Indie Author Confidential 10: Indie Author Confidential, #10

By M.L. Ronn

The ground-breaking, behind-the-scenes look at a working writer continues with Vol. 10!

Prolific writer M.L. Ronn (Michael La Ronn) shares his lessons learned on his journey to become a successful writer. You'll discover writing, marketing, business, and other miscellaneous tips that you don't hear every day.

Covered in this volume:

• How Michael doubled his daily word counts…again

• What it feels like to achieve new levels of productivity and the problems that come with it

• Why AI audiobooks are having a watershed moment

• How he used Facebook ads to have his best sales month ever

The information in this book is what writers discuss over beers at writing conferences. You may find it useful on your journey to becoming a successful writer. It just might make you more money and help you satisfy your readers, too.

Are you ready to dive into the world of Indie Author Confidential?

 

V1.0

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Level Up LLC
• Release date: Oct 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885510646

M.L. Ronn

Science fiction and fantasy on the wild side! M.L. Ronn (Michael La Ronn) is the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels including the Modern Necromancy, The Last Dragon Lord, and Sword Bear Chronicle series. In 2012, a life-threatening illness made him realize that storytelling was his #1 passion. He’s devoted his life to writing ever since, making up whatever story makes him fall out of his chair laughing the hardest. Every day.

Book preview

Indie Author Confidential 10

INDIE AUTHOR CONFIDENTIAL 10

SECRETS NO ONE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT BEING A WRITER

M.L. RONN

Copyright 2022 © M.L. Ronn. All rights reserved.

Published by Author Level Up LLC.

Version 3.0

Cover Design by Pixelstudio.

Cover Art by jasoshulwathon.

Editing by BZ Hercules.

Time Period Covered in This Book: Q3 2022

Special thank you to the following people on Patreon who supported this book: Zhade Barnet, Michael Guishard, Jon Howard, Beth Jackson, Mojo Jojo, Lynda Washington, and Etta Welk.

Some links in this book contain affiliate links. If you purchase books and services through these links, I receive a small commission at no cost to you. You are under no obligation to use these links, but thank you if you do!

For more helpful writing tips and advice, subscribe to the Author Level Up YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/authorlevelup.

For avoidance of doubt, Author reserves the rights, and no one has the rights to reproduce and/or otherwise use this work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text, including without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the work without the Author’s specific and express permission to do so. Nor does any person or company have the right to sublicense others to reproduce and/or otherwise use this work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text without Author’s specific and express permission.

CONTENTS

About This Series

Introduction

Become a World-Class Content Creator

Lessons in Dialogue

Lessons in Comics

Lessons from Studying an Interpreter

Lessons from Three Assholes in an Airport

A Challenging Fantasy Series Idea

Audio: The Great Concealer

Writing More Short Stories

Master Dictation Macro

Achieving New Levels of Productivity

AI Audiobooks: The Watershed Moment

Portfolio Management Achievements

Speaking Engagement Success

The Idea Well

Become a Technology and Data-Driven Writer

Lessons in Cover Design This Quarter

Building an Easier Master Publishing File

Audiobook Proofing with AI Software

Fixing a Mistake in a Live Audiobook

Bulk File Renaming

Clipboard Manager

Automating Reviews

Lessons in Facebook Ads

Another Way to Run Amazon Ads

Reevaluating Currency Exchange Rates

Selling Entire Bibliographies of My Work

Looking Forward

A Personal Trial

Automated Websites

The Rise of Cancel Culture

R.A.M.P-ing Up My Career

Encounter with a Savvy Author Estate

This Time Last Year

This Time Five Years Ago

This Time Ten Years Ago

Q3 2022 Progress Report

Content Created While Writing This Book

Read the Next Volume

Meet M.L. Ronn

More Books by M.L. Ronn

ABOUT THIS SERIES

This isn't your typical writing self-help book. This series is a compilation of lessons learned from an indie author trying to walk the path to success. Follow author M.L. Ronn (Michael La Ronn) as he navigates what it means to master the craft of writing, marketing, and running a profitable publishing business. Learn from his successes and failures, and learn about things that most successful authors only talk about behind the scenes.

