The Mind-Set of a Full-Time Author: AskALLi Beginners’ Self-Publishing Salon August 2018

Welcome to AskALLi, the self-publishing advice podcast from the Alliance of Independent Authors. This week it's our monthly beginners' self-publishing salon with advice, tips, and tools for indie authors just starting out.

Topics discussed this week include:

• Publishing a series/catalog of books to become successful;
• The different kinds of backend businesses authors can have behind the book (coaching/ online courses/ affiliate products);
• Why it's not a good idea to leave your day job till you become successful;
• How to calculate the number of books to sell before you break even;
• How to check how well a book is doing using its Amazon sales rank.

If you haven’t already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at http://allianceindependentauthors.org.

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About the Hosts

Jyotsna Ramachandran is the founder of Happy Self Publishing and author of the international bestseller Job Escape Plan.

Tim Lewis is the author of three time-travel novellas in the Timeshock series and three fantasy novels in the Magpies and Magic series under his full name of Timothy Michael Lewis. He is the host of the Begin Self-Publishing Podcast and is currently working on the book Social Media Networking- a guide to using social media to find your dream job, find love and boost your travel experience.

Read the Transcripts

Jyotsna Ramachandran: Hey guys, welcome to the self-publishing August beginner’s salon podcast. This is your host Jyotsna Ramachandran and with me we have our cohost, Tim Lewis. Hi Tim.

Tim Lewis: Hi.

Jyotsna: HI! Today I'm super excited because we are talking about how much money can you make from writing, right? But before we dive into that, I'd love to know more about what's happening with you. I know you, you're just back from the US, from the Podcast Movement conference. Right? So how is it?

Tim: It was very good. It’s the third Podcast Movement I've been to actually, I've got a Podcast Movement 2016 shirt, but I'm not going to lie back enough for you to actually see that. So, but this year it was in Philadelphia, and because I hate night flights, I flew back from Boston because Boston is one of the few us cities that has a morning flight to the UK. So, I went, spent a few days in Boston and then to Philadelphia, then overnight in Boston and back. and the, the conference was really good because, it has everything that you've ever wanted to know about podcasting basically. And so there's a great, great group of people there, so people podcast about all sorts of obscure topics. So it's a great community for podcasters.

Jyotsna: Yeah, it's really nice to go to live events because most of us who work online, that's where you actually meet real people. So what were there any key takeaways for authors?

Tim: Well, as I was talking about and the pre-chat, I went to one particularly good session about how to chant in the apple podcast shot. So. And it struck me the similarities with the same kind of advice for publishers and the Amazon shop. So the podcast charts are driven purely by subscription. So somebody's going on onto the apple APP and subscribing to your podcast. And this guy who runs it, does loads of client work with people who he launches podcasts for. His thing is all about getting people to subscribing one or two days to a particular podcast in a short period of time in the similar way to how you want to get sales for your books. Within a confined period of time. Now Amazon is a bit more finicky about its algorithm than iTunes, or Apple Podcasts, as they are now known as. Oh, so and you need to have a sustained period over a few days, but the concept is the same. And then there are also other things that you said like with your artwork or the podcast artwork, make sure it's different from all the artwork in that category so it stands out. Something like that could apply for books as well. So, make your cover if every other covering in your book is that in your book categories black, make sure you always use white for example, and that kind of thing. Obviously you don't want terrible artwork but you want something distinctive, so people are going to click on it when they see the little tab or look at it. And that kind of stuff was quite interesting to me because I've never seen anybody do that kind of talk for a podcast before.

Jyotsna: Yeah, I think consumer behavior is pretty much the same whether it's on an Amazon store or Apple Podcasts. So I think those are really important points that even artists can use.

Tim: Yeah. And there is an element of just begging absolutely everybody you know, to buy your book or subscribe to your podcast, something I've never been particularly good at it to be fair. So that was interesting. Anyway, as a particular stand out session for me,

Jyotsna: I've also been attending conferences back home in India and the good thing is I partnered with a seminar company in India and we have created three-day book writing boot camps because here a lot of people are not aware of the option of self-publishing and people are not too tech savvy yet to just go online and find out for themselves. So, we created a three-day program that goes totally in depth about self-publishing and at the end of the program we offer them our services. So it's a great platform for me to move away from just the online stuff I've been doing and really connect with people on a one on one basis. So it's been a lot of fun. So we have scheduled a lot of seminars in the coming months. So exciting times ahead.

