1000 words today. Today was not a writing day—it was a self-improvement day.
What a day. But first, some thoughts.
I finished a book by one of favorite authors, Arthur Hailey. Hailey is a thriller author who was quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but is lesser known now.
His wife wrote a book about him and what it was like to be married to him. I read the book in an entire day.
As I read it, it reminded me how writers’ lives haven’t changed very much, and yet everything is wildly different than the 1970s.
For starters:
- * Hailey worked many different jobs, working his way up the ladder before finally finding some writing success. Most people reading this are writers holding down full-time jobs and writing on the side.
- *Hailey took 3 years to write a novel. He wrote in the mornings and wrote 600 words per day, taking him until five or six in the evening to write.
- * Hailey received mountains and mountains of fanmail, much of which reads like fan mail authors receive today.
- * Hailey’s work was so successful that it created money problems (of the good kind). He spent so much time reviewing royalties, licensing, and managing his money that it frustrated him.
Anyway, the lives of mega bestselling authors fascinate me, if you haven’t noticed. I learned a lot from his life—first things first, keep writing. Second, success is deadly. Better to anticipate it and learn to deal with it before it happens. If you’re wrong, you wasted a few dozen hours of work. If you’re right, you’ll be better off emotionally, and possibly rich. Third, writing a screenplay for your own movie is a terrible idea. Reading Hailey’s horror stories of dealing with writing his own screenplay confirmed that I would not want this responsibility.
Fourth, once you release a book into the world, you never know what it will do for people. There’s a touching story in the book about a piece of fanmail that Hailey received (his wife handled his fanmail for him). A soldier stationed in Vietnam borrowed one of his books from a fellow soldier who had brought it with him to the war. They took turns reading the book. The base they were stationed at was attacked, and his friend was killed. The soldier was tasked with finding dead bodies in the rubble, and he looked for the book but could never find it. When he returned home from the war, he bought a new copy of the book because not only was the story great, but it reminded him of his friend and all the good times they had. Wow. That brought me to tears.
You never know the impact your books will have on people.
I also took away from the book how writers are walking contradictions…I’m mostly speaking about myself here, but I related to many things that Hailey’s wife said about him:
- * Ambitious yet humble
- * Fastidious and idiosyncratic about their career, but with a terrible memory about everything else
- * Methodical
- * Impatient with domestic matters but infinitely patient with anything that had to do with books
- *Craved a life of excitement
I always like to read about authors’ mistakes and their shortcomings. You can always learn from them.
Anyway, I learned a great deal from Arthur Hailey’s life and his writing style.
LESSON LEARNED & EXECUTED
No ad work today. I technically should have been working on my ads, but I decided to let things sit for a little while longer.
My conversion rate started really strong this morning. My conversion rate was around 5 at dinner time, which confirms my theory…if my conversion rate is below 10 at dinner time, I’ll (probably) be profitable for the day.
I noticed some interesting trends.
First, I can almost predict when my lesser-known books will sell. My short story collection sells 1 copy roughly every 2 days. And so does one of my poetry collections. In fact, I appear to have improved the conversion rate of Android Poems by cutting it nearly in half. Still not profitable though…but man, it’s surreal that I got two of my most obscure books to sell regularly each week, while some of my more commercial titles aren’t earning a penny. You never know.
However, the changes I made to my OTHER poetry collection appear to have WORSENED my conversion rate. Haven’t sold a single copy since I changed the book description. Wow. Amazing how you can start seeing this stuff if you look for it.
But overall, I can’t complain about my ad performance this month. I had a few crummy days over the weekend, but it looks like things are balancing themselves out. Ironically, I notice that my profitability problem is the worst on weekends. The spending scales up dramatically after 7PM and if the sales aren’t already built up, I end up underwater. It would be nice if Amazon let you choose days of the week in which to serve certain ads. That would make all the difference in the world for some of my books, especially the less popular ones. Doesn’t matter with my better selling books.
Anyhoo, that’s enough action for one night. Fellow author Huw Collingbourne released a new post-apocalyptic trilogy that I wanted to let people know about in case that’s your thing. Huw and I write in similar genres, and he interviewed me on his blog a few months ago, which features interviews with indie writers. He asks very thoughtful questions to some of the most successful Indies of our generation, so check him out. If you like post-apoc, check out his series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NTTWNWN and also his blog: http://www.darkneon.com.
