10 Lessons From Publishing a #1 Bestseller

Posted on January 20, 2013

A masterpiece is a difficult thing to create. We all have at least one—usually more than one—masterpiece in us, waiting to be created, waiting patiently to show its beautiful mane to the world around us. I’m 31 and I’ve created three masterpieces in my life.

It took me 30 years to get around to the first—my bestselling short story collection, Falling While Sitting Down—which I published last year and which debuted at #1 on Amazon’s Bestselling Short Stories list.

I’d like to share the lessons I learned along the way, lessons that helped me prepare for my new masterpiece, my novel As a Decade Fades.

Lesson 1: Value Transference

I’m best know for my writings at The Minimalists, where my best friend, Ryan, and I write essays about living a meaningful life with less stuff. Ryan and I created that site to share our journeys with the world, and we were fortunate enough to establish an audience of more than 100,000 monthly readers within a year.

I enjoy writing for that audience. I enjoy all types of writing—I even teach an online writing class—but my deepest passion is writing literary fiction, something that not many blog readers dedicate their time towards. I’ve dabbled in nonfiction for less than two years, but I’ve written fiction for nearly a decade.

I learned, however, that I could transfer my skills (viz. writing) and contribute to other people in a meaningful way. And in turn those people would be willing to support what I was passionate about. Said another way, if you add value to other people’s lives, they will support you and what you’re passionate about.

You already possess a skill set—you’re already good at something—how can you use that skill and add value to other people?

Lesson 2: Bypass the Gatekeepers

Throughout my 20’s, I received rejection letter after rejection letter, one by one, from agents and publishers. Eventually, I realized I had two options: fold-up shop and call it a day or do something on my own. I chose the latter, started a website, and built an audience by adding value to people’s lives (notice a recurring theme?).

I realized that I could do it myself, without interference from the old guard, and have more control of my destiny in the process. For the first time in history, we don’t need the old guard. We live in an era where the indians can circumvent the chiefs, taking their masterpieces straight to the tribe. Hell, one day I might publish those letters as a stand-alone book; I could call it Dear Author: Rejection Letters to a Bestselling Writer.

Lesson 3: Passion Can Be Painful

Passion is an absolute requirement for creating your masterpiece. I can’t think of anyone who has created a masterpiece out of something he wasn’t totally passionate about. Passion, however, seems to be a misnomer for many people.

Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy every aspect of it.

In fact, I’ve found the opposite to to be true. While writing my first masterpiece, Falling While Sitting Down, it was a miserable experience 80% of the time. Seriously, much of the time I wanted to put my head through a wall. But the other 20% was magical and exciting and made all the suffering and drudgery well worth it.

The key is pushing through the tedium of the 80%, so you can find the beauty beneath the banality; it’s there, plentiful in that remaining 20%. You have to tolerate the pain, if you want to pursue your dream.

Lesson 4: It Ain’t the Money

If money would have been my primary goal—as it was throughout most of my self-indulgent 20’s—then I wouldn’t have focused on creating what I was passionate about. Rather, I would have stayed in the corporate world, making every effort to “maximize profit.” But then again, if I would have been focused on money, I wouldn’t have written the best thing I’d ever written, followed by … the best thing I’ve ever written.

I didn’t worry about the money; money is not why I do what I do. That said, I’m not allergic to money either. I just know that if I add value to other people’s lives, the money will be a bi-product of my efforts.

Lesson 5: It Takes Time

It took me a year of writing every single day to create my first masterpiece; it took the same amount of time for the second. When I didn’t have time, I’d make the time: I’d wake a 3:30 a.m. I’d find 30 minutes before I left for work. I’d work through my lunch break. I’d find an hour after work. I’d cut the superfluous nonsense out of my life.

I wanted it bad enough, so I found the time.

None of us were born equal. We come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different socioeconomic situations. Suffice it to say, we were not all born on a level playing field. Time is the one exception. The only thing we all have in common is time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. You can find the time if you want it bad enough.

Lesson 6: Size Doesn’t Matter

It’s the motion of the ocean, right ladies? My first masterpiece was relatively short (Falling While Sitting Down is 30,000 words, which in traditional print is roughly 120 pages), and while my second is longer (As a Decade Fades is 70,000 words, about 300 pages), it was nearly 950 pages at its bloated zenith.

