How realistic is it to get a fantasy novel published and make money from it...

How realistic is it to get a fantasy novel published and make money from it? Would it be ill-advised to work on one in place of working a minimum-wage job?

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becoming a rockstar is more realistic

>Would it be ill-advised to work on one in place of working a minimum-wage job?

Have you done any market research whatsoever? Even semi-decent first time fantasy authors will RARELY sell enough copies to compete with a minimum wage job, that's if they can manage to find someone willing to publish their crap to begin with.

To make real money from writing mass market fantasy/scifi/YA is insanely difficult. This is not to say that your writing is bad, it probably isn't, and it's certainly better than the shit that gets pumped out by room temperature IQ single women who write to purely to self-insert. Instead it's difficult because nobody really knows how an author writing this shit gets 'big'. It's only possible to properly examine this kind of stuff after it's happened - maybe there was a big werewolf movie that made people love them and so werewolves are popular and one author just happened to write a werewolf story and simultaneously exploded on twitter because they had a great comeback to some latenight tv host. It could be anything. The point is: nobody can predict it or come up with a set of characteristics for story/author/series that will always guarantee success.

My advice would be to write and put it up anyway, what have you got to lose? Use a pseudonym and see what happens. Maybe you'll get big, more likely you won't, but at least you threw your hat into the ring.

I write because I have romantic dreams of becoming a decent author just like everyone on this board. I know that it's incredibly unlikely to happen, but I do it anyway, and every now and then I'll submit something to a publishing house.

I also write erotic fiction and post that online on amazon. This makes some money but is nowhere near enough to quit my day job for. It's nice though, to have what amounts to a little extra almost guaranteed income coming in. Obviously I use a pseudonym, but it's fun and you might want to try it too if that's your cup of tea.

How is writing erotica guaranteed money?

Sorry, bad wording. Erotica sells quite a considerable amount on amazon. By having a few short stories up I'm almost guaranteed a small amount of money coming in from amazon each month.

Interesting... Would you mind sharing yours? What genres do well? How long are the stories, typically? And how do you market it?

I don't wanna derail the thread, but suffice to say I write niche fetish stuff. Not gonna link because I want them to stay up. Stories are between 50-120 pages. I do absolutely no marketing at all, just leave them up on the store. No idea how other genres do, I only write in my niche.

How do you publish anonymously? And what is your niche, user?

>How do you publish anonymously?
Anyone can publish on amazon, just use a pseudonym. As long as it doesn't contain any kind of illegal stuff eg. paedophilia or legitimate calls to violence against real world people, then they'll put your ebooks on their site.
>And what is your niche, user?
Pretty heavy femdom stuff.

Not OP but was wondering why is it important to use a pseudonym?

You can avoid damaging your reputation if the books are shit and take the praise if they're great.

I guess that makes sense, sorry if I'm being retarded here but what's stopping other people from trying to lay claim to your work?

It's perfectly realistic to get a fantasty novel SELF-published, but traditional publishing is much more difficult. No matter what the genre, this is how I advise the pursuit of becoming a full-time writer...

>Have a job (you'll likely need one for quite some time
>Write
>Finish the book
>Edit
>Edit more if need be
>Eventually stop editing because no, it's never going to be 'perfect', that doesn't exist
>Self-publish it
>Select some traditional publishers and send manuscripts
>Keep in mind that it seems as though an agent is often necessary for big publishing companies
>Write on something else while waiting for feedback when you're not working
>When not writing or working, market the book and seek out feedback
>Learn from the feedback when you finally get it, it might take months
>Don't be discouraged if you get barely any sales at all, this is common for new authors
>It often takes SEVERAL months to hear back from traditional publishers
>Continue working, writing, getting feedback, learning, marketing, and releasing more books
>You might end up 'making it' via self-publishing before you get taken up by a traditional publisher
>It might take several years to 'make it' either way


If you have what it takes, if you can EARN your way to becoming a full-time author, PROVE to readers that what you write is worth not only reading but also worth paying for, then you will not get disheartened in a month, or 6 months, or a year, or even 10 years if it takes that long. You will continue to write, to edit, to market, to get feedback, to accumulate reviews, to pump out one book at a time, you will improve, perhaps feel embarrassed at your first book eventually because most author's first books are bad either entirely or in part to some degree or another, but eventually if you keep at it you WILL gain traction. You will get fans, some of whom you will email regularly and keep in contact with like buddies. You might meet people with blogs that have a readerbase and they end up enjoying your books so much that they will happily promote them on their blog when new ones come out. You will get bad reviews inevitably, but unless you utterly suck you will also get good reviews inevitably, in fact even if your stuff DOES suck there's probably in illiterate troglodyte out there somewhere who will say "this us gud1 me liek! wan mor1!1"

So get to writing, don't quit your day job even if it's minimum-wage, and we'll see how you do. If you're only in it for the money though, then fuck off. You will only make it if you have a genuine love of writing. What would be the point of being a full-time writer if you're doing something you dislike; writing, and probably only writing things that don't interest you at that! You'll be miserable, and will probably become disheartened early on anyways because most new self-published authors don't even make $100 in their first year.

Assuming you keep originals and drafts and notes and whatever then you can always prove that you're the author. You can also do other things like storing manuscripts in a safe deposit box that you can get before the date of publication, or even dated documents signed by third parties saying that they've seen your manuscripts. Moreover people can use common sense. Does that person seem like they write? Did they ever tell anyone they're a writer? Are they able to produce similar writing? Do times and dates match up? Don't worry about someone claiming your pseudonym as their own work, it never happens.

