Kevin McLaughlin is a multiple USA Today bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy novels, with over eighty books published. He believes in giving back to the writing community that helped him out during the early days of his career, so he uses his experience to boost others. He has been a speaker at Boskone, Dragon Con, the Nebula Conference, 20Books London, and many other events. A skilled public speaker with experience in education, McLaughlin sees it as both pleasure and obligation to pass along to others the skills he has learned, so that the chain of people helping people continues unbroken.

The Zero to Sixty Author by Kevin McLaughlin

Multiple USA Today Bestselling author

One road to writing success!

This book is the one I wish I'd had in my early writing years.

It's chock full of information I wish I'd had, warnings about pitfalls I wish I'd avoided, tips I really could have used, and strategies for building a writing career which have been proven effective over and over, for author after author.

There's no 'one true way' to success as a writer. But this is one way which has worked very well for a multitude of authors. Here you'll get a step-by-step rundown of every critical component for building your own author business and reaching rapid financial success with your books.

Here you'll learn:

- Choosing a market that will work for you.

- The Venn diagram that will help you live a happy and successful writing life.

- Easy and effective ways to gain visibility for your books.

- Why quality and quantity of writing might not be related in the way you think

And more!

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Hi there!

If you're reading this, then you probably want to be a professional writer and make money from your work. I'm here to tell you first that it's totally possible to accomplish this. I've done it. I'm going to show you one method of doing so yourself. That's what this book is about: going from 'zero to sixty' in the writing biz. Taking ourselves from zero writing income to a sustainable living wage.

It's doable. I don't know a single person who's followed the steps outlined in this book and not made a rapid rise to success. I wish I'd had this advice when I got started!

Instead, the tale of my author career is full of ups and downs. When I started seriously writing back around 2008, the indie revolution was just kicking off. It was hearing about "indie writing" that dragged me back into writing again, actually. I'd learned all the bad old lessons from traditional publishing a decade before: it was a lot of work, there was no surety of getting anything published, and even if I did, it wouldn't pay the rent. The explosion of the indie writer onto the scene changed everything, and I was thrilled to be part of those early days.

Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of good guidance back then. Most of us didn't. We sort of felt our way along, making things up as we went. I screwed up pretty much every way imaginable. Like, I did ALL of the wrong things, at one point or another. I've had books fail, series tank, readers not follow me from one genre to another, covers that didn't work for the book, and more.

Each time I screwed up, I picked myself back up and tried again. In a lot of ways, I think those of us who write stories for a living are mostly the people who never gave up despite how hard it got.

And it does get hard sometimes. This is an awesome career, but there's a ton of work involved in learning everything a modern writer needs to know.

The good news is, I'm giving you a primer in this little book. It's a short volume, but that's because I left out filler pages and similar BS. Everything in here is right to the point and immediately actionable.

If you're just started out, this primer will help you get started well. For the more experienced author who's having trouble getting traction, there will be some cool tips in here which might just give you the leg up you need. Even highly successful authors will likely find one or two tips inside worth remembering.

A Word of Caution

There is no 'one true way' to publish. What follows in here is a set of guidelines which, if followed, should result in a successful launch for a writing career. It's the book I wish I'd had back in 2008. But that doesn't mean this is the only method forward.

Thing is, every writer is different. We have our own backgrounds and experiences, our different personalities and abilities. This book is about ONE road to writing success, but it absolutely is not the only viable path. My advice to writers is always to study broadly and experiment constantly. We learn best by doing, most of us, so try new things! I'd urge you to give this method a shot — but feel free to dump elements of what you read here that just don't work for you in practice. Use the parts which do.

Who Am I?

My name's Kevin. I write mostly science fiction and fantasy, but also some stuff in technothrillers, LitRPG, romance, and probably more I'm forgetting. I've been a writer for decades, but only went full-time a few years ago. I've hit the USA Today bestseller list twice, been a top-100 science fiction author for most of the last two years, and I'm seeing an excellent income from my work — significantly more than I used to make as a nurse. I've also published about fifty books and a pile of short stories.

All that said, I am also the same person I mentioned above: the one who screwed up in just about every way you can imagine as I was learning the ropes. That's not hyperbole; I've bootstrapped my way to a writing career, learning all the lessons the hard way as I went.

But that means I can point out a heck of a lot of the pitfalls out there before YOU fall into them. That's my goal with this book: to provide writers with a roadmap that works. It's not the only working map, of course. I made it as a full-time writer without any map at all, right? But if I can help a few folks jump-start their paths and avoid a couple of the big problems that almost derailed me, I'll consider this book a success.

Let me know what you think! I love hearing from folks, so please feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] if you'd like to share your feelings about this book or any of my others.

Now, on to the real stuff!