20BooksTo50K 2022: Conference Day Four (Thursday)

What it’s like to attend the best writing conference in America.

I woke up this morning feeling very refreshed and “normal”. Since I was able to keep my breakfast down, I decided to chance attending Thursday sessions in person. I was still pretty bummed with the livestream experience yesterday, so this was the optimal choice given it’s the final day for sessions.

Thursday Session: 1,000 True Fans for Authors by Bryan Cohen

Bryan is the author of many fiction books, books on writing, and provides paid services for writers. He spoke multiple times at this conference (and he’s pretty funny).

If you’ve never read the writing of Kevin Kelly, the original thought leader behind the concept of “1,000 true fans”, you can find that article here. This was the basis of Bryan’s talk and what many Authors strive for, especially if you believe in the concept of 20BooksTo50K.

Bryan discussed the free and cheap ways to attract readers, how to grow your email list, and how to use paid advertising to further grow your list. He was hosting one of those talks with prescriptive lists (my favorite). He assumed the audience was composed of Authors who hadn’t published their first book yet. So his step-by-step instructions covered what you should do first to get your 1,000 true fans, even before you release your writing into the world.

He believes if you take his methods and apply them for 6–12 months, you can get to a list of 1,000–2,500 readers, although they will not all be true fans. However, you’ll have enough to keep following you and help you make a sustainable living.

I really enjoyed this session, as I hadn’t attended a session yet that went into step-by-step detail on how to specifically create different types of newsletter content, as well as how to apply that content to grow your audience. The Author sitting next to me informed that much of this information is also located in Mal Cooper’s book “Help! My Facebook Ads Suck”. I will be checking that out, too.

Thursday Session: Writing Better Short Stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kris is well known on the literary world. And she has a blog with business articles focused on writing as well: KrisWrites.com. She’s been a professional writer for 40 years, has owned several publishing companies, has had NYT best sellers, is a multi-award winning short story winner, etc. She loves short stories — both writing them and reading them.

What was interesting about her session is there were no slides. It was a fireside chat. And it was excellent.

First up, her philosophy on short stories: you can’t write a good short story unless you like short stories.

One of the valuable things she talked about was the 7-point plot outline (which is a concept that came out of the Scott Meredith literary agency many decades ago). Every short story must have 7 points:

A character
In a setting
With a conflict and/or a problem
The character tries to initially solve the problem
The character fails and then things get worse
Climax — a big try and the character either fails or succeeds
Validation — permission for the reader to leave the story

She talked about how important it is to for short story writers to learn the concept of “depth”, or using the 5 senses to get the reader immersed into the story, character, and details. And quickly. She said most writers screw this up.

She also touched briefly on the business side of short stories and gave details on how writers can monetize their short stories.

Thursday Session: Go Direct! Selling eBooks and Audiobooks Direct with BookFunnel by Damon Courtney

Damon works at BookFunnel. If you’re working on your first novel, he said, the information he would be covering would be helpful later. For now, finish your first book and start creating your backlist…common advice we attendees heard throughout the conference.

First, he talked about the definition of “selling direct”. This means to sell to your readers and, most importantly, YOU are the platform. An example would be setting up your own store and selling your backlist on it.

He did advise against selling direct until you have a large group of super fans with a backlist.

Then he covered methods for enticing people to buying directly from you, the benefits of it, the math behind it (using Amazon vs. BookFunnel royalties), how to get started, and the differences between print, eBooks, and audiobooks. He also layered in advice about how BookFunnel can help Authors do all of these things.

Given that I wanted to know more about BookFunnel, I found his talk educational. It wasn’t focused on BookFunnel — he did a great job of tying in how BookFunnel can help an Author on their selling direct journey (and other journeys, should they choose other paths).

Thursday Session: Thrills and Chills: Horror and Cross-Genre Thrillers by Jonathan Maberry

Jonathan is a NYT multi-best selling Author and writes in several genres. He is a traditional Author, but a lot of what he discussed he said would apply to both hybrid and indie Authors. Jonathan started writing when he was 6 years old. He’s currently on his 47th novel. He believes writing in multiple genres has kept his attention.

