Last week, Novelr profiled Amanda Hocking, whom they dubbed the very rich indie writer. Hocking is a 26-year-old woman who writes “paranormal romance” novels and publishes them herself through Amazon’s Kindle store. She’s been very successful, and has made a lot of money.
Her success has led to all sorts of speculation — as success will do — and comments from folks who think they could do what she does, too. They think she’s an overnight success. She recently posted a response at her website, and I like it. Here’s an excerpt:
This is literally years of work you’re seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.
If you read Hocking’s post, you might understand some of my own mindset over the past few years. Imagine that instead of discussing supernatural love stories, she’s writing about an unexpectedly successful personal-finance blog. There are some close parallels. I don’t mean that in a negative, complain-y way. I just mean to stress that yes, you can make it big doing something you love, but it’ll probably take a lot of hard work. (And luck. There’s always a bit of luck involved.)
Speaking of making money: There’s been a small flurry of online info about making more money lately. (You know this is one of my pet topics, right?) For example, Inc. magazine posted an article from Jason Fried about how to get good at making money. Fried’s list is targeted at small-business owners. Trent at The Simple Dollar responded with his own list of five easy steps to make money for average folks. Both articles are interesting.
Moving on: I’ve written before about the value of a neighborhood exchange — an informal system of borrowing and lending goods and services. David at My Two Dollars has a great list of items to share with your neighbors to save money. I realize that not everyone likes to borrow or lend things, but if you live in an area with good social capital, this can be a great way for everyone involved to save space and cash.
Since returning from Africa, I’ve been struggling to get everything done that needs to be done. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. So I was interested in the latest post at Pop Economics, which asks, “How much do you value your time?” Pop says the balance between time and money is tough to find — we want more of both. He’s actually experimenting with a personal assistant, which I like. I’ve been waiting for an average joe to do this and report on how it goes. (As opposed to somebody like Tim Ferriss, who makes it sound like a way to become superhuman.)
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Interesting observations. I’ve been reading Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Lapin -and he offered something that I found very compelling. When we hire professionals (ie., doctor, lawyer, etc.) we usually judge them by their business skills, which invariably includes relational intelligence and marketing, not their core skill set. Being self-employed does not mean a life of indiscriminate leisure, rather you have to order your life in such a way that your product/content is not compromised in terms of quality and still tend to the business side of the equation, like marketing, managing people, dealing with vendors.
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That Jason Fried piece is really good. I got a largish project with a client the other day, and because it was hard to budget and write up a contract with everything, I broke it down into manageable (and payable) pieces instead. Client was on board the same day. It’s just what Jason Fried advised there (among other things), but I hadn’t codified this into a method like he did. Will adopt this from now on.
Please, more posts about MAKING money, especially for the business/self-employed crowd (like the people who run this blog). I know this is not a business blog per se but things like salary negotiation have been discussed, and people on salaries can always have a side business.
I bought the Money Book for freelancers the other day thanks to Sierra’s post last month, as a result I’m reorganizing my finances at warp speed. New bank accounts, new accounting, etc.
[@JD: does your affiliate link apply also to Kindle editions? Because the Money Book link was for the paper book but I bought the Kindle version and did not see it... just making sure you get your % with my thanks.]
Re: the Amanda Hocking case, she might be a successful writer (I haven’t read her books so I can’t comment on the quality) but she’s failing as a manager. She needs to delegate & go back to doing her thing. OR, alternate periods of managing and writing. But “shoemaker to your shoes”– she needs to hire someone to run her chores or she will go crazy eventually.
I tried a personal assistant for a while– we had a pile of money and too many projects to handle and she was very helpful at sorting things out. We would have died of a heart attack without her. She wasn’t abroad though, she was a friend who needed a job and didn’t charge a lot, she lived in another time zone though and we worked via Basecamp (speaking of Jason Fried…). Then the Big Recession came and it all went to hell, but things are picking up again, so who knows.
Ok, end of random post. Thanks for the links.
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I do some of the neighbor sharing things already — one neighbor lent me all her newborn clothes and maternitywear last summer and my next door neighbor and I used to give each other the coupon insert leftovers. We also get free grapes from a couple neighbors and I generally give them a lot back in jelly form. I love the idea of expanding that even farther, though.
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I think being an overnight success J.D. has become the modern expectation and few appreciate nor welcome the hard work, dedication, sacrifices, and hard times that comes with it. Bright shining lights of good times mask the tougher ones so I applaud Amanda for not just basking in glory but telling it as it is. As Monty Hall said, “I’m an overnight success, but it took me 20 years”. That’s what it takes!
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Hey thanks for the Amanda Hocking piece. What an interesting, and humbling story.
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El Nerdo is exactly right that Amanda Hocking really needs to hire help and delegate. It sounds like she’s making >$1M a year now. She should be focusing 100% on the writing and hiring professional help to do everything else.
But I do think that its awesome that she has found that kind of success independently. Kudos to her.
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I totally agree that any “overnight success” you find out there took years to get to that point. Can anyone do it? I’d venture to say “yes” they could, but it’s the matter of if they actually do it or not. There’s a lot of work involved and most are not willing to put in the sweat equity. As for luck being involved, I don’t totally agree with that one. We make our own luck by the choices we make and our frame of mind. Sometimes things happen that we can not explain logically and attribute to “luck” but I believe they come when we are ready for them after all that we have done.
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