Liquid Fear, Chronic Fear, and the rebirth of a writing career

By Scott Nicholson

Today, Dec. 21, marks both the solstice and the two-year anniversary of my indie publishing experiment. On a gray day as the sun reached its nadir across my northern sky, I clicked a button that sent Burial to Follow into the digital world.

I had no idea what I was doing, only that I had nothing to lose. Part of me was afraid, as those old whispers came. You know, the ones drummed into writers since the dawn of time: (“Only hacks self-publish! You can’t do anything without an agent! Just keep sending out query letters and focus on writing the next book! Self-publishing will kill your career.”)

In truth, the original act was a mix of desperation and inspiration. Despite six books in traditional publishing, I was basically dead in the water, haunted by midlist numbers. New York thought it knew what I was and had the data to prove it. I knew better in my heart, but I was unsuccessful in convincing my potential partners, and the world of publishing had grown harsher and colder, to the point of “Only responds if interested.” All I could think was “Maybe you’re not interested, but I sure am.”

The Burial to Follow novella was respectably published in a hardcover by Cemetery Dance, so it had provenance. I figured I’d hedge my bets against what my peers thought (not that peers were paying any attention at all to me in 2009) by self-publishing backlist so I would have a built-in defense. I created a terrible but sincere cover with art from my DIRT comic book and hit the Amazon button.

I believe I got one sale through the final nine days of the year, but it was fun to wonder about that one stranger who had clicked and purchased. So I prepped The Red Church, a novel that had been successful in its short life but had fallen out of print for five years. Again, I had the self-defense of prior publication. “See? I’m a REAL writer and I am just making these ‘legitimate’ books available again.” And then sales started trickling in, and the book steadily rose up the charts. People liked it! But the most immense satisfaction was in being able to reach readers years after New York was done with it. The story was still fresh, maybe even timeless. At least timeless enough for now.

Cool things happened. My daughter was most impressed when I hit #1 in “Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy” (boy, the categories were wild in those days), not because I was above Stephen King but above C.S. Lewis. I think that was the first time she ever viewed me as a “real writer,” despite the stack of my dusty paperbacks in the closet.

I was still sending stuff to publishers and agents during this time, because I was a “real writer” and that indie stuff was just a sideline until I got a “real deal.” My goal at the time was to earn enough to pay my power bill. So I clumped together some stories that had also been professionally published, and the nickels turned into dimes. There was also an exciting and growing indie community, writers either frustrated by the traditional system or new to the entire game and having no pre-conceptions. That was matched by the enthusiasm of readers who saw a whole new world of choice open up to them. The universe was opening to possibility in odd and thrilling ways.

By mid-2010, I stopped sending stuff out to agents and publishers because the power structure had shifted. Readers now ran the industry, although none of us really understood the concept, or maybe it was too large and simple for us to grasp. Readers created bestsellers, they created careers for writers, they created new genres and cross-genres and niches and book blogs. The whole job for a writer shifted from finding the intermediaries who would deliver an audience to removing as many obstacles as possible between you and your readers. I uploaded original novels that I had been sending around, and I wrote new ones with the sole intention of self-publishing.

By the dawn of 2011, I was able to leave my day job and fulfill the only personal goal I’d ever had as a writer. I had some luck with a couple of bestsellers, and Amazon picked up Liquid Fear for re-release, and the sequel Chronic Fear. Amazon is awesome to work with and has been the most enthusiastic partner of my entire publishing career.

I don’t know if there is a “next level.” I certainly don’t need any more to be happy, and I am incredibly grateful and humbled. All I did was do what I love and click a few buttons, and I happened to be doing the right thing when the right time came along. I wish I could make ego claims of genius and talent, but it’s simply the blessings of good fortune, simply doing what God made Scott to do that no other person can do.

Today, Amazon launches Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear. Two years after the sun hit its lowest point and started ascension. Two years to the day after I first hit a button and said “Yes.”

I still say it today. Thank you, God and the universe. Thank you, readers and friends. Thank you, my wonderful, beautiful family. Yes.

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Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear are $2.99 for Kindle, also available in paperback and audio. Current freebie  through 12/25 is Transparent Lovers for Kindle. Thanks for your support and friendship, and tell your friends about the freebies. My pledge is always: The more I get, the more I give away.

Book success and the art of the ego

It's terrible to be a writer. We're all crazy. Writing--the act, the art, and the career--is a specific set of mental defects grounded in the most outlandish insecurities and wrapped in a poisonous atmosphere of ego. It's bad enough to think what you have to say is worth anyone's attention, but then you want money for it? Puh-leez.

I've served as therapist for several writers over the past year, and it's almost entirely about their numbers. I can't recall one writer saying "I'm stuck in my writing, and I need some inspiration." Instead, all I hear is "Oh my gosh, my numbers are down" or "Sales are hot, how can I keep it going?"

Because I've had exhilarating success and abject failure in my writing career, it's easy for me to seek the middle way. Being a taoist libertarian works fine when I'm sitting here in a Blue Ridge Mountain hollow with nothing out my window but the garden and the trees, but I can't afford to be a taoist unless people buy my books. Indeed, the primary goal of The Indie Journey: Secrets of Writing Success is to define happiness as apart from money while at the same time offering you tips to sell more books. The inherent contradiction drives me nuts, but at least I am not tricking you into believing you can sell a million copies. Because you won't. Neither will I.

So my advice to writers worried about their numbers is, "The numbers are numbers and the words are the words." I am not sure what that means, except after 15 years I've come to believe that sales are largely due to luck. Talent is luck, the mental stamina to work hard is luck, and getting book sales that stimulate book sales is luck. Indeed, in the larger picture, all writers sitting right here in the Great Digital Gold Rush of 2011 are lucky. It won't last, of course. No good thing ever lasts. But there will be a next good thing, and a next, just like always.