Overall, this was not the best session for me. There were no slides and it was about his personal journey. I didn’t understand that when I read the title and description. I can tell he’s been very successful, but it seemed like this talk was for people who already knew him and wanted to know more about his journey.

Some pearls of wisdom I gleaned from his talk:

The horror/thriller genres want print books
Opportunities are all over the place and not necessarily where you think you need to look
Test drive genres using short fiction. If you don’t like it, you haven’t lost a lot of time and effort.
Don’t read only in your genre. Crossing genres creates more opportunities.
Every writer should spend time understanding the skills required of their genre and write accordingly for their readers
Cross genre sells because the world has seen too many versions of the standard genre

Thursday Session: Steamy Romance Panel

Authors: Lasairiona McMaster, Susie McIver, Emilia Rose, and Melanie Harlow

These authors all write steamy romance across multiple sub genres. Several of them just started writing in the last few years. I found the Author responses to be helpful. In addition, all of these Authors owned what they do for a living and that was especially empowering.

This was a panel and it was decided in advance due to time restrictions that only a couple of Authors would answer each question. Here are some of the questions and responses as I heard and understood them.

Question: how did you decide what heat level to write in your books?

Susie — sometimes she’ll write something spicy but then back it off. She’ll read it back to herself. She doesn’t go overboard, but just steamy or extra steamy. Not kinky.

Emilia — the opposite of Susie. She goes way overboard. She first started doing clean stuff on Wattpad, then got tired of it and switched. She went full explicit and it’s going good.

Question: there has been a call for more realistic spice details (e.g. dealing with UTIs, pregnancy. etc.). Why isn’t it included more — does it kill the mood?

Melanie — hasn’t seen this feedback herself, but she has seen more around contraception. The types of stories she writes are about small town romances and characters you know. She acknowledges contraception in some way. If you don’t, the reader assumes it will be an accidental baby or surprise baby. Her characters don’t have unprotected sex. It’s a fantasy. If you as the writer gets pulled out of the scene, skip it and let a beta reader tell you if more detail around these topics is necessary.

Lasairiona — she writes everything including the comedy and errors of sex. Some of her characters have been injured during sex. So far no one has complained about it.

Question: how do you keep long sex scenes interesting and fresh?

Emilia — she does a lot of research (and not always in books 😂). She also does this to step outside of her comfort zone. She started with vanilla but is trying to get darker with her writing.

Melanie — this is a challenge. It’s the same act and body parts throughout the book. She put 9 sex scenes in her first book and when she went to write her second book, she restrained herself.

Question: what resources do you use to find different ways to say the sexy stuff?

Lasairiona — she has 3 books that she recommends. Thinking Like a Romance Writer by Dahlia Evans, Naughty Words for Nice Authors by Cara Bristol, and Body Beats to Build On by April Gardner.

Emilia — echos the research comments. She reuses a lot of the same words.

Question: When you’re doing your market research, how do you deal with taboo or negative words?

Emilia — she knows her books aren’t for everyone, especially people who don’t like explicit words. She ignores that and just writes for herself.

Melanie — write it how it appeals to you because there is an audience for every single heat level. Spicy romance is huge right now. Also, those 1-star reviews that say “this was nothing but porn!” sell books, too.

Lasairiona — Goodreads is for the readers. They will help signal to other readers whether it’s for them or not. That’s why she doesn’t try to censor her ARC team so that it can be signaled out there for other readers. She agrees to write what you want.

Question: do you have a newsletter and how steamy does your reader magnet go? Do you preface it with a warning?

Susie — she does it once a week. She releases a book once a month and she gives them the first chapter. And sometimes there are sex scenes in the first chapter. Sometimes she gives them the epilogue. She does not preface it.

Melanie — your magnet should be representative of your work.

Question: do you include trigger warnings and how do you include them in a sex positive way?