To read all the collected volumes of this series in an anthology, visit www.authorlevelup.com/confidential.

INTRODUCTION

2022 continues, and it has been one of the more eventful years in my writing life.

The time of great forgetting is in full swing. Summer is the time when writers forget to write. After all, it’s nice outside.

Fortunately, the time of great forgetting forgot about me. I still maintained record levels of productivity even though the number of books I published this quarter was small. Next quarter will more than make up for it due to the timing of a few projects hitting late in the quarter and my annual Beast Mode challenge, which starts mid-August. This is still shaping up to be a solid year for writing output.

Yet, I dealt with problems. My wife is still battling long COVID and suffered worsening symptoms this quarter. I also had kidney stone surgery at the beginning of the quarter that slowed me down a little due to some complications.

Despite the setbacks, I still made some signature achievements this quarter.

My Core Strategic Priorities

As a refresher, my mission is to create content that entertains and/or educates my audience, preferably both, and to remain nimble in an ever-changing industry. I do this by focusing on three strategic priorities:

Become a world-class content creator

Become a technology and data-driven writer

Become the writer of the future (looking forward)

What's in This Volume

In the World-Class Content Creator section, I discuss experiments with voice recorder dictation that laid the groundwork for doubling my word counts moving forward. I also discuss writing craft lessons learned from bestsellers, collaborating on a book with a friend, and adventures with AI audiobooks.

In the Technology and Data-Driven Writer section, I discuss falling currency exchange rates, running profitable Facebook Ads, and thoughts on new tools that have helped me be more productive.

In the Looking Forward section, I share how my wife’s battle with long COVID has impacted my writing as well as thoughts on cancel culture and how to remain balanced in my everyday writing life. I also talk about where I was this time a year, five years, and ten years ago, with a special anniversary taking place this year. It’s fun to look back at my career from time to time.

Enjoy this volume.

—M.L. Ronn

August 20, 2022

Des Moines, Iowa

BECOME A WORLD-CLASS CONTENT CREATOR

LESSONS IN DIALOGUE

I read a book with a dialogue scene that stuck with me. I decided to study it to see how the author kept me captivated.

I won’t share the name of the book because that’s not important. What matters is the analysis itself.

This was a 700-word section of a scene between the main character and an ex-girlfriend who happens to be his boss. The main character was just injured in a scary attack, and his boss is visiting him in the hospital, chastising him for being reckless. The scene is a medium-paced (not fast but not slow) conversation between two characters. The scene is mostly witty dialogue.

Here are my takeaways.

The author established the setting within the first 200 words. There were three major focus points in the setting. That’s an admirable thing to shoot for—amazing setting and world-building early so the reader stays engaged.

The author established the secondary character with just three pieces of description, yet she’s a relatively important character in the novel. I’ve always operated under the theory of the more important the character, the more details they get throughout the book. This turns that on its head. It just goes to show you that anything’s possible as long as you execute.

There is some overwriting in the chapter. There are a few lines that really aren’t needed and don’t add to the experience. In fact, I don’t even remember HEARING these lines when I listened to the audiobook, and I didn’t even hear them the second time when I listened to the chapter. It was only when I studied the chapter visually that I noticed them, and even then, my eyes glossed over them. I paid careful attention to the phrases so I can avoid them in my own writing.

Approximately 25 percent of the dialogue lines do something other than said. In other words, the author did something a little different to vary up the conversation every fourth line (on average, not in practice).

There were three lines of AMAZING writing in the section I studied (I could argue that there were more, but there were three lines that grabbed me). What if I aimed to write one to three arresting/interesting/very vivid images in every chapter? This isn't necessarily something to aim for; it's just food for thought.

This analysis only took me about 30 minutes. I don’t like to spend a lot of time doing this. Studying the craft can become a big