Tim: Okay. Well that sounds fantastic. I mean, there is something great about this good old fashion real world. Where actually making those connections and certainly if you're a credible person, it's actually often a lot of times better to communicate in, in the real world, so to speak. A lot of books I've sold have been because people have met me in real life, so it's very easy to think that you're going to set up this sort of system online and do everything online, but actually don't neglect the real world and the real world connections that you make because depending on, unless you're really sleazy, the real world is probably going to be a better place to sell things.

Jyotsna: That's true. So no matter where we go, we talk about the benefits of becoming an author. So today let's talk about, is it really worth it in terms of the monetary benefits of becoming an author?

Tim: Yeah. Well, I mean I suggested this topic because it's been one of the popular shows. A couple of the popular shows on my podcast have been about author income and about how much money you can make and how and it's interesting because it's very easy to say you should self-publish and make millions and there were lots of, there were lots of people pushing self-publishing because of the financial kind of benefits of it. On the other hand, I don't, I wouldn't want to be the person who tells somebody you should give up your day job and write your book about Dinosaur Romance and you're going to live happily ever after. Because it’s got to be said there were an awful lot of self-published authors who aren't making that much more money either. They're generally making more money than traditionally published authors, for similar books. But a lot of self-publishers aren't making money. So, I thought it'd be an interesting topic, especially to talk to you about, because you, you have lots of clients who have made a lot of money out of self-publishing. So, you can give the happy perspective, so to speak, from self-publishing where I can be the more the Grinch and say like, don't give up your day job.

Jyotsna: Right. No, I totally agree that giving up your day job, just because you've written your first book would be insane because until you consistently make a good five figure income a month through your books, it really doesn't make sense for most people, especially if you're living in countries like the US or the UK where the cost of living is pretty high. Right? in India when I used to make even three or $4,000 a month from my book royalties, it was good enough for me to shut down my other businesses and just focus on that book. But I'm sure that's not the case in other countries. So one has to first understand how much money do they need at least to take care of their bills and make sure that it comes consistently and they have a plan for the book of like a marketing plan to consistently sell the book. I think that a lot of people don't give the kind of importance that that book deserves. So they write the book with a lot of passion. They put it out on Amazon and then they forget about it. So when you don't really focus on in the book is not going to sell by itself and you're not going to become rich, but I know a lot of authors who really give the kind of importance that the book deserves, they monitor their sales on a daily basis and they keep coming up with strategies to keep increasing the sales. So those are the kinds of people who really take it seriously. The other ones who end up quitting their jobs after a couple of months or a couple of years and they become full time writers. So I know an author called Steve Scott. He writes. He used to write books related to Internet marketing. Then he, he started focusing on the habit building genre. So he writes a lot. I think he's written more than 60 or 70 books now in the last four years. That's a lot of books. He writes these short concise eBooks and he has been doing this on a, on a very regular basis. Every two months a book is out, and he does it in all the different formats an audio book, a paperback and the eBook and now he's in a position where he can in order to really make lots and lots of money through the book, but not everybody gives that kind of time and puts in that kind of effort. So it could be a challenge for most writers. So that's my take on that.

Tim: Yeah, I mean I think the people who are consistently, who have given up their day job and are doing it purely professional at why they are producing an awful lot of books. So, people like Mike and Underlay and the people who do the 20, 20 bucks to 50 k conference, I almost do an industrial like level self-publishing. So they've got like in staff, editors that are producing a book every month in a long series of books. So, it's kind of like they're not just writing a book and then expecting like, or the money to pour in. they are producing series and they all got a system running. And I think that if we do that kind of approach and you're professional about it, you will eventually get to the point where you are more than self-sufficient and you're actually getting a decent amount of income coming. people like Joanna Penn who is now very big and very successful. I mean she would tell you, that she down, she and her husband downsized their property. I think they had a property and they sold it and they downsized to a smaller flat so that she had this like financial flexibility to be able to spend the time on her like Writing career. And that's one of options, especially if you're all in the US, will be UK property prices are really high and costs are really high. On the other hand, if you've got an existing property and what existing income coming in and you really cut back your costs then, that gives you the opportunity to get into that habit, get into the groove and start producing books to get through that period where you may be not making money and your right. You do need to focus on the marketing. This is where I've been particularly terrible in that I've tended to publish books and then get distracted by another project or another podcast. Oh, the new book. And I've not put in the time to do the marketing because from my experience I've had one. My very first book was reasonably successful, but some of the later books have not been. You almost need a whether or not the bookies, the best book ever or the worst book ever. You need to get it to a certain point before people actually see it in the market place. So marketing is really important just to get your book out there because it can be the best book in the world and not everybody who reads it can be like, and you can say a word of mouth will find the book. And it's like, well it might do after 20 years. I mean there are long history of books that were successful 20 or 30 years. But the person who wrote the book died as [inaudible], even though the book now, he's really well known, so don't necessarily rely on word of mouth. You've actually got to get out there and promote your book to have a hope that it will be successful.

