Category: Taking Chances

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On “Going Commercial” – And Loving It.

I’ve just been invited by Amazon Canada to be an Amazon Influencer. This means that I get my own website at Amazon.ca to display all of my books (finally!) and I can recommend products to you there as well. As one reader put it, “You’re going commercial?”

You bet I am, but I’m not doing anything differently with my online presence than I have been for many years. It’s just that a large corporation finally noticed that what I have to say (of my own volition) to my followers may be useful to them. If that’s what some call “going commercial,” I say bring it on, bring it big or go home broke. I’m not doing anything I’m not proud of; in fact, I’m really excited about this, because I’d already been plugging books and products in my Instagram/ on Twitter and YouTube for two years without even realizing it. Now I’ll just be earning a small percentage per purchase when I point readers to books and products that I already use and love.

I’ve always been a writer for the love of writing, and if I can find ways to do what I’m passionate about every day, stick to my morals, and still make a decent living in the 21st century as an author? Then “going commercial” is something I’m darn proud of.

The best part is, this is one more way that I can prove to those of you who aspire to become authors that, yes, Virginia, we CAN be wealthy writers! Very few can make a living that will sustain a whole family simply by writing books (especially if you don’t have over ten published books out yet). We can, however, make a decent salary for ourselves as writers if we think outside the box and do more than just write books. We have to consider selling those books as ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks; selling the rights to adapt those books into films; speak about our lives as writers and get paid for that, and use social media to gain more interested readers, which gives us leverage in making business deals with corporations and organizations that we respect.

I started out as a poet, first published at age five, and decided to become a writer then and there. At the time, I didn’t realize I was headed into a profession that would pay me very little (even as a trained journalist) for coming up with fresh ideas and stories out of thin air. It didn’t make sense to me: why are writers so undervalued, when people who catch footballs and run with them earn $5-20M a year?

Reality sunk in quite quickly in my twenties when I began sending out story ideas to magazines and learned I’d be paid two to forty cents a word for my work ($1/word for the top magazines) and that the average author in Canada makes $6,000 a year. For some crazy reason, though, I kept on writing. I think the reason is called passion.

I’ve since made it my mission to be transparent with followers who tell me that they want to be authors, too. I try to remind you that it’s going to be challenging, but not impossible, to make a living doing this. I only started making a good profit at writing fiction two years ago. It started out as what I called “skate money” to buy my daughter skates, but soon my earnings became “vacation money,” and I was able to buy a $500 daybed for our backyard, several lovely vacations for our family and I paid many bills (or as my husband Bill likes to joke about it, “Pay Bill.”). While my book income continues to grow, I wouldn’t be able to handle the mortgage payments on my own, plus saving for University for our daughter, plus all of our yearly expenses, without the help of my spouse’s income. I can’t sustain my family in 2018 on my author earnings. Yet.

And that’s why I’m going commercial. Plus, I love online shopping. I love avoiding traffic and crowds and shopping in my luxurious grey robe. Now, when I’m not writing my next novel or working on getting the last one adapted into a movie, I get to buy dresses, purses and shoes and tell you what I think about them? Yes, please!

Check out my new Amazon Influencer Link and please use it whenever you want to buy one of my books or audio books. It will be much appreciated.

Thanks for taking this journey with me,
Heather

Heather Grace Stewart
Shopping online is my second favourite way of doing it. I most love shopping at outdoor markets, buying flowers and hand-crafted decorations for our home.
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Back To You

Hey.

I know it’s been a while. I hope you still remember my name.

I’ve been a terrible blogger for the last few years. It’s been challenging to find time to write my novels, market my novels, teach others how to do that via YouTube and social media, and spend time with my family. Blogging had to be left behind.

But blogging poems and blogging about writing are how I got pulled away from journalism and onto this career path back in 2007. I started this blog as “Where the Butterflies Go,” you all commented on my poetry, encouraged me to turn the posts into a book, and … […]<<< a whole lot of stuff happened! and here I am today, a published author, with four novels, five poetry books, a screenplay book and a kids’ book of poems under her belt. I never could have imagined I’d still be doing this more than a decade later.

I don’t think I’d be here if I hadn’t started that blog and had such great feedback from you readers. Thank you.

I miss that interaction, don’t you? Social media certainly makes it easier to comment (no logging in…I’ll see what I can do about that btw) but you don’t always have the same “clan” coming back. I miss my bloggyland tribe.

