The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 15 – A writers WORST nightmare

The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

As authors we're 100% depended on our data, yet many treat it as not important. A writers worst nightmare comes through the day your computer crashes and everything is lost for ever.

We don't want that to happen to you, so we took it upon ourselves to lay out 4 simple steps that will secure you data for good.

The different tools mentioned in the podcast are:
AxCrypt for encrypting your files: https://www.axcrypt.net/
Acronis for backup: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/
The handy USB drive: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-128GB-Traveler-DTSE9G2/dp/B00U88FV0S/

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LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
So if you have a new idea for a complete new story, should you just go ahead and write it straight away or would it somehow be worth it to actually test if readers would be interested in this story idea or not? Well, that's what we are going to talk about in today's session and also if it is worth testing with readers, then how do you do that?

Autumn (38s):
Yeah. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn and together with Jesper we've published more than 20 novels. Our aim is to use our experienced with to help you with writing marketing and selling your books to fans all over the world. Okay. Before we get into all of that, uh, let's just do a quick update on what we're working on as we've decided to do on these monthly joint sessions and a as we talked about last month, we U been pretty busy on a few number, a few different items, haven't we?

Autumn (1m 16s):
Yes, we have some big projects coming up and one of them we hit a new milestone. So we're both really excited to be at this point with our top secret, not so secret all building course that we have been working on for months now. Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah. Um, yeah, so well basically we, as we mentioned last time, we were sort of nailing down our joint process, uh, for plotting.

Jesper (1m 48s):
So we have the book on our guidebook on how to flood a novel and there was a workbook associated to that. And on top of that we have a book on story ideas, which is sort of a well congruent with what we're talking about here today I guess. But we have those three books. Um, it sort of in the way, because we were focusing on getting those done before we could actually put some full effort into the world, but in cost. But, uh, now I'm very happy to say that we actually have the first draft of all three of those books done.

Autumn (2m 22s):
So we're really excited. We have some content editing and our editor and actually a couple of bucks covers. But we got one of them done. So we're really moving along with those and our focus is definitely going into the world building, which is perfect because it's really starting to come together and hopefully it will snowball to completion very quickly. Well, quickly as it this year, 2019. Yeah, yeah. I was also doing this or you couldn't see that the, yeah, for those on the podcast, I'm doing air quotes quickly, uh, because uh, uh, well, uh, there is a still a lot of work with the welding course.

Jesper (2m 58s):
Um, but now because of those first drafts of those books being done, uh, sort of only focusing on the world building costs now, so that's got to pick up a lot of peace. Um, but they still months away before it's done. Um, and as we've talked about before, we're building our own future world in, in conjunction with the development of the cost as sort of an example sessions so that people can see how, how to apply what you're teaching, which makes a lot of sense.

Jesper (3m 31s):
Um, um, on top of that, we also want to add a example outgrowing of our, the first book in our next series, which we have not done yet, but a the first applied for that we want to include as a download in the planet books are, but people also there can see how we are going about the plotting and how are we applying what, what the book is teaching. So that alone also halls that book back because we need to finish the wealth building first and then we got a plot the book and only then can we, uh, you know, make that download available inside the program.

Jesper (4m 5s):
They could, we release the book. So it's probably gonna I guess we're going to sort of have a kitchen perfect later in 2019 where we released the three books at one time and also have a cross on all of a sudden everything sort of well contribute factor, except I guess I'm gonna say it sounds like we made this giant ball of yarn that's all knotted together and tied or a giant piece of Celtic knot work and everything is interlaced independent on each other. So well it's all released. It's going to be big, phenomenal and beautiful. But until that, I feel like we're just pulling it individual strands that we don't see the whole pattern yet, but we're so close, we're getting there.

Autumn (4m 38s):
I'm really excited. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Alright, well building and our books, that's actually a really good lead in to what we're talking about today. If, you know, should you just go and write whatever book idea is in your head, is that how the best way or writing books or is there a way of testing the market to see what readers are interested in? And so that's a fun question and one we both kind of ponder it and wonder. We're pondering as we look at our current, are you serious that we're going to be writing?

Jesper (5m 11s):
Yeah, it's very interesting actually because it was something, it was something autumn brought up actually a while back I think because initially we talked about it quite a long while back about, but I'm sort of testing the waters with story ideas and trying to figure out if it's, you know, if there was a way to test out whether or not a story idea is gay, getting any interest from Rios a but also if it's sort of worth investing the time to write a full trilogy, for example with the story idea before we're getting into it.