Emilia — she does and usually they’re in the beginning. She doesn’t include them for specific acts unless they’re seen as extreme. Trigger warnings aren’t negative — we all like what we like and we don’t what we don’t. It’s a warning.

Melanie — you should put them in there because there are readers are specifically looking for these types of books and this is a way to signal to them what you have written.

Lasairiona — she listens to her ARC readers and puts them in if recommended.

Question: TikTok is the name of the game now. Does the rise of BookTok and the feedback we can get from there change how you write?

Susie — no. And she’s always on TikTok. She writes the same as she always has.

Emilia — she doesn’t go onto TikTok so she hasn’t changed anything.

Melanie — she pays attention to the kinds of scenes that earn a lot of TikTok activity. It has influenced the kind of scenes she rights.

Question: marketing plans…how do you incorporate your steam level into them?

Susie — she started doing TikTok a year ago and she does page flip videos. She doesn’t do anything else. She includes steam so readers will know what to expect.

Emilia — her marketing starts when she starts creating her story. She publishes through Patreon. She’ll write a 1,000 word sex scene. Then she’ll ask her readers what they want to read next and they’ll vote. Then that’s what she writes next.

Melanie — it’s become more difficult to market steamy romance because Facebook, Amazon, etc. will reject ads and posts if they’re too explicit in the visual or text. So you have to be creative in how you signal to your readers how steamy it is. You just have to be creative with it.

Question: if you were starting your career right now, what would you suggest to yourself?

Emilia — she would tell herself not to hold back. She was originally writing tame stuff and she was scared to use certain words. But her readers now enjoy her word choices and how explicit her sex scenes are.

Lasairiona — start a newsletter and reader group sooner. You don’t need a book out to start cultivating all of that.

Susie — wishes she would have started when she was younger. Also, she didn’t start a newsletter until her 4th book. That newsletter makes such a big difference.

Melanie — nothing moves the needle like she when she sends out a newsletter. Readers love her bonus scenes. She also wishes she had a better understanding of the marketing before she wrote books. She spent years avoiding the tropes and that was a dumb decision. The reader needs to understand if her book is a good fit. Also, never be afraid to change a cover.

Thursday Session: Deconstructing a Paragraph by Maxwell Alexander Drake

Maxwell Alexander Drake runs www.drakeU.com, which is a place where Authors can learn about the craft. He’s been doing this for 30 years. He also has a restaurant background. This session was a bit of a dud for me — I thought I would learn more from it.

Pre-session question: what advice do you have for new writers?

Throw out your first book in the garbage and write the next book. Your first book will have a ton of errors in it.
As many celebrity Authors have recommended, strive to write a million words to practice (however, this could equate to 10 novels and 10 years)
You have to get to the point where you stop thinking about the craft
You can only see below you, not above you so you might think your writing is good, but it won’t be at first

He also discussed the 5 stages of editing, as well as his 9 points for writing better paragraphs. Did you know there are many types of different sentence structures? He said you should use them all.

Simple — one independent clause, an action, and optionally an object
Compound — 2+ independent clauses
Complex — one independent clause + 1+ dependent clauses
Compound complex — 2+ independent clause + 1+ dependent clauses
Fragments — not a complete sentence
Run-ons — anything outside of a simple sentence

Final Conference Session: Success Stories

Authors: Craig Martelle, Kiersten Modglin, Jeff Haskell, Sarah Knopf, Michael Anderle, and Paddy Finn

This final, formal session of the conference was a good way to end. Let’s have Authors who followed the 20Books philosophy and have met with success talk about their journey. I loved it.

As this was a panel, I summarized some of the questions and answers below.

Question: when you started your writing journey, what was your initial vision?

