How to Write a Novel

It was a dark and stormy … Hey BRAD you spilled your greek yogurt on my freaking MacBook Pro, dude! Can you PLEASE just stay on your side of the table while I am writing my pitch lines? GAW…

Brad’s six. He likes to move things around. And me, I just started writing a novel, which I am pretty sure will be brilliant. I am not sure what it will be about.

But …

It will sell because I have a website already set up to promote it.

I added a click funnel to capture email addresses.

My daily e-blasts include links to Patreon and GoFundMe so people can support me. Greek yogurt ain’t cheap, amirite Brad?

Oh, I bought multiple online ad placements to test several working titles. Each targets a representative slice of an assumed core demographic. Click data will determine which title I use and the main character’s age, gender, and lifetsyle.

My ads link through to a landing page that offers a free chapter download, once they supply a little more personal information, of course. *wink*

My email drip campaign is scheduled out for the next eight months.

I created a subreddit and a half dozen fake accounts to start chatting it up. It’s already trending.

My Instagram and Twitter accounts channel followers to my pre-sales alert promotion page.

My LinkedIn account has a motivational post series scheduled to roll out that explains how entrepreneurship and self publishing changed my life. It also links back to my promotion page.

The promotional page drops a cookie to track my visitors’ browsing behavior, which I’ll use to decide what topics to make the story about.

I’ll gather my topics and solicit someone at upwork.com to ghost write a 5,000 word opening chapter for $75.

Next week, I’ll put together five articles to roll out on Medium explaining major steps to making money as a writer, none of which explain how to do that, which is OK because those articles never explain that, anyway. I’ll mostly talk about how awesome my life is and say something smug like, “I make my stories go viral.” Anyway, I’m just using them to grow readership and my fan base.

I’ll use the sample chapter, readership metrics, and growing email subscription numbers as leverage to score a big cash advance from the publishers I solicit.

Over on fiverr.com, I just paid someone $8 to enhance a cell phone selfie so it looks like a professional studio head shot. Now I look older, but playful. But serious. But spontaneous. But successful. Just like a best selling author.

Whew. Writing a novel is a lot of work. I need a cappuccino. Come on, Brad. we’re going to Panera … wait, strike that. Let’s go to Starbucks. After all, I’m going to be famous.