In 2007, Armentrout decided she wanted to fulfill a lifelong ambition and started writing books. Three years later, her first novel in hand, she attempted to secure an agent. After many rejections, she sent her manuscript unsolicited to small publishers. One bit and in 2011 Spencer Hill Press published her first book, Half Blood.
"I started out like most authors do looking for an agent but I couldn’t get one. Once my book came out I was able to get one," Armentrout told me in an interview yesterday.
Later in 2011, she secured an agent -- Kevan Lyon of the Solana Beach, Calif.-based agency Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. In the following two years, she signed several publishing deals with larger publishers: a deal with Harlequin Teen and a two-book deal with Disney Hyperion.
So far, this is a fairly typical story of an author having modest if not improbable success (the vast majority of authors who attempt to secure an agent or a publishing contract with even a small publisher fail). The story takes an extreme turn -- one born of the ebook era -- when Armentrout stepped into the shower one day this past Jan.
I "came up with the idea in the shower and wrote the book in 20 days in January. I can write pretty fast," she said.
The book she wrote so quickly was the first draft of Wait for You. Before I tell you how it happened, here are the highlights of what happened:
1. Wait for You went on sale in late Feb. and hit the No. 1 spot on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller list on March 10, a first for a self-published book.
2. It hit the No. 1 spot again on the ebook best-seller list this week, another first for a self-published book.
3. HarperCollins acquired the title for "high" six figures, as Armentrout told me yesterday, along with two others to make a series.
Here's how it happened: The book is in a relatively new genre called "new adult contemporary" (read: it's basically a mashup of romance and erotica -- think Fifty Shades of Grey). Publishers are wary to take risks on things that are new and relatively unproven. And they're right to: It's hard to get bookstores to stock new adult contemporary books (unless they're huge hits already) because they don't really have a section for them yet. Are they erotica? Romance? Big-time successes like Easy by Tammara Webber and Sylvia Day's Crossfire series are the exception and not the rule.
"We targeted about four-to-five publishers and it was really well-received and all the editors loved it but it got turned down at every publisher," said Armentrout.
So, Armentrout huddled with her agent and they decided to self-publish the book. Armentrout and her agent knew almost nothing about self-publishing but they knew people who did, other authors. Those authors helped Armentrout find editors and designers to work on the book and a month later it was on the market.
What pushed the book over the top -- from good-seller to best-seller -- was Armentrout's shrewd approach to marketing. She and her agent planned on using the platform she has built in publishing over a dozen books in the preceding two years. But they also knew that they wanted to reach an audience beyond Armentrout's Twitter and Facebook followers. So several weeks after the book went on the market, they lowered its price to $0.99 for three days (it was retailing for $2.99). This is a lot more complicated than it sounds. You have to manage the price change across multiple retailers and time it just right with any planned promotion. Many large publishing companies struggle to do it as well as Armentrout did. The ploy worked and shot her book up the charts to No. 1. Less than two weeks later, she got her deal with HarperCollins for what I'd call "going to Disney World money."
Imagine if any of the publishers that Armentrout approached bought the book. First off, it probably wouldn't have hit the market yet with many publishers spending much more time than a month bringing a book to market (Armentrout signed deals with Harlequin Teen and Disney Hyperion in 2012 and those books won't be coming out until late 2013 and early 2014, for instance). But if we assume a similar level of success, the book would have made any small press's year -- if not decade.
What could a publisher have done to get in on the act earlier?
When I asked Armentrout this question, she said, "I don’t know. I totally understand why it [Wait for You] was rejected. I was writing in a risky genre."
This cuts at the age-old question of publishing: Which books to bet on and which to let go. How many publishers rejected Harry Potter before Bloomsbury took a risk on it?
But, this anecdote of the ebook era may not be all bad news for publishers. By seeing which self-published books do well and then moving to acquire them, publishers can make investments on proven content rather than take risks on unproven content. Sure, they'll pay a lot more to do so (Armentrout would have likely gotten a typical five-figure deal had she signed with a big publisher pre-publication), but the return will likely be more reliable.
As for Armentrout, I would estimate that she's approaching the million-dollar mark when it comes to income from writing if she hasn't eclipsed it already. And she's done it just about as quickly as possible -- from aspiration to extreme success in five years; from publishing her first book in 2011 to a "high" six-figure deal in 2013. Considering her new "Disney World money" deal with HarperCollins, I asked her if she was going to visit the resort to celebrate her windfall.
"I was there not too long ago," she said. "I’m actually going to write my next book. Everyone was like, 'you should celebrate' but I’ve got books to write. The celebration is going to have to wait."
Read the rest of my interview with Armentrout.
Five Tips on How to Make a Million Dollars Writing From Armentrout's Story
1. Write what you want to write. In Armentrout's case, she wrote the new adult contemporary novel that she wanted to write even though she knew it would be hard to sell.
2. Build a platform. If you want to have commercial success as an author, it almost goes without saying these days that you need to build a dedicated following using social media and other Web tools.
3. Write a lot. One thing that helped Armentrout build her platform was writing many, many books. She has more than a dozen out already with more on the way -- and that's just two years after her first book came out.
4. Consider all your options. Armentrout first tried the traditional route. When that didn't work, she tried other things. When publishers wouldn't buy her latest book, she self-published. Authors have more options than ever today and they shouldn't be ignoring any of them.
5. Learn the tricks of the industry. The price drop that Armentrout executed for her book was not easy to do. By knowing what's happening in the publishing industry and how publishers are finding success, Armentrout was able to leverage that to propel her own sales.