Jesper (5m 44s):
So we talked about it for quite a long while back and then it sort of went on ice for a while because we were doing other things I guess a but now it's, it's starting to become a bit relevant to have the conversation again and it's, well, especially me as well. I'm more interested because I know autumn have done a bit of testing with some with this stuff, uh, over the last well once I guess. Um, and when I started out writing my first a series, I did exactly what I guess like 90% of all authors probably do is I write what I wanted to write and then I just cross my fingers.

Jesper (6m 20s):
Hopefully the market will like these sorts of books. Uh, but yeah, the question today is, is, is that really the best way of doing it? So that's where we, we sort of exploring this topic here. One good talking to you at the same time. So, uh, so hopefully you will get a lot of this, but maybe you want to sort of explain a bit what you mean. Sure. As can say this is, I'm in the middle still of doing this experiment because I did the same thing when I wrote my first trilogy. I had this idea, I just wrote it and actually then I wrote a different series and I just wrote it and they've done well, but they could be doing better.

Autumn (6m 53s):
I look at the market, I know they could be doing better and my perspective has changed. I am, I'm passionate about writing. This is definitely my passionate what I want to do as an adult, but I'm also much more interested in now as an entrepreneur. I understand the business of writing and I know when you're doing a business you test out products, do you know, do some market testing, makes sure that people are actually going to like what you're doing. And of course there's a couple of ways of doing that and one is like you can see what is really popular now like game of Thrones and say, Hey, I've got to write game of Thrones, my version, but by the time I got that done written and how many other people are writing game of Thrones type stories right now you're just going to get this tiny little sliver of the market.

Autumn (7m 35s):
But the other thing to do is to say true to yourself and what you want to write, which is great, but don't go and just write an entire series. Don't build an entire series. The best thing to do is to test the market and that can be done through a couple of means. One is short stories, which I've been writing short stories and they're great because they also help with the world-building. If you're, if you're kind of pants in your world or your characters on some short stories really are great, phenomenal way of getting a better feel for the world as you actually write it. Instead of writing a list of, you know, or even drawing a map, it gives you more of a perspective, very similar to how the novel will be, but somewhere between a short story and a novella.

Autumn (8m 16s):
And that's what I am trying. I actually have two story ideas that I think are great, completely different ideas. Um, and I releasing two novellas in may and one in June and I'm going to see which one's readers perfor before I go and write the entire series on either of them. Because I'm at the point where I want to know I'm going to be writing something that only I enjoy. I mean I just love writing, but that readers are really waiting for and going to be receptive to because I do this for a living and I have to make money now you have to pay the bills and eat.

Autumn (8m 48s):
I, I'm not a vampire yet or a tree. I'd actually like to be a tree, but a tree they could, right. So like an end, it has to be an a. It would be a fantastic way to live. So that's what I have written. I did plot out the series, I have a solid idea of what books one, two, and three would be, but I have only written the first novella and I'm going to hand give them out. Um, well that goes out there going to be 99 cents and I might do them as a sign up as a free a banged lead-in, um, reader magnet, but I'm going to give them, you know, a couple of months out there to see which one readers prefer in whichever is the one that I see the most interested in.

Autumn (9m 30s):
That's the one I'm going to go ahead and write next. And then I avoid to write all three books and release them. Boom, boom, boom. Like we've discussed before in these episodes. So that's a fantastic way of doing it. But I don't know. You could give your ideas. Yes. As I mean does that sound like a reasonable thing would? My biggest con that I have found, and you can, this will be a good one for you to think about is I have written two novellas, two totally different worlds, two totally different characters. I've had to take the time to develop characters, develop a world, develop magic systems, everything.

Autumn (10m 3s):
We've talked about, everything that we talked about in our world building course and I'm writing so far, 45,000 words in one 35,000 words on the other and I might not go any further. And so there's definitely a time constraint there. I mean, I could test out other ideas using the same world but different characters. But it's also not as easy as saying darn it, I writing three bucks and that's what's going to happen. Yeah, be good. Because I actually was, uh, wanted to rewind that for a second, but just to understand, so are you saying that you have like two completely different worlds and two completely different stories and that that's, and then you write one stop throwing one of them and another show of throwing another?

