Writing and Releasing Rapidly Read online

  Writing and Releasing Rapidly

  Indie Inspiration Book 1

  Elana Johnson

  Contents

  1. About Elana Johnson

  2. Getting Smart

  3. The Rapid Release Strategy

  4. Rapid Release Series Setup

  5. Writing in a Rapid Release Strategy

  6. Rapid Release Behind-the-Scenes Setup

  7. Launching the Rapid Release

  8. Determining Success in Rapid Release

  9. Rapid Release Debrief

  10. Rapid Releasing Every 11 Weeks - Case Study 1

  11. Rapid Releasing Every 6 Weeks - Case Study 2

  12. Rapid Releasing Every 3 Weeks - Case Study 3

  13. Rapid Releasing Every Week - Case Study 4

  14. Doubling Down on Releases or Rapid Releasing Two Books on the Same Day - Case Study 5

  15. Rapid Releasing Every Month - Case Study 6

  16. Wrapping Up!

  About Elana

  Leave a Review

  1

  About Elana Johnson

  Hello! I’m Elana Johnson, a two-time USA Today bestselling author, Amazon bestselling author, Kindle All-Star Author, and have been making six-figures just with my writing since 2016. Three years, going on four with that income, and it goes UP each year not down.

  I started writing in 2007, and I’ve been in the business through ups, downs, curves, pits, and more. I started in traditional publishing and have had 4 literary agents sell my work from here to France, in audio, paper, and ebook formats.

  I’ve written for Hallmark. I’ve worked with editors from four publishing houses. I’ve had big deals and highs, and low lows and slumps.

  Through it all, I kept writing.

  I entered the self-publishing scene in 2014 as a “screw it” way to tell my publisher they’d be upset they passed on my book. No lie. As if they cared. LOL.

  But I cared, and I wanted to write what I wanted to write.

  Go back and read that line again. In today’s marketplace, it’s all about writing to market. I do that…and I don’t. I write what I want to write. This was a lesson I learned in 2013, when Simon & Schuster wanted a book similar to the young adult dystopian trilogy I’d already sold to them. So I gave them that. And they passed on it because…it was TOO similar to the YA dystopian trilogy I’d already sold to them.

  I was like, SCREW IT. Some of you might use more colorful language.

  But that defining moment in my career turned me to self-publishing, and I now only write what I want to write.

  You don’t have to write military sci-fi just because it’s popular. Or billionaire romance. Or erotica. I know a lot of authors, and every one of them gets tired of writing what they’re writing. The reason we keep doing it?

  We love it.

  If you don’t, it’ll show in your books and eventually you’ll burn out. And since the point of this book is to help you write and produce and publish FASTER, we don’t want you burning out or being discouraged in the process.

  But I think that’s first. Write what you love.

  So when I published in 2014, I published a YA contemporary romance novel in verse. Say that five times fast. ;)

  It was a book of my heart. It went to four acquisitions meetings at traditional houses and no one would buy it. “Verse novels aren’t in,” they’d say. Or “we don’t know how to position this in the market,” I heard.

  So I self-published it, and I still freaking love that book. It doesn’t sell anything. It did at first, but our Indie Publishing Climate (IPC) doesn’t support books just taking off on their own like the self-publishing boom of late 2011 and early 2012. Yes, I was around then too.

  Today’s IPC is different, with so many more players in the game. But that’s not what this book is about. This book is about rapid releasing and why you might choose this method to launch a series, or your career.

  I’ve sidetracked again. I do that a lot. Sorry.

  Back to 2014. The self-published novel did okay. I wrote another novel-in-verse and published it too. I had some old YA SFF on my hard drive, and I published that too. I remember a distinct feeling I had when I put that first book up on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

  It was addicting.

  I wanted to do it more.

  I needed to do it more.

  And I did a lot of it wrong. But I had my traditionally published YA dystopian novels, some YA SFF out there, an adult fantasy that Amazon Press picked up, and things were going okay. Not great. Just okay.

  I hit a major slump and flailed around for about 18 months. I was still writing, sure, but my books weren’t selling, and I honestly wondered what the point was.

  Some of you might be in that boat right now. Or the ship you used to be in is sinking, and you’re wondering if you get in the lifeboat or abandon writing, er, the ship altogether.

  I’ve been there.

  If you haven’t been there as an author yet, you simply haven’t been around long enough. Or you’re really lucky. LOL. Or maybe both.

  The point is, we’ve all been there.

  For me, I liken it to being a pilot. I’m in the plane, and things are going okay. Then there’s a bird strike, and I have a choice to make. Water landing in the Hudson in January? Or death?

  Both of those options are bad, right? Captain Sullenberger knows. Watch Sully and you’ll know too.

  But I can’t think of that airplane pilot or watch that movie without sobbing. Because I get it. I’ve been in that seat, thinking What the heck am I going to do now?

