Mission: failed.

I wrote stories no one was interested with covers no one clicked. Needless to say, I was frustrated but eager to learn. I had consumed tons of other indie authors shooting up the Amazon sales ranks like the Rocketeer, selling thousands of books, even though their storytelling sucked (IMHO). It thought their work was lightyears away from being professional.

I needed to get better at my commercial craft, so I DEVOURED 50+ storytelling books, honed my typing, and glued my ears to storytelling podcasts. I’ve put most of it into practice and learned lessons that dramatically boosted my sales.

Below, I want to reveal the top 4 commercial storytelling lessons I’ve learned…

1) Niche down, down, down and down

It’s better to serve a tight niche with few(er) but fervent readers than a general niche with many readers. For example, science fiction is a general niche with millions of readers worldwide, but sci-fi space opera is a niche with “only” a few hundred thousand dedicated readers. (Not an accurate number, but a mere calculation from Amazon sales ranks and the bestselling authors I’ve asked). Writing specific sci-fi opera will make you more money than writing general sci-fi, even though the pool’s much smaller.

Sub-niche readers are voracious.

I’ve talked to dozens in the sci-fi sub-categories and they’re on fire for new fiction. They consume their chosen category of obsession with…well, obsession. They usually read 1-2 books per day(!) and need the next fix like a junkie his coke. General readers of a genre LIKE the genre, but sub-genre readers LOVE LOVE LOOOVE their sub-genre. Remember, fandoms are always specific.

So whether you’re writing romance or sci-fi, look for a fervent sub-niche within that group (Romance: Billionaire S&M? Sci-fi: military space opera?) and deliver the goods. You’ll be selling.

2) Loop ‘till you poop

Okay, bad pun, but I wrote this headline at midnight and needed to cater to my childishness.

Loops are the spicy ingredient that makes every genre story (potentially) addictive.
They’re based on the notion that humans read and tell stories to understand their world. Even when you’re reading fun escapist stories about an arrow-shooting 17 old girl asking herself whether to have sex with a werewolf or vampire, the underlying motivation is to learn about life. Survival.
I highly recommend watching the storytelling interview with author and screenwriting guru Robert McKee.

Now, what does that have to with the loop? Well, a loop is an open-ended question asked in the first act of your story. In a crime thriller, it’s often “Who’s the perp?” or “Why did s/he commit the murder?” This loop gets hopefully closed in the 3rd act.

In my sci-fi stories, I ask tons of loops in the first act. Like, who’s the mysterious alien race? What’s the secret to the VR game that’s so scarily popular? What happened to mankind on that planet?

The reason why loops are powerful is because they trigger the survival mechanism of the brain. It wants to learn, learn, and learn to survive–”Don’t go near that bush, bro, there’s a sabre-tooth tiger!”. Hence the page-turning effect.

Knowing why X committed the murder or why that spaceship had to crash-land on that planet triggers your membrane. The brain says: oh-uh. Possible life lesson here, better pay attention to it.

That’s why you should loop in the first act. Set up at least one major mystery and answer it by the end of the third act. Of course, you have to resolve the loop by the end of the book. If readers still don’t know what Uncle Jimmy’s hiding in his basement by the 5th book, you piss off your reader base.

Having said that, if you plan on writing a selling series you’ll have to use two types of loops.

• 1) Micro-loops that get opened at the beginning of the book 1 and get closed by the end of Act 3.
  (Example. Loop start: Uncle Jimmy hides something in his basement. Loop end: it’s Uncle Jimmy’s twin brother.)

• Macro-loops that get opened in the first book and closed in the last book of the series. Example: Book 1 loop: Uncle Jimmy has a twin brother. Book 3 end loop: Uncle Jimmy and his twin brother are actually clones who had escaped a secret government facility.)

So when you write your series, open a micro-loop in the 1st act of the 1st book and close it by the 3rd act of book 1. Also include one macro-loop that gets opened in 1 book one and closed in the last book. This way, you’ll have readers burn through your first book and the ones after that. You’ll end up selling more books.

