How I Became a Full Time Author
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มี.ค. 2022
- This is the story of how I became a full time author. It took me a few years of writing and publishing novels to make a full time income from writing fantasy and science fiction novels. In this video I talk about my strategy, the successes and failures, and how it went.
Maybe you’re trying to become a writer yourself or maybe you just want to know the story of my writing career but I hope you find this useful and interesting.
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Greatly enjoyed this. It sounds like we’ve been on similar journeys
Cheers mate, yeah I knew you were a scifi author. It seems so obvious now but it took me quite a long time to realise I should apply storytelling techniques to my history videos. And your storytelling is wonderful - especially how you keep us interested over epic length vids.
How to get around writers block or prevent burnout is a big one for me. I usually burnout during world building.
That’s about as impressive as anything I’ve ever heard, about establishing a career as a fiction writer. Sure wish I could ask you questions in the old fashioned face-to-face way.
Your story is the same as mine. I have the exact same development and obsessive writing habits, although without the success. Seeing your victory gives me hope.
Real talk. Respect the grind, Dan.
Cheers Jessie.
Inspirational stuff Dan. Thank you , as a “failed artist” this certainly resonates. Clearly you have earned your success!
Thanks very much Alastair.
Very good to see that when it doesn’t sell its not always about the quality.
Also good to see you need to persevere
Yes the selling is the hardest part. But you can help yourself by planning and executing a piece of work with the selling part in mind.
Amazing to hear about your dedication. People I know who have succeeded at creating startup companies also seemed to work those insane hours and pour vast amounts of energy into one activity. Thank you.
A Gun Powder Fantasy set during the English Civil War sounds like an excellent premise. To my mind it's probably that YA was simply the wrong market. I could see the setting more easily pulled off as a Grim-dark/Adult Fantasy. Maybe you should try rebooting the concept with that in mind. I'd certainly be curious.Anyway, Cheers on the success.
Very interesting. Yes hard work, and learning ... willing to make mistanke... not despair but kep moving forward... lije your honest humble way... si far have enjoyed your videos..
Thank you for this. I’ve decided, I am going to go full time with my writing.
My youngest started school last September and I’ve been looking for my purpose, not realising it was under my nose the entire time.
Respect and appreciation for your channel from a fellow Brit.
Took me time to pluck up the courage to watch this, as a writer struggling to get paid doing writing and editing jobs, finishing his first novel and approaching agents with samples so I can sell my poetry manuscripts. Keeping at it hopefully I end up a successful author and down to earth guy like you.
It took more than one attempt to get this channel made... You truly an author!
I'd really like to know more details on the changes that started giving you success so that I don't have to go through the same thing.
Okay sure.
I just turned 20 and have the exact same dream you did. I always liked to make stories, and just like you I always stop after a few thousand words... I feel like I have good ideas but an extreme lack of focus.
Your channel is great and your novella too (the only I've read so far). I'd love to see more content on this, and I am happy for your success, Dan. You deserve it.
Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed the Wolf God.
Great to hear you intend to be a writer too. I was twenty years old twenty years ago. I don't think my years of unfocused writing was wasted as I learned a lot during that time. But planning a story out before I wrote it was the best step I ever added in my process.
I have a mild case of ADD that always made it hard to write. Getting on medication helped a lot, but even before that, I found it helpful to have a mildly engaging game going while I was writing and forcing myself to write at least one sentence between turns, or rooms, or enemy encounters, or whatever. Hopefully that will be helpful, and if not, no worries. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with solutions that work for you. Good luck!
Interesting timeline of how your career took off. As with music, sometimes a ‘product’ simply has to find its ‘market.’ How many artists are seen as influential, even though their sales wouldn’t suggest they were. Amazing how many artists find success with a new generation- through some channel. Kate Bush being a current case in mind.
I have found you and Subscribed via your You Tube pre history films. Fiction is often based in fact and the origins of humanity now unravels through DNA. How many crimes have been solved decades on by DNA… That started off with a Leicester scientist helping the local police force.
