipline will help you achieve success. Set office hours when you’ll be available to communicate with folks on-line or on the phone, or can have meetings in person. Fence off certain hours for writing, and nothing short of a family emergency is to interrupt that time (you’re at work, remember?). Set daily goals for productivity, and deadlines for reaching milestones in your writing. Then hold yourself to them.
I’ll confess that I’m still struggling with this. I have a goal of writing 3,000 words a day (including new text on my next novel, blogs, etc.). Some days I make it, some I don’t. Keeping myself accountable to that goal is often dicey, but it’s one that I keep hammering away on. Because if I don’t focus on improving over time, my chances of long-term success dwindle significantly. There are some days when I just don’t feel like writing. But that’s okay, because there’s always something else you can be doing, as long as it furthers your business of being an author.
In our next and final installment, we’ll talk a bit about Socializing and Taking Time Out…
Adjusting To Being A Full-Time Author – Part 2
In this second installment of my musings about moving from a full-time day job to writing for a living, let’s take a look at some of the financial issues you need to be aware of in the rapidly evolving industry of self-publishing…
Keep The Faith, But Don’t Count On Next Month’s Income
Between February and August 2011, I made a ton of money, around $105,000, from my book royalties. Not like the big authors, but more than the “modest car payment” amount I’d been making before from month to month. I had stars in my eyes and money burning a big hole in my pocket. We already had some hefty financial obligations (I’d been a well-paid federal employee, remember, and had the payments to go with it), and made some financial decisions based on “projections” that, in hindsight, maybe weren’t such a good idea.
Because in September, a month after I left NSA, sales took a nosedive after Amazon (which is where I get over 95% of my royalties) apparently changed some of its algorithms. The royalties for that month were about $7,000. Yes, that’s a lot of money to a lot of people, but in terms of our existing financial commitments, that was not good at all. Even if Amazon hadn’t changed anything, eventually your bestsellers are going to drop off the list. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any books in the top 100 except King, Koontz, and Patterson, right?
Another thing to keep in mind is that your royalty payments from Amazon and other retailers don’t have any tax withheld. So don’t forget that little gotcha. I’d also strongly recommend that, at least for your first year, you find a good tax consultant. You’ll be able to write off a lot of expenses for your business, but you’ll also have to pay some other things, like self-employment tax. A consultant can help you wade through all that stuff.
The silver lining, such as it was, is that Amazon pays on a net 60 basis. This means that the royalties you make in a given month are actually paid to you two months later. Some people complain about that, but to me that’s a financial safety net. If your royalties in a particular month suck, you’ve got two months to prepare for the hit. And that’s what we did, battening down our financial hatches and stocking up on mac & cheese for dinner.
But the hit didn’t end with low royalties in September: October and November were even worse. I was seriously contemplating going back to work (probably as a contractor working for the government, as we’d all starve to death by the time NSA’s hiring process churned me back into the fold) and was getting really agitated and depressed. Sure, it wasn’t like we were out of money or were going to starve. But after three months of this, I was getting really discouraged.
After a lot of soul-searching and talking to my wife, I decided I was just going to persevere. As I mentioned, it’s not like we didn’t have any money, at least until April when the taxes would come due. I just had to keep the faith and push through.
Sure enough, sales turned back up in December. It wasn’t the kind of windfall we’d experienced over the summer, but were about double what we’d made in the slow months. And this month, January 2012, has been even better. Okay, I told myself. I can do this. Chugga-chugga.
That brings me to the moral of this part of our little story. If I had things to do over, the very first thing I’d do with my royalties when they took off is save the money away. Build a big-ass financial cushion (post-tax, remember). I’d put away enough post-tax money to keep us afloat without eating mac & cheese every night for at least six months.
Why six months? Because if you’re writing full-time, you should be able to produce at least one new book in that time, and quite possibly two, along with short stories, etc. So, if your current list tanks, you’ll still be able to eat while you’re working on that new book.