3) Follow the Trope

If you’re an indie author wanting to make money from your stories, because you know, a Netflix subscription and covfefe actually cost money, you should target genre fiction. The biggest ones are “crime thriller”, “romance”, “sci-fi & fantasy”, especially on Amazon.

But to succeed in your chosen genre, you have to understand the underlying tropes or you’ll piss off your target audience. Tropes are recurring themes. In a sci-fi space opera, it’s a captain and his misfit crew, a special spaceship, aliens, orbital and ground-based battle, yadadada.

In Dystopian YA fiction, it’s usually a 17-year old girl living in a dark world run by an authoritarian regime where grown-ups are assholes, except for the 2 hot guys she’s got to choose from.

I’m only slightly exaggerating here—if you write YA and your main character isn’t a teenage female dealing with issues, it’s a tough sale. Light romance and trouble with grown-ups are part of the trope.

If you write space opera but you include no spaceship, aliens or intergalactic battles, you get slaughtered in the reviews. Sub-niche readers expect reoccurring elements.

That’s why you should Google the tropes of your (sub)genre and understand the basic themes that those readers expect. If you manage to deliver the tropes while adding a unique touch, you can make a lot of sales.

Conclusion

I love writing genre fiction. It’s a mix between mastering compelling storytelling (AKA hooking readers to your digital pages) and understanding how to serve a hungry market crowd. The tips above helped me become a full-time indie author. I hope they do the same for you.

Please share this post if you find it useful!

The post 3 commercial storytelling lessons that helped me sell more fiction books appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

If you haven’t been sleeping under rock with sound-proof titanium, you must have stumbled across the Netflix original series “Stranger Things” about a kid disappearing in some sleepy American town. What follows is pure storytelling drama fired up with conspiracies, nostalgic horror mysteries and even stranger things.

The critics and audience darling will likely be renewed for a second season, but before it hits the digital shelves, let me extract 4 juicy storytelling lessons from the hit series:

1) Everything is a remix

“Stranger Things” steals so many tropes from the 80s, it’s a wonder the Justice Department of Movie Ideas hasn’t swatted them yet. In fact, the website Zimbio has listed every original source the series’ makers used as ‘inspiration’. Steven Spielberg movies and Stephen King’s horror stories were just some of the references I got. And yet, by combining these known storytelling sources, “Stranger Things” has become greater than the sum of its parts. Which brings us to documentary filmmaker Kirby Ferguson and his idea model “Everything is a remix”:

1) Copy. You get ideas from what you love.
2) Transform. You rearrange these pieces and transform them.
3) Combine. You combine the ‘changed’ pieces and thus create something new.

Lesson: the audience never wants something ‘entirely’ new. They want something they already know, albeit a bit differently. So take the things from your market and rearrange them in new ways to both stand out but still cater to the group. 
Which brings us to point 2 below:

2) Trigger familiarity

Remember the minor rants about Marvel movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” cashing in on 80s nostalgia by featuring their classic hit music? Well, “Stranger Things” takes it to a new level by using tropes, characters, music, heck, even screen fonts from the 80s era.

Stranger Thing’s storytelling wants to take now-adults back to their childhoods and grandparents back to their parent days, thus triggering the (melancholic) emotions from the past.

Lesson: familiarity is a powerful emotion. Whatever market you produce for, find a common ground, preferably a positive one, that immediately connects with your audience. That could be a specific time in history, a character or setting. Once you have the emotional link, you can take your audience wherever you want them to.

3) Ask WTF questions

“Stranger Things” is the thriller of a thriller. During the 8 episode run, it asks one major question: WTF happened to Will?

And then it poses smaller questions throughout each episode: what’s going on in that town? Who’s that boyish girl? What’s up with the woods (Pssst, don’t go there!) and many more.

Every new episode you get a weeny-bit closer to the truth, but not quite. To really find out what’s going on in “Stranger Things”, you have to watch until the last episode. Bastards.

Lesson: if you want to write a fast-paced series, pose one major question and answer it at the very end of the series. During the series, ask many smaller questions scattered across each book and answer them by the end.