  Maybe I should just quit.

  What’s the point? No one reads my books.

  I can’t make money at this.

  Etc, etc. etc.

  If you’re there, accept his virtual hug.

  And don’t give up.

  It’s time to get smart.

  So let’s get smart.

  2

  Getting Smart

  There are probably a dozen books about writing to market. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, but I am going to start at the beginning.

  You should too. Don’t skip some steps in your publishing career the way I did. Or if you already have, one of the greatest things about Indie Publishing is you can fix those mistakes. (That back log of books on my hard drive I self-published? They’re not for sale anymore. You’re welcome.)

  So up first, we need to talk teaching.

  I’m a teacher by profession. I spent almost twenty years in an elementary classroom, teaching hundreds of students a day as they rotated in and out of my computer lab every thirty minutes. Just take a moment and imagine that.

  It was my life. I was very good at it. I have a teacher’s heart, and I want everyone to learn, do what they can do, and be successful.

  That’s why I’m writing this book. I want you to learn what you need to do to be successful. You may not be able to do everything in this book. You can’t do what someone else does. You can only do what you can do.

  I think that’s so important that I’m going to type it again: You can only do what you can do.

  And we can all learn. But we need to learn smartly.

  In teaching, we sit in meetings for four or five days before the students come to school at the beginning of the year. Some meetings are good, and some are bad. I mean, they’re meetings. But I learned something very early in my teaching career that applies to Indie Publishing: Start as you mean to go.

  When you start a school year with children, you better do it in such a way that you can tolerate their subsequent behavior for the next 10 months of your life. If you don’t…it’s very hard to fix.

  Indie Publishing is the same way. You should start as you mean
to go. This includes decisions on:

  Genre – what are you going to spend your time writing? Can that genre sustain you over many books and many years (hopefully) of your career? Do you like writing those types of books? And I mean, really like writing those types of books? Because you’ll be writing a lot of them. Even the most seasoned authors get tired of writing the same books over and over. Or maybe that’s just me. ;)

  How saturated in this genre? Can you expand to other types of books within this genre? Or are you limited to young adult dystopian novels or zombie romance novels?

  TIP: Think big, then niche down. For example, my pen name of Liz Isaacson writes Christian contemporary romance. That’s BIG. But if you niche that down, she’s one of the only authors writing Christian contemporary western romance. Not historical cowboys. Contemporary cowboys. Christian cowboys. Cowboy romances. That’s much smaller.

  Think big so you have a little bit of room to move around.

  Niche down so you can dominate the category.

  Here’s another example. Elana Johnson (that’s me too) writes clean contemporary romance. That’s big. It includes YA and adult. It’s clean/sweet. It’s contemporary. But I can move within that however I want.

  I niched down to beach romance, because I freaking love beach romances. But I can do oceans, rivers, or lakes. I can do islands. I can write billionaires. I can write football heroes. I can write princes. I have leeway all over the niche to write any kind of beach romance I want. But it’s still beach romance, and I still love writing it.

  So STOP AND THINK: What is your big genre? How have you niched down? And can you write this niche and big genre for many books and many years? If you don’t know the answers to these questions or haven’t thought about it, you haven’t started as you mean to go. You’ve just started. It’s a step, but it could be the wrong one, in the wrong direction.

  You can fix it later, sure. Heaven knows I’ve made more than a few fixes in my career. But if you start as you mean to go, there’s less work to do later.

  Pricing – you train readers what to expect from you. This includes your decision to enroll your books in Kindle Unlimited (exclusive distribution from Amazon only) or not. Start as you mean to go. 99¢ readers will buy 99¢ books. They might not buy something priced higher than that. What are you willing to price your books at? Where does that path take you?

  Name – do you need a pen name? Why or why wouldn’t you do one? Initial or no initial? Do a search on Amazon and see what names are already being used that you’re thinking of using.

  I did a pen name and Liz was born in 2015 because at that time, I was still heavily entrenched in the YA SFF market. Christian cowboys didn’t fit with that.

  Since then, Elana has been up and down and around, and completely rebranded. Told you I’ve made some mistakes and attempted to fix them. You can too. If you’re reading this and going, “Oh, crap…” all is not lost.

  You just have work to do.

  And hopefully, it’s smarter work than you did last time.

  And lastly, but I think the biggest one, is goals. What are your goals with your Indie publishing? This can be anything to “I want to make money,” to “I want to pay off my mortgage,” to “I want to make enough to quit my job.”

  Those are all monetary goals. Money goals. You want to make money with your writing. That’s a great goal, but I find that many people have not defined it well enough.

  In teaching, we have concrete goals we examine every week. “By the midyear assessment, 80% of fourth graders will reach mastery on their times tables through twelve.”

  It’s defined. It’s specific. It’s tied to a timeline. It’s attainable. We actually call them SMART goals.

