This October I challenge you to 10x an area of your business! - sales - page reads - pre-orders - subscribers - word count - followers - whatever you want! Post your goal in the comments! If you're not sure, post an idea and we'll help you workshop it. It's okay if the goal is a big scary--we'll cheerlead you! Shoot for the moon and land among the stars. We have a kick-off call October 1st! Let's do this!

Maya Alden was kind enough to share her writing / publishing process in the following interview: 1. At what catalog size did your backlist start producing meaningful income? First, I think “meaningful” is different for everyone. For me, the business started generating meaningful income surprisingly early. I launched my first indie book on June 23, 2023, and by September, with only three books published, I was earning enough to feel comfortable walking away from corporate. But I wouldn’t call that a mature backlist yet. The real shift came about a year later, when I had roughly 12 books published. That was when I began to see the compounding effect of having multiple books and series working for me at the same time, and my monthly baseline moved up significantly. So if I had to give someone a number, I’d say around 12 books. That’s enough for a couple of series, some read-through, and a catalog substantial enough that one book can lead readers into several others. 2. How has your drafting process evolved over the years, and what part of the process do you think is the most integral to writing 17 books in a year? So, I sold my first book to Random House in 2001, and it came out in 2002. Yes, that many years ago. I stayed in trad writing mainstream fiction for 9 books over 22 years. So my process has always been: I have an idea, then I write fifty pages or so to test whether it can become a story, and once I know it can, I write the book. The process has changed now in the sense that I don't "test" the story—I let it stew in my head a while before I put it on paper. I know what the story is, and I know it can hold its own. So, there's less trial and error. I recently started dictation because I usually narrate the chapter in my head before I write it. Now I narrate it to Otter. That creates a great scaffold and first draft. I then work on the second draft. I edit chapter by chapter, so I have the third draft done piece by piece. Once the book is done, I do one more draft start to finish.

Her recorded talk on how she followed her gut and ended up hitting the NYT is up: https://www.skool.com/bookmarketingbootcamp/classroom/3c67f7a0?md=86881cd671064165a3b2f553722f3782

THE SHIFT What’s the one key thing that took you from making newbie money to making a living money? - I was one of the lucky ones who hit the right combination of market timing with the right book out of the gate. (And I had help from my sister who was already a published, full-time author.) I would say one of the things that helped by quick start was rapid-releasing the first three books in a series and having very tight branding, to-market covers, and good blurbs. I was also publishing in a hot genre (MM romance) that had high demand and not too-high supply yet. Writing in series helped a ton since each release bumped all the other books, too. Can you nail the moment, or define it, when that moment of change happened, whether it be an internal or an external moment. And if yes, what exactly switched? - One thing that helped me with a mindset shift was going to Romance Author Mastermind and hearing a presentation about Six Figure Thinking. It included the idea of treating your author business like a business which means showing up even when you’re not feeling it. Sometimes I think of myself as a trash collector who has to show up and collect trash even when they’re in a bad mood, or have a challenging family situation at home, etc. This is my full-time job now so I don’t get to nope out of work because I’m not feeling it. My mortgage lender is still going to expect that payment next month whether I’m feeling it or not. This isn’t the case for every author, of course, but it is for me. And it helps me show up and keep plugging away. THE STRATEGY What strategy got you where you are now? (Hard work is obvious) - Consistency, treating it like a full-time job, staying in one lane (clear brand promise), building a platform of followers. My best advice for building a platform is to use reader magnets and bonus story offers in backmatter to capture your readers in their hottest-for-you moment and convert them to newsletter subscribers. Building a robust newsletter is the single most powerful marketing activity you can do to help you sell future books.