I’ve learned so much since my first novel was published. Here are a few of those lessons:

1) Take risks. If you don’t risk, you don’t grow. I know it’s scary, especially for so many of us introverted artist types (surprise, yes, I’m in fact an introvert who had to come out of her shell through drama as a teenager when she realized that’s how artists grow). I have had such an interesting life because of a few brave moments.

2) You have to put yourself out there as an author. No one else, not even your publicist, knows your product like you do. You have to go to the book signings and the speaking engagements, tweet about stuff that really matters to you, and risk looking like a fool (see #1) if you want the right readers to find you. In time, many of those readers will become your friends. Cool right? It’s not all about making money…but…

3) You have to spend money to make money. I didn’t like this one very much. You mean you have to spend money to advertise that your heart and soul of a book is FREE for a few days? Yes, you do. You don’t have to do that until the end of time. Just until you gain a reader base. It sounds wrong, but it’s right. I didn’t start making a profit as an author until I started spending money directing traffic to my books.

4) Give back. I feel this one strongly. I like to encourage and teach aspiring authors, because I remember how maddening it can be to feel like you’re getting absolutely nowhere. I still have those days, trust me, but that’s because I’m trying new things every day (audiobooks, TV deals) so I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t work. There are tens of thousands of new authors out there who are struggling to find their audience in this ever-changing book industry. I just want to encourage them before they decide to call it quits. Speaking of calling it quits…

5) Don’t quit. Success if probably just around the corner, or at least the corner after that. Keep on going, dreaming, risking, believing. Don’t put a second mortgage on your home, mind you, please be smart about it, but do everything you can to get your book seen. You have to keep on going, especially if you have a strong “knowing” about it. If you know it’s supposed to be, it will be. It’s just a matter of time.

I’m so happy to be back. I’ll try to do this weekly!

Heather 🙂

 

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Writers write, and market their butts off.

The expression “writers write,” is an old one, and I think it’s time that we did away with it.

Sure, writers have to write something every day if they’re ever going to get their first novel finished. However, if they want to succeed in the 21st century, they’re also going to have to market their work every day, take courses to improve their craft and marketing skills, network with other professional writers, and interact with their readers.

Sound like work? It is. “But I just want to write,” you say. So did I, five years ago.

In 2012, I worked as a freelance writer and editor for national magazines. I penned my poetry collections in the early mornings, before I got to work on paid writing contracts. I had already self-published two collections by 2012. A traditional publisher accepted my manuscript for Carry On Dancing, and I thought I was set for life. Okay, not for life, but I was traditionally published! I was going to start making a profit on my writing, after years of submitting work and being rejected! I was going to be sent on wondrous reading tours around Canada and maybe even the US. Because: I was published!

Yeah, right.

Now, to be fair, my publisher was awesome and worked hard. Those dreams didn’t happen for me right away, because I didn’t yet understand the amount of work (and advertising dollars) that goes into being a profitable author.

I spent hours a day trying to get my name out there, as did my publisher. I toured a few cities in Ontario, using profits from my freelance editing and writing jobs, and some grants I earned from The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers Union of Canada (TWUC). I blogged and Facebooked my way into a fan base of about 200 regular readers. For all this, I earned about $60 in royalties three months after the book’s launch. I was pleased with this, because I was still holding down other writing and editing jobs, and making some wine and shoe money with my poetry. I even started selling the one-time reprint and audio rights of my poems to internationally-distributed textbooks.

Fast forward to 2014, when a publisher accepted my manuscript for Strangely, Incredibly Good.  The publisher was fantastic, and worked hard alongside me to publicize the book. The greatest lesson for me that year was that I lost some time and money marketing the book to Chapters-Indigo stores in Quebec and Ontario. I was published, but I wasn’t “she’s a big name,” “she’s going to sell like hot cakes” published, so the stores didn’t put my book on their shelves, only took my books by consignment, and took 45 % of the profit. I had a wonderful time meeting and greeting with readers, at a loss of about 0.50 a book. I was fully aware of that loss. I decided it would come out of my paid contract work. In my mind, my fiction writing was still a hobby, and I was getting my name out there with these appearances. It felt a little counter-productive sometimes, but I kept reminding myself that as long as I was having fun, I should keep on going.

