Ready, Fire, Aim: Publish First, Ask Questions Later
By: Sabana Grande
Tags: Publishing, Books, Writing Tips, Amazon, Writing

Ready, Fire, Aim: Publish First, Ask Questions Later

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

This is a first-person account of how I got my first book published. It was the summer of 2015 and I decided I would spend the summer writing a book and then publish it on Amazon Kindle.

I did not spend the summer writing a book. I went to music festivals. This was back when they still existed…

However, as September rolled in and I was just about to enter Business College, I decided that that day, I was going to write a full book and publish it. And I did.

The book was crap

But it was well-formatted, did not have any typos, and conveyed the message I wanted it to convey. It was upwards of 50 pages and I had written it all in one day.

I had previously signed up for Amazon Kindle Publishing (here’s an account I made earlier) and all I had to do was hit ‘Publish’. It was not exactly a heart-wrenching moment where I really hoped my book would top the Amazon Best-Seller list.

I had used the Kindle Publishing tools to give my new book a nice title and a distinct red background. I used a pseudonym and decided to price my book by pulling a number out of thin air, say £7.84. It was perfect.

I published it and forgot about it

I was just about to start college, and I never expected anyone to ever buy my book. I simply left it there. The book was, apart from its high editorial standard, absolutely rubbish. I had written it in one day, after all.

It had been my summer goal and I had felt guilty about not doing it. I had at the time read a book called Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson. The book was not about writing per se.

It stated that the most successful companies launch imperfect products and then fix them as they’re selling them. The hypothesis behind this approach is that nothing CAN be perfect when it starts out.

College textbooks get rewritten every year as they receive feedback from readers (and they make more money by making new editions).

My point

I woke up one morning with a cheque in the mail. It was about a year later and I had earned £100 in royalties, with more in my Amazon Kindle account waiting to reach the threshold at which they would send it out to me again.

I’m not saying that this is a huge amount. However, what I am saying or speculating is that a lot of writers lean towards perfectionism. You will have new techniques in a year’s time, better stories, more inspiration.

Up until that point, I was a writer who wrote stuff and left it half-finished until the PERFECT next scenario I wanted to write about came to me.

Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash

The failure taught me a lesson

The book was not perfect and it didn’t do very well. Also, people who read it did so on Amazon Kindle subscription, meaning that they didn’t have to pay the full price for my book. Other than paying tax on my earnings, the book cost me nothing to produce and earned me money, even on one day’s work.

I learned that perfectionism is costly. I had always leaned towards perfectionism vis a vis my writing and my art. This experience taught me that there is an opportunity cost when you wait a very long time for the perfect inspiration.

One can also apply the teachings of the book, Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson to the drafting process. FINISH your book. Then edit. Don’t worry about it being perfect as you go along. Nothing can be perfect.

The message

Tone down your perfectionism a notch if you want to make money. Or at least tone down your perfectionism when it comes to the first draft. This is my personal quote on writer’s block:

Writer’s block is when you think about everyone judging you before they do.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but I had no problem with writer’s block when I thought nobody was going to read it anyway.

Produce the material first. Then perfect it. Repeat to become a prolific writer.