Jyotsna: True, I think it all begins with the mindset that if an author believes like Joanna, that I'm going to become a full time author. That's going to be my main job and they take the necessary. I think that's the starting place because I really don't know how many people would think that drastic step of downsizing your house because you want to focus on your career as a writer. So I think that connection is really important. And then the other key points that you mentioned is the series of books. Magic doesn't happen with just one book. I mean it's like a lottery that can happen for you know, maybe one in a million, but for the rest of us, I think the consistency of publishing more and more books that are in the same genre so that you become the leader in that category and you develop a following. Because I think by the time you write your fifth or sixth book, you actually have a sizable audience. We're really waiting for your next book. I think once you reach that level of, of followers, that's when success starts like knocking your door.

Tim: Yeah, it's an exponential thing as well because let’s say that you write a whole series of books about yoga or something and you write 10 books about yoga and None of them sell. Then you do a new series, where you start writing about Shiatsu massage and about book three in that series. You've been doing it for about two years or whatever and you've made hardly any money, but from book three in that series it really takes off. Now people who bought that, that series of Shiatsu massage looks. A lot of them go back and buy the yoga books because it's by you. So those assets, those books are still assets. Even if they're not selling Now, there’s nothing. If you write a successful book in the future, your old books will sell as well. So don't get too dispirited if your books don't sell now because if they're good and the good quality and they may sell in the future, but you have to keep producing stuff so that there is that hope the people will come back to your old stuff. And so it's never a case that a book is a wasted, wasted time because it may pick up. I mean, you might become famous for some totally unrelated reason. Then people buy your book. So, it's kind of like, look, I went to, when I was in Boston, I went to the JFK, presidential museum and now he's actually JFK wrote two books, and I'm sure like sell because JFK wrote them whether or not they're actually good books or not at all. But that's the thing. I mean a book is an investment, but I wouldn't expect necessarily to be able to write a book and then give up your job and be like, oh, what happened in [inaudible]? Because that's just hard. He really, at the end of the day, unless you have a plan and the big amount of cash or something that you've downsized or you're working at Starbucks or in a, in a small factory you in and you used to have a mansion. You have to be sensible about the way that you are into the money in terms of actually making money self-publishing.

Jyotsna: because you mentioned yoga. Tim. I could immediately think of a client of ours. So she is a yoga teacher and she would conduct classes on online, on skype. So, when she wrote her first book, it was just a book and it did decently well during the launch, but a couple of months later she gave us a call and she told that, within the first month of the launch she managed to book Thirty Thousand Dollar’s Worth of coaching clients through her book. They all found her through the book and that was amazing because the money doesn't just have to be in the form of royalties. You could, if you have some kind of a business that is related to the book. If your book is on Instagram ads and you have a social media agency, so people will read your book and maybe busy entrepreneurs don't have the time implemented themselves and they would end up giving them to your agency. A lot of people have their own coaching and consulting practices or even online courses and I find them really making a lot of money in the back end. So even if they have just sold the 500 books and they get five clients out of that, it only covers the cost of publishing and more so.

Tim: Yeah. Well I mean there is on the nonfiction side, certainly there is credibility. I mean you, you hear the expression, they wrote the book on it. Well now you can write the book on it just because you can self-publish a book on it because nine out of 10 people who know about the topic either haven't got the time or are too frightened or are waiting for a publisher or some other reason. They haven't written the book on a topic. So, if you self-publish a book on a topic, and especially if it's only one of the few books on that topic, do you become an expert? almost because of people won't read the book. They will know that it exists, that you've got a book on that topic. So, you’re right. I think for nonfiction people, if they were, if, if you do any kind of business based on your activity, I mean if it's like even if you say you'd like fly fishing in Scotland, they used to be an advert in the UK that was famous for this guy like JR Hartley who was always bringing up people trying to find this book that he'd written in the seventies around fly fishing. Even something like that. You could maybe do a deal with people who are away on fishing holidays and become an affiliate. I make money from your book via an affiliate relationship. if you, even if you don't have a business. So you're right. For nonfiction, I think the money is not necessarily in the book but in the prestige and the spinoffs that you get from the actual book.