4) Attract the four-quadrants

In case you don’t know, that’s Hollywood lingo for the four major target groups according to the big studios—female and male, under and over 25 years old.

Because, money.

“Stranger Things” features stars in EVERY age bracket: You have the courageous kids story (middle school), the teenage horror love story (high school) and the grown-up parents and officers (adult, middle-aged). Which is why you see so many old and young people watching the show—there’s storytelling for everyone!

Lesson: think about the age group of your market. Either you go niche, e.g. Young Adult, or you go broad and feature characters of different age groups to cast a wider net. My sci-fi books mostly feature young adults and seasoned veterans because that resembles the reader audience.

Conclusion

I believe you can learn storytelling from any kind of story medium, and “Stranger Things” is such an addictive series it features the best lessons of them all.

What’s your favorite storytelling device or moment from the Netflix hit series?

And please share this post if you find it useful.

The post 4 Storytelling Lessons You Can Learn From “Stranger Things” appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

1) Your cover must be 100% genre specific

Listen, I’m an illustrator. I like over-the-top, colorful covers that stand out like a dancing pig doing a somersault on a suborbital jet. But the truth is, every unique cover I slapped on my books killed sales. How can I tell? Because these books made low sales in the first days of the release, before anyone had a chance to read it. I was super-pissed and asked my super-successful indie sci-fi authors who judged by books, my description and then my cover. Their verdict?

They told me my covers were too unique. They said a space opera needs a big-ass spaceship and that would bring in all the sales.
I said BS, that’s way tooooo simplistic.

Then I created a spaceship cover for Fear The Liberator and it started selling from day two.Two weeks later, it sold up to 20 units per day and resulted in 13,000+ paid pages getting read PER day.
#genrecoversmatter

For sci-fi, especially space opera, it really means slamming a big, fat spaceship on the cover. For thrillers, add a BIG BOLD FONT on the cover, some city background and a silhouette running. For fantasy, use ze swords, shields and orcs, elves, dragon and fantasy landscapes. Romance: schmaltzy stock models touching each other in cheesy colors and floral fonts.

Not creative in the least, but it sells, especially when you don’t have a brand name. Yet.

If you need inspiration and/or DON’T have any clue about cover design and you work with a cover designer, google your favorite and successful traditional genre authors and check out their books. Copy them.

Here again, in fancy b-quote framing:

Your cover must be 100% genre specific.

2) Categories matter a lot. Like, more than you think.

Why? Because they give you exposure. The more categories your book ranks in, the higher the changes of potential readers finding your work on Amazon. Picture your book as an exhibitionist flashing in as many malls as possible.

But so many indies and even traditional writers DO it wrong.

I look at traditional author books on Amazon and cringe when I see their terrible category positioning. They often rank in only two categories, one in literature and one in genre fiction. Thanks to my voracious appetite for anything self-publishing related, I’ve DEVOURED Amazon ranking keywords. I sucked at categories for my first books, that’s why no one knew about them. By the time I released Fear The Liberator, I was so much smarter:

Getting a categorygasm yet?

Please, please, please.
Treat your book like a website that has to rank high on Google.
Now substitute website with your book, and Google with Amazon, and you understand the importance of categories.

Check out the official Amazon keyword page and get a feeling for which words in your KDP keywords section are relevant to you. Then use the relevant words. As many as you can. Go, go, go.

3) You have to push your books actively

In 2016, books don’t sell themselves anymore. A few years ago, when I was hardcore-listening to Sean Platt’s and Johnny B. Truant’s publishing bro-versations, it sounded like you just have to keep shipping good books and once you reach the magic five, you were making constant sales. Not anymore. One properly marketed book can make you more moolah than 10 un-marketed books.

So what am I doing? I’m doing a KDP countdown deal this week and focus on book newsletters like Bookbub but much smaller. Explained: Kindle countdown deal means a week of Amazon promotion through incremental price increases.

Wut? Simple.

Let’s say your book costs 4.99 and you make a countdown deal for five days. On Monday, it will be priced 99 cents, on Tuesday, it goes up to 1.99, Wednesday 2.99, until it becomes 4.99 by the end of your countdown. The idea is that a lower, temporary price will lead to more sales. We’ll see.