Autumn (10m 47s):
Is that what you're saying? I have written short stories in both of them, but uh, to really do this market testing, I'm going to actually put them for sale, not just for download and I'm putting them on Amazon. And so they're actually novellas. Ah, the one is 45,000 words. The other one is 35,000 words, but it's two different, two different stories. Totally. One is more urban fantasy modern to more sun in this world. So that one was pretty easy to develop but at the end and a lot of backstory to make it real. And the other one is dark fantasy and totally different world.

Jesper (11m 19s):
So that went with all the regular world-building you'd have to do. Right. Because my thinking would more be like, for example, let's, let's use our own future fiction. Here's an example for now. Uh, but we are building that entire world and am we've got to write in that world so it's not like, well then we'll just build a new world after that and the new world after that onto something, you know, we got to ride in that world. But so my thinking was more like that, that what you would need to do with in this case a I understand you have two different worlds and all that, but I'm just trying to link it back to to let's say a more efficient way.

Jesper (11m 57s):
So we could have only one world. Uh, and then I was just speculating that maybe what you could do would be to write two or two or three or whatever, how many want to do different short stories that is all set in that world, but maybe just focus on on sort of some different stories or maybe some different characters or something just to see them. Which one sticks the most or which, which one gets downloaded the report the most mentally, you know, I wasn't thinking thinking that that would be my caveat is that if something doesn't, if it's this whole world that I've developed doesn't work, that's something I was thinking I could try just, you know, go different part of the history.

Autumn (12m 40s):
Try different character to find the, find the aspect that readers certainly go, yes, this is what I want to know about and this is what I'm going to. And that once you see that spark, once you see readers really say, yes, I really want to read this. That's when you know, you have something that you want to go ahead and write and obviously write as quickly as you can, but it's probably going to be a year from that novella to that trilogy being released. But that's all understandable. They're excited. You're also going to be building readers, uh, who are waiting for the rest of the story.

Jesper (13m 11s):
And that's, that's still a very powerful, so you have even that many more people waiting for that release. Yeah. As I said in the beginning of this video, we're sort of figuring this out. That's, we talked to basically you're just to view a seeing as sort of debating what to do ourselves here. So, uh, so that, that's sort of a bit of a look behind the scenes as well because I was just thinking as well when you set that, if it's even possible to do, unless you have quite some audience already. I mean in our cases we have some email lists, we can email people, we can ask her readers to which one do you prefer?

Jesper (13m 45s):
And we can, you know, when release a short story, we can email them when we can say, okay, now it's ready and they will go on and buy it or download it. But I'm just thinking G to be actually be able to judge if one story is better ended the other or sort of entice us Rita more than one or the other, then you need enough statistical relevance to be able to actually judge it. You know, if if your grandma and your mother downloaded one and your brother and your sister download the other and you know, it doesn't help it.

Jesper (14m 18s):
I mean you need, you need at least a thousand people reading each of them. And to be able to say anything relevant about whether or not it's, it's, I mean a hundred people is not even enough. Categorize myself as pretty savvy in, in the, in the apps and stuff. But uh, I think I would even, I would have a hard time, I think driving enough traffic to justice 99 cents short story to actually get people to convert to buy it. If they're just like they have no, let's say not it's of me or us or whatever already.

Jesper (14m 51s):
I think it would be difficult. I think it would be, I agree actually and I thought of that cause you could sit there and churn out a whole bunch of stories and never see any real, just like S you know any real catch because you just don't have the marketing. But this might be a good reason to try KDP select for a 90 day period because then you get the free offers. Try to do some giveaways with BookFunnel, giveaway something where people sign up for your readers list so that you can then get them, they can have it for free by signing up and then you can say, Hey and read this other one for free.

Autumn (15m 24s):
And then tell me which one you like. Because I mean that's a great way to start building up new new readers as well. Because I've thought about this. My previous books are, I have one that's sort of post-apocalyptic, which kind of fits one of the stories, but the other one I went from Nobel bright ethic fantasy too. I think I've been just a dark phase in my life and everything's dark. It's dark fantasies. I'm very a. One of the questions I recently answered on Instagram is would you survive in your world? I'm like, no, I would die in this world. My first world by Epic fantasy world.

