Joe Konrath is one of the authors at the forefront of the ebook revolution.

How did he get there? By working his ass numb at the typewriter / computer and getting printed in 2001. He then worked his feet numb by doing many book signings across the country. Now? He is sharing tips for how to take advantage of the ebook craze – preaching involvement in Amazon’s Kindle and SmashWords projects.

What was Joe saying about “ebooks” 5 years ago on his blog?

Basically, he thought they were going to take off.

Here is one of Joe’s posts from 5 years back – “Ebooks!” ->

The post shows Joe was thinking about ebooks 5 years ago – by giving 2 of his books away for free on his blog. He was also already marketing himself like a madman – in any way he could.

Why is that important?

Because this is the model you could be using today. If you ever hope to make it as an author – you’ll need to market yourself exhaustively, and hit every channel you can – using every opportunity to give it your best effort to help someone find your books, or like them once they do find them.

A five-year plan is NOT THAT LONG to change your entire life.

What were you doing 5 years ago?

Me? I was in Thailand like I am now. I was wondering – what the hell am I going to do in Thailand to make a lot of money and support myself and payoff debts from the past?

I did start blogging back in 2006. I started a few blogs – ThaiPulse.com, AimforAwesome.com, and then a handful of blogs on Blogger.com that went basically nowhere. Over the past few years I’ve written 20+ books, wrote thousands of posts on blogs I own, created 280+ videos at youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/thaipulsedotcom), and read a lot about technology, marketing, ebooks, and anything else I thought would help me get to where I want to be.

Though five-years ago I had book ideas in my head, and had even started some – writing 50 pages on a couple of books – I just never got going whole hog. I didn’t see that ebooks were going to kill it later. I sure didn’t think of myself as a writer that could sell enough books to keep me and my family alive.

Now, five-years later and I’m on the verge of something. If I could just slap the side of my head hard enough to shake shit up – and yet, not destroy my creative gray mush – I could go full-throttle and start banging out good books. Soon I’d be cranking out great books. You know what? If only one time in the next 20 years of writing I nail it and write a blockbuster (netbuster) – we’ll all sit at our favorite paid fishing lake drinking Beerlao and putting catfood and bread on hooks for the monster catfish.

Hell, we might even go see Chiang Mai – the only place in Thailand we’ve never come close to.

The time is NOW.

Waking the hell up and realizing that today is the start of the next 5 years – is in order. I’m hitting you with it right now. You can’t ignore it.

Piece a plan together, and start hammering it out – working on your writing and marketing yourself everydamnday for the next 5 years – I think you can be successful. Hell, I think non-writers could be successful too. I wasn’t a writer by any means. I was a thinker… not a writer. Now I’m trying to do something with all the thinking going on. Something useful. I tired of firing off nerve impulses that got lost in the space of my head, not doing any good for anybody – including me.

If you’re a writer on ANY level – you can make it work. I know you can. There’s nobody reading this that cannot make it happen.

Just go.

Guys like Joe are 5 years ahead of you. Today Joe is selling some ungodly number of ebooks per day – 600+ I think it is. I get bored reading how many thousands of dollars he is making a month, but I think it’s something like $20,000+. That’s USD folks.

In 5 years you’ll either be looking back at 2011 – 2016 as the best time you ever spent on yourself…

Or, you’ll be looking ahead to 2021 as the date when you finally pull it all together.

Me?

I’ll be absolutely killing it by 2016.

Write that down.

I’ll be KILLING IT I said!

New Amazon Kindle Fire Color Multitouch Tablet – eReader:

New Amazon Kindle Touch eReader:

New Amazon Kindle eReader:

I’ll stop writing about our climbing book sales. Well, the exact numbers anyway. Unless I hit a million and can’t contain myself.

January sales have been outstanding – and I can only hope – or start believing in a God that hears me if I pray – that this trend continues.

A year ago I had ebooks on my sites. I have a few thousand people per day coming to my various websites. I have 31 websites… not all focused on things that my books are – so, not all are a place I might find buyers for my books. But, there are 1,500 visitors per day that ARE in the same niche as what some of my books focus on.

Even when I advertised the books there – heavily – sales were nothing like what I see now. In fact, they were about 1/10th of what I see now.

What is the difference between then and now?

I wrote about 6 more books since then, and we started publishing at Amazon’s Kindle store.

That’s about it.

Well, I tweaked my covers about 4 times for each book on average.

That’s about it.

Sales have increased every month now by 10% minimum. Sometimes by as much as 40% in a month. Those are GIANT gains.

Is the ebook market going to explode past this?

I don’t know.

There are going to be a whole lot of authors that jump into the game at the same time that herds more buyers are jumping into the game. That much is true.

More authors = more competition.

More competition means, if your writing sucks… your book cover sucks… and/or your description for your book sucks – sales will probably suck.

I’m not writing at a world-class level. I’m not competition for Thomas Harris or anybody else at his level. I’m a beginning writer and having outrageous success already.