Book newsletters are basically HUGE lists with thousands of eager readers. Bookbup, as mentioned, is the biggest, most expensive and hardest to get into, but there are many smaller ones. Google them. In essence, you check out a book newsletter website and fill out their forms. Genre, description and a link to your Amazon book page where it’s listed. You then pay this newsletter anywhere from 10 to 100 bucks, and they send out an email to their list where your book gets mentioned and linked. In the best case scenario, thousands of readers click on the link and buy your book.

Alternatively, there’s Facebook ad marketing, Goodreads giveaways and stuff like that, but I don’t have enough experience yet. Soon.

Conclusion

“Write and they will come” worked in 2012 and in your wettest dreams, but not in 2016. Genre-specific cover, good categories and a little marketing have turned Fear The Liberator into a success for me. Learn from me and become more successful.

What’s your best book selling trick in 2016?
Please share this post if you found it useful.

The post Why One of My Books Sells and The Other Four DON’T appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

Most How 2 Write guides suck camel dick. They regurgitate the same ol’ same ol’ blah blah that you have read a thousand times without adding nothing new. But if you’re an ambitious author like me, you want to learn new tips on improving your writing craft so you can sell more copies.

Doesn’t matter whether you’re a fiction or a non-fiction author, or any other kind of content creator–owning your unique voice will help you stand out from the masses and attract the readers you want.

James Scott Bell, a thriller author I’ve followed a while now on Twitter, has written a powerful little book about about creating your own narrative style called VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing

I’ve devoured it one sitting with eyes wide blasted and made enough Kindle highlights till my index finger ached. Down below, I reveal some of the best points of the book which will help you create a unique voice that could mean way more bucks in your bank.

In short, James Scott Bell says the following about voice:

• “It’s combination of character, setting, page turning.”
• A distinctive style, like a Sergio Leone film.
• It’s who you are.
• Personality on the page.
• It’s something written from your deepest truth.
• Your expression as an artist.

James has summarized these points in a ‘formula’ consisting of three parts:

CHARACTER background and language filtered through the AUTHOR’S heart, and rendered with craft on the PAGE = VOICE

James Scott calls this the CAP method:

C is for Character

A is for Author.

P is for Page.

Let’s dive straight in how each point works for developing your unique author’s voice:

C is for Character:

James Scott Bell suggests you use a Voice Journal for your character. That’s a simple, free-flowing write-up of your character’s thoughts that expresses his opinion from the first perspective. To make your character/voice more original, use a character archetype and give him a unique trait, like in my case–a space marine on Mars, originally from the US, who used to work for a Japanese tech company:

“Back when I was working in Neo-Tokyo, I used to walk ’round Shibuya on Sunday to watch all the crazy cosplay peeps. Young kids dressing up like Hitler with angel wings (no kidding) and cyborg animals playing e-guitar. Weird, but good times, man. It got better: climbing up Mt. Fuji, hanging out with Yukie under the Sakura trees, stuffing your stomach with fresh Ramen. Miss those days, especially on a goddamn hellhole like Mars with air so hot and hostile it kills you faster than space radiation…”

I’m going to use this ingenious Voice Journal every time for my main characters, because unlike the boring-ass biography form or character sheet, this method actually allows an insight into the character which creates his unique voice.

A is for Author

James Scott writes that in order to create your character’s voice, you have to feel his emotions. He calls it a symbiosis where you are the method actor becoming the character you write about. To achieve this, he offers a simple workout:

Define your character with five key emotions, and two life-altering events.
Key emotions might be: playful, fearful, angry, lost, suspicious, loving.

Use both positive and negative emotions. You want your character to be complex.
A life-altering event is something you dream up for your character. Maybe an inciting moment in your or your character’s life. In the space marine example above, the guy was loving his life in Japan and was devastated when he got conscripted to fight on Mars. His key emotions are: frustrated, lost, caring, loyal, angry.

Combine your life-altering event with the key tags and you’ll closer to creating that voice.