Sometimes TIME doesn’t run chronologically to reach a conclusion.
Sometimes local meetings of minds can change humanity.
Isn’t ALL ART VANITY PUBLISHING? Just that it has a backer?
Your videos have been tremendously helpful to me in my own stories. I have developed such an interest in the indo-european bronze age and in conversation will often reference your videos. Thank you for the work you have done so far, and I look forward to continuing to learn from your experience.
That's so great to hear, thank you.
I am glad you succeeded at last!
Thanks, me too!
Enjoyed this tremendously
Is obvious that you have worked hard at this and I’m glad it is paying off for you.
Your videos are great and hope they bring you some recognition as well as help book sales
I majored in English in college but dropped out to travel the country in an old VW van, then bred horses, then became a blacksmith , made mostly 18th century knives and axes. Now I sell antiques
Never worked a regular job
That's very cool! Awesome jobs and none of them easy.
You really are an inspiration. I did something similar to your 10-year pledge once. I'd just graduated college with a degree in English Language and quickly learned how useless it actually was. All my job prospects and contacts fell through, so I decided to take the leap and try to become a published author. I'm sure no one needs to read the sob-story that was the following two years, but the outcome was a near mental breakdown and my older brother getting me a job at the door shop where he works. In retrospect, it was a harsh but necessary lesson. My writing simply wasn't all that good.
Three years later, I've still been writing and learning from authors like you kind enough to share advice with the world, and I finally have some stories I think are good enough that publication is possible. Unfortunately, most guides for new authors basically amount to this:
Step 1: Become Facebook friends with authors you've never met and expect them to go out of their way for you ... for some reason.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Success!!!
I'm extremely grateful to hear your thoughts and insights on the journey from enthusiastic amateur (me) to successful full-time author (you).
Thank you Lyndsay, yes it is extremely difficult for sure. I wrote well over 500,000 words for ten years before I tried to make a go of it and still my first few novels were just not good enough. It's just extremely tough.
I do have some thoughts about the best ways to go about it and am looking forward to sharing them.
Thanks Dan, very curious to hear more about your process and any insights into self publishing and novel writing.
Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy what's coming.
Congratulations on your success. Writing a book is hard work and I respect your perseverance. During school holidays, I would wake up, start writing my story, forget to eat, go to sleep, wake up and repeat for many days straight for a month, still only scratching the surface of the full story I wanted to write.
Love your stories, so thanks for hanging on to your dreams. Much respect!
And your book covers are truly eye - catching !
Greets from the Netherlands 🌷, T.
Thanks!
Thank you. I relate to this. I'm on this journey right now teaching about wild mushrooms and plants. I completed my five-year plan and am currently in my third year of business. This should be my first year making full-time money but I'm still working a full-time job. I love your videos but this video has made me decide to read your Vampire series (then your bronze age series of course)
That's a very cool profession, Tim. It's been an unusual and challenging couple of years for small businesses. I wish you the best of luck with it, I'm sure you'll reach a point of making the switch soon. Being self employed can be extremely stressful at times but I only wish I'd attempted to do it sooner.
I hope you enjoy my stories.
This is so inspirational Dan. Amazing. Thanks for sharing.
Well done!
Thank you for sharing
Great content. Sign me up.
So excited to hear about everything you've learned.
I'm talented at world building but struggle building a unique (non derivative) and compelling story within my worlds. Maybe a seed for a future video!
That's a good idea, thank you.
Your story is motivational
I first came across your youtube history channel, that led me to looking for your books. I've really enjoyed the ones available so far on audible.
Excellent! I've been subscribed to your history channel for while and it has incredible stuff in it. I'm also interested in your writing and publishing process, so I'm looking forward to what you have to say here.
I'm here from the other channel and I'd like to say: THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS!! I'm aghast by the knowledge you demonstrate about early history and how to make a compelling story set in those times and I can't wait to see all you share here about your writing process.
Will leave another comment with questions
Great video! I just wrote my first book and I´m going to really take your advice to heart when I try to get published.
