Writers. How to sell your work.

A post about monetising your output.

Feb 15, 2023

This post was written by Phillip.

Before we begin, I wanted to thank all our new subscribers for joining. We’ve not advertised this page much, but people are still finding it somehow!

So let’s begin.

How do you make money from writing?

This is me whenever Lego releases a new big Ninjago set.

Full disclosure, I don’t make much right now (despite being a bestselling author on Amazon every now and again). At the time of writing, I’ve had no sales for 14 days. That includes subscriptions, books, my eBay store, my Etsy rare bookstore, my writing jobs (I write speeches on the side) and anything else I do. It seems that, for me at least, sales spike and then dip very sharply.

It’s pretty bleak. I’m on the self-employment in the UK at the moment and that ends in about three weeks. I’ve got some lingering mental health things that hold me back from keeping a regular job with normal people (PTSD, sound sensitivity), so I like being self-employed.

I don’t like bring broke, however.

So how do we fix it?

For me, the answer included rebuilding my confidence and doing standup comedy. For you, the answer might be different. This post should hopefully give you some ideas about selling yourself and your work.

A bit about my process

As anyone who follows my author substack knows, I have been reshaping my little writing business for a few months, feeling around and finding the right shape for it. I tried putting one of my books on Patreon, but that didn’t feel right. I later had an agent take some interest in it, so I couldn’t publish it there without potentially violating a future agreement. It was weird.

I tried putting comedy on Patreon too (I’m also a comedian) but I had no material in the beginning. Now I’ve got material I’m thinking of getting back into it, which is funny as last week I worked with a personal assistant and we talked about how I’d really like to get back into coaching. That’s what this substack is for, really.

I already have a paid tier on my author substack which I switched off in November 2022. I had some teething issues in the beginning: One person signed up, thinking the paid tier was free, and then got a refund. But refunds cost more to the author than they made, thanks to transaction fees. This dipped me back into my overdraft, which I then got charged for again. Then the self-employment people asked if I’d made any money, I explained I had technically lost some, but they still wanted to count it as income. It was a nightmare.

(To fix this, I have made the language around my paid content so simple that there is no way to misunderstand it)

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I want to be brutally honest. It’s what I’m known for in person, in my writing, in my comedy, and it is what Halfplanet Press needs to be to stand out.

No messing around.

Just brutal honesty.

I am the brand. Halfplanet is an extension of me.

So there are ways to monetise. There are loads. Here’s a list of ten.

Forget waiting for a book signing. Make your own.
Go outside and hand out flyers (not the most accessible)
Publish your book and sell it
Don’t gamble on online ads, research them
Get a patreon (but learn from my mistakes, and work out what it’s best for)
Get a premium substack (again, learn from my mistakes, make it abundantly, annoyingly clear the a paid tier costs money and you can’t afford to refund it. Adding free previews will help with this)
Get radio interviews. These are good for writers who want some anonymity
Be honest. This is the most important. Yes, you will lose people, you will be called names, but you will go to bed each night knowing you were not wearing a mask all day.
Make something people want to buy.
Know your audience.

Point 3 might sound a bit snarky, but I have genuinely met authors who were upset nobody read their work, and when I asked where it was available, they said nowhere. Publish something, anything. It does not have to be good. It just needs to grab people. If it’s free nobody will care about the editing. Build an audience!

Point 4, about not gambling on online ads. That’s important. I put over £500 into ads in two years to see if they worked (not including a further £250 on a sponsorship thing which I’m getting back as that also did not work). I put hundreds of hours into researching keywords too. The result? I wasted money that would have been better spent on a plane ticket. But I know that now. I learned from it.

I also spent £1500 on ComicCon, so far I made £500 back, but it gave me my confidence back after a traumatic family event, so I reckon it was worth it. I can go to the shops on my own again without getting nervous. Thanks ComicCon!

Like I said, being honest here. This publishing business is messy and oftentimes dehumanizing. But I have a goal.

I am going to make my own damn publishing industry.

And we’ll get back to that later.

Point 8, about honesty, is the second most important. I suffocated myself as a writer by hiding behind pen names. Rather than cultivating one audience of people who actually liked me since enrolling on a Creative Writing degree in 2013, I spent all my time until around 2020 being dishonest with myself. I pretended I wasn’t funny, whenever I could. I did this because I saw my friends were peeling away from me. Their politics were changing, their moods were changing. People were making enemies of strangers. Subjects that could be joked about yesterday could not be spoken of today. And this is on both ‘sides’ of things. Everyone was labelling everyone else as baddies. They were always the goodies. It was boring.