Jyotsna: Yeah, absolutely. And as you rightly mentioned, a person doesn't have to have their own products or services, they could be an affiliate for of a ton of different products and that can bring them huge income. But again, it all boils down to how consistently you do it and one book can, may or may not truly bring wonders. So it's really, it's all about the consistency.

Tim: Yeah, I mean, I suppose I should say what an affiliate figures because I mean, it's a term that I know, and you know, but for people who don't know what an affiliate is, is, so for example, you can be an Amazon affiliate, so you can go onto Amazon affiliate into Amazon. You Been, you've got a little web link and anybody who uses a web address to a particular product, you will get paid like two percent or three percent cost, because you're almost like an introductory fee. So you're being paid a commission for introducing somebody to something. So that's when affiliate relationship is.

Jyotsna: what's awesome about Amazon affiliate, this person clicks your link and goes and buys, not necessarily the product that you suggested, but anything else for the next 48 hours, imagine they bought, an LCD TV even get a chance to earn a commission even on that. So that I think Amazon is pretty cool when it comes to their affiliate program.

Tim: I, I almost jokingly put a webpage up with loads of these motorized lawnmowers, which was like $4,000 and hoping somebody might buy. Nobody did, but I was hoping I'm like 80, 80 pounds affiliate for somebody buying my choice lawn mower or you might miss something you don't know. I mean, I mean actually compared to a lot of companies, their affiliate rates are quite low. I mean a lot of online courses. So if you're talking about social media, a lot of people running social media courses because it's mainly profit for them. The course they are paid. Some are paid like 20, 30, 50 percent affiliate rights. So affiliate deal was can be very good for all offers if somebody in your related area, but it has to be something that you actually are happy to be associated with. You don't want to say our quick get rich quick course name. Have all the people who you've read your book give you bad reviews because you gave them and they got ripped off.

Jyotsna: Yeah, people are buying because they trust the authors. Authors should never make a wrong use of that trust that they have won. Right? And in terms of fiction authors I have been following Nick Stevenson for a long time and what Nick does is he has given away one book which is permanently free on Amazon. So, and I'm sure a lot of fiction readers love free stuff and they end up downloading his book and they're apart of his email lists now. So whenever he publishes a new book, they all get notified. And building your email list is super critical even for fiction authors because that's how the readers or the previous book will get to know about your new launch. And yeah, I think it's having one or two books permanently free on Amazon is a great strategy to build that list and then eventually you'll grow your readership.

Jyotsna: Oh yeah. Though, I think it works a lot better in the past that it does now. But it's still a valued technique. I mean the, the advantage of. As a fiction author. If you've got an email list of a thousand people who are actually genuinely a thousand people, they're not just somebody who had some sort of giveaway deal and they don't really know who you are. the advantages It gives you are, you can make sure that people buy your book when it comes out. So you spike up the charts in a similar way to like what I was talking about before. And also it means you're going to get a lot of reviews for your books from these people who are more like your super fans and reviews are so fantastically important for books, especially good reviews, but just having any reviews really having the last number of reviews for your book because you don't want that. I mean, if you're going onto Amazon and you see a book, that there were no reviews tool that's a little bit, unless it's very, very new that's a little bit suspicious to most people. Even like I'm in a three star or four star rating and I have eighty reviews. It's better than having two five star reviews and one of them looked like your mom. So that's the, that's the kind of advantage to having a list already, but you need to be able to get that list of people. So. It's just having that, that group of people who will go and buy your stuff and make so much difference.

Tim: True. Absolutely. Tim would you like to give a ball park number, which is realistic that authors can probably look at for publishing a book. I’m sure the range is huge. There are people who make nothing and there are people who make lots and lots of money. So any numbers You want to share that you know how much people are making. Well, I've done. I did actually a blog post stroke podcast episode about author income, but I didn't kind of answer it in the same way because it's very difficult because I. I mean somebody maybe like a data guy could give you a better figure about average amount or how much people. My suspicion is that it's like with podcasts, apparently the average podcast gets about 140 downloads a month, which is actually pretty low. That's the middle level and I suspect the middle level in terms of self-published authors is going to be probably less than $100 a month, but that's not necessarily as depressing as it sounds because there is an awful lot of people who are either self-publishing a book because they just wanted to self-publish a book. They did a very short book. They didn't edit it properly. It's got lots of typos in it. They haven't marketed. They've done a good book, but they haven’t marketed it and they like given up

Jyotsna: and that’s why the average is so low.

