Why Not Retire and Become a Writer?: A Seniors Guide to Having a Retirement Career Publishing Books

By Scott Smith

Do You Dream of Retiring and Making a Living As a Writer? Learn How!

Do you dream of one day retiring and spending the rest of your days sitting on your couch and watching TV? Maybe! But if you do, then you probably are not reading this description! Most people, even in retirement, want to have a job. We may not call it a job, or even think about it as a job--but we want to do something.

For many people, that job is writing that great story they've had in their head for years. While these people typically dream of making a good income out of it, most never do. It's not because their book was no good. It's because they never took the time to understand how to do it right. They spent months--years even--working on something they cared deeply for, but only a few hours maximum thinking about how they would get people to read it.

The goal of this book isn't to tell you how to write your story. There are plenty of books on that. The goal of this book is to help you with that next step in the journey: publishing it. And by publishing it, I don't mean helping you find a publisher or agent who will do the heavy lifting for you--I mean helping you do it yourself through self-publishing and bring home the income most writers only dream of!

It's going to show you the strategies used by thousands of writers (myself included) to turn their passion for storytelling into something that's more than a hobby--something that has an actual livable income that comes with it.

Are you ready to start your retirement career? Let's go!

Note: this book is based of "The Six Figure Writer"; it has an expanded section covering formatting and publishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Smith
• Release date: May 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393880486

Scott Smith

Scott Smith was educated at Dartmouth College and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

Book preview

Introduction

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Do you dream of one day retiring and spending the rest of your days sitting on your couch and watching TV? Maybe! But if you do, then you probably are not reading this description! Most people, even in retirement, want to have a job. We may not call it a job, or even think about it as a job—but we want to do something.

For many people, that job is writing that great story they’ve had in their head for years. While these people typically dream of making a good income out of it, most never do. It’s not because their book was no good. It’s because they never took the time to understand how to do it right. They spent months—years even—working on something they cared deeply for, but only a few hours maximum thinking about how they would get people to read it.

The goal of this book isn’t to tell you how to write your story. There are plenty of books on that. The goal of this book is to help you with that next step in the journey: publishing it. And by publishing it, I don’t mean helping you find a publisher or agent who will do the heavy lifting for you—I mean helping you do it yourself through self-publishing and bring home the income most writers only dream of!

It’s going to show you the strategies used by thousands of writers (myself included) to turn their passion for storytelling into something that’s more than a hobby—something that has an actual livable income that comes with it.

Are you ready to start your retirement career? Let’s go!

[1]

Don’t Expect Immediate Results!

Before continuing any further, let’s get one thing straight: this is not a get rich quick scheme.

I’ve been doing this for over ten years. I’ve seen all the schemes.

If someone is bragging about how you can earn six figures in less than an hour a week, they’re probably trying to scam you into trying something either frowned upon or outright banned—like blank notebooks (this, it’s a thing) or PLR (Private License Resell).

The fact is, publishing is hard. Really hard! You think writing a book is difficult—just wait until you have to find readers to read it!

Statistically speaking, most authors think they’ll become bestselling authors, but in reality most authors earn less than $50 a year.  Yikes, right! You just spent a good chunk of your life writing what you consider a work worthy of a Pulitzer and all you make is 50 bucks?!

I know what you're thinking: the average author makes $50, but you’re no average author. Unlike their books, yours is actually good! Like, really good! Like, so good you’re surprised Brad Pitt hasn’t knocked on your door yet to ask if you’d let him play the lead. Heck, you’ve read books from some of these so-called Kindle Millionaires, and they’re not very good—not as good as yours, anyway.

Let’s put this into context. Every day thousands of authors just like you publish their book. Every day! Over the course of the year that adds up to several hundreds of thousands. And these are just new books. If you throw older books into the mix, there are millions of books. Millions!

So, John Doe logs onto Amazon to search for his next great read, and what do you think happens? Do you think he’s going to sort through millions of books until he sees yours? Maybe? Possibly? Absolutely not!

Depressing, isn’t it?

Incredibly depressing...unless you take the time to do things right. That’s what I’ll guide you through in this book.

I don’t like get rich quick schemes. This is a get rich right book. It’s for the author who wants to make a career out of their writing. If that sounds like you, then keep reading.

My story

I was fortunate to get in on eBooks right when they started; it wasn’t easy to sell a book, but you weren’t exactly competing against dozens—hundreds even—of authors in identical categories.

That said, this book is authored under a pen name—so if you are wondering why this is the only book I have, and yet I claim to have sold millions of copies, that’s why. I have published under several pen names across multiple genres. I have written bestselling books in nonfiction, YA, religion, and lots of other stuff in between. Most of my books hover in the 10,000 to 30,000 sales rank; the highest I ever got was #1 on Amazon—it was only for an hour or two, but it was still a proud moment.

I chose to write this under a pen name because I want people to copy my formula and not my books. The formula has no secret sauce—countless authors have successfully used it. My books don’t either. But I don’t want someone to read this book and say, I’ll just do exactly what he did, so I can make as much as him!

My hope is that you learn, spend the next several months working hard, and then