  S – specific

  M – measurable

  A – attainable

  R – realistic (in small business, you’ll see the term relevant here)

  T – time-bound

  What’s your SMART goal for your publishing? Is it defined at all? Is it specific? How much time have you given yourself to achieve it? Is it attainable? I have a lot of thoughts on goals I’ll save for another time.

  Fine, I’ll just say one: I think it’s okay to “dream big” too, and everyone should have an “outrageous goal” they want to hit. For me, this year in 2019, mine is to make a half a million dollars by selling books. Can I do it? I don’t know. But it’s defined. It’s specific. It’s tied to the year. I’ve broken it down into steps to make it appear attainable. I know what I need to do to achieve it.

  Do you know WHAT you need to do to achieve your goal?

  If not, how in the world will you do it?

  Teachers don’t teach like that. We know the goal. We know where kids need to be at benchmarks (in-between) times in order to meet the goal. We know what to do with the children who’ve already met the goal, and we know how to provide extra support to those struggling to meet the in-between benchmark goals leading up to the Big Goal.

  Authors shouldn’t write, publish, or market without knowing the goal.

  Do you know any of those things for your publishing goals?

  If not, STOP AND THINK. Right now. Get a piece of paper out or open a new email to yourself or whatever.

  What are your goals for your writing and publishing? Define them. Be specific. Tie them to a timeframe. Are they attainable?

  What steps can you outline that will help you reach that goal?

  For me, I broke it down into income per month, and then per day. I know how much I need to make every month and every day of that specific month (because they each have a different number of days…) to make the $500,000 I want to make.

  And if I don’t make it, what intervention methods will I implement? Sales? Free days? Boxed sets? I have plans for those too, should I need them.

  I have the goal. I have a plan if I’m not meeting the goal.

  And my plan if I’m exceeding the goal?

  Eat more bacon to celebrate. Seriously!

  Skip a day on the treadmill.
  But if YOU don’t know what your goal is or how you’re going to achieve it, you might as well just wander off the publishing path into the darkness right now. You can still find success, but it’s harder, takes longer, costs more, and is a lot more frustrating.

  If you don’t start as you mean to go, you’ll never know if you get to where you were meant to go.

  Recap:

  Are you being smart about your business? Genre, pricing, name, and goals.

  Are you making business decisions with your head or your heart?

  Do you have defined, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timebound goals, with a plan of action if the goal is not being met?

  3

  The Rapid Release Strategy

  So now that you know a little bit about me—and I reserve the right to sidetrack whenever I want!—and you’ve defined your own genres and goals, let’s get into the rapid release strategy.

  This might not be a strategy everyone can handle. Everyone leads a different life, from kids to dogs to day job. I know; I have all of those. And a demanding volunteer church duty. You have stuff too. We all do.

  A few questions to consider before you get too far into committing yourself to a rapid release strategy.

  Can you reasonably write 5-10,000 words a day, five days a week? If yes, you can probably pull off a rapid release strategy in some form.

  Can you afford to hire a cover artist or buy stock art for the covers you require?

  Can you afford to spend time and/or money to edit, format, and produce books quickly? This includes tagline creation. Blurb writing. Editing manuscripts. Formatting the manuscript into a book. Putting the book up for sale/preorder. Creating a marketing plan for the book/series. Sending review copies. And everything else Indie authors do to send their books out there to be successful.

  Most of this work is done BEFORE the first book comes out, so you need to ask yourself if you have
the patience and commitment to work on a project for hours, days, and even months before you sell a single copy. This can be daunting. It can also be rewarding once that first book hits.

  If you answered, “yes,” or “I think I can,” to all three of those questions, you can probably perform a rapid release with some measure of success. Now, what that success looks like for you?

  That should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timebound. Written down for the series and for each book. Don’t hate me! But the reason most teachers see some measure of success with the dozens of kids they teach each year is because we know the goal and how to get kids from Point A to Point B over the course of a school year.

  You should know how to do that for your releases as an author. If you don’t right now, never fear. Isn’t that why you’re reading this book?

  If you don’t set goals for each book in the rapid release, how will you know if your rapid release strategy was successful?

  It’s okay to write down, “I want to earn more than I spend in the first week.” It’s defined. It’s specific. It’s timebound. And if you attain it, you succeeded.

  Or “I want to earn more than I spent to produce the book within one month of release.”

  I also think it’s important to note that goals can be adjusted at any time. I have a preorder goal for every book I put up. I monitor this weekly until I get close, and then I monitor it daily. If I make the preorder goal BEFORE the book goes live, I alter the preorder goal. Make it higher. Push myself to get more.

  And if I fail and don’t meet the goal for preorders? I might push harder at launch once the book is live. I might adjust my goals for the next book in the series. Or I might go, “Dang. What could I have done differently?”