Indie Life/Writing Wibbles

I actually have something useful this week…

When Lightning Strikes (or gets really close)

I haven’t been struck by lightning, but came pretty close once. I was riding home from work, on the motorcycle, and ran into a thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning came down behind the supermarket, where I was sitting in traffic, and I felt a spark jump from my hand to the handlebars. Needless to say, I bolted for a bank overhang and waited it out.

As an indie writer, getting into the best-seller list on Amazon might be like being struck by lightning. But lightning could just get really close, too, and your book might end up in the upper 1,000 overall rankings and chart on one or more genre Top 100 lists. It happened to me, it might happen to you. Then you might ask yourself:

Now what?

First, celebrate! Do a happy dance around your desk, pour yourself a generous helping of your favorite beverage, take the family out for a nice dinner. Take screen shots of your book page. And don’t forget to thank your higher power, whatever you recognize as such, for cutting you a break!

Next, stay focused. Constantly checking your book's rank or sales numbers isn’t going to push it any higher, and takes away from time you could be writing the next book. In fact, this is the time you really need to get that next book ready. You've got an incentive, and impending royalty checks have a way of making family take your writing more seriously.

Finally, analyze. If you have other books on offer, and they never caught on like this one, why not? What did you do right, this time? Is there anything you can do with your current books to give them a boost? Can you do the same things for your next book, or even improve on them, to do even better next time?

Think of it as the “stop, drop, roll” of modest success in your writing endeavors. Oh, and here’s a little soundtrack for the happy dance:

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Being Indie doesn’t have to mean going it alone. Check out some of the other Indie Life blogs this week: