Erock87
Regular Contributor
GAH! I wrote a long post, but accidently hit the backspace button and lost it all. Let me try to recap:
First start off by thanking Giroud, HfR, and ChickenHawk for inspiration. HfR inspired me to publish a non-fiction satire on fathering I wrote this past year, G because he is doing what I want to do, and CH because my wife loves your thread, and we are impressed with your success (all that hard work and late nights - awesome!)
A little about us to help put things into context. I work as an actuary, she works for Virgin. We do fairly well for our demographic (bring in about $140k from work combined annually). We own two houses, one of which we rent out and earn $350/month over the mortgage. I'm also in the military, so I make a little extra each month from trainings, drills, etc. We have no debt aside from our mortgages, (no CCs, no school debt, no car payments, nothing). We have a one year old, and what inspired me a few months ago to try and change was that I hated seeing him only on weekends and a couple hours each night.
So long story short, we have decided to try publishing books as a way to supplement our income, and see where it takes us.
1/10/2014 - Around this date I started hiring people on oDesk to write books. Over the course of a week, I hired 6 people, my wife hired 5. Our initial investment was around $1,600 for the 11 books. We knew there would be an upfront investment, and we wanted to cast our net wide to see works from cheap and expensive authors.
1/18/14 - I got two books back, and started editing. First book was poorly written, took me about 10 hours over the course of the week, but I edited it to my liking. Second book was much better, only took about 2 hours, and I was happy with it. I hired two different people to create covers.
1/26/14 - We set up a website on Wix.com, basically outlining our publishing company. I have two pen names, she has one...and all three are on our site. We also set up a mailing list through MailCheat(Chimp), and formatted standard copyright pages for the back of the book. Really worked on streamlining the process.
1/28/14 - Got covers back, published the website, and went like with our books. I decided to publish not through KDP, so I could do SmashWords and createspace as well. I also opted not to do a free trial period, so we'll see how that goes. I recall HfR saying that he doesn't set them as free...he just keeps writing...so that's the theory I'm going to emulate for now. Maybe I'll switch it up down the road, but my hope is that once readers see my pen name on 10-15 different stories, it will snowball from there.
Two books published on 1/28/14
First book: 18k words / 2.99
Second Book 13k words / 2.99
Both went live a couple hours ago, so no activity yet.
What is success to us?
Our short-term goal is to recoup our initial investment of $1,600 with-in six months. Our longer term goal is to be able to supplement our income with an additional $4 - $5k by the end of 2014, with minimal work set forward after the launch of a book. We want the income to be passive!
I'll keep you posted!
First start off by thanking Giroud, HfR, and ChickenHawk for inspiration. HfR inspired me to publish a non-fiction satire on fathering I wrote this past year, G because he is doing what I want to do, and CH because my wife loves your thread, and we are impressed with your success (all that hard work and late nights - awesome!)
A little about us to help put things into context. I work as an actuary, she works for Virgin. We do fairly well for our demographic (bring in about $140k from work combined annually). We own two houses, one of which we rent out and earn $350/month over the mortgage. I'm also in the military, so I make a little extra each month from trainings, drills, etc. We have no debt aside from our mortgages, (no CCs, no school debt, no car payments, nothing). We have a one year old, and what inspired me a few months ago to try and change was that I hated seeing him only on weekends and a couple hours each night.
So long story short, we have decided to try publishing books as a way to supplement our income, and see where it takes us.
1/10/2014 - Around this date I started hiring people on oDesk to write books. Over the course of a week, I hired 6 people, my wife hired 5. Our initial investment was around $1,600 for the 11 books. We knew there would be an upfront investment, and we wanted to cast our net wide to see works from cheap and expensive authors.
1/18/14 - I got two books back, and started editing. First book was poorly written, took me about 10 hours over the course of the week, but I edited it to my liking. Second book was much better, only took about 2 hours, and I was happy with it. I hired two different people to create covers.
1/26/14 - We set up a website on Wix.com, basically outlining our publishing company. I have two pen names, she has one...and all three are on our site. We also set up a mailing list through MailCheat(Chimp), and formatted standard copyright pages for the back of the book. Really worked on streamlining the process.
1/28/14 - Got covers back, published the website, and went like with our books. I decided to publish not through KDP, so I could do SmashWords and createspace as well. I also opted not to do a free trial period, so we'll see how that goes. I recall HfR saying that he doesn't set them as free...he just keeps writing...so that's the theory I'm going to emulate for now. Maybe I'll switch it up down the road, but my hope is that once readers see my pen name on 10-15 different stories, it will snowball from there.
Two books published on 1/28/14
First book: 18k words / 2.99
Second Book 13k words / 2.99
Both went live a couple hours ago, so no activity yet.
What is success to us?
Our short-term goal is to recoup our initial investment of $1,600 with-in six months. Our longer term goal is to be able to supplement our income with an additional $4 - $5k by the end of 2014, with minimal work set forward after the launch of a book. We want the income to be passive!
I'll keep you posted!
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