And it was creatively limiting. And I’m not saying I’m someone who wades into unfamiliar territory, writes a surface-level story about THE CURRENT THING and then vanishes. What I’m saying is that for most people now, research seems to be a hateful thing, so we feel we cannot write about things we have not personally experienced. Inquiry is damaging, listening to individual voices is bias. Everyone must be in a group. The world is clumping people together who do not derserve to be clumped.

Art is an unclumping.

Is that even a word?

It is now.

Unclump your brain. Meet new people. Meet people who challenge your beliefs.

I tested some of my spiciest god jokes on a Christian friend and she loved them. But I will be honest, it did make me nervous.

The most creative among us will have friends all over the place, because we find value in debate, and we find value in people who can tolerate debate.

Because debate is science. It is a chiselling of opinions on a pursuit of truth. An actual truth, not a ‘personal truth’.

That is what I want Halfplanet to stand for.

Individuals. Actual thinking, breathing people.

Weirdos, primarily.

Weirdos like you perhaps.

Kermit’s pig-themed erotic novel was slammed by critics upon release, but developed a passionate online fan group.

Point 9, about making something people are willing to buy, is the most important. It exists above all politics and marketing, all spin and pomp.

So how do we monetise our work?

For me, the answer is ANY WAY THAT WORKS.

It’s that simple.

It’s that complicated.

You see, I do so many things as an artist that little bits of money come in from almost any direction. Sometimes I get paid £2.51 for page reads on Amazon Kindle Unlimited (not listed in my ways to monetise because it seems to be on its way out for self-pub authors, which I haven’t researched yet). Sometimes someone buys me a pint after I tell them a joke. Sometimes someone gives me £3 on Ko-Fi as thanks for making them laugh at a story. Sometimes I sell an old book on eBay (but I am running out of them). Sometimes people buy my books.

I cannot simply do one thing because to do one thing is to make my brain sad. And that’s okay. It just means my journey to working as a full-time writer is a bit more complicated.

What are my plans for monetising?

Well, it’s complicated. If you’re like me and you write lots of different things, it might be smart to think about monetising them as separate entities. Consider that you are not working one job, but that you are working many smaller jobs.

Q: Won’t that make me look greedy?

A: Far from it. I’ve been told by my fans “You are the brand” and people have asked for my workshops to come back since around 2019 (I founded and chaired my own writing society at Edge Hill uni, which people still talk about).

But it is very rare that one person is simultaneously interested in my comedy, my fiction, and my coaching. So how do I serve each of those unique people?

Let’s go over that again.

it is very rare that one person is simultaneously interested in my comedy, my fiction, and my coaching.

This is important. I have several small audiences simply because my output is so varied. I’m also a microcelebrity in the Lego world because one of my projects got 5000 votes and I was on Lego Masters on Channel 4 that time. I do a lot of stuff.

Many of my more successful author friends have multiple pen names, provided their genres are very different. The point is to do what comes naturally, and to trim back complications at every chance you get. For me, that means splitting my serious poetry from my silly stuff so Amazon’s very limited algorithm doesn’t confuse my audiences by cross-recommending things.

So here’s my plan to monetise and finally become self-sufficient this year. Let me know if it’s any good.

Monetise my comedy through Patreon. This could easily work with TikTok and live events (someone will definitely send you £2 a month, whereas a yearly subscription of £24 will feel like a much larger commitment, even though it works out the same)
Monetise my writing Substack by adding a paid tier so people can access my old posts and exclusive spoilers. Additionally, include a ‘sponsor’ tier which is a bit more expensive but which includes a signed copy of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? (I have already scheduled this to go live this week)
Monetise my Lego art by posting instructions on Etsy. This is something that I don’t put much time into because I use Lego to relax, so having a monthly service for my work there will suck the fun out of it. This is something to consider when deciding how to monetise. So for me, posting PDF instructions for £2.99 and occassionally having someone pay for them is a nice bonus that doesn’t interfere with the fun I have making spaceship noises in my bedroom at 3am (yes, I still do that).
Monetise Halfplanet (and launch it as a business) by adding a paid tier here which gives you access to exclusive posts about writing, as well as discord audio workshops and spaces. These posts will eventually turn into a writing advice book, and I could give a special thanks to paid subscribers within the book. This will launch soon, hence the bold text.
Sell my vintage paperbacks, get a business loan, and focus on making Halfplanet the best little publisher it can be. Reach out to independent bookstores and bother them.
Do more podcasts.

I think all of these are good ideas. And I am capable of running them all at the same time.

Why split it up?

Because when I asked my fans over on my fiction substack if they ever wanted or needed my writing advice, 85% said no.

This takes us back to point 10.

“KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE”

And you are mine. So what do you think?