Now, go over each word and find in your own past a moment when you felt the same thing. Relive that past moment by remembering the sights, sounds, touches, and smells. Dwell on them until you feel the emotions afresh.

P is for Page

Scott’s final step is the writing itself. You want to get that voice, vibrating with your own feelings, on the page.
Which means feeling something as you write, whatever you write. To achieve that, Scott uses advice from legendary director Chekhov’s method called the psychological gesture.The foundation for this exercise comes from the fact that our physiology informs our psychology.  

For example, if you want to have a depressive/melancholic character, you should breath shallow, slump your shoulders and maybe even hear sad music as you become your character. On the other side, if you want to create a strong, take-no-prisoner military man, you could sit up straight or even stand, listen to marching music and even talk out the dialogue with a roaring voice as you act out the character while you write.

Thus, it’s important to align your emotional state to the character you want to create. Act sad to write a ‘sad’ character, act tough if you want to create a toughie etc. Obviously, the same is true for writing non-fiction.

For example, whenever I want to create an inspirational blogpost, I look at my favorite upbeat fictional characters and ‘channel’ them, meaning, I pretend to be them while I’m typing the words. This mind-game helps me create the mood I want to evoke in my readers.

Conclusion

All those this touchy-feely advice makes me sound like some goddamn hippie wearing Birkenstocks, but it’s actual buck in the bank. In today’s age of insane competition, both in the indie writer and the traditional publishing realm, your voice will truly set you apart and attract fans that want to you read your next book. If you don’t manage to differentiate yourself in the busy consumer’s mind, he’ll forget about you and move onto the next.

Don’t let that happen.

Reread the tips above and/or check out the excellent book VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing by thriller author James Scott Bell.

If you find this post useful, share it with the people you care about.

The post How To Create A Strong Writing Voice appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

And if you want to make it, you have to get good reviews ASAP or otherwise you’ll tank in the sales ranking. Disappearing into the graveyard of indie fiction, never to arise again. Most of the people and peers I’ve asked told me the same: “Try to get an average four star review rating on Amazon, or otherwise you will not make any significant sales.”

But is it true?

So, here comes the moment that changed my (self-publishing) life…

I read a blog post by sci-fantasy author Chuck Wendig who had his first Star Wars novel unleashed onto the world. The tie-in novel to the seventh film of the popular sci-fi series landed on the fifth spot of the Kindle ranking, meaning it sold like hot starcakes.

We’re talking thousands and thousands of units sold per day.

But that’s when the shit hit the hyper-turbines. Die-hard SW fans ripped the novel apart like a pack of rancors…one star and two star reviews flooded the Amazon sales page. Within a day, the average rating was 2.3 stars out of 62 reviews, with 1 star reviews making up 52% of the average. Devastating, right?

Obviously, the fans hated the book with a passion. I thought, jeez, this novel is going to drown within days, but two weeks after the release, the book was still surging in the sales ranking, gathering hundreds of reviews, even though most of them were negative.

Chuck Wendig wrote a blog post about his novel getting butchered but also stated that according to Amazon, bad reviews didn’t lead to fewer, but actually MORE sales. He also said that Amazon only cared about the quantity of reviews, not the quality, which buzzed my brain. Different sources I consulted told me something similar…

Let that sink in for a second.

If the claim is true, it wouldn’t matter if you had one hundred 5 star reviews or one hundred 1 star reviews–what really seems to matter is that you have ONE HUNDRED reviews.

Period.

Apparently, Amazon doesn’t give two rats about the quality of your reviews, it only cares that you’re getting attention which translates into sales!

The first time I heard about it, my mind was blown from the inside out. I finally understood why so many books with devastating reviews were still shooting up the Amazon sales ranking like a mach 5 rocket. Just in the last months, I encountered two indie sci-fi books–one about a sex goddess and the other one about a lost star pilot–which were blasted with 1 and 2 star reviews and yet reached the 200-300 ranking inside the Kindle sales. Making the authors many thousands each month.

