How to Become a Successful Author

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How to Become a Successful Author

Hard Won Lessons from Life in the Writing Trenches

By:

Russell Nohelty

Edited by:

Leah Lederman

Proofread by:

Katrina Roets

Cover by:

Charmaine Ross

Dedicated to every author who has struggled to find success, thinks they aren’t a good writer, and thinks about giving up from time to time, which turns out to be every author I’ve ever met.

Copyright © 2019 by Russell Nohelty

Published by Wannabe Press

All Rights Reserved.

This is a nonfiction work. Russell Nohelty and Wannabe Press do not guarantee any outcomes from following the advice in this book. We are not lawyers, accountants, or other specialized professionals. We take no responsibility for what happens if you take this advice. It’s worked for us, and many others we know. However, this is simply the accumulated experience of one man making his journey into the world. While we think it is very good advice, there is no guarantee it will work for you.

Paperback ISBN:  978-1-942350-57-6

First Edition, November 2019

Part 1

Mindset

Before we get started , it’s important to understand what you’re going to get when you go through this book. Most nonfiction books are set up with a linear path from beginning to end, where they parse out a very simple concept over the course of about 150 pages.

This book is different.

It is the follow-up to my beloved How to Build Your Creative Career book, which was less a linear path and more a collection of essays containing all the pieces you need to build a creative career, from making great stuff, to building a sales funnel, and then selling your work.

This book is set up much the same way, but it is focused on the career path that I chose, being an author and writer.

You might say it’s the next evolution of the concept set forth in the first book.

Some of the pieces in this book are generic and applicable to everybody, but the focus is certainly on being a writer and building a successful, sustainable career as one.

Just like my first book, this book is culled from my own experience, interviews, and case studies of many successful authors, both traditionally published and independent.

If you’re looking for a straightforward paint-by-numbers guide, this book isn’t for you. If you’re looking for a compilation of the kinds of things you need to get right in order to be a successful author, then this book is perfect for you.

Plus, I pack each page with practical, actionable advice, so that you can make the most of your writing journey.

You’re going to learn exactly how to land a publishing deal AND how to become a successful self-published author, as well as the process I used to build and sustain a killer network full of incredible writers and creators.

Ready to begin? Then let’s go.

What I wish I knew getting started

Ihave a great audience who read my work and I’ve cultivated a real community feel to everything I do. But it took a long time for that to happen. It took many starts and stops, many thousands of dollars pissed away that I won't ever recover, oodles of failed businesses, neglected and abandoned projects galore, and a distinct lack of planning toward my personal and business goals.

If I could talk to my younger self, I would tell him so many things. Here are the biggest points that could help him cut years off his struggle:

Focus on a niche and genre

MY WRITING WAS ALL over the place for the first several years of my career, which has been beneficial to me as a jack of all trades, but for a long time, I was a master of none. Writing all different kinds of things helped me figure out my voice, how to write, why I write, and what I wanted to do. I recommend doing a little of everything when you start, but when I focused on my professional career, I should have picked a lane and become a master of it much earlier. Why?

Finding and building fans is very hard, and they are unlikely to follow you across genres and mediums.

Also, companies need to see a lot of work in a specific category in order to hire you. If they like one of your scripts, they'll ask, What else do you have like this? If you've got nothing except something in a wholly different genre and tone, that's a problem.

Finally, you can only be top of somebody’s mind for one thing, and if you don’t drill down on one thing you will never get there, and thus you will never get a referral for a job, or a new fan.

Start small to grow your fan base

ONCE I SETTLED ON MY niche and genre, I should have started cranking out small projects and submitting them online, posting them to my website, and doing everything I could to prove I was a good writer in that genre. People are much more likely to read a five-page short story or comic book from an unknown than a 400-page opus. I thought short stories and one-offs were a waste of my time. I was wrong.

Start a newsletter immediately

I SHOULD HAVE STARTED growing my mailing list from the moment I started writing. I wonder sometimes how many tens of thousands of potential fans I lost in my life because I didn't get their email address. You can start up a free MailChimp account right now and start emailing people. It may seem old school, but it's still the best engagement you will get on the internet.