I think you could be too. You had better JUMP RIGHT INTO this game or choose another profession now. Get in right now while you still can – and hone your skills… sell as many books as possible, so, when the going gets tough – you can have some savings to get you through the profitability hump.

I have my next 8 books planned out. Do you?

Like the newspaper industry, the book publishing industry is being turned sideways and twisted like a corkscrew – sucked into the whirly vortex of the digital publishing black hole.

Book publishers, agents, grammar rules, and books as we know them are going the way of newspapers which are going the way of magazines… all of it leaving a sparkling crystal white Pepsodent-clean taste in my mouth as I climb toward $100,00 earnings in the digital publishing market.

I was thinking the other day, as I was writing my 2nd fiction novel, Collecther, that I must write in a way that appeals to an agent and publisher.

I don’t know why, but I still had this idea I needed to cram my thoughts into a format that every other published writer was following and had followed for decades… scores of years.

And then it fell straight out of the sky hitting me squarely on my egg head…

I’m free to write as I wish.

Why it didn’t hit me before, and why for the last 8 months when I wrote, was I  writing for others – I’m not sure. Cognitively I know that the entire industry is going ass over noggin, but I hadn’t thought about everything that meant. I’d missed this crucial fact.

We’re free. Writers are free to write as they wish – whateverthefucktheywish. Whatever format you want to write in, you can write in.

Nobody has the final say on my work – but me. On your work? You.

Grammar rules, accepted for years – go right out the fucking door and freedom takes its place. How cool is that?

See, Mike Fook didn’t get a degree in English. In high school, university, grad school – the intricacies of English grammar did nothing for me. I could write master’s level papers, sure. My vocabulary? Uniquely bedecked.

Can I keep a proper tense throughout 120,000 words? Nope.

Can I tell you when to use commas – or hyphens – or these things -> (;:)?

Nope.

Can 98% of the US population explain even ten rules of grammar?

Nope.

Am I going to worry about it anymore? Nope.

I’m writing for an audience. You are too.

Who is your audience?

If you’re writing for PhD’s then you’ll want to continue to adhere to the same style of writing your audience is used to. You must if you want to communicate at the level that makes them all cheesy, warm and gushy.

My audience isn’t that same group. My audience is a group of intelligent dudes -ettes that could give a rat’s tiny hairy one whether I used the proper tense, as long as the point got across. My audience wants to read intelligent shit presented in a way that’s unstuffy, unpretentious, un-microedited, and that flows smoothly from my fingers not unlike dripping jasmine nectar off my pinky finger into their willing mouths.

Nobody     in     my     audience     gives      a    shite      if       I       space      wackily.

Nobody cares if I use shite instead of shit. Fark for fuck. My audience wants to see new words and phrases in new context. My audience wants to try to figure out what the hell I’m saying – sometimes at least. The written word has been dead for so long. That’s why people like Keroac, Hunter Thompson, found an audience… people were ready for something real.

Two thousand ten is a very important time for the written word. Here’s why…

Any jackass that can move his mouth can be on television.  Remember Morton Downey Jr’s guests? Some could barely be said to have been speaking English – but, it didn’t matter. They had a nationwide, and even worldwide, forum. They could communicate whatever they wanted and be recognized for it.

There is no grammar test for people that are speaking on television or radio. There is a DJ in Tampa, that, years ago spoke like a hillbilly from the sticks. Guess what? He killed radio there – to a sick degree. He was way ahead of every other DJ in listenership.

Why is that?

He had a message.

The message counts on TV – always has. Have you watched any popular YouTube videos lately? There are whole flocks of idiots telling their story, in whatever way they know how – that are making bank on top of bank.

Television, video, internet, radio, walkie-talkie and karaoke radios – nobody cares about grammar except the publishing industry.

That’s about to change because the paper publishing industry is being blackholed by digital publishing.

Digital publishing, though at first glance might seem like a panacea for only the tech-literate, is actually a game leveler for writers of all types. Writers that don’t have the slightest idea how to put together a book – will put together books because they aren’t constrained by the format anymore. There is no test to pass… no agent, no publisher to get through. You write a book. You get an editor if you want (I still want), and you publish your book digitally.

Right now I have 5 books on Amazon that are selling. They’re not selling gangbusters, but they’re selling. I’m making $5 per book sold. How much would I make if I went with a paper publisher? $1.30? Hmm.

Any day now my books will be sold at the Apple iBookstore and Sony ebook store. I have worldwide distribution, INSTANT distribution, without the paper publishing industry at all. Actually, nobody even had to edit my books – I can write one in a week, edit myself, upload, and bang – I’m live on Amazon.

Are you beginning to see now how much the good lord loves digital publishing over traditional publishing?

Sure you are.

While traditional writers are banging their heads against oak writing desks, crazy over whether one of the 300 agents they sent query letters to will respond, I’m banging my head against silk-covered feather pillows banking  extra sleep while my ebooks put cash in my electronic accounts.

Where do you want to be banging your head?