My eyes squeezed, my mouth wrestled, as I thought:
“People HATE this book and yet they’re buying it like gold-plated iPads. How is this possible?”

The saying from old media seems to be true–there are no bad news, because ‘bad’ news still give you free attention. Which brings me to the second realization–a well-known marketing principle which could help you sell more books in the near future:

If you’re into marketing, and as an (indie) author and content creator, you SHOULD be, you may or may not have heard about the infamous System 1 and System 2 thinking. In short…

• System 1 thinking is your old reptilian brain; the part responsible for your intuition, emotion and reactionary instincts. The basic flight-or-fight response is classic System 1 thinking.

• System 2 thinking is the new brain that allows for complex thought and analysis. Simplified, it’s what you use for math, writing, research and all that brainy jazz.

Now the revelation from marketing says that the most effective commercials only target the System 1 thinking. Good ads aim for a strong emotional response, be it positive or negative, because that leads to action, i.e. buying the product that was advertised.

Here’s the kicker–the ad doesn’t have to make any sense or even make you feel good. If it’s ridiculous, funny and/or disturbing and offensive, that would be fantastic, at least from a marketing point of view, because it makes you feel something.

On the other side, all the ads that aimed for the analytical System 2 thinking part failed to make any impact.

Feeling=good, thinking=bad.

Watch this compelling DO talk where a marketing guru John Kearon explains the concept far better: Why the best companies make you feel something

So what does this have to do with your self-publishing and Amazon?

It means in marketing, even aggravating your audience is better in terms of sales than leaving them unaffected. John Kearon explains a scenario where Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof was impatiently waiting for the money to trickle in via live TV, but the audience didn’t seem triggered. Bob Geldof eventually lost it, approached the camera guy and shouted,
“Give is your fuckin’ money,” after which the money apparently flooded in. The message:

Make ’em love or hate you, but don’t leave them indifferent.

Emotions on each side of the spectrum lead to sales. That’s why I don’t freak out anymore when some reviewers describe my books as “self-mutilation” and claim “it’s the worst book I’ve read”. Or even write 700(!) word paragraphs on why my story sucks. It’s all bucks in the bank…

Conclusion

Money follows emotion, even on Amazon. Don’t worry about getting ‘good’ reviews, just worry about getting reviews. The worst place for your writing is the dreaded middle which leaves the audience cold.

So when crafting your next stories, think about creating a unique style that doesn’t hold back.

• Is your work politically incorrect? Go full anti-PC.

• Or do you use a controversial topic that ruffles feathers? Set those feathers on fire and go the whole mile.

So if you think you’re ‘too’ out there, don’t worry. Go to the extreme.

Now do not create edginess for the sake of edginess, but don’t be afraid to push toward the edge. Rather than aiming to write a book that tries to please everyone, worry about a book that elicits strong emotions, be it positive and negative. It’s more buck in the bank.

What’s your opinion about writing stories that evoke a strong response from the audience?

And please share this post with the people you care about.

The post Self-publishers, attention. Why Bad Reviews Can Lead to More Book Sales appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

Political Correctness.

As I write thousands of words everyday, my mind chatter gets in the way, scaring me shitless:

Can I write about this? Can I use a character like that? Can I make that statement? Can I criticize this ideology without facing danger?

Questions no real artist and storyteller should ever ask himself, unless he lives in North Korea or a similar regime. But unfortunately, the West has become so pussy-fied, everything is offensive to someone out there. Whatever you write about, or don’t write about, can be used against you.
You’re guilty unless proven innocent:

• Write a book without including the right minorities? You’re a racist.Have only male protagonists? Must be your misogyny seeping through.

• Mix your work with ‘foreign’ influences? You appropriating other cultures and should STOP.

• Do you create art that dares to go against the mainstream, hive-mind thinking? Dig yourself a grave, you despicable being.

Seriously, everything you write and create must be politically correct or else your work will bashed by the mainstream media and banned from the markets. Worse, you, as the sole creator, will be threatened by narcissist, self-righteous radicals who only allow art that resembles their worldview.

