Writing For A Living

Many writers and artist fantasize themselves drawing or writing for a living, however it is insanely competitive, and only the top 2 percent can make a reasonable living out of this. Majority of writers are working a regular job and writing on the side, but Paul took the leap of faith and quit his job to write full-time. He found success through his main book “Pathless Path”. His first year he made 100k, then the year after that, he made 225k form sales. It’s not as though he quit and suddenly decide to be a writer. He was writing for quora everyday until he realize that he wants to be a writer, which later on led him to quiting his job.

Process

This part is important, most people are obsessed with the events, but it’s the process that makes success. Paul has a process that he use to keep his writing natural. He would write 2-4 months, and then he would spend a month restructuring. It’s considered a moderate pace of writing, because most writers just write straight through, and take vacations based on what their families want. This method works well for Paul and his success shows it.

Paul made the decision to self publish, he have designers, editors, and proofreaders to clean up his book before fully publishing it, and it cost about 6k~. His budget was tight, but he believed in quality, so he didn’t cheap out on quality, and his success shows it’s an effective way to make success. He also spent almost a year of time writing, so it would make sense that he is doing all this quality check to protect his investment.

Business Decision

Paul was offered a publishing deal from Penguin Publishers. Penguin are known as one of the biggest publishers, but no matter how big the company is, you have to be careful if they’re trying to snake you out of your hard work. Many hard working software developers spent years of training to work for Meta, but they still get laid off, when times get hard. However in this case Paul was offered a 200k contract 70k for ALL-TIME rights to his book’s contents and 135k to publish a 2nd. At this point his book has already generated 40k and sales were still climbing. Penguin offered him a dirty deal, and Paul made the right decision to reject the insanely bad offer. His single book has generated that offer in a year and half.

Now not all publisher will snake you out of a good deal. JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, is partnered with Warner Brothers. Warner Owns the series, however JK owned the character rights. Basically she has 90 percent of creator control over how the book goes. This is a good deal, and a reason to sign.

Mentality

If you like it, you can brute force it. Paul truly liked writing, he voluntarily write for Quora for free. He did it everyday, just for fun. So when he forced himself to write, it didn’t feel like writing. By forcing himself to write, he manage to figure out how to rest to write better. This is unconventional advice, but everyone is different, depending on your personality the strangest method may work for you, even if it doesn’t follow the textbook, of writing forever and take formulated breaks.