How did you get started? Also what is the average length of your stories? Do you focus on a specific genre?
I've been interested in writing for ages but I'm such a perfectionist.
I've been interested in writing for ages but I'm such a perfectionist.
I picked a genre (science fiction romance) and stick within it, but am still not "narrowed down" enough from a business perspective. This takes longer to build traction. There are so many different niches in this genre, that if I could stick to just one of them I'd get momentum faster. But the reason I started doing this was only partly profits - mostly I just wanted to write cool stories - so I don't mind it taking longer.
Perfectionism can be tough to overcome, but I think of it like this: If I don't put out more books and see how they perform, I will never get as close to perfect as I could be. That feedback loop (reviews, profits, rank, whatever measure you care about) is a driver of improved quality and presentation. I always put real effort into my stories of course, but now I look back at the first thing I published and cringe. But if I didn't publish it and learn from it for the next thing, I'd still be writing at that level.
Did you publish short stories on KDP as well or did you wait until you had longer pieces to publish?