- Keep writing, that's the only way you really get better, get the clay ready for molding.
- Keep notes on what you might want to change later, events or povs, so you can transform that from exposition to things on screen. So your character doesn't become the exposition monkey.
- Have characters readers can root for and even boo/hiss at. *Rising of the Shield Hero (anime) did this fantastically, so did David Weber when he made Pavel Young.
- When to use Kickstarters or Indigogos. (I have a feeling this helps writers that are more established in their genre or stable of books.) akin to Trekker. 35k in less then a week. That's something.
- The War of "Tropes am Bad" vs "You must subvert expectations!" vs "Here's the Proper Way to do X." In my short experience, write what you want. Its the only way to really start learning and inserting that into your books as you go or later on during editing.
- Depending on you GOAL for your books: Writing for yourself, writing to audience, writing to trends, or if you end up mixing it all in, its something you have to decide for yourself. Me? My series is pure passion project. That is my goal and success. Its not a matter of how much for me, its a matter of I want to do this and finish it because I love Superheroes and Space Opera.
- Should the story have flashbacks? Depends, but you will only know if you keep writing.
- When launching your book, Get the Genre Tags right, so much stuff is overloading other genres with things unrelated to it. (Key Words are vital too) I use unusual combos to try to filter out the "Top" 100 in most of amazon's category. Since most of that seems to be "LOOK AT ME!" rather the pertinent to the genre as a whole.
- Have a main hub for all your books/work. Get ready for the success before hand. Don't just write one and done.
- Mr. Cole said its also not wise to end the first book in a series on a cliff hanger. I plan on having a complete story in the first book with some epilogue stuff that will lead to the next book, but yea. Even if a series is there, sometimes cliffhangers don't work.
- World building and lore pull me in but Characters make me stay there.
- Covers and Burbs also catch my attention. (Been studying that a bit too) Sometimes that's a difference between passing it over or taking a look.
- Even that is getting a bit flooded. So what have I see people do to stand out? Well for one, repeated successful campaigns are a good feather to have in your corner.
- Have a link to your active project on your blog, twitter profile, facebook ect. But try not to spam your various channels repeatedly. Pace yourself. Blog about your series, put up slices of what you are working on, passages
The competition is fierce!
Competing against a whole lot of worlds out there.
One thing I think a company could take advantage of Amazon is... fixing the issue of simply finding one of those 15 Million books.
Does Amazon have a good search engine? Yes. Does Amazon have great suggestions if you show them what you're interested in? Yes.
What they do NOT have is a good way to BROWSE titles. As someone who's sold on Amazon a few times (different name) - I know how hard it can be to get in the top 100 of a particular category on Amazon.
That's a very good point, how to get past the top 100s to find the diamonds underneath. To find titles and adventures among those millions of books.
Plus I had a basic plot epiphany thanks to this post:
What is the Goal? The Golden Compass Points in No Direction.
I can see why Mr. Wright has such a library under his belt. Thanks again. Breaking down the Plot between these two series, of which I am familiar was like turning a key that I was just missing in the background.
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