Persistence paid off. By 2015, the year I decided to self-publish Remarkably Great, the sequel to Strangely, Incredibly Good, I wasn’t taking a loss with my appearances anymore, and my local Chapters actually offered to put several of my books on their shelves. I started seeing more money from my fiction trickle in, but certainly not what I’d call a living. I told the students I spoke to at my alma mater, Queen’s University: “Writing can’t always make you a great living, but it can make you a great life.” I was enjoying the life my writing had made – never a dull moment – and I kept at it for the sheer joy of the craft.

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Author Heather Grace Stewart, right, with Queen’s University students after speaking at their Journalism Conference

My background should demonstrate how many years of zero profit or even a loss you may have to endure before you start making money with your fiction writing. The J.K. Rowling stories are rare. They exist, and I don’t want to dissuade you from reaching for the stars, but they are certainly not the norm.

In early 2016, after much contemplation and research, I made a few changes to how I was selling my work. I took back all the rights to all my work, so that I was the sole publisher. I wanted control of all my work and its marketing, and I wanted to organize my accounting in one place, not several.

Once I had the rights back, I was able to control everything from pricing to discount sales to advertising. I was also finally able to put my first novel in the Kindle Unlimited Library along with Remarkably Great and my new novel, The Ticket. 

Kindle Unlimited, used properly, is one of the best author tools since the typewriter.  I started making a steady profit by early February 2016. I remember pretty much freaking out that I was now making $60.00 a month on Kindle sales alone, because I had been making $60 every three months. I wrote a blog Keep Your Day Job (But keep the faith)   about how I was finally able to use my Kindle royalties – money earned from fiction alone – to buy my daughter a pair of skates.

Over a year later, I’m thrilled to say I could buy everyone in my daughter’s class skates every month with my ebook royalties, and then some. My monthly profits fluctuate, of course, and I haven’t begun to tabulate this year’s paperback profits, so I can’t tell you what I’ll be making this year, but it’s not just shoe money. It’s enough money to not have to think about finding freelance magazine writing contracts each month, or selling my poems to textbook companies to help pay the bills. (Although I still love to do those things).

What did I do differently? I took charge of my creations and my career by becoming an independent author. I kept writing every morning – because yes, writers do write. Then I started spending my afternoons investing in my writing career. I started a mailing list, improved my website, hired a designer for my book covers, and started advertising all of my novels – consistently, in places where readers always hang out. I also began doing more video appearances on my Facebook Author Page and tweeting on a more regular basis, with a more consistent approach.

In December 2016, I took a fantastic course called the Self Publishing Formula by Mark Dawson, and it changed the way I looked at my fiction writing. I had to stop thinking of it as a hobby if I wanted to make good money. It’s a business – a hard one to succeed in – but a business.

It took sixteen years of sending my work to publishers and agents, telling myself fiction couldn’t actually make me much money, before I drastically changed the way I approach my writing “hobby.” Now I’m finally making a daily profit with my fiction writing.

It’s 9:36 a.m. and I haven’t started writing for the day yet. I’ve been marketing my butt off since 7:30 a.m, and trying to help and encourage emerging authors with this blog post.

Because that’s what profitable writers do.

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Spring Clean Your Inner Artist!

Every one of us is creative. Every one of us has an inner artist (I’m going to call him Art for the sake of brevity) but we don’t all take the time to nurture Art. It’s hard work nurturing a creative child with a mind of its own, and it can be frustrating —painful even, especially if we haven’t picked up a paint set since second grade.

But there are ways to rediscover the creative, uninhibited Art you were as a child. One of those ways is what I call spring cleaning. No, not actual cleaning, although I’ve had excellent ideas come to me while vacuuming! I mean using nature; the return of buds and blossoms and the birth of creatures as a return to the artist that’s lying dormant inside you.

You may think your artist is non-existent, but it’s simply living inside you, waiting for you to  bring it out of hibernation. My Art likes to go to sleep, too, especially after a busy period like I’ve just completed (I just published my fifth poetry collection and spoke at a journalism conference).

So how does spring cleaning work? It’s much more fun than actual cleaning. If you have a car, get in the car, and drive. If you don’t have a car, put on your running shoes, and go for a walk. Anywhere is good, except in heavy traffic! That will put you in a rotten mood and block poor Art, who just wants to run around outside, like the free-spirited child he is.

Bring along a voice recorder and record ideas that pop into your mind the minute you have them. Don’t be shy —this exercise is to shake loose the ideas lying dormant inside your mind. Let them loose! No one ever has to hear what you record but you.

