Tim O’Rourke – Secrets to Success

Happy Wednesday and  Inspiration Week here on Entice! We hope you’ve been enjoying the tips, facts, and pictures we’re posting on our site and on Entice Twitter (@piatkusentice).

Ok, Entice writers, ever wondered how a successful ebook author gets started? And how they grow? Read below for a web post from Piatkus author Tim O’Rourke, author of Vampire Seeker!

 

Although I have published many titles before, my book Vampire Seeker (Samantha Carter Series) Book One, was the first of my books to be published by a traditional publisher. It was published last week by Anna Boatman and her team at Piatkus. It was an incredibly exciting day for me as I had worked hard for many years to get my work noticed, let alone be published by a major publishing house like Pilatus. So how did my dream come true? It started about two years ago, with my desire to share my stories with as many people as I could.  That’s why we write, isn’t it? It is for me. I began by self-publishing books onto Amazon so they could be downloaded to the kindle. I then published my books via Smashwords so they could be downloaded via Barnes & Noble, Kobo Store, iTunes and others. It took about seven months and five books for my work to start to sell in what I considered to be significant numbers.

In my first month I sold 50 books and seven months later I had sold just under 1000 books in a single month. My books started to climb the Amazon charts and within a few short months I was selling in excess of 10,000 books per month via the various eBook platforms. In my first year of self-publishing I sold approximately 100,000 copies of my books.  A year later my books continue to sell and that number has now more than doubled. I often get asked what is my secret or how do I do it. To be honest, I don’t think there is a secret. I write lots and I mean lots. I write five days a week for about eight hours each day. But most days longer. Even when I was holding down a full time job, I would write on the train to and from work, on the bus, wherever I could. In the last two years I have written over 1.5 million words and all of these have been self-published. In just over two years I have self-published over thirty books. And for me, I think that was what helped my work get noticed. I didn’t sit back and spend a year trying to push my first book on social media sites, although I did do some of course – social media is really important and a great tool too – but I started work on my next book, then the next and so on. Once people had downloaded my first book, I hoped they would enjoy it enough to look for the second, and I wanted it to be there waiting to be downloaded. If they enjoyed the second I hoped they would look for the third and so on. I wanted there to be enough of my books out there so I developed a following. My work ratio is this – writing 80% and social media 20%. That works best for me.

Once I had built a flowing it was important for me to thank those people who had downloaded my books and taken the time to read them. I am genuinely so grateful to the people who take time to leave me messages and feedback on Facebook and other social networking sites. I love chatting to them and discussing the books I have written. I respond personally to every email and message I receive and acknowledge every post left for me on Facebook. It really is a good way of interacting with the people who read and buy my work. If it wasn’t for them, then I wouldn’t have sold one book. So my advice would be to write, write then write some more. People can only read your work if you make it available for them to do so. But most important of all, take some time out of each day to say thank you to those that enjoy reading your work.

Thanks, Tim! Now to all your Entice writers, keep going! There’s still time to enter!