Tim: yeah, that will be dragging the average. I mean, I don't know, I've just picked that figured out the top of my head as a guess. It may be a much higher or it might be much lower. So everything's going to be pushed down by Loads of books that are selling basically nothing a month. maybe one or two copies. but my if I actually click across to me am I, like a little chart I did on mine. what I did was I worked out. I've got a little chart that we're looking at so you don't have to bear with me here, but rather than asking how much money would you make? I was, I did some calculations roughly of how many books you have to sell to get the costs back of your book.

Jyotsna: That’s interesting. It’s like an ROI calculation, right?

Tim: Yeah, I mean this is a beginselfpublishing.com/authorincome.com so, and, and it makes a big difference how much your eBook costs. This is just looking at eBooks and this is just looking at the US because I couldn't be bothered to do the complicated more complicated calculations. So, for a ninety-nine cents eBook, and this is just in the US and its, 40,000 words long and I used the standard costs that Reedsee have. So Reedsee is a company does like marketing services and they said this is the average amount that people spend on covers. This is the average amount people spend on editing and they're more high end. So these are higher costs. But to break even, in terms of sales for a ninety-nine cents eBook, just in the US, you need to sell 9,726 copies of the book. If it's 40,000 words long, if it's 80,000 words long. typical

Jyotsna: What is the assumptions we're making in terms of the investment?

Tim: Well the assumption that I'm making a is I'm using Reedsees figures because it costs more to edit a longer book. That's why I'm giving different figures for how long the book is. for a 80,000 word book which is a typical novel, a nonfiction book. You need to sell 14,226 copies for ninety nine cents even. Now the reason why these figures are so high is that for ninety-nine cents eBook you only get 35 percent royalties, which is something they need to always consider. Now, if we take the two, same biggest for nine $9.99 eBook for 45,000 words equal, you need to sell 504 copies of your book.

Jyotsna: Which sounds more practical.

Tim: Consider considerably lower, and for an 80,000 word, but you need to sell 737. Now the great problem is that 9.99 is really, really way too for most eBooks, unless it's very technical. So, it'd be like a programming book or really profound skill, but you can get away with 9.99, for certainly for a 40 K in 30,000-word eBook a, you'd be hard Struggled to sell it for 9.99.

Jyotsna: Other books are priced between 2.99, and 4.99 for eBooks.

Tim: So I have got the fee. So, for the 2.99, let’s say which is the standard sort of eBook price, for a 40,000-word eBook you need 1,890 book sales to break even, which actually if you look at the lifetime of a book, isn’t that hard to ask really and for an 80,000-word book you need 2,750 book sales.

Jyotsna: Yeah. If the author also produces the book as a paperback as well as an audio book, these numbers would drastically reduce, right?

Tim: Oh yeah. I mean that's the thing, now this is a breakeven even calculation. This is just for you to get the money back that you spent on it, because I have actually later on I put in, some more thought experiment, things that like actually counting for your writing time as well. So, if you were like minim the minimum wage are, if you counted that you're right in time with the minimal wage costs, but if anybody wants the fond of looking at my fault experiment calculation, but you're right. In reality, you could have a paperback book as well. You can have an audio book and this has taken no notice of all the ancillary advantages. It's just talking about like selling yoga courses or affiliate. It's just, yeah, it's just the royalty amount, but it is something . let's say for an average a book you've, you probably need to be thinking you need to sell about 2000 copies to make your money back. Probably less dependent on the making. You know a good deal on a cover designer. You can find an editor maybe be you can barter with or you can find somebody cheaper who's actually really good. Then that cost count. That number of books you need to sell it goes right down, but it's probably a good idea to be thinking about two, 3000 books is what you will need to be selling to kind of be making good money from books and that's the lifetime of a book. So this is where having new books available that can make sure that people actually go back and buy your old books. It comes much more of an important thing in terms of making money from self-publishing.