The reason for political correctness? Apologists defend this censorship of free, artistic expression with ‘being respectful’ and keeping everyone’s feelings safe.
Funny thing is, that’s the same statement Nazis and Communists used before they killed millions of innocent people.
“We’re not censoring, we’re making our world more harmonious.”

Well, you can’t spell harmony without harm.

Today, feelings seem to be more important than facts. Every work can be banned or derided if it hurts someone else’s feelings, and that’s the surest way to rob our future of artistic creation and innovation. Have you noticed that countries that forbid freedom of expression never innovate?

You can’t create something new if you aren’t allowed to be wrong, or better, dare to think different. Every iconic comic character, video game, novel, movie or technology has been created by passionate individuals who thought differently and summoned the courage to follow the unusual path.

• Einstein created the relativity theory even though his peers thought he was crazy. It is often said he only married to not look like an outsider in society.

• Steve Jobs wanted to bring art into the computer realm and taught an entire generation to appreciate style where grayness prevailed

• Legendary artist and painter Francisco De Goya criticized war and the government in his paintings, facing imprisonment and even death from the reigning Monarchy

• The French satirists of Charlie Hebdo dared to criticize Islam via cartoons and got gunned down for it–and that in a free, Western country. The result? Apologists defend the murder of the innocent artists and writers by claiming they were too insensitive, i.e.too politically incorrect.

Our so-called modern world is going backwards. Instead of becoming more liberal, everything is becoming regressive. I’ll add a decade, and we’ll achieve similar
restricted speech as we did in the European medieval ages. Artists and writers, especially in fantastic genres, should be encouraged to write about ‘dangerous ideas’, instead of holding back to not offend anyone. But that’s what’s happening right now–content creators are walking on extra-crisp, ultra-fragile egg shells.

The danger of political correctness? Our (art)work becomes so bland, it slides into irrelevance. Worse, the works of fiction become propaganda of the status quo, enforcing the hive-mind thinking of the mainstream, instead of questioning it. That’s the surest way of creating a dumb public that doesn’t dare to speak up.

Not too long ago, I read the sci-fi classic ‘Starship Troopers’, which is about a fascist military regime where soldiers are treated as first class citizen with all the power, while civilians act as the bottom-feeders. Coming from the sixties, this is a compelling read that dares to make us think, but many of today don’t see it like that.

I checked the reviews on Goodreads and found lots of ‘triggered’ narcissists, complaining about the book’s military propaganda and the lack of strong female characters.
Some said the novel should even be banned for its outdated views, wow.

Nazi book burning here we come.

Isn’t that what great (art) work achieves besides entertaining us–it make us think.

conclusion

There is a quote, often attributed to George Orwell:
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

I think the same is true for content creation. It’s telling a story that someone else does not dare to tell, everything else is enforcing the status quo.
As for me, I’m working hard on fighting the fear of political correctness. I’ll write the words that I deem as truthful, not caring about what the strong resistance of the mainstream public deems correct.

How do you personally fight (self)censorship of your works, or do you fight it all?

And please share this post if you find it useful.

The post The Two Dangerous Words That Are Killing Our Creativity and Innovation… appeared first on Marsdorian.com.

Now seriously. I’ve just released my 3rd novel, a space opera called Fear The Liberator. Thanks to my email list, the book’s doing better than the first since I have already 7 person reviewing it on launching day. Doesn’t sound much, but seven good reviews are sooo much better than zero. Y’know, social proof and all. Now to be honest, my first two books flopped, partly because I didn’t have any experience and followed ideology instead of business sense. Below, I want to reveal my 3 new lessons I’ve learned from self-publishing my 3rd book:

Going exclusive on Amazon, at least in the beginning, is the way to go.

You’ve heard the same old saying all the time ‘Don’t put your eggs in one basket’, which is English for: don’t be Amazon’s bitch.
I say bullshit. Amazon’s the biggest bookstore on the planet and has the best track record of reaching genre readers.
Even the big indie authors that say you should diversify make 90% of their income through Amazon. (I know because I’ve asked some of them).

