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Fiction and non fiction author Chris Fox returned to talk to us about giving up his six figure evil day job for the unknown as a full-time author. We asked him what plans he has to keep himself from procrastinating his day away (like Erica), how he intends to meet his publishing schedule and releasing 12 books this year!
About our Guest
Chris has a life outside of writing as well (omg): By day he is an iPhone developer architecting the app used to scope Stephen Colbert’s ear. By night he is Batman!
He has been writing since he was six years old and started inflicting his work on others at age 18. By age 24 people stopped running away when he approached them with a new story and shortly thereafter published first one in the Rifter.
Now, at the age of 38 he lives just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the beautiful town of Mill Valley. If you’re unsure how to find it just follow the smell of self-entitlement. Once you see the teens driving Teslas you’ll know you’re in the right place.
Questions asked and discussed:
- So…what’s the backstory behind the new book, Write to Market?
- Skipping the editing stage and going with proofreaders instead
- What’s the difference between writing to market and selling out?
- You’re not talking about the books that are high in competition, you’re looking for the genres that are underserved, how do you find that?
- Should people be thrown off by the naysayers? You gave great examples of how people complained about how one author went too close to BSG.
- Could you talk a little bit more about mining reviews for information?
- Question from John Monk: Was Chris in the military? How hard is his military research?
- You’re going full-time author: Is there a number of newsletter subscribers you reached which made you feel comfortable or some special math that helped you switch to full-time?
- You also have a large newsletter list, can you talk about how you grew that?
- In your book you talk about exploiting also-boughts and using also-boughts to help you analyse writing to market. Can you share how you do this?
- Do you want to write erotica?
- Question from Cate: Is Chris doing anything special with keywords on Amazon?
Now that you’re going full-time and you’re obviously writing to market, so what is your schedule looking like for the rest of the year? - What is it you’re giving up to become a full-time developer?
- What are the downsides of going full-time, are you prepared for that?
- A lot of people who go full-time feel a little loss in the beginning and procrastination can kick in. What is your plan to combat this?
- In the book you recommend reading not only books in the genre you’re interested in but also a more diverse range as well, why is that?
- Sometimes books turn up in categories that don’t belong there, can you talk a bit about that?
- Was your formulation of your analyses amazon-centric or did you look elsewhere?
- We aren’t selling out we’re opening our eyes and looking at what readers expect in the genre / subgenre and using some of those tropes to give them they want while writing something you enjoy and making it your own an unique without writing to a formula.
- Is there such thing as too many tropes?
If you have a second, an iTunes review would be VERY appreciated!
Join us next Thursday 7pm PST / 10pm EST
when we interview Honoree Corder