Michael — he wanted to write a bunch of books; he never slowed down

Kiersten — always wrote stories and always wanted notebooks and pens to write down her stories; she was hoping to be rich and famous and get movie deals; that did not happen but she always wanted to tell stories and connect with readers

Jeff — he had a rocky life and he’s dsylexic with ADD and no college degree; he was so tired of being poor so he started writing; he wanted to make buckets of money and he wanted to really impress his wife

Paddy — he created a Slack page for his family called “galactic domination”…and that was his vision

Sarah — she thought she was going to be a big success like Stephanie Meyer, she did not have the readers saying she was awesome so she realized she wasn’t; so she went to the library and found books to do research on how to do better; her breakout success was on book 50

Question: when did you know you’d be a full-time writer?

Sarah — she wanted to sit at the winner’s table because the conversations were different than at the loser’s table; she did a lot of research when she noticed she was flopping; but she kept trying; she made 6-figures in 2019 compared to 4-figures in 2018. She doubled down and then tripled down and she thinks she’s figured it out.

Paddy — in Feb 2018 he attended 20Books London; he was really inspired by his fellow peers; he realized he could take this momentum and do something with it; his sci-fi novels had gained traction but weren’t big yet; he had a good paying job in IT but it wasn’t fulfilling; in Nov 2018 he decided to go full-time; they had 2 kids and his wife was a SAHM and they had no savings; it took 2 years of uncertainty; they launched a box set at the end of 2020 that hit and suddenly things were OK

Jeff — he knew he was going to make it from the beginning because his wife believed in him; he was working in another field but lost his job due to an illness; he started ghost writing and the guy who hired him kept asking for more books; his wife told him to cut out the middleman and just write himself; in May 2015 he got up at 5am and listened to Chris Fox do his 21-day novel challenge. Over the next 1.5 years he published 3 novels and he got a check and knew then that he’d be OK.

Kiersten — she was always very stubborn; she remembers getting $0.17 checks for her writing, but she kept up her confidence and faith and knew it was going to happen one of these days; she didn’t have any connections or any money and didn’t know of 20Books back then; she and her husband were scraping by and working hard; in 2018 she had 12 books out but was still making pennies — someone mentioned that she didn’t write for a specific genre so she doubled down and figured out her genre; she decided she loved psycho thrillers; in Nov 2019 she was making enough to quit her day job; in Mar 2020 her husband was laid off due to Covid; they went down to a family of one very small income; in 2021 she released a book a month while her husband watched their daughter; when it was time for her husband to go back to work in Jun 2021, she was making enough for both of them with book #17. So now he works for her writing business.

Michael — he made $300 off his first 3 books, then made more on his 4th and then even more on this 5th; $12K shot up to $40K by month 6; he was releasing books to people like him, a person who loved to read who wanted a series; when you know you made it — that’s a mental decision, not a financial one

Question: what is the best bit of writing advice you can give to an author?

Michael — don’t doubt yourself. Let yourself flow.

Kiersten — write like no one will ever read it. Don’t worry about making it perfect, or what people will think about it. You can’t edit a blank page. You can obsess later.

Jeff — military sci-fi is the 3rd largest sub genre. His only competition is the last thing he wrote. Never be satisfied with being good tomorrow.

Paddy — there’s only one way for you. Don’t get hung up on what people think you should be doing. Once you figure it out, lean into it

Sarah — have fun. When you have fun writing, your readers will enjoy reading it.

Afterwards, both Michael and Craig made some closing remarks. And we all did a standing ovation for Craig’s efforts in putting on this conference.

After Hours Meet-ups & Dinner

There weren’t any meet-ups I was interested in attending Thursday night, so I edited this blog post and grabbed some dinner from the Miracle Mile shops. I felt 100% by the end of the day, so I took a chance on eating something “normal.”

Tomorrow is the final day of the conference, and it’s the Author signing day. I might pop in just to take a quick picture and check out how Authors are creating their booths.

Regardless, I’ll do a final wrap-up post with my observations and tips.

Other posts about this 2022 20BooksTo50K conference:

🌷 Do you want to support the writing community? Read millions of stories on Medium. Sign up here! Your membership fee directly supports me and every other writer you read. Thank you! 🌷

Summarize