If you have a camera, take that along, too. Stop the car or stop walking and snap photos or go explore anything that grabs your attention — this is Art telling you to take a few moments for him.

Just as with real spring cleaning, there are distractions that can stop you from getting anything accomplished when you spring clean with Art. These include feeling you simply don’t have the time to go play with a camera and a tape recorder, embarrassment, and feeling you need to obey rules.

You’ll have to dig deep and find the self-discipline required to simply not listen to those blocks if you really want to spring clean. Time? Yes. As technology increases the speed and ease of communication, employers are putting increasingly ridiculous expectations on us as employees. And there’s more: Early to rise, late to bed, families to care for, aging parents to look after. Where does that leave time for Art?

Make five minutes at first. That’s my Five Minutes First rule for anyone who thinks they aren’t creative, and don’t have the time to find out that they are. It takes five minutes to snap a photo, draw a picture with bright pencil crayons, cut some flowers and arrange them in a vase. I guarantee, once you find five minutes for your creative self one day, you’ll want to set aside 15 the next. Art is like that. He’s one persistent dude.

And what’s so embarrassing about standing with a camera by the side of the road at sunset? It’s far better than fuming about your day while stuck inside a car, like those passing by. As for rules, okay, please don’t get put in jail, but if you need to park in a stranger’s driveway so you can walk down their residential road and get a good shot of the river at the end of the street, go for it. You may want to knock on their door and ask for permission, but my bet is if they find out what you’re up to they’ll start telling you how they used to love photography, and how they wish they had more time for Art.

You may end up inspiring someone else to do some spring cleaning of their own. This is another trick Art loves. Once one artist is inspired to create, their whole community can be inspired.

Have fun spring cleaning!

Capturing the return of this flock of Canadian geese was my spring cleaning exercise this morning. In turn, the act of photographing the geese while thinking about all the actual spring cleaning I have to do stirred my inner artist to write this blog post!
Capturing the return of this flock of Canadian geese was my spring cleaning exercise this morning. In turn, the act of photographing the geese while thinking about all the actual spring cleaning I have to do stirred my inner artist to write this blog post!
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Meet Four Writers On A Blog Hop!

Welcome to my blog hop, where you will learn a little more about me and three other authors:

Tracey Allen (Sustainable/Gluten-free/Passive Solar) http://simplifyandsave.weebly.com/blog-save–simplify.html
Luigi Benetton (Technology/Business) http://luigibenetton.com/category/technozen/
Paul Lima (Business of Writing) http://paullima.com/blog/

and here’s my official website:

Heather Grace Stewart (Author/Poet/Speaker) http://heathergracestewart.me

If you’ve never visited my blog before, thanks for dropping by! Hope you’ll stay a while, and please be sure to visit my writer friends’ blogs. Thanks!

I’ve been writing creatively since I was five years old, and my first poem was even published (in the school newsletter!) From that moment on, I was hooked on writing. I went to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and wrote for the Queen’s Journal and Tricolour Yearbook. Then I attended Concordia and completed a graduate diploma in Journalism. After a few years working for a newspaper and several magazines as their associate editor, I decided to become a freelance writer, and in 1999, I founded Graceful Publications, my freelance writing and editing business.

Little did I know that one day I’d expand that business to become a book publisher!  I’ve been traditionally published a few times (Jackfruit Press, Bewrite Books and Winter Goose Publishing) and recently, through Graceful Publications, I published a book of children’s poems, The Groovy Granny, my screenplay The Friends I’ve Never Met, and I’m so excited to announce that my 4th collection of poetry, prose & photography, Three Spaces, will be released in ebook format mid-February 2013 (print will come a month later). I really enjoy doing readings and speaking engagements, and am looking forward to doing a workshop on epublishing at the Queen’s Conference on Journalism and Media next month.

I think the best advice I can give to aspiring authors is to follow your passion. You may have to keep a job you don’t like much to pay the bills, but if writing about fly fishing or vampires or poetry is your passion, then find the time to do that, because that’s probably where you’ll do your best work and find your greatest joy. Don’t give up, either. There are so many different ways to get your work out there now – you can make your own ebook for free, or post samples of your writing on a blog, record them in pod casts, or even Tweet them!

So, don’t give up! Write every day, even if it’s a few words on a little sticky note. Those few words could spark a great novel some day.