Writing « Robin Writes

The short answer is this: I’ll be darned if I know!

The long answer, however, is this: Many, many factors.

First, you have to have a good story, and/or a book with wide appeal. Second, it must be well-designed. Third, you have to get it to market.

A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Something to hook the reader and let him in, hoping to discover more and wanting to know more.

A book with wide appeal is something to which many people can relate. In fiction, that can be all over the map, so to speak; in non-fiction, it could be as simple as cooking, or self-help, or entertainment, or information on a common illness or disorder.

That simply means that it must have universal appeal—a book about your family will be interesting to your family, but not necessarily anyone else (unless you’re famous). A book about something you overcame or your own life story may be intriguing to some, but not to many (unless you’re famous).

And of course, you can’t price it too high.

Timing helps too—you don’t want to release a holiday book in the spring, for example.

Then you have marketing. This means exposure. If you don’t have a website or do nothing with it, if you don’t have a blog or never post new material, if you only market to other writers, etc., etc., you will not sell books. If you never do events or festivals or appearances or speaking engagements, you will not sell books.

If you do all these things, consistently, you will sell books. Probably.

The single biggest factor for marketability is luck.

Just stop and let that sink in for a moment.

You’ve all seen really crappy books, or even just a short story sold as a “book,” that climbs the Amazon charts. Ugh. And good ones, from unknown authors, that just sell and sell and sell.

WHAT THE HECK?

Luck. Pure and simple. Like winning the lottery. I can’t explain it and neither can you—if you have the awesomest story ever, and the most brilliant illustrations, but sometimes that just can’t compare to this type of luck.

What does this mean? Not a thing. It certainly doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write or draw or try to sell books—that won’t get you a darned thing, and that’s for sure. Keep trying, keep working on it—why?

Because that’s who you are.

Here you go, the handy dandy guide to writing that book you were always planning:

Have a story
Write it down
Check for plot consistency
Check for mechanical errors
Let someone read it.
Make any necessary changes

Simple, right?

Everyone has a story, their own story; some people come up with other stories—which are really just big what-ifs. What if this happened, or that, and how would it progress, and how would it end? Ideas can come from anywhere at all: dreams, real-life occurrences, and just plain daydreaming.

Now for the hard part—writing it down. You don’t have to write a certain number of words each day, and you don’t have to write every day, and you don’t have to write at the same time every day. However, if you skip more than a day or two, you run the risk of getting out of the habit of writing, and while that won’t necessarily preclude your finishing the book, it will extend the time it takes.

You might want to also make notes, or a timeline, as you go or even before you start.

After you’ve finished, and I don’t care what NaNoWriMo says, a novel is NOT 50K words, it’s almost twice that, at minimum, read it back over again to make sure you wound up all the loose ends and didn’t change someone’s name or description in the middle.

Make sure it’s believeable, as any good story is, and be sure you haven’t inadvertently used some colloquialism or slang term specific to your region, your family, or your business. Historical facts and actual places should, to a point, be accurate insofar as general readership is concerned.

Once you’ve made any changes, read it over again to check for mechanical errors: spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Fix them.

Now you can send it to someone to read—or several someones. Make notes of their feedback, and decide if you want to change anything.

There you go—you’re finished. You wrote a book. Congrats!