VERY ENCOURAGING! Thanks for sharing this, Dan. I've also shared with others in a private writing group on Facebook.
I'd love to see future videos where you discuss things like book covers and marketing. I suspect that's how a lot of writers fail; they just don't know any of that stuff, and don't really have a good way to figure it out if they're self-published or Amazon published, because they don't have anyone to tell it to them.
Yes I will do. You're right, marketing is the most important thing. But marketing includes the content of the stories and the idea itself. My video on how to come up with ideas for stories is looking at this from a marketing perspective.
Brilliant. I publish graphic novels here in Israel with major publishers but with such small circulation I am hardly making money. I am struggling to get into the US/European market but everything is changing, and it really seems your way of self publishing makes the most sense. Love Godborn, and the vids! Thanks for all your wonderful work!!
Yes the effort of doing the work is noting compared to trying to sell your work. Good luck with your graphic novels and reaching a wider market.
Thanks for sharing, Dan! Very nice of you to share how one can give a dream a chance.
Thank you.
Your video was very honest, I jsut clicked the notification bell and im sure I'm not the only one who will be ready to watch your future videos. Please share with us those lessons you learned that helped you succeed as an author 😀
This could be the next big thing for you Dan!
Liked and subbed
Thank you.
1) How do you know you've done enough research?
2) How many times do you draft? What does each draft do?
3) What influences your writing? Like, what authors or books in particular
4) How often do you post and what do you post about in Social Media, not just to promote the books, but to create an audience.
5) How long do you write daily? And how long sid you bused to write when you were working a full time job?
These are great questions I will have to answer them in a video. Thank you.
Great video, I can definitely relate to your struggles and I'm on a similar journey of publishing as many books as I can, currently writing in Fantasy (A pirate fantasy). Trying something new, formating my books to read more like an episodic TV show or comic book series, with smaller books that follow the crew of pirates through their various adventures on the open sea in a magical world that's connected with my other fantasy books. Each small book in the series will follow the TV (Mostly Anime) story format with an Inciting, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and hook/cliffhanger for the next book, all while foreshadowing/callbacks the overall arc, leaving easter eggs for connected stories, and leaving hints at a huge overarching story that connects other series together. I'll do more testing on whether to market it as a Pirate series or Epic Fantasy series. But I also like to include a lot of tropes that I enjoy. A little bit of romance, some darker horror (But not too intense), lots of epic fights at sea with magic, and several different character arcs (Some positive others tragically negative). Some heroic sacrifices, and an overall hero's journey. It'll be interesting to see how people will respond to the style of writing (Being more episodic). I like the idea of being able to give the first few books away for free, since it'll be a really long series and have a pricing strategy that increases (Since the length of the books will increase as the adventures for each book become more and more emotionally and thematically deeper, building on previous adventures, tying together multiple character arcs and overall, providing bigger payoffs, while keeping things super personal to the characters and giving them super relatable problems and flaws that they must overcome to succeed.
You and Isaac Arthur, different ends of the same stick!
Sci-fi and historical fiction like peanut butter and Nutella
Can't wait to find out the 4th idea you're yet to write
Very interesting
Thank you, glad you think so.
Please re-publish the kids series. Sounds cool. Young Adults and Adults will buy that if properly marketed
Yeah I probably won't do that.
Gods of bronze sounds super interesting
Suggestion! You could have a really interesting conversation with the critical drinker another author who is always being asked about writing & publishing. any way loving your content & looking forward to learning more about writing. I personally have many ideas in my head. 👍
Thanks very much. Yes he's a novelist isn't he. I hope you enjoy the future videos.
I have really enjoyed your vampire stories on Audible I am going through them a second time but I don’t see Impaler armada or cavalier when will they be going up on Audible? I really look forward to listening to the rest of the series
Thank you. Yes they have not been produced yet. I will contact the publisher and see what is happening there.
Could you do a video where you go over this same timeline, but how your marketing and advertising strategy evolved during the process?
Thank you for this. I have always wanted to be a writer but I didn't know how to start. I am inspired to go for my dream and become a writer. I am currently struggling with character development. Would you mind talking about building characters please?
