Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Quill and Feather Pub [Public] => Topic started by: dgcasey on September 24, 2018, 06:25:44 PM
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Good story about a common bloke, writing and finding no love from the trads and deciding to go the self-pub route. 210,000 sales later and ninety million page reads shows what can be accomplished when you find your audience. Oh, and he's only 20-years-old. Good on him.
I just bought his first book, so I'll put it up near the top of my To Read pile and see what all the fuss is about.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/melbourne-uni-dropout-matt-rogers-earns-50k-a-month-writing-payperpage-action-thrillers/news-story/7b127e3631fa521b2b39d2229a1087f2 (https://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/melbourne-uni-dropout-matt-rogers-earns-50k-a-month-writing-payperpage-action-thrillers/news-story/7b127e3631fa521b2b39d2229a1087f2)
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Oh, and that is not a picture of him in the story. This is a picture of him:
(https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/09/23/07/509041C500000578-0-image-a-35_1537684567169.jpg)
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Wonderful to hear about his success! :)
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That's pretty great! Plus, it doesn't hurt that he's a cutie!
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Love these success stories!
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Sometimes I wish I'd started at that age. Then again, I might have gotten discouraged by the industry. I know guys that are making six and seven figures as indies that were consistently rejected by the trades over the last 30 years. Goes to show how bad a business model the traditional industry has, that they left so much money and market share on the table for the grabbing.
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Sometimes I wish I'd started at that age. Then again, I might have gotten discouraged by the industry. I know guys that are making six and seven figures as indies that were consistently rejected by the trades over the last 30 years. Goes to show how bad a business model the traditional industry has, that they left so much money and market share on the table for the grabbing.
I've just been surprised how insular the industry was / is. Pretty much concentrated in one city, and it seems like most agents / editors are drawn from almost the exact same demographic, down to what schools they attended. A few hundred white people living in New York with almost identical values who likely attended liberal arts schools or other expensive private universities deciding what a country of 350 million has access to read. Really, worldwide, an English language population of a billion or more. It's no wonder that self-publishing exploded - or, as demonstrated by Author Earnings at the Nebula presentation - that the market grew by 40% once it was opened up.
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Thanks for this, DG
It's a great read
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“I heard about this self-publishing thing so I decided to try it out, wrote a novel, put it up on Amazon and it just took off.”
If only it were that easy for everyone. :icon_rofl:
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“I heard about this self-publishing thing so I decided to try it out, wrote a novel, put it up on Amazon and it just took off.”
If only it were that easy for everyone. :icon_rofl:
I think it is that easy if you can write a book that resonates with the readers. Too many self-pubs (like me) write stuff that is so derivative and has been done to death. The trick is finding that story that just begs to be written and doing so with such a fresh look that people will be falling all over themselves to get their hands on it.
As for the subject of this thread, I'm about halfway through his first book and while I can say it's an enjoyable read, there's not much that's ground breaking in it. You can tell the author is a big fan of the Jack Reacher novels and you could easily take the name Jack Reacher and slip it into every instance you see the name Jason King and you'd find yourself checking to see if the author is Lee Child. The only real difference is Jack is a retired military policeman and Jason is an ex-Delta Force dude.
All that being said, it is a hot genre and Matt tells a good story. I'm sure most of us would agree that that is the number one secret to this business. If either one of those is missing it will be an uphill slog every inch of the way. I'm still trying to write that story that hits on both of them. But, I have plenty of time and nothing else to do. :icon_wink:
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Amen, dg