Jyotsna: I would also like to share one tool for authors were still in the planning stage and they've not really decided on what topic a, there is a school tool in this website called kindlepreneur. Where if you enter the Amazon rank of a book, it would show how many copies is it selling per day. So probably if, if an author is confused about, should I go with a harder genre or mystery and probably they can go into Amazon and look at the Amazon rank of the other books that are selling in that category. And that way they would really get a good idea about how many copies the other authors. the other authors are selling. but again it's by no means it means that you can sell the same number of copies, but it'll at least give people some vague idea about how much the other authors are making. So that's something which people can look at if they want to compare some categories and see how the books are doing. I can probably leave the link in the show notes so people can check out, just ended up Amazon rank and it will show the number of copies that that particular book is selling on an average per day and per month.

Tim: Yeah. I mean Another great resource is the Kanalytics website where they do report on which, which are relatively selling more than other ones. but that kindlepreneur site. It's actually very good for general just general blog posts as well as I didn't even know that tool existed so I'll have to check it out.

Jyotsna: It's a free tool. It’s pretty cool for people who are doing their research.

Tim: Yeah, I mean this is the thing I'm always of the like I don't want to encourage people to just give up their day job and think they're going to become, especially on the fiction side, because on nonfiction there were so many more ways to make money off the back of the book. I think actually for my last interview with the guy from the guy who runs Kanalytics, Alex Newton, he was saying that there is a lot more money actually in books in fiction, but you haven't got the, you can can't sell a course about your fantasy book. Really. I mean, that's fine.

Jyotsna: Maybe you can write a course, create a course on how to write fantasy books. And sell it to other authors.

Tim: That's my. Yeah. You see, an awful lot of fiction authors who are successful do write marketing courses because they suddenly realize they can teach other people how to do what they did and make money from it. Yeah.

Jyotsna: Like Mark Dawson, who has created Facebook marketing for authors course.

Tim: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that fiction. The fiction has over nonfiction is that fiction doesn't dilate. So if we write. Well I mean I suppose something like yoga, but they might be suddenly new technique that comes out in Yoga that this book was written beforehand and you have to update your book, but certainly if you're writing a book about social media, you're books probably going to. I mean I'm writing a book about social media and I am going to have to update it in about a year or something. so there is this like you're going to have the cost of updating and or all your book could just sort of get older and older. So, I'm sure a Facebook marketing book from 2008 is not going to be that relevant now as it compares to one written this year. But this year's but might be irrelevant next year. So that's an advantage that fiction has nonfiction in that you write it and it's there and you don't necessarily really have to do anything about it yet. Once you've written it, it's out there. People buy it or they don't buy it, but they might buy in the future. where with nonfiction. You could write loads of books about Internet marketing and if I don't sell now, but at the time they might sell it in the future, there'll be outdated.

Jyotsna: Yeah, I think each genre has its own advantages in India. I know of a fiction author. He is super popular here. He writes stories for young adults and he has now become a screenplay writer for movies because he's so good at his plots. The movie guys have identified his talent and they are making him write screenplays and I know a lot of authors whose books book of whose story rights have been bought by filmmakers, but I think that's very, very rare and its where one can’t just depend on something like that area, but I think for fiction authors of the book is a selling on its own organically through your marketing efforts and you keep publishing more and more books and build a huge following. Think that's when you will be ready to actually quit your job, so don't be in a hurry.

Tim: Well, let me know what the people like. Dawson, Adam Croft, who've been really, really successful fiction authors. They have put the time in the book after book, after book, after book, after book. And all high-quality stuff as well. so yeah, I mean consistency, it doesn't guarantee anything. I mean you could buy 100 books and all of them not sell, but I think that's pretty unlikely. I think if you've written 100 books and none of them sell then you probably got more of a fundamental problem, it's very easy to just write one book and it might be the best book in the world, but it may just never take off. so you've got to keep that consistency going. Obviously this is not something I've done very well. I writer about a book a year, but I think if you're really serious about fiction writing, you should concentrate on it and write as many books as you can, get that cycle going because you will improve as a writer just by writing more books.

Jyotsna: The feedback you get from your readers is so important to improve your next book and I think that that's why writing more number of books really helps in improving your writing and making it interesting enough for your readers.

Tim: Yeah.

Jyotsna: Great. So thank you so much, Tim, for sharing all those valuable inputs and we'll see you guys again next month. And until then, I'll make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified every time we post a new video.

Tim: It's right down here or up here, wherever or wherever you're watching this.

Jyotsna: Thank you so much.