That's completely different, then.
Self help, as in, "You are NOT a worthless sack of scum that sits on your couch all day, you CAN do whatever you set your mind to if you buy this book that contains nothing more than pages telling you to get off your couch and actually try doing something",...
Not "self help" as in how to repair a roof.
That's completely different, then.
Start with a blog about writing fantasy and/or sci-fi - world creation, magic systems, starflight, blah, blah, blah. Offer a free email newsletter with *premium content* (this is how you build a list of potential customers). After building an audience via email/rss, launch an ebook about how to write fantasy fiction and pimp it out to your email list for $19. This will be easy to write, because you just rehash what you already wrote on your blog but add some more detail and organization. A few months later, launch a membership site where you charge a monthly fee to get online instruction, coaching and peer interaction. $47/month sounds good. Next year, you'll develop a software that facilitates your writing method and sell that for $89...wait, where's the profit in that? Make the software an online app with a freemium model so you can charge a monthly fee to upgraded services! All the while, continue to send emails to your list and promote other people's products where you get an affiliate commission. Rinse, repeat, etc. This is what all the Internet marketers who sell info-products do... Make a product a lot of people want (everyone wants to write a novel, right?), take advantage of their insecurities, promise them the moon, laugh all the way to the bank.
FantasyMapMaker.com - free fantasy maps for commercial or personal use ~ Campaign Cartographer 3 Review
See... that was the theory behind the business idea I originally posted about... only, rather than just doing my own stuff, I'd offer the service of managing the IPs to other folks who didn't have time to produce other takes on their own work, but wanted good quality takes on it. The problem is... (a) you have to earn a reputation for doing something like that and (b) I'm not really sure in that model who the customer is and how to monetize the transactions.
Good model for them... not sure how you start from scratch and compete against that behemoth. It kind of relies on coming up with a revolutionary and instantly-popular new product category that appeals to sci-fi/fantasy types. I'm trying to take existing ideas and find new ways of applying them in the marketplace, but if I could come up with a revolutionary new product, I would.
Hmm. what do geeky tweeners like?
Well... quite honestly, once you start subdividing the super-genre of "Speculative Fiction", you can break it down into a lot more than just Sci-fi vs. Fantasy. And you're burdened by a huge gray area of overlap between even just those two genres. Fact is, this category of genres is all about genre-blending and genre-bending and trying to do something that hasn't been done before, which makes it hard to categorize individual works.
That being said, I see a lot of bookstores make a distinction between SF versus Fantasy, but the two still sit next to eachother. This bookshelf SF, this bookshelf Fantasy.
Agreed. That's why I love it.
Hmm. Is there a way to do this without being evil? Also... I don't know how many people would care that much about a "how to publish your novel" self-help from some dude that's never published a novel.
I think, therefore I am a nerd.
Cogito, ergo sum nerdem.
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Pimping my worldmap here. Still WIP... long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of what I've done so far...
Absolutely, it could be done without being evil. But since I'm in Internet marketing, I'm justifiably jaded by all the hype and over-exaggeration that accompanies many such info-products.
To get around the "never published a novel," just partner with someone who has. You could ghost write most of the content and have them personalize it, or just have them introduce you as a trusted colleague. Their role isn't too intense so they get to enjoy easy profits at your expense and you get to use their name to lend credibility to your work.
FantasyMapMaker.com - free fantasy maps for commercial or personal use ~ Campaign Cartographer 3 Review