When I began writing I had a goal and a reason for writing the things I did. It wasn't a grand amazing dream to get rich either. It was in a nutshell to make back my thirty dollar investment. So I hit publish and chewed on my nails for days. It was horrifying. I was now an author. I wouldn't tell anyone. Not my family, not my friends, no one!
As the first ten days rolled by and I'd already made more than my twenty-nine dollars back. I was shocked. I was excited and I told someone about it because I was so damned proud of my forty-five dollars. Then the reviews started coming in and I was even more amazed because they were mostly good despite the comments about needing an editor. Even with all the issues they were reporting with my grammar and spelling. (Which for a dyslexic person is a huge challenge.)
Yep, I began to write a second novel. I was living on the high in that first month I had made four hundred dollars. Holy crap, batman! I put out the second novel exactly two months after the first. (Sorry, apparently according to my critique partner I am a story writing guru…because I have turned out every novel I have written all about 60000-70000 words in under two months. It not that they aren’t flawed they are but the story line and characters are solid. This amazes her. I think it’s just that parts easy for me…over active imagination.)
The second novel was even more money and I was even more shocked. For years I had tried to make the traditionally required word count and would fall short by about ten thousand words and give up. Only Kindle didn't have a requirement for this. It was liberating in a way. I discovered that I was actually not bad at writing, which was news to me because I thought I would never make it as an Indie author with all my issues from my dyslexia.
Not only did I enjoy writing I was making gobs of money and I was still in awe. I was still wondering what the heck was happening. I am now a one-year veteran of self-publishing and I am still amazed to say I sell fairly well and now have an editor for the last two books published because I can now finally afford it.
I now have three edited titles and by the end of this year I want to have all of them edited. But that isn't the reason I wrote this article. The reason I wrote this is to say these words and you’ll laugh once you read them because you read this whole article to do so…and it’s sort of a joke. So here they are:
Sometimes it’s best to run before you walk.
As far as editing goes, editing is very important, because books, articles, magazines, and newsletters have always been edited very well. People expect good editing in published works. The biggest mistake that indie authors make is to publish without editing. I helped a fellow with a very good story edit his book last year and it took me nine months, part-time, of struggle to get it correct.
As for word count, I'm not sure what your problem is. There are short stories, novellas, novels, and series, but no limit to length of written work except to meet certain commercial and contest publishing requirements… Not writing requirements for personal publishing.
Ron