How to Become a Full-Time Author

How do you become a full-time author? Hmm. People ask about this a lot, and while I think there’s no one right answer, I’ll tell you how I did it.

Here’s what it boils down to:

Write every day.
Hone your craft.
Study successful authors.
Learn the business of selling books.

I know that sounds pretty simple, and maybe a little tedious. Let’s look at each component and see if we can’t flesh out how I became a career author.

Want To Become A Full-Time Author? Write Every Day!

I wrote my first fiction novel in 2013, and I’ve been honing my craft ever since. Spend four to eight hours every day hammering away at the keys, five to seven days a week, and you too can be a full-time author with over fifty titles on the market.

That’s what I did, anyway.

Most won’t because they don’t have the discipline for it, nor the stomach. Instead, they’ll troll authors like me, making inane comments on our ads while they secretly wish they were in our shoes.

Writing every day takes discipline, but it gets easier as you go. You pick a time and a place where you’ll sit down and hammer away at the keys each day, and then you stick to that schedule, come hell or high water.

If you can’t carve out an hour, you set aside thirty minutes. If you can’t do that, you get a dictation app and dictate during your daily commute. Or you write on your phone at work between taking customer service calls and filing TPS reports.

The bottom line is you figure out a way to write. If you don’t write every day, if you’re not working on a written work, then you’re simply not a writer. This is the non-negotiable first step.

Hone Your Craft

Anyone can have an author career, folks. You simply must be willing to study the craft and write every day for years on end.

Some authors choose to receive a formal education in English, literature, or creative writing, and that might help. However, this alone will not make you successful, and it’s not even required to become a well-known and respected author.

Many successful commercial and literary fiction authors have eschewed a formal education in the literary arts. Some famous writers never even attended college. This list includes such venerated names as Bradbury, Capote, Angelou, Wells, London, Dickens, Burroughs, Twain, Kerouac, and Faulkner.

So don’t think you can’t make it as an author, just because you never completed an MFA. On the other hand, don’t think you’re going to write the great American novel without learning anything about the craft of writing fiction.

Writing compelling prose and creating cohesive, addicting narratives is not a skill that comes naturally to most beginning writers. Before I penned my first novel, I’d already written a half-dozen non-fiction titles, and I’d been a prolific blogger for years.

“How hard can it be?” I thought as I sat down to write the next great fantasy epic.

The answer is, very hard indeed.

Certainly, the fact that I’d already developed a daily writing discipline helped me succeed. Yet, I soon found that non-fiction writing experience does not always translate to the art of writing fiction. It took years of study and practice (and a digital drawerful of abandoned WiPs) before I managed to write something that was even halfway worthy of publication.

I learned how to write fiction by reading everything I could on the topic, by taking courses, and by practicing what I’d learned. To improve my skills, I wrote thousands of words a day for years on end, and I listened to feedback from my readers and editors.

Believe it or not, I still read something on the craft of writing, almost every day. On each day that I write (5-7 days a week), I spend at least ten minutes studying ways to improve my writing.

Ten minutes may not seem like a lot, but it adds up. Every month, I read roughly one book on the art of writing fiction… in ten-minute chunks.

In this way, I can implement whatever I read in that day’s writing session. That approach ensures that I’m practicing what I learn/review immediately. For me, it’s a great way to continually make incremental improvements in my writing.

Passable Prose Is Only One-Half Of The Equation

Yet, the ability to craft decent prose and dialogue isn’t all it takes to become a working author. You also need to understand the art of telling stories.

The first few fiction novels I wrote were terrible from a purely literary perspective. Years later I hired a very skilled editor to help me polish them, and frankly, they’re still not that great.

Yet, there was something about those stories that hooked readers. I might not have been the best writer at the time, but I knew how to tell a good story. “Good storytelling” is that ineffable quality that keeps genre readers coming back for more—often in spite of not-so-great writing.

Storytelling skill and writing skills do not necessarily go hand in hand. Browse through any random selection of books on Amazon, and you’ll find plenty of examples of authors who are skilled writers but horrible storytellers.

Likewise, I can give you several examples of authors who tell amazing stories with merely adequate prose.

Dan Brown and E.L. James are highly popular authors whose works are often reviled by critics. George Lucas is renowned for writing wooden dialogue that somehow works on screen. Christopher Paolini was fifteen when he wrote the first draft of Eragon, yet it became an international bestseller.

Clearly, there’s something more to what these writers do than mere workmanship in prose. No matter what you think of the leading authors in your chosen genre, you should spend time working out why they’re successful.

Which brings me to the next step…

You Become A Full-Time Author By Studying Successful Authors

Full-time authors are full-time because they get paid. Chances are good they’re getting paid because they didn’t reinvent the wheel.

Instead, they likely emulated other successful authors while carving out a niche for themselves writing the stuff they like to read.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t try to be overly original. Don’t think your art comes before getting paid.

Do look at what’s selling. Do find an audience that shares your interests. Do write to cater to that audience.

Above all, look at those who have succeeded at serving your chosen audience, and copy what they do. This doesn’t mean you have to copy their work (nor should you). It simply means you should accept that much of the thinking has likely already been done for you.

In other words, you don’t have a blaze your own trail to become a full-time author. Instead, study successful authors in your genre who are popular with your chosen audience. Then, do the things that made them successful while putting your personal spin on the genre fiction conventions they’ve established.

This is not copying, and it’s not being unoriginal. When Tesla brought a viable, practical EV to market, were they being unoriginal? Of course not. They innovated while following standard automobile conventions (chassis, cockpit, four wheels, and horsepower).

You can—and should—do the same. Or, you can choose to be wildly original and starve—your call.

Learn The Business of Selling Books

Once you’ve gone through the previous steps, you’ll next muster the guts to put your stuff out there for the world to see. Then, whether you’re trad-pubbed or self-published, you’ll need to learn how to sell your books.

If you’re self-published, you’re in charge of the process from soup to nuts. So, you’d better study the business of self-publishing and become an expert at the process of polishing and marketing books.

Outsource things you aren’t good at, like editing, cover design, interior formatting, and so on. If you’re good at something, it’s okay to do it yourself, but make sure you’re not wasting precious writing time on something you can hire out.

Learn which covers get the most eyeballs, how to write good cover copy, and how to run ads that drive readers to your books. A decent, no-nonsense primer on these topics is Chris Fox’s Write Faster, Write Smarter series. Start there if you know what’s good for you.

Then, learn from your mistakes, and repeat.

One More Thing I Didn’t Mention

That’s the formula, and yes, it can be brutal. A prerequisite to that path is having skin seven layers thick. Thin-skinned writers need not apply.

Me? I love it. I love sitting at my keyboard, crafting characters and storylines, inventing new settings and worlds, and throwing it all into chaos for the reader’s entertainment.

I get paid to spend time with people I like, every single day—even if it’s only in my head. And, I get to entertain some of the nicest people in the world. Honestly, it doesn’t get much better than that.

If that sounds like your dream, I suggest you start putting in the time immediately. The sooner you get your 10,000 hours in on the craft and business of being a fiction writer, the sooner you can become a full-time author.

Good luck!