Examine your audience and competitors critically from the start

IT TOOK A LONG TIME for me to go to cons and examine what other writers were doing, and more importantly WHY they were doing it. It's important to see what they are doing, how they are selling, and why they chose to write the project they did.

Right now, I have a glut of content that I've created over the years. It's in every genre and medium. I've got children's books, middle-grade mystery, sci-fi, horror, etc.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have made sure everything pointed in one direction, so that all my fans would want to buy everything I put out, instead of growing multiple audience bases simultaneously.

Oh, young Russell, the mistakes you will make. I don’t envy your path, but you will come out the other side a better human for it.

Secret weapon

Stephen King will beat you at almost everything when it comes to being an author. So will J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, Tom Clancy, and... well, you get the picture.

They have bigger names, more fans, more money, a big publisher pushing them, a huge backlist....

...in almost every aspect, they crush you. They are probably better writers than you, too, since they have been doing it longer and at a higher level.

However, they are horrible at being you. They are abject, miserable failures at being you.

You are the best you that you can be. Even if you feel like a failure, you are the best at being you in the whole universe.

You are the absolute best at using your influences and writing stories like you.

That is where you can beat those authors. That is where you win. Because, for better or worse, nobody else can be you, and you can't be anybody else.

It's you that people buy. It's you who can reach out to fans. Stephen King isn't reaching out to every one of his fans. He's not replying personally to every email. He's not sitting in a convention center for five days meeting them.

And he's not writing your book. You are. That is the only way you can win this game, humans. The deck is stacked against you.

But you have a secret weapon. You.

Why this book?

The single most important question you can answer before sitting down to write is WHY did I choose this book over the thousands of others that I could have made with my time?

Answering why you chose to make your book is so critically important that it might matter more than everything else put together. That's probably a hyperbole, but I am prone to hyperbole, so indulge me.

You see, there are millions of books out there in the world, and they are, as a whole, pretty good, maybe even great. People have already read them and love them. So, you are starting with a huge structural disadvantage with your book, in that those other books are already in the public eye.

In order to break through the clutter, you have to be able to articulate WHY you made your book, WHY it is special, and WHY anyone should care at all. Those last two pieces are really important, but they are intrinsically linked to the first question because the reason you made your book is usually also the reason why I should care and why it is special.

Every single book I have ever made has an intrinsic WHY that is so deep I could talk about it for hours.

Every book is a choice. Choosing one book means NOT choosing hundreds of others, maybe thousands of others, that I could have been working on instead.

That is true for you as well. There is a reason you chose to work on the book you did. You might just have to dig deep to find it. Over the years, the more clearly I have been able to articulate my why, the more deeply my work has resonated with people. Even more importantly, when I go back and dig through my reasons for making old projects, and start articulating those, suddenly sales of those projects jump as well. From that WHY, an audience emerges. If you can identify your why, you can find your readers.

That is the core of how you resonate with your audience. You understand your why and bury it deep into each page, so the reader can search and find it. When they do, they can hold it up like a shining treasure and place it inside their soul to make it shine stronger. When people ask me why people read fiction, my opinion usually comes down to this:

People's souls dim as they go through life and need to be recharged. In order to recharge their soul, they rely on the souls of other people. They read and watch and listen, trying to absorb the charge of another soul. They try to find the little piece of your soul that you buried inside the page because it will make theirs glow brighter. Your WHY is that piece of soul you buried in the pages. Sometimes, the why is dim, and the soul has trouble reaching it. Sometimes it shoots out like an explosion and latches onto people.

The more you can understand your why, the more you can embed it into your story, and the brighter your readers' souls will glow when they find it.

Where do you want to go?

Once, on a flight, I met a model and host who you would recognize if you saw her face, but maybe not if I said her name. She is the kind of minor celebrity you meet all the time in LA. Like all minor celebrities, she wanted to take the next step in her career.

We talked for the hour flight from Vegas to LA, and eventually I asked her who she wanted to be. Without blinking, she said Giuliana Rancic, a host on E! who interviews celebrities. That’s what she wanted to be, an interviewer and host.

