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JOSEPH WAMBAUGH — INTERVIEWING CRIME WRITING’S MASTER OF CHARACTERS

Joseph Wambaugh is crime writing’s master of cop & crook characters. Unlike many crime writers, Joe Wambaugh policed in the Los Angeles trenches. He’s worked with guys like Roscoe Rules, a fictional yet true-to-life rogue in The Choir Boys whose behavior was delightfully over-the-top. Wambaugh also served with psychologically-wounded real-life officers like Karl Hettinger portrayed in The Onion Field as a PTSD victim sadly spirally down after his partner’s on-duty execution. And, after 50 years in the police and crime writing business, Joseph Wambaugh knows his characters and remains down-to-earth. I’m honored to share the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Quarterly magazine’s recent interview with crime writing’s master.

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In 1971, Little, Brown & Company published a novel with a catchy title, The New Centurions. It was the first book from a young writer who described his profession in a way never been done before. The author was a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department and the book was an unorthodox look at policing—full of colorful characters tossed together in a zany, chaotic world of life and death. Joseph Wambaugh was describing policing in the City of Los Angeles, but it might as well have been any city. The New Centurions was a runaway bestseller.

Joe Wambaugh went on to write 15 more novels and 5 non-fiction books. He wrote TV scripts, contributed to movies and television shows, and became a household name in police and literary circles. Fame forced him to leave policing and propelled him onto the author’s circuit in countries around the world. He made appearances on countless TV shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Wambaugh’s fame continues to this day. His books continue to sell, phrases he coined are commonly used in policing and—most of all—he left a profound mark on the police profession. Joseph Wambaugh understood cops. He also recognized the emotional toll of “the job” on police officers, long before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was a diagnosed condition.

Joe Wambaugh also exposed the disparities in society through his examination of topics as diverse as dog shows and