It's remarkably hard for someone to just come along and claim that they're the real author behind a pseudonym.

Thanks for the long reply, dude. I only have 2 questions.
>Couldn't it lower the work's value to publishers if you've already self-published?
>Isn't it expensive and lame to self-publish?

What if you don't want to fuss up to writing that smut but you still want to profit anonymously?

Thanks, I guess as long as you have your manuscripts you should be good.

Oh you were specifically talking about writing erotica? Fair enough, I thought the question of pseudonyms was a general one.

Look, buddy, all you do is use a fake name on the website. You can set your author name to whatever you want. People buying your books can't see which bank account the money is sent to. Stop worrying and publish if you want to.

>Couldn't it lower the work's value to publishers if you've already self-published?
To be honest, I don't know 100%. If I had to guess, being able to check out the sales rank for your work on Amazon would help tell them how your popularity is. If it's high, and you're already making money from your work, then that means you have a readerbase. If your sequels likewise do well, then surely the traditional publishers would see that as a sign that if they hire this writer, and publish their next works and maybe even the current ones as well, then there's already readers talking about it and therefore a good chance that they'll start getting sales immediately. Something else they could do is release the writer's self-published works, but at the back of the book is several pages worth of some other book they're currently working on, which MIGHT encourage people who already bought the book to buy that one as well.

>Isn't it expensive and lame to self-publish?
I've got 7 books out, working on an 8th, and I haven't spent one single solitary cent.

>lame
In the eyes of many on Veeky Forums, yes, because they bought into the meme. 15 years ago they'd probably be right, getting self-published would be an expensive and foolish venture, but right now it is free and the market for eBooks is positively booming. I haven't even been self-published for 10 months yet, however I've made over $150 in profit, and got 2 fans that I regularly email and they are actively looking forward to my next book. I've gotten paperback sales in North America and mainland Europe; ebook sales in North America, UK, mainland Europe and Australia; free downloads during promotional campaigns in 9 countries on 5 continents.

I don't know about you, but I don't think that's lame at all. Obviously, no, I'm not a full-time author, but I'm doing better than most new self-published authors and I anticipate reaching full-time within 2 years at the rate I'm going and the rate I'm learning. I will have been writing books for a year in almost a month's time, and I will have been a self-published author for a year in just shy of 3 month's time. It's hard work, requires a lot of determination, and it's a long process, but it feels amazing to be pursuing something you love.

$150 is hardly a fortune

Would you mind sharing some free samples of your work?

In regards to promotional campaigns, is it possible to publish say 2 chapters on an ebook for free or is there a minimum wordcount?

Never tried to say $150 is a fortune, but am I going to complain about receiving $150 for simply doing something that I enjoy doing? Hell no. I might as well be paid for playing videogames as far as I'm concerned; that's what it feels like. Except because it's my stories and I have complete control, I'm basically playing my very own videogames, ones that I have instantaneously created and I know I'll enjoy it because I created it.

I have one book perma-free on Lulu, but do keep in mind that I wrote this novella within 5 days. I've been informed that there's a few grammatical errors, and I'll get around to editing it sometime, but here's a link to it.
lulu.com/shop/j-n-morgan/another-one-please-to-dull-the-pain/ebook/product-23229284.html

You can also check out my Amazon Author Profile. When you look at books on Amazon, there's a 'look inside' feature that shows, I dunno, maybe 5 or 10% of the book for free.
www.amazon.com/author/jnmorgan

When you have a book contracted with KDP Select, it's a renewing 3-month contract but you can stop the renewal at ANY time. When your book is contracted, you cannot let any other site sell eBook versions of your book (physical copies are ok though), and also the most you can personally give out of your book for free is the first 10% at most. My book Living amongst the Dead is 235 pages as I recall in its 5x8" format, so I can give out 23.5 of those pages for free. Though I can also give the entire book to a professional reviewer for free and Amazon/Kindle won't care. It's also ok to give manuscripts to traditional publishers to sell physical copies of your books but NOT eBook versions because that's Kindle's while you're contracted, which is fine by me. Kindle by far dominates the ebook market, and traditional publishers by far dominate the paperback/hardcover markets. When you use KDP Select's 'free' promotion specifically (there's other things you can do with your books via KDP Select) then the whole book becomes available for free. It's a great way to get people reading your stuff and getting to know your work, even if they're apprehensive on actually spending money. I've had about 450 free downloads and I will continue to do free promotional offers about once a month or so. There's also Kindle Countdown discounts and with KDP you also get your book on Kindle Unlimited for KENP.

>If you're only in it for the money though, then fuck off.

tfw I would be ok selling millions of books and making literally nothing from it

>Writing just because you want money and don't care what it's about
>Writing because you love to write and hope to earn money from it from people who enjoy it
>Writing without wanting to make money from it whatsoever

So you think only the top and the bottom exist?

I have a career path that will make me a lot of money down the road and not with much hard work. I mean a few million from a book would let me instantly retire and act and direct and paint but being read at all by a readership is a rare honor that's worth doing for free.

I... what? So you think in terms of writers there are only 2 sides; the millionaires and the destitute? Is that right?

I made about twelve dollars off my fantasy about an island full of naked teen girls, so I guess anything is possible.

No, because I'm not retarded. I essentially just ignored your question the first time because it was insultingly banal and instead just talked about myself.