20 Books to 50K, Adelaide: a review

On January 6, 2023, my wife Sue and I, with about one hundred others, attended the 20 Books to 50k one-day seminar in Adelaide. Attendees were from all over Australia, and there were casual get-togethers the night before and afterward, to network.

If you are in the dark about 20 Books to 50K; that is not a set formula, but it is aimed at people who aspire to ethically make money from their writing purely by self-publishing, either exclusively on Amazon or across a spectrum of sales channels. And to succeed, you must understand how to market your writing and how to grow your author business. So, you need the right tools—ideas and strategies—and know when and how to use them. And your failsafe is your wider support networks.

Good writing sells, but the cream does not automatically rise to the top. Platforms such as Amazon are crowded with millions of offerings. It takes know-how to put yourself in a position where readers will see your work—and be persuaded to part with their money for your content, whatever that might be. Then, it’s an art to keep those people on board so they buy from you again. The good news is that it can be done, but if it’s not done properly, your efforts will just be part of the literature fog.

Craig Martelle, who is an urban fantasy, thriller and sci-fi author from Alaska, chaired the seminar. Here is a small sample of his fictional offerings.

Martelle, together with Michael Anderle, started 20booksto50k as a Facebook Group in early 2016. It has 68000 members now—so, yeah! His mission through 20booksto50k is to aid the professional development of authors via shared opportunities, camaraderie, and targeted philanthropy. He looks to spend everything he makes, not just on advertising and business costs, but on helpers, other authors and travel. Because Craig’s mission is to empower writers to make writing their business (rather than a hobby or side-hustle), he bankrolled the other seminar speakers and venue hire, meaning the attendees only had to fork out for the catering. Like, wow!

He saw family in Australia, ran the seminar in Adelaide, then did a little tourism before popping across the ditch to run another seminar in Auckland. 

Here are his craft books (links to Amazon). He was rather busy in 2022, also churning out 10 new fiction books, as well, plus some collaborations.

If you are interested in viewing YouTube content of his craft seminars, there was a three day event in Las Vegas last year: search “20Books Vegas”. If that doesn’t hit the spot, you are hard to please!

My main takeaway from the seminar was:

Writing to market

Writing to market does not mean writing to the latest trends. For instance, I personally have no desire to write in sub-genres that, by their nature, cannot honour Christ. One such romance sub-genre, reverse harem (RH), is at the top of the pops right now. And, at the gathering, I talked to well-meaning, otherwise sensible people who were writing just that, as it would sell.

But trends come quickly and can disappear at the same speed. But romance itself will always be in style. It is generally an honourable genre. After all, Christ gave up his life to buy back his bride, us, so we could have union with him, God. It is not called the Great Romance for nothing. 

Writing to market involves writing in categories so people know what to expect. There is literary fiction which is always character-driven and usually a study of the human condition when faced with real life challenges and then there is genre fiction. Readers who want mystery might expect to follow a crime or some abnormality (such as a disappearance) from its happening to its solution; and likewise, genres such as romance, life story, thriller or suspense, speculative fiction, women’s fiction, etc., all have their standard form and content which caches the storyline. There are some genres that fit together well, like mystery-thriller or historical romance.

The problem comes when a story, the story you are trying to sell, doesn’t fit so nicely into one of these established categories. The power of the market is a rather broad but finite range of product-types, each having its own niche in that market. But just like that product you can’t find on the supermarket shelves, if your work is an unusual mix of genres, it can be difficult to place.

So, if you are struggling to select the appropriate ‘shelf’ of the online bookstore for the book you have written, your readers may not enjoy your book because it was not quite what they expected. And if it’s not on the first page of a targeted search, you are not going to get chance buys, as few potential buyers will browse past the visible window.

As well as genre, readers are guided by familiar tropes. Now, there’s a whole separate topic here—tropes are to do with your story premise—for example: good versus evil, or rags to riches—use them too much and the story is hackneyed. Use them too little and the readers get lost without familiar guideposts.

So, I guess, writing to market is really important if you want the general public to buy and read your books.

Of course, if your market is your family or a niche group, then all good. You know what they expect. Carry on. You’ve got this!

Writing Sprints

The seminar wasn’t all speculative, as most of the participants had already published something. They simply needed guided affirmation that they were doing the best they could. 

Sue enjoyed the seminar too, although she had seen some of these concepts before. The greatest benefit for her was networking with other authors doing well. To maintain the rage, she organised writing sprints (timed periods of writing) with people she met at the seminar. This was as much for accountability, as the shared experience.

But you can't go to a seminar about writing, without well, um...writing. All attendees were given a writing sprint exercise--three times during the day.

And the question for today, is how do you describe the smell of peppermint to someone who has never had the sense of smell?

Try it now. Think laterally. Set the timer. You have five minutes. Happy writing!

Marc Jeffrey is an Adelaide-based author and poet who loves to craft words in times when his beautiful wife and lively dog (Shih tzu cross Chihuahua) are asleep. He writes of hope and justice, depositing his characters in the nexus between the ‘what is’ and the ‘what if’ – while wondering if he can leave the house without waking anyone up. 

He is long-time member of the ‘Literati’ writing group, that grew out of the Tabor Adelaide Creative Writing program. When he’s not writing, Marc listens to his favourite music, which ranges from Cold Chisel to Claude Debussy