The authors doing well on Apple iBooks and Kobo do so because they get special promotions and discount deals, either because they know the folks in charge
or they have performed so well on Amazon they get preferred treatment from the other platforms. For a beginner with no track record, you might as well fire your manuscript into the void. And your hopes with it.

So, unless you’re publishing romance, which seems to perform well on all platforms, I say go exclusive on Amazon, build up your track record and then spread out. That’s how Hugh Howey, Jen Foehner Wells and Marko Kloos did it.
(As far as I know, Marko Kloos is still exclusive on Amazon and makes a little fortune. He just received an Amazon ‘thank you award’ for selling over a 100,000 books of his last book.)

You have to spend X amount of money.

Otherwise Alterrian trolls are gonna eat ya!

Seriously, I’m tired of all these blog posts that vomit some kind of arbitrary minimal cost for your book. It’s like the book’s lobby sponsoring those articles.

I’ve seen people spend up to 5K on their books.
I’ve seen people spending ZERO K on their books.

I’ve three books out, and so far, I’ve spent a whopping zero dollars on them. I have proofreaders that love to read my stuff, and a freelance editor that I exchange services with. Sure, it’s not as perfect as having a dedicated pro editor, but it’s good enough for the early career. Most people tend to forget what hungry genre readers really want:

Story, story, story.

Seriously, I’ve seen so many indie books, especially in the sci-fi and fantasy genre, with cringe-worthy misstaykes that make you question the author’s mental stability (maybe there were penned by monkeys from the Arkham Asylum)
And you know what?
They’re still attracting good sales and good reviews. Sure, some reviewers point out the errors out, but according to the sales ranking (often in the 1000s of Kindle sales), they’re doing just fine.

Remember, you don’t want your book to be an error parade–but if you’re low on cash, you have to be creative and compromise.

Lesson: whenever someone tells you that you HAVE to spend X amount of money on your book, they’re probably following ulterior motives. It’s obvious why an editor tells you to spend good money on editing, they have to secure their future. If you have no money, you can ship your book for free. You just need to spend extra time, approach people who dig your genre and/or swap services with proofreaders/editors. If there’s a cheapo will, there’s a cheapo way. I would only make an exception for the book cover-that has to be top-notch, so if you can’t create it yourself, find a person who can. Once you make money from your minimum viable book, invest it back via edits to make even better and thus make more money.

Unique is the death call to the unknown

Be unique! Stand out! Separate yourself from the masses!
These lines from second-rate self-help books make you all fuzzy inside, but they’re usually divorced from the reality of genre book selling.
I always believed gurus like Seth Godin who said you have to be a linchpin, a so-called creative ruckus maker who poop-a-loops on the conventions and dances outside the box.

Maybe that’s true for some markets, but especially in the self-publishing genre, unique can be the kiss of death for your fresh career. The following sentence hurts me, because I’m all about uniqueness, but even I realize the realities of the market:

People want what they already know with a dash of freshness.

With my first two books, I had a unique story and cover, and they bombed like proton torpedoes. The comic-style and different story lines deterred readers like I was selling rash with plague flavor.

My new story and cover is mainstream-ish, and it’s doing much better (I hope it continues to).

Why is that the case? Well, you have to think about the reader. He loves his genre, let’s say sci-fi, and he doesn’t know you. When he sees your unique book cover, he’s confused. Is that still sci-fi? Is it going to be so much different from my previous reads?

Add a unique book description and the confusion climaxes.

Your ‘unique’ book is a risk, the reader may waste time and money. Which means he’s going to ignore you. There goes your sale, sailing away to your competition. Remember, most humans are creatures of comfort. That’s why millions of people watch Avengers Versus Batman Versus Ninja Turtles and Transformers 7. They want more of the same, slightly different.

Once you make a name for yourself, i.e. become a genre niche star, you can write more unique stories since you have a built-in audience. That gives you leeway for experiments. But if you’re unknown, going for special means going for broke. I know from x-perience.

Conclusion

Writing books no one wants is bad for the wallet and your ego. I hope you can learn from my lessons and use it to create novels love to read and pay for.
Ah, yeah, if you want to check out my latest sci-fi space opera, here you go.

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