How to Make Money Writing Ebooks
Romance is My Favorite Genre What's Yours?
Why I Write and Self-Publish Books
I am a voracious reader of books. I love romance, young adult (YA), science fiction, faction and books about uniquely lived experiences. I wrote my first book in second grade called “The Biggest Snail in the World” my mom still has it. I have to admit-it’s adorable. It’s a cloth cover and one day when I have kids, I will read it to them. So when I randomly decided to write a book in 2018, it wasn’t out of the blue. The type of book did surprise my friends.
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I wrote a romance.
It felt random because I was a personal finance content creator talking about all things money on a daily basis. I’d landed on the idea to write a creative piece of work because I got tired of talking about money. I was looking for something that fed my soul and felt more fun.
So, I wrote my first book. It was a MC (motorcycle club) romance and it did really well. It made $514 that first month and I was hooked. The anonymity (I had a pen name) made exploring this interest and area of creativity intoxicating.
That random book and subsequent works have made me around $15,000 since 2018. This is notable for a couple of different reasons.
I basically didn’t market my books-I did have an email list but that was it.
I was publishing using a pen name.
In 2020 I effectively stopped writing romances and each time I tried between 2020-2023 it was a huge failure. Apparently dealing with concurrent pandemics and crazy times in the US were terrible for my creativity. Basically, I couldn’t focus.
Then there were the course sales. I built out and sold a course called “Make Money with Ebooks” I’m thinking of making that course available to my Money Sprouts paid tier of Creators Getting Paid-likely in January. Let me know if you would be interested in that. I made thousands selling to writers who otherwise wouldn’t have written their amazing works. It’s something that I feel very proud of and it was so hard to stop selling that course during COVID. The bandwidth to encourage and help other writers was gone during that time.
I Didn’t Just Write Romance
I Also Wrote Non-Fiction
There were book ideas that I had that would compliment what I was sharing as a digital content creator. I wrote books about podcasting, visiting Colorado and hosting in-person events.
Some Lessons Learned from This Experience
I thought it would be helpful to share some lessons learned from writing and self-publishing books since 2018.
Self-Publishing is a beautiful thing and has democratized access to written works by authors who otherwise wouldn’t be read.
I have friends who’ve used their self-published works and leveraged that experience to traditional publishing deals.
Your personal muse and then your audience are the most important things to consider when writing your book.
Start where you are-Can’t afford an actual editor? Use Grammarly, do a call for editors, etc. who are within your price range. Also, there are several types of editors. I had no idea until I started speaking with other authors.
You’re a published author once you publish your work-no one can take that from you.
You don’t necessarily need social media for your books-but, you will need a marketing plan.
You CAN’T UNLEARN making money with ebooks or any of the skills that you’ve spent time focusing on. Once you’ve learned how to do it…you can double-down when you have the capacity to focus on making money online.
Sometimes I Wonder
What if I didn’t take the foot of the gas and kept writing during COVID? Then I realize something that we don’t talk about enough-once you learn a skill, it’s pretty difficult to unlearn the skill. I’m also a hell of a lot more confident in my writing and marketing skills than I was in 2018-2020.
With that in mind, I’m so excited about the next part of my writing journey. I’m relatively rested, focused and ready to rock this next phase of my writing journey. The tips I’m sharing below are the same tips that I’ll be using to grow my writing income stream again.
20 Tips to Make Money Writing
In working on this part of the newsletter-I accidentally discovered a Facebook post that I shared in the 20Booksto50K Facebook group in 2019. I thought I would share that and then the 20 tips for the Money Sprouts Community Members
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Financial Hardship Requests
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The Tips
Watch the video below for the 20 tips that I’ve shared to market and sell your book.