20 Books to $50k Challenge Part 3: How I’d Do It

How I Would/Will Approach The 20 Books Challenge

(Please Note: This post about the 20 Books to $50k Challenge is split into three parts. You can read the first part here, and the second part here.)

In the two previous posts, I talked about the 20 Books to 50 Challenge. I talked about what it is, caveats to it, what “making a living writing” means and ran the numbers associated with doing so.

All that’s left now is to give my personal thoughts on how I would go about completing the 20 Books to 50k Challenge and the limits I’d place on myself in doing so, as well as the strategies I’d use to “hack” the process to make it as easy as possible on myself.

So let’s go.

#1 Timeframes

The aim of doing a challenge like 20 Books to $50k is to get to a point where you have natural discoverability. Discoverability, as a concept, means that you have enough products available so that firstly, it’s easy to find your products in the wide, wide world, and secondly, so that when a potential reader has read one of your books, there’s more for them to find and purchase.

If a person finds one of your books and you have one book available, the lifetime value of that reader is $5. If a person finds your book available and they enjoy your book and want to buy another and there are twenty available, the potential lifetime value is $100+, because not only could they buy all of your books, but they’re probably going to become a long-term fan if they’ve read that much of you and are still happy to pay.

I bring this up because the point of doing something like the 20 Books to $50k challenge is so that you can get to the point where you make a living as a fiction writer. Now, to that extent I say; you want to do this as quickly as possible, (while obviously not going so fast as to decrease quality.)

Ultimately, it boils down to this; if you write two books a year, you can be making a living as an author of fiction in ten years according to the goals of the challenge.

If you write twenty books in a year, then you can make a living as an author in one year.

If I were to do this challenge, I’d be aiming for less than one year. However, I’m a full-time writer anyway. If you have a day job, or otherwise are committed to other stuff, I understand that’s a lot to ask.

Let’s run the numbers though before we move on.

Most writers can write 1,000 words an hour. Let’s say you’re entirely part time, writing solely in the evening to replace your Netflix habit. You get three hours in. 3,000 words a day. A typical novel is 90,000 words for a crime/thriller, and 110,000 words if you write fantasy. If you write epic fantasy, then it might be 150,000 words.

Which, I’m sorry to leave you hanging with the numbers but it brings me to my next point…

#2 Genre and Length

If you want to run the 20 Books to 50k Challenge, then it’s obviously up to you what you write. However, I suggest you don’t write your own version of Lord Of The Rings high-fantasy set-in-space clocks-in-at-150,000-words-per-book series.

3,000 words a day means 50 days to complete your novel, assuming it’s a clean first draft and everything’s perfect.

Here’s the thing; (in addition to the above,) assuming you’re writing quickly with the goal of someday soon becoming a full-time writer and doing  a great job in the meantime, I suggest you leave the ambitious works until after you’re there.

Think; you’ve got twenty books making you a passive livable wage in a years’ time. You’ll have all the time in the world to write Tolkien’s successor.

For now though, you want to make it as easy on yourself as possible.

Write it in this world, (no worldbuilding needed,) in a genre with well-defined beats, (mystery, romance, thriller,) that you know will sell.

Remember, we’re making it easy on ourselves.

Run the numbers again. 3,000 words a day, part time. In a genre where the average book is 90,000 words. That’s a book a month. 20 months to complete this goal working very part time.

That’s how I’d recommend you do it if you’re part-time, with a few hours to spare.

What if you’re a pirate hustler though?

#3: How I Would Hypothetically Do The 20 Books To $50k Challenge

Let’s say you read about this challenge on a Thursday and wanted to start on the following Monday.

I would suggest the following:

• Pick a TV series with an overarching plot but episodic content that you’d like to write your own version of

For instance, if you’re a Sci-Fi fan, you might watch The Twilight Zone or Dr. Who. (I’ve never watched either, so bear with me on this.) These shows have the same structure/form every episode, and Dr. Who has the same hero, but the episodes are all independent.

A better example, now I think of it, is Scooby Doo. It’s the same episode over and over; the same heroes, the same Team and the same general structure. They solve the mystery.

Now, the McSloy household has always been into murder mysteries, so I can tell you; they’re exactly the same as Scooby Doo, just with added levels of complexity and obfuscation.

The point here though is to find a TV show in your genre that’s built like this, because it’s a lot faster to watch a couple of episodes and deconstruct the beats than it is to read a lot of books. If time isn’t a concern for you, read 100 books in your genre. But we’re going for speed.

• Having done that and deconstructed the beats… create your own

You’ve got the structure. You’ve got the beats. And you’ve got your cast and team. Now you just need twenty inciting incidents, twenty general plots, and you’re already, naturally writing in series and in a genre that you know there’s an audience for. Later, this will pay dividends in marketing and releasing your books.

• Start writing and don’t stop

Remember, you will learn about craft. Your first book will, if you’ve done the above steps correctly, hopefully not be mediocre. But it won’t be brilliant and you won’t feel it’s brilliant and that’s OK. You will get better as you go on. Take notes on what’s good about your writing and what isn’t.

But… the key thing is that you apply what you’ve learned to the next book. You don’t rewrite, you just release it and then do better the next time. If you feel bad about that, remember that Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and Stephen King all got panned for their first books. And those are just the writers I could name off the top of my head.

They had to get a few books in to nail down what their strengths were and what their target audiences wanted and needed. So will you. Remember, you are not a full-time author until after you’ve done the challenge. You don’t need to be Tolkien from book one.

Final Thoughts

If you follow the above steps, then the rest will come to you.

As you can imagine, I wrote all this with the hypothetically disclaimer but I’m 90% sure I will attempt this.

I won’t give a running commentary of everything, in all likelihood, but I’ll put together a guide and put it all in the Vault. Other than that, I will most likely be writing with the goal in mind to do this as fast as possible.

We’ll see where it goes; but that’s the end of this 3-part article.

I’ll see you in the next one.

Jamie