A Little About my "Real Job" Outside of Steemit as an Indie Author

in steemit •  7 years ago 

I don't talk a lot about it, but outside of Steemit, I'm an author!

In fact, I've published over a dozen books under my own name, and over two dozen for others as a "Ghost writer" which means, they help me conceptualize and flesh out the writing, I do the grunt work, they put their name on it, write me a check and then they can sell it as their own.

I published "The Wishmonger" in its first format, (not what I'm sharing here right now) about twelve years ago on Lulu, before Amazon was "AMAZZZOOONNN!" and everyone was just finding out about Ebooks in a big way.

I used to see Ebooks on Tripod blogs back in the day, but they were all about collecting rocks, or how to use vitamins to keep the aliens from stealing your thoughts, stuff I found so fascinating, I could barely prevent myself from putting my credit card information online! (like many, I was afraid to do that at first too)

Fast forward a decade and people will trust a person with a website over a brick and mortar store, without one. And I do all of my banking through the web.

So, I thought I'd share some of my books with you today. If you'd like one, but only have steem or SBD, leave me a comment and I'll be happy to send you a PDF version for a single SBD or Steem.

Here's the one I'm proudest of

It's a zany scifi reminiscent of "Hitchhiker's Guide" with a young hero named Jack, who uses a technology called "BEANS" to go down a hole in a Volkswagen Rabbit,and it's all tied together into a soup of multiverse fun, including Shadoe figures that plan to suck the light out of our world for their own evil ends.

I shared the first 1/3 of this one here in a novella called Jacked about a year ago, and will probably be revising it and sharing it again soon!

Next up, something a bit inspirational!

This little book is my best seller. It hit #1 on Amazon's personal success list briefly! It has a lot of what I've learned earning my living in the arts for 25 years! If you'd like to be more creative, get this one!

Last but not least, the one that kind of started it all for me

I'd done Wishmonger on Lulu.com about five years before, but had only sold about 10 copies total. This one kicked my publishing career into high gear at 3000 downloads! It's all about my starting a social media company from a $10 domain name and a $35 box of cards.

Here's my sales page on payhip.com

Payhip is a free publishing site that pays direct to your paypal in minutes with each sale!I love it. If you're worried about your email, don't. I won't sell it, I only use them to let readers know about new books and specials! It's required to get your downloads.

CHECK OUT MY LATEST PROJECT!

The Cool thing is, you can do it too! I'll be starting a self-publishing series soon, follow me for more, or ask questions in the comments!

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Wow, so cool to learn more about your indie author pursuits. I too am an author and only have one book out under my real name but use a pen name for my fiction books.

Cool, what kind of fiction do you write?

I'm working on a publishing company for steem, selling books for SBD.

You should accept not just STEEM and STEEM Dollars but also other major cryptocurrencies- Bitcoin especially since it is still the undisputed king of the coins.

Well, I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm not looking to do that right now. Thanks.

Very nice post your friends

Hey, thanks! I see you're a photographer. I'll check out your blog.

Please could you write a book about how to delete half a million spammy steemit accounts and just keep the top quality ones so I dont have to wade through through piles of trash everyday to find posters like yourself then Id be the first one to buy it...sometimes I hate undeletable blockchain.....and long sentences. Sorry, I'm definitely NOT an author!

So, here is how you do it, ready?

  1. Go to your followers list
  2. Delete all spammy authors
  3. Occasionally venture out to find more good authors
  4. Follow us
  5. Only read authors on your feed.

PROBLEM SOLVED! LOL

lol...I like to hunt new stuff so its not my follows that are the problem, its when I wade through the new posts trying to find newbies and interesting stuff...nightmare...I give more flags than upvotes ;-)

Well, not sure how helpful that is. I'd encourage people to leave the downflagging alone. It doesn't do a lot of good and upvoting good content rewards those authors, so save your juice for that, IMO

I have an inherent hatred of cheats so when I see some posting 20+ single, stolen pics a day, I offer my advice, if its ignored I flag every post they earn a cent from. People need to use flags here instead of just ignoring the issues facing the platform. I report many too, but steemcleaners must be run off their feet bless em !

Yeah, but the guys getting 50 cents are nothing compared to the ones shortcutting the process, producing nothing and selling votes, then raking in what gets earned off those posts without risking anything when the vote buyers come back again and again.

I see your book creativity have more ideas in Amazon have a genuine price and free reading, your cool ideas really awesome. I will buy it shortly wana read it.

Follow me and stay tuned, I'll offer a free book giveaway soon.

Great sir and all the best for ua future

To you as well, my future is so bright, I gotta wear shades!

Good sir pray for me, I wana make my self as like you

Hey @markmorrisjr .. been wandering and ask about you !!! We in Asia asking actually.. now we know ..!!!

Asking what about me? I'm here every day. LOL

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

LOL .. been spreading the word.. we in Asia .. some of my follwers DM me .. thks buddy

Absolutely, Love to help if I can. Make sure they follow @dolphinschool for some great tips on growing on steemit.

Thanks for this post. Like @peggyhazelwood and you, I'm an indie author. I have a couple of kindle short stories under my name and a trilogy under a pen name. I took your advice a couple of weeks ago and started posting my serialized novel here on Steemit. It's got characters from my trilogy in it.

But I digress. I am fascinated by your idea of a publishing company for steem.

Thats cool. I was chatting with some friends last week about attempting to crowdwrite a serialised novel :-)

That could be an interesting project!! I am looking forward to seeing if you get this going. It might be an interesting and intriguing read. What genre are you thinking of?

well, we'd just thrown a few random paragraphs out, I thought we might just try and weave a lot of different authors work together...this was last weekend, by Thursday I fear interest is waning lol...

And that is the biggest difference between those of us that publish and those who don't. We just power through and finish something. LOL Seriously, I think the best writers in the world, probably never publish.

At least your books made it somewhere you can sell them. I have a few picture books up on Amazon, but the other ideas are on my desktop, on an old computer or half published on Steemit. It's on my to-do list down the road somewhere :)

You may well have tempted me to try Payhip, just bear with me...

Well, as you know, they didn't "make" it anywhere, I put them there. LOL

And that is the real secret to success

So, you show me how you did the 10k sales on a $10 book, and I'll help you do what you need to do to get the rest of it finished and out into the light?

You have yourself a deal.

Wow thats a lot of books, me I cant write, can draw whats in my head, but cant write it down, it always comes out wrong.

I can do both. I designed theatrical scenery for almost twenty years, and do all of my own cover designs, with some help from my graphic designer wife. (note: this does not necessarily mean I think all of my current covers are brilliant, by any means. LOL But words are my forte.

we all have our thing, but it would be nice to be able to put good words together, your words are clear and understandable.

I trained as an actor from the time I was 14, until I was 39, and I wrote a LOT to get to this point. For the past ten years, I've written over a million words a year.

Very cool man! I wrote an E-book but I haven't published it yet. It is about an obscure poker game that nobody has really heard about (unless you are really into poker that is).

I am still in the process of editing it but I didn't want to release it until I had a sizable poker score at the WSOP. That would give me more recognition and clout in the poker community and would also sell more books!

Interesting. You might try releasing it here, a chapter at a time, to see if you could get some advance funding. That's what I do with mine.