Note that if you think you can only write one book a year full-time, you’re probably going to need supplemental income unless you really strike it rich (which is a factor of luck, not planning, unless you’ve already got a large, established readership). This business is literally a publish or perish affair, and survival favors those who are more productive.
Another thing: I wouldn’t seriously consider leaving your day job to write full-time until you have a backlist of at least half a dozen titles. You may have a whopper of a bestseller like SEASON OF THE HARVEST was early on, but what goes up will inevitably come down. It’s only a question of hang time on the charts. But if you have a bunch of books in your list, they’ll sit there and quietly continue to earn money, even if they’re not on the bestseller lists anymore, and each new book you put out will pull in more income.
But do NOT base your expectations on the current performance of any single book, or you will likely find yourself jumping off the diving board into an empty pool.
The other thing is just to keep the faith. It’s hard. But as Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Just build a healthy money reserve before you strike out on your own, be smart, and then write your butt off.
In part 3 we’ll cover The Virtue of Self-Discipline…
Adjusting To Being A Full-Time Author – Part 1
I’ve had a number of folks ask me about my experiences in transitioning from a career day job to working as a full-time author, so I thought I’d give you some of my impressions here, for what they may be worth. I’m breaking this up into four parts and this, of course, is part 1.
Now, keep in mind that I’m speaking from the perspective of a self-published author who’s now supporting his family entirely on those royalties. So some things may apply more or less to you, depending on your situation (e.g., you have a second income, etc.).
As a quick recap, I was a career government employee working for the National Security Agency (NSA) for twenty-five years, and was a GG-15 (the highest grade on the regular pay scale) when I decided to leap into writing full-time after SEASON OF THE HARVEST was published in February 2011. That was literally the turning point for me, because sales of that book took off and took my previously published books with it. The money that I made during the summer of 2011 from my book royalties convinced me that I’d be an idiot not to pursue it full-time, and so I resigned from NSA in mid-August.
Six months have passed since then, which actually comes as a bit of a shock: it seems like I just left work yesterday! Anyway, here are some impressions I’d like to pass on in hopes they may help someone else down the line who’s at the threshold of taking this particular leap of faith.
Health Insurance Coverage
You probably weren’t expecting this, were you? The reason I wanted to talk about this is that it was a huge issue for us in transitioning from a federal plan to a “regular” health plan, because it’s something I don’t believe people should be without (the FUBAR’d health care system notwithstanding), but depending on your situation, this is a potential show-stopper for becoming self-employed.
At NSA, I was covered by one of the federal government plans (the same as our friendly neighborhood congress-persons have). We paid about $400 a month for family coverage, while Uncle Sam (through your generous tax donations) paid another $800, for a total of right around $1200 a month for a state Blue Cross HMO. We had copays of $20 or so for office visits and whatever the formulary cost was for prescriptions (which were generally very cheap), and that was it – no deductible, no coinsurance. It didn’t matter if we went to the doc for a sniffle or if I needed a brain transplant, and there were all sorts of other bells and whistles. In short, for $400 a month and a few twenties now and again, our family didn’t have to worry at all about health care coverage. Best of all, the providers couldn’t drop us, screw us over on preexisting conditions (if we’d had any) or jack up our rates. They can’t do that for people covered under a federal plan. Sweet.
When my wife and I started seriously looking at me leaving NSA, I had to research alternative health care plans, the kind that “regular people” not working for the fed have. Holy crap. All I can say is that anyone who says we don’t need massive health care reform in this country is certifiably insane. I’m not making a political statement, just stating a fact.
After weeding through all the bazillion different plan options, which on the surface give the impression of offering choice, but compared to what I was used to only differed in the degree to which I was going to get screwed, I finally settled on one that had a premium of $600 a month and had a $2700 per person ($5400 family) annual deductible and no coinsurance. Just to compare those two, our federal plan cost us maybe a total of $5,000 a year for everything. Just the premium on the new plan is over $7000, and we could get stiffed over $12,000 if we had enough to eat up the family deductible. Yummy.