Wonderful. Yes I will make videos about building characters.
Thanks, Mr. Davis. I'm working on my fifth book and trying to get my first one published. I am really struggling with whether or not to go the agent route. You're really encouraging.
Do you have any tips for understanding the market? You mentioned a few times in this video about times where you did or did not understand the market. Can you pull out the strings on what made a difference for you?
I hit the 👍, and I subscribed! 🥳
Did you have such a knowledge of history before you started writing, or was it learned along the way? 🤔
Have you tried to turn the Immortal Knight series into scripts for movies or TV? 😎
I hope the best of luck to you! 🤞
Thanks Dan! ✌️💘🤘🖖
Interesting, I thought you would be older, both because of the number of books and because you come across as very mature.
I'm 40.
Thanks for sharing your inspirational journey. What did you do for a day job while working towards your goal?
I had various jobs but mainly London insurance broker in my 20s, local government and charity funding consultant in my 30s.
I write on wattpad, and I feel like if I self-publish, it would be a waste of time and money...nobody reads anything on there as is It is discouraging because I get zero feedback, so I don't know if what I am writing is any good, but this is something that I want to do...
I really admire what you did! This is truly something to be proud of!
I've got a question. I've been thinking about following a similar path, I'm late 20's. I'm interested in writing Greek or Roman era based fiction, possibly mixing light sci-fi.
Is there starting point or structure you would recommend to follow?
Yes there are many versions of story structures we can use. I think I'll have to put my thoughts in a video.
I will listen to everything you care to say on this topic, Dan. It'd be great if you could transcribe it as well. Hey, there's a book idea for you! I'll buy your signed copy when it comes out.
Thank you!
Hi Dan, I'm a big fan of your history channel. You probably read a lot of scientific papers from archeology, anthropology etc. What do you think about good scientific writing? What sort of features make a paper well written? Cheers
Hi Adam, thanks very much. I do read a lot of papers and the writing is generally terrible. They do seem to make an effort to be as tedious as possible. Some do stand out though because they try their best to be interesting - these papers have interesting titles and engaging introductions. They think about trying to grab an audience, even if that audience is going to be other academics.
A great paper is that one The Dogs of War by David Anthony and Dorcas Brown.
How did you find that focus you used? I've always wanted to be a writer too. It feels so much like a dream that I woke up from. Reality being what it is, bills to pay and relationships to maintain or mourn. I am really looking forward to learning more about your journey.
That's a good question. Where did that focus come from? When I had all the spare time in the world I didn't have it. I would imagine it's different for everyone but I sacrificed quite a lot - drinking, watching movies, getting enough sleep etc - and just told myself this was something I was going to make work no matter what.
@@dandavisbooks The reason I watch all your content is because I have all the spare time in the world. Usually, I'm watching with a beer in my hand. You've given me quite a bit to think about today.
Hey just found your channel. Great story. Im just now putting in the effor to finish my first novel HOw m
uch did you write per day? hours or word count?
When I was starting out I tried to do at least an hour and 500 words per day but I would usually do more like 1,000 words a day or more, sometimes much more. I remember one Saturday writing 8,000 words in a day but that was exceptional. When I was writing full time I would aim for 5,000 words every day but would usually get more like 4,000.
But I was always fast at writing. It doesn't really matter what you can do in one day, it matters what you can do in a week, a month, and a year. Whatever goals you have and whatever system you use, you have to just keep at it for long enough for it to be done. Then start the next one.
@@dandavisbooks Great points. A little bit at a time is the only way to look at it
Hey whens the next video coming out?
It's been far longer than I intended but I will make more videos for this channel as soon as I can.
@@dandavisbooks That is great. I am an aspiring author myself. And would be very interested in understanding how you went about it.
Algorithm Comment Cuz!
Thank you
there a way I can be a known author
Do you self publish?
'Bad advice on the Internet from people who only wanted to sell me stuff.' Like this video? You're just advertising Amazon, aren't you?
Are you stupid or something