While the content must—ahem—add value, the size doesn’t matter as much as you think. Rather, it’s more important that you create something meaningful.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Or perhaps, more accurately, brevity is wit. Thus, I decided to create something larger and then whittle it down to its essence, resulting in a masterpiece in which every line is carefully considered (and filled with tweetable moments).

Lesson 7: Creating a Final Product

Once my masterpiece was complete, I needed assistance from others to get it out to the world, most of which assistance I was able to crowd source for little or no cost. People are willing to help when you (everyone together now) add value to their lives.

Hence, I found proofreaders who were willing to find typos. I discovered an editor who was willing to work inexpensively. I asked a friend who was into photography to take cover photos. I asked another friend to help design the cover. I found someone to inexpensively format the book for Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and print.

All the while, I learned along the way: I learned that I could create a print book for free through Create Space and sell it. I learned, as I’ll reveal below, that Amazon was the best sales channel for me. And I learned that I actually could make money from my masterpiece.

Lesson 8: Don’t Ignore the Stats, But Don’t Let Them Run the Show

In the corporate world, I used to live and die by the stats. I managed several large groups of people in several different locations, and I was forced to make the vast majority of my decisions based solely on the numbers. I’d posit to you, however, that releasing your masterpiece to the world is far less about stats, and much more about how it makes you feel. That said, I’m going to share a few things I learned from the numbers when I first published Falling While Sitting Down.

Learning from the Statistics

First Week: I decided to sell the book for $0.99 for the first week, from which I saw over 2,000 sales, most of which were from my existing audience and nearly all of which were on Amazon (with a few Nook and PDF copies sprinkled in the mix). I then raised the price to $4.99, selling 1,200 copies over the next three weeks.
Reviews: I learned that people loved the book because they left glowing reviews, which—guess what—those reviews had a huge impact on future sales. I know that very few people are compelled to leave reviews, so I went to my readers and asked them to leave reviews (most via social media). Not in a pushy way; I simply asked them to leave a review if they had a moment. I let them know it would help me reach more people.
Platforms: I decided to hold off on the print version of Falling While Sitting Down and focus on the digital side of things (N.B. I included a print version in the initial launch of As a Decade Fades). I made the book available on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Smashwords, and PDF (E-Junkie). I was surprised when Amazon captured 93% of all sales in the first month (just shy of 3,000 total copies). Thus, I decided to do some more testing with Amazon.
Amazon KDP Select: As a test, I removed Falling While Sitting Down from every seller except Amazon. When I did this, I placed the following clarification on the sales page of my website: Don’t own a Kindle? No problem! Kindle books can be read using the Free Kindle Reader App for your Web Browser, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, or Android. Selling exclusively through Amazon allowed me to enroll in their KDP select program, which allows authors to lend their books and make a dollar or two for every copy lent, and, more important, it allowed me to give away my book for free for up to five days, opening up an entire new audience. So, I made the book free for five days and nearly 21,000 people downloaded it, most of whom had never heard of me or my writing before. And many of those people bought my other books, too. Ultimately, Amazon provided me a large new audience that, when combined with my existing readers, were willing to support my work—because they found value in it.

Lesson 9: Breathe and Then Do It Again

Pause and bask in the glory of your masterpiece. Go ahead: take it all in. Enjoy the moment. You deserve it. Now get started on your next masterpiece. This lifetime contains as many masterpieces as you allow. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Lesson 10: Keep Adding Value

As I continue to repeat Lesson 9, I’ll continue to learn. To share my learnings, I recently teamed up with two friends/self-publishing experts—Colin Wright and Ryan Nicodemus—to form Asymmetrical, a publishing company and community that embraces new technologies, methods, and ideas to help writers and other creative types reach an audience.

If you’re interested in publishing your ideas to the world, I’d like to invite you to come check out the Asymmetrical Community at your leisure.

It’s an online home—one that can be a periodic port in the storm, or your full time crash pad—and it’s already full of people looking to up their publishing game, learn from each other, and share what they already know. I have personally made socializing there a big part of my days, so if you want to chat, that’s the digital coffeehouse I’ll be working from. I’ll save you a seat.