Autumn (15m 55s):
Oh yeah, I'd be fine. So fine. This one I'm dead and five days easy. So it's a much darker world. And so will my old audience light kit, I'm not sure. So I'm thinking I might need to do some new audience building anyway. So I have thought of that where it's like, Hey, sign up, get it for free. Oh Hey, here's the other one for free. Hey, which one do you like? And so there is going to be a lot more, you know, talking to people, chasing people, saying, Hey, you know, do a little bit of a hustle, but I want to know what people like and hopefully I can get them to interact with me.

Autumn (16m 30s):
I'm actually doing some interact polls and some contests and stuff like that to get people kind of more excited and more involved in the story. And knowing, learning about it very quickly, learning about the world very quickly and then I can even just see what people, how people are they doing the direct polls, are they answering questions and finding out what are the eight fantasy races they are in the swine or if they're rightfully or dark Faye and the other one, see how often they're actually following through with some of the other things. And I can take all of that data to see where people are interested.

Autumn (17m 3s):
Hopefully, hopefully I'll let you know in a year when I have the books written super herself. Yeah, well, well at the end of the day that the question fundamentally here is, is it worth to do some market analysis beforehand before you stopped doing all the, you know, writing a full trilogy releasing it only to figure out that, well, nobody's really interested in in this particular world that his story, you know. But on the other hand, is it worth because, well, as I said before, I think if you have a good building audience already, you can, you can probably get to the stage whereby you can make a conclusion without let's say too much hot work.

Jesper (17m 46s):
But if you don't have that, I think you want for quite some hustling to get to the stage where you actually have the input that you need to to make a proper conclusion on whether or not people like one story versus the other. A so for me, I think unless you have the building audience, I were, I would say, well if you're willing to spend a lot of time and effort on it, then it's great. But is it going to long run monitors situated?

Jesper (18m 17s):
Is it going to save your time? I've just got to spend a lot of time figuring out which one you're to. Right. Anyway. So you know, if you see what I mean, if, if you write fairly quickly, you know, if you don't take what two years to write a novel, sadly, let's say it takes you four months to write a novel, you know 12 months you're going to have Fultz religion done. If you don't have any building an audience and you have to run ads and you have to collect all the data to figure out which one to write the first year I need to write the short stories, then you need to do all the margarita.

Jesper (18m 48s):
It's, I would think you're probably looking at seven, eight month right there. And then you could have done the full trilogy in four months extra and then that's done. Yeah. And that is definitely the catch. And I also think of it from a reader's perspective cause I've done this as I've met other authors and you go to their Amazon page and you see all these like maybe books one and two out of five that are up. But then there's books one and two and three or book one and this other trilogy and book two of just all of these half finished trilogies.

Autumn (19m 20s):
And I know as a reader I'm like just finish something. And so when I see an author publish a book, a book one and they, you know, I, you list out the names of the rest of the books, you know, is that really what you want to see as a reader? Go era. Have other readers come to you and see you let you have all these book ones and no books two, three and four. I don't think that's really what you want to see either. So it is, I play with that and I have to admit I probably, I like both of these stories enough. I can see me writing the whole series and both of them.

Autumn (19m 51s):
So it's more it. So which one do I write next versus which one is going to go into the hopper and I'm just never going to see the light of day. I don't feel that way about it. But that is the true platform that you know is being built as a, this is a writing as a business and this is how you do your research and this is how you know what to write index and you're going to have ideas that literally get canned and never written. And that's just so sad to be as a writer. You know, even I kind of straddling the line of well this is the way you're supposed to do it. And then there's me going, but I just want to write it.

Autumn (20m 24s):
I just want to see which one to write decks and I have a feeling I already know which one I'm going to write next. So yeah, why am I doing this other than, you know, I can be enough build up some readers while I'm just have the novellas out and it will help me though. Give me maybe confidence a which one's going to do better? And I have to admit though, you and I together have done some market research and that totally a little bit of what I was planning on writing because by doing the market research I refined and tone down, um, some elements that I would have normally have kept.

Autumn (21m 0s):
So I do think market research has a place and you should be aware of like what is the top 50 bestselling books and fantasy are your genre right now and allow that to, you know, temper the ideas that are going in your head. Because if you really want to write a bestseller, if you really are going to do this for money, you do have to do some research somehow. If you are a fast writer and you can whip out, you know, if my mother my game and really concentrating, I could easily do a novella and a month that is nothing.