That might sound like a pipedream, but for somebody of her status and celebrity, it’s not that big of a leap from where she was to celebrity interviewer, especially when you take into account that she knows lots of celebrities from hosting events at night clubs around the world.

So, I asked her, What are you doing to move from where you are to where you want to be?

She was stumped, and just stared at me blankly for several seconds, which is still to this day the most common reaction I get to that question.

Most people don’t even know where they want to be, so they’re definitely not making conscious choices to get there.

Luckily, there is a process I developed to figure out where you want to go, and how to get there.

Step 1: Know where you are

MOST PEOPLE DON’T TAKE this step seriously, but it’s really important. There are skills that you currently have that will serve you well wherever you are going. Whether it’s logistics, or budgeting, or writing, or something else. You need to make a list of your hard and soft skills.

What are hard and soft skills?

Hard skills are abilities which can be taught and measured, like your ability to read, write, or do math. Some examples of these skills are designing websites, accounting, finance, and typing.

Soft skills, on the other hand, are harder to quantify or learn. They are things like a strong work ethic, a positive attitude, being a good problem solver, or managing your time well. 

Step 2: Figure out who you want to be

THE NEXT STEP IS DECIDING the celebrity avatar you want to embody. Every celebrity has a different thing. Tony Robbins is a very different celebrity than Rachael Ray who is a very different celebrity than Bruce Willis. You need to pick a specific celebrity or person at the top of your field, someone who is doing exactly what you want to be doing.

Step 3: Make a list of all their hard and soft skills, then compare them to yours

NEXT, YOU NEED TO COMPARE their hard and soft skills with yours. Some of them might be internet celebrities. Some might be great on camera. Still others might be great on radio. You need to know where they are strong and where they are weak. This does two things. First, it shows you what you need to work on and what skills you need to acquire in order to become your ideal.

Second, it shows you if your celebrity ideal is reasonable. Look, I’m not going to be Rachael Ray for many reasons. I don’t know how to cook. I’m not folksy. I’m not great explaining things on camera. I could be Anthony Bourdain though because I love to travel, eat weird things, and talk with people.

Even though those two celebrities are both foodies, they have very different hard and soft skills.

Step 4: Plot their career path

NOW THAT YOU HAVE THEIR strengths and weaknesses plotted, you need a direction. It’s time to get in front of a computer and plot the career trajectory of your celebrity avatar. You need to see where and when they make their moves, so you can make a plan that includes similar moves.

You need to get into the weeds on this, and find every piece of information you can about what steps they took to become successful. Dig up every interview, and make this as comprehensive as possible.

Step 5: Work on the skills you need

THIS IS PROBABLY THE hardest part because you will need to make a list of the skills that you need (along with those you already have) in order to get where you want to go. You might need to learn how to cook or take several classes on public speaking. You might need to take writing seminars. Whatever it is, before you move on to step six you need to acquire some base-level skills.

Step 6: Exploit your skills to build recognition

NOW HERE IS WHERE YOU bring your skills to bear. If you are a great coder you can make a killer website. If you are amazing at marketing, you can bring people to your site. If you have celebrity friends, you can use them to help promote your product. Whatever skills you have, you need to harness them NOW.

Step 7: Keep working toward that goal

WITH A SPECIFIC GOAL in mind, you’ll be able to make a road map for success. You will be able to decide which projects to follow and which projects won’t help move you toward your goal. Remember, most celebrities have multiple streams of fame, but they broke in with a very specific niche. You need to follow that initial niche until success.

The great thing about this method is you can pick any celebrity, from Steven Hawking to Mark Zuckerberg to Kurt Vonnegut. It’s better to pick somebody more current, but since knowledge is ubiquitous you can make it happen with just about anybody from today or in the past.

I will say that you will need to make changes. This won’t necessarily be a straight line. You might find another celebrity fits you better. You might find that a different field fits you better. However, you don’t need it to be perfect to get started. The first three steps of this exercise take a couple hours of reflection before you can get started and move forward.  A good plan executed well is better than a