Of course, the insurance company didn’t want to cover me for 10 months for something they deemed was a preexisting condition, even though it hadn’t been an issue for over two years. So I had to sign a waiver for that, stating that the insurer wasn’t responsible for anything related to that condition for 10 months. Anything for that had to come out of my own pocket. Nice. Then, of course, they can later on “reevaluate” our coverage and raise our rates, etc. Welcome to the Matrix.
So, health care is a huge potential cost that you may or may not already have in your financial calculus. If you have a serious condition, you simply may not be able to afford insurance on your own.
Next up: Keep The Faith, But Don’t Count On Next Month’s Income…
Dealing With Social Media Trolls
One of the unpleasant things that comes up periodically when skinny-dipping in the great social media sea is dealing with trolls. You know, the people who fling inflammatory or unkind things around, or – not to put too fine a point on it – are just jerks. They are generally few and far between in the greater social media population, but you eventually will encounter them. Here’s how I handle these beasties.
The first thing NOT to do is engage them. Don’t get into a pissing contest with these people, because you’re just wasting your time, and at worst you can become a troll yourself. Unless you’re a social worker doing some pro-bono work, just…don’t…do it.
Instead, if somebody starts flinging poo in your direction on Twitter, for example, don’t hesitate to just block them (blocking means that you can no longer see their tweets, and they can no longer see yours). I don’t even bother engaging folks like that before I hit the block button. A lot of folks seem reluctant to do that, and instead feel compelled to spend valuable time trying to win the troll to their point of view or engage them in a substantive discussion. If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine. Good luck.
As for me, I don’t have the time or patience for people who are negative, vengeful, foul-mouthed, etc. For me, Twitter is both a business tool and a social forum where I’ve made quite a few real friends, but I value my time and the time of those with whom I interact. Trolls don’t. Simply put, I’d rather spend my time with nice people than someone who wants to drag me down.
The principle is the same on other platforms like Facebook. You can unfriend people who are driving you nuts (although there are other reasons you might choose to unfriend people that aren’t “negative”) or, if they’re really obnoxious, block them.
Trolls aren’t always overtly or initially obnoxious. Some are probably nice people (maybe), but are what I would characterize as “unacceptably high maintenance.” I hooked up with someone on Twitter and Google+ who seemed nice at first, but after a while became a real nuisance “know it all” who was really driving up my blood pressure. After putting up with this for a while, I came to the realization that I’d had to put up with people like that now and again during my career at the National Security Agency because I didn’t have a choice. In social media, I do. Block. Block. Block. My relief was palpable.
If you’re using Twitter (or Facebook) for business, as I do, you’ll also encounter folks who aren’t necessarily trolls, but can sometimes come across that way. For example, some get frustrated with promotional tweets and are happy to flame you, either nicely or not. If the person brings this up in a civil manner, I’ll take the time to explain that it’s an essential part of marketing for my business, and nicely point out that if it really bothers them, I won’t be at all offended if they unfollow me. I also maintain a separate “promo-free” Twitter account that they can follow instead. But if someone just flames me about it…I just push the block button. Better for me, better for them.
Now, some folks will point out legitimate concerns that you should consider, so don’t just blow off anybody and everybody who has something critical to say. And always, always be nice in your responses, even if the person has tossed a real fireball at you. You can never go wrong by sticking to the moral high ground in your public discussions, and these discussions can be very public!
And that brings me to the real bottom line. As you’re reaching out to other folks on social media, be it for business or to make friends, stick with people who are looking “forward and upward” and giving out positive vibes to their social media circle, and do the same for them. Leave the trolls behind.
My Books
Reza Gard is a young boy of the Human Confederation who is swept up in the century-long war with the alien Kreelan Empire. Nightmarish female warriors with blue skin, fangs, and razor sharp talons, the Kreelans have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. Read More >>