Autumn (21m 30s):
So if I could write two or three novellas, get a feel for the audience, um, with, cause I do have a, you know, a pretty good audience already built up. Say, Hey, which one of these do you like? And then go for that series and get it done in a year and have a very solid platform all the while. I think that's a really good business idea. Yeah, in principle, I agree. I, I, for me, I think you need to have the built in audience otherwise, to be honest, I would, if somebody came and asked me for advice and they did not have a built in audience, I would probably tell them, no, don't do it.

Jesper (22m 6s):
Don't do that. Because you've got to spend so much time and effort on it. And honestly, I don't think unless you're willing to really spend a long time and I've got to get to to a proper conclusion, chances are probably your, you'll jump to a conclusion the way before you should and then you're going to end up in the same place. You wouldn't have ended up anyway. But what I think I would say though is, because you mentioned how we've done some market research and whatnot, which is actually part of some of the modules in the world than in cost. So I would say if you know what you're doing with your world building, meaning that that you're also building a world that you know has elements in it that that does generally like them.

Jesper (22m 47s):
That is the first step and then the second step and now I'm shamelessly plugging some of the stuff that we're doing at the second step in step is a. If you know what you're doing with your plotting and you can develop the characters based on some, what should I call it, like like generic elements that is also known to invoke a reader interests. If you sort of have those things working together, I would almost go as far as to say that the story idea it as long as there's enough meat on the bone of that story idea that it can carry it.

Jesper (23m 23s):
It's religion for example, but let's assume that that is the case. Then I would say it probably doesn't really matter if it's the one story of the other one. You're writing right? Because if the world buildings based on some market analysis and the plotting is based on what we know Rita's generally like with characters and plot lines and character arcs and those sorts of things should be safe to be honest. I think. I think so too though. I think let's am ask anyone watching or listening that, uh, you know, do you want an update as I carry out my experiment that's coming up?

Autumn (23m 58s):
Uh, if you do put it in the comments and we will schedule one of our one on one sessions, or at least a little update later on to let you know how my little experiment runs and if I do see some feedback and then if it carries out in a year when I launched the series, if I really do see that maybe my sales have increased and I feel it comes from what it does it come from, does it come from the fact that I asked readers which ones they prefer and went with that or, because, you know, I've been advertising it for a year with a novella. I don't know.

Jesper (24m 29s):
We'll find out. I'm taking notes. Yeah. But I think that is an excellent idea actually to uh, you know, let us know if you're interested in, in, in, in a later update on how this experiment is going bigger. Because right now I would say I'm probably on the, on the, let's say I'm just probably sitting with the conclusion that it's not worth it. Um, to be honest, based on what we've talked about and, and before entering this conversation, actually I haven't made up my mind, so it just happening by, we were talking here, but based on what we talked about, but I think I've sort of re recent my mind to, to watch that.

Jesper (25m 6s):
I don't take it twice, but maybe you see it differently or maybe maybe you just, you're just curious too, to learn how this test that autumn is doing is going. And of course maybe autumn will surprise me and actually tell me that I, I was an idiot and actually we should be doing what she's doing because it makes so much sense. And then of course I will be happy to come on air again and say I was an idiot, but a until then I think it's not worth it. I will definitely wrap up by saying it has been a lot of work and the stories have become both very near and dear to my heart, so I couldn't, I could not write one at this point.

Autumn (25m 45s):
So I'm gonna basically I have the next two years of serious plan. I'm just trying to decide which one to write first and being ironic sometimes as I am it, it'll probably be the readers will tell me one and I'd be like, but I wanted to write this one next and I'll probably do it. I think if I care any flack from my re my readers, it will be because I didn't continue in my elemental fantasy world that was nowhere bright and wit to this dark, dark place. And I'm probably gonna get an email saying, are you okay? Are you sure? I'd be like, hang in there. Trust me is a really good series.

Autumn (26m 15s):
Probably bad shit happens, but shouldn't have said that really bad stuff happens. But really it's a good suit. Just trust me. It's an amazing, amazing storyline. Um, on both sides. Both are dark. I don't know why I'm just there in my life. Everything is fine, I promise. Awesome. On that note, uh, let us know in the common section or in the, uh, in the show notes a if you're listening on the podcast, if you would like an update later on on this one, a on this topic, and we will make sure to, uh, to come back to it later on.

Jesper (26m 48s):
Uh, but, uh, on that note, I think a all those left to say is a see you next Monday. Bye.