Nothing sells like sales. Nothing writes like words. I don't know if that's taoist or not. But your numbers are no more real than the stories themselves. This entire thing is impossible--from writing a book to finding a reader. The fact that it has happened once or twice doesn't make it any less impossible. You, as a person, are not your numbers any more than you are the words you put on a screen.

My thriller Liquid Fear hit the Kindle Top 20. Right now it's probably around #12,000-15,000. Yet it's the same book. Amazon will publish it Dec. 20th, and it will likely be a hit again with their promotion. Great editorial assistance aside, it's basically the same book. So am I the indie rock star from April, the forgotten shmuck from November, or the Amazon poster boy of 2012? All and none. All and none.

The book that didn't sell at first is still the same book as when it breaks the Top 100. No better or worse. You as a person and as a writer have no more inherent value than you did before or after your stardom. You will be forgotten. You will go out of print. We all do.

So what are you so worried about?

What am I so worried about?

All and none. I told you all writers are crazy.

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My Amazing Digital Year

It was one year ago today, Dec. 22, that I finally decided to try this "e-book thing" I'd heard all the kids raving about. I was dubious about the whole self-publishing movement and I still wasn't sure people were willing to "read books on computer." I'd been taught that serious writers never self-publish, and if I had been offered a bottom-of-the-barrel paperback deal, I would have taken it.
Still, I wasn't going to risk the whole shooting match, and I was shopping a couple of newer manuscripts. But I figured I would put up an old novella, Burial to Follow, and hardly anyone would notice, especially those peers I was so worried about. I did the cover myself, with art taken from the DIRT comic book. Yeah, it's a terribly cheesy cover. I sent it through Amazon for the Kindle, a device I'd read a lot about but had never seen.

And I sold two copies as 2009 drew to a close, but I also uploaded The Red Church, my most successful novel. I had held the rights for more than a year, getting a couple of small foreign deals, but I couldn't figure out a way to get it back in print. Of course, by "print" I was thinking of cranking up printing presses and spending thousands of dollars and worrying about bookstore orders.

I sold one copy of The Red Church before midnight, Dec. 31. In January, when the price was $1.99 and I was making a 35 percent royalty, I sold 67 copies of Red Church and 12 of Burial to Follow. The next month, I sold 413 copies combined. In March, I sold 771 copies as I added another book. It still wasn't much money, but it began to look reasonable and I softened my stance on self-publishing.

April took me a step back to 667 copies total. March moved up to 793, followed by 1,119 in June, 1,152 in July, and back down to 1,146 in August, when Amazon's 70 percent royalty kicked in and I raised some prices to $2.99.

I haven't done an analysis of how many titles I added during this time, or which book was selling at what price, but I had at least four novels up by then, as well as four or five story collections. Individually, nothing was knocking it out of the park, but collectively it looked like The Little Engine That Could.

During this time I'd been called by a Big Agent who had some interest, though primarily it was for ghostwriting, which would only interest me if it was a pay-off-the-house job. The third time I heard "I can't sell this," I didn't waste another second. I started putting everything up on Kindle as soon as it was edited, proofread, and formatted.

Back to numbers. September made a nice little jump, to 1,949 copies, and my first United Kingdom sales trickled in. October saw the first significant surge, up to 2,799 copies. November got crazy when Disintegration broke into the Kindle Top 100, reaching as high as #30 overall. For the month, I sold 12,422 Kindle e-books.

I'll be down for December, as Disintegration did its inevitable cooling, and as of last night I had 5,810 sales for the month to date. All these numbers are for Kindle e-books in the U.S. only. My U.K. numbers are still small in comparison but growing steadily. The Red Church sold 4,764 copies in a year, eight years after its original release and about six years after the publisher had left it for dead. I'm happy to see it is not dead, that people still read it and respond to it. That's one of the best things about this new era: nothing has to die. Ideas can fade and bounce back in a natural ebb and flow and readers can find them in their own time.

In my first full year in the Scott Nicholson industry, I sold 29,120 copies on the U.S. Kindle. I had some print-on-demand paper sales and additional e-book sales on other devices like Nook, Kobo, Sony, and iPad, but Amazon is my main outlet. After Jan. 1, many authors will be blogging about their numbers and their success. I'm not competing at a J.A. Konrath level (thanks for the inspiration, Joe) or an Amanda Hocking level, and I'm not laying out these numbers to brag or send anyone scurrying to measure themselves against me. But I have a pretty nice level that works for me and is easy to sustain and build, and that's all any writer should seek.

I don't even know how much money I made, and I wouldn't talk about that anyway, but I do mix my prices between 99 cents and $3.99. Suffice to say that's more copies than I sold in any of my last four mass-market releases, and I made more money in 2010 than in any year in which I was writing for New York. It's easy to get caught up in real-time numbers and rankings and feel like it's all slippery when you move down a few thousand slots in the rankings. But this is the first time I've stepped back and looked at the big picture, and it's pretty stunning.

If I were running a real business, like selling widgets, it's the kind of growth I could take to a bank. It trends pretty solid and steady, with plenty of potential for growth, considering Amazon is claiming 8 million Kindle sales this year. Sure, I have lots of books out now, maybe around 20, and that's swelling my numbers, but my response to that is: Why in the world do I care how many books it takes? I have them and people like them. I'd be stupid to release one a year like major authors do. I want readers to find all my books at any time. And I will write more. That's what I do.

But I also know I didn't do much besides what I love, and I would have written the books anyway. More than 30,000 of you took a bigger risk than I did. You said, "This Scott Nicholson guy is worth a little of my time and money." And I don't take that lightly at all. Thank you.

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