SFFMP 215: Working Hard, Ignoring Naysayers, and Becoming a Full-Time Author
For this week’s show, we talked to return guest Jeffery H. Haskell, who first joined us in December of 2017 for the show “Successfully Launching as a New Author and Is Kindle Worlds Worth It?” (Yes, Kindle Worlds was still a thing back then!)
Jeffery is a superhero fiction author and also has a new non-fiction title out, Writing for Life: Living the Impossible Dream. We talked about superheroes and how the fantasy subgenre is doing, and we also talked about some of the mindset issues that beginning authors face and that may be holding them back from publishing and becoming successful.
Here are some of the specifics that we covered:
- Keeping a series selling past six installments.
- Launching a new series in the same universe.
- The state of the superhero subgenre as of January 2019.
- Whether traditional publishers and authors are in the superhero genre or it’s more dominated by indies.
- The earnings potential in the superhero genre.
- Overcoming negative feedback and challenges to pursue your writing dream.
- Making smart decisions, working hard, and not relying on luck to succeed.
- Whether you have to be born with what it takes to become a writer or if anyone can learn.
- When it makes sense to bank novels and rapid release and when you should publish right away to test the waters.
- How long an author should give a series before accepting that maybe it’s time to try something else.
- Setting realistic expectations for your first books and series.
- What marketing Jeff has found works well for him in the superhero genre.
- Increasing productivity to publish more books as one shifts to full-time.
Find Jeff on his website or Facebook or check out his books on Amazon.
For inspiration, take a look at Writing for Life: Living the Impossible Dream.
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I wanted to search for this author mentioned in the podcast, the one with the science fiction books that area like Firefly? I love Firefly, but I searched for Richard Perry and “Tykie” but I’m probably hearing both of these names wrong. If you could ask Jeffrey about this author, I’d appreciate it! Thanks!
I’m not Lindsay or the guys ;-), but the author Jeff mentioned is Richard Parry, and the first novel in his Ezeroc Wars series is Tyche’s Flight. I’m looking forward as well to reading these—they sound right up my alley, too 😀
Yes, thanks for answering, Dale! I grabbed a sample to try too. 🙂
Really appreciate you guys having Jeffrey Haskell on the podcast again. Not only did he have a lot of great info and insights into the super hero genre today, but his advice and thoughts on setting expectations for success as well as finding out what might be holding you back were excellent.
I’m glad you enjoyed him as a guest, Dale! As always, thanks for listening. 🙂
How Jeff finds time to be a superhero AND a fiction author is amazing! My hero indeed.