TWENTY BOOKS… The Reality…

Got A Letter From A Writer with Twenty-One Novels…

This writer was making almost nothing and was angry that they had been conned by the twenty books myth. Clearly they thought when they finished and published twenty novels, they would be making $50,000 magically. You remember, the old 20 to 50 conference?

And there is truth to the twenty major books exploding the discoverability exponentially. If…

And there is truth if you reach that magic twenty number and are doing a bunch of things right, you can make from $40,000 to $80,000 on book sales per year. If you are doing a bunch of things right.

Oh, boy…  are there some major “ifs” that must be done.

Now this writer who wrote me wasn’t really asking me for help, they were just complaining. But I got the letter, so I couldn’t help myself. Like watching a car wreck. I wanted to see what the problem was.

I did a little checking and looked up their books. Not a person on the planet outside the writer’s closest family would buy a book. I wrote back and asked this person what genre they wrote in because I could not tell from their covers. Oops… Science fiction was the answer I got back, of course.

One cover had an image of a daisy, I think, a photo, pink, with a pink title and the author’s name tiny across the bottom in pink. Science fiction.

The sales copy of two that I looked at was all plot and passive and told the endings because this author thought that was the important and exciting stuff.

I took a chance that someone who could actually finish and publish twenty-one books might be interested in some help. So I told the author they needed to study covers, genre, and sales copy to improve their sales. I said nothing more. If they wanted help, I expected a letter back asking how to study that.

Crickets as expected. The author was looking for the secret. I was clearly not willing to give it to them.

Writers who can write, all of us, have egos. We believe we know what is best for our books. But sadly, sales does not bow to egos.

A pink daisy floating on a pink cover with a small title and an even smaller pink author name might have been perfect for what this author saw for that book. Clearly an important image in the book, as so many authors go to for their covers.

Don’t write me and answer this, just answer this for yourself. Did your last cover have an image of some event in the book? Or did the image just go to genre?

Twenty-To-Fifty is not a myth. But you have to be doing a bunch of things right before the exponential explosion of discoverability at twenty can really help you make more cash flow.