If you’re going to take any notice of what I’ve got to say about making money writing, you need to believe I know what I’m talking about, right?
Fair enough. Mostly I work “behind the scenes” writing for blogs and other websites. There’s a degree of client confidentiality involved in that kind of work – which you’ll discover if you go down that route.
However, I have also collaborated on a number of ebooks and although my name doesn’t always appear, I’ve had a word with a couple of the publishers and they are happy to recognize my involvement – and happy to confirm what I’m saying if you want to check with them.
First, The Complete Intarsia Manual, an ebook in a niche area of woodworking. I got involved because it’s something I dabbled in for a while (I have a serious multiple hobby habit!). There seemed to be a gap in the market so I contacted a couple of the foremost experts and we put a book together. That was about seven years ago and it’s still selling. It’s in PDF format and only sells as an ebook. Today it might be profitable as a print-on-demand book as well, but back then it wasn’t viable.
Following on from that I got involved in the craft market for a while and wrote Complete Craft Publishing. It’s not the most successful book I’ve ever been involved with, but sales trickle in and the beauty of writing a book is that most of the work was done years ago – it’s then a question of promoting it (which I’ve been a bit lax with). Whatever this book earns is almost “free money”. It was also a great learning experience.
By the time I got involved with the next book, the Kindle was on the market – something that has changed the face of independent publishing in my view (more on that later). The French Property Buyers Guide was first released as a PDF ebook, then later on the Kindle. Sales increased dramatically as a result. People seem to trust Kindle content where there can be a reluctance to buy “old fashioned” PDF ebooks. You’ll find the book listed on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk if you’d like to take a look.
My most recent collaboration was on Sorry, No Vacancies, a book promoted by Bed-And-Breakfast-Marketing.com. It’s available on Amazon worldwide and has proved reasonably successful considering it’s quite a small market.
As you can see, they represent quite a diverse range of subjects. If you’re a “writer for hire” it’s the writing that’s important, not the subject. Subjects can always be researched and of course the internet’s a great place to do that.
How you get paid for this kind of work can vary. Mostly you get a fee for writing the book, end of story. Any royalties then go to the publisher not the writer. If you write your own book, you get to keep it all of course – but then you’re putting in the effort without knowing the reward. Nothing wrong with that, but we all need to earn a living in the mean time. On rare occasions, as I’ve done with The French Property Buyer’s Guide, you might become more involved and work out an ongoing deal based on copies sold.
Anyway, there’s a few examples to illustrate that I’m not just saying this stuff, I have actually done it!
More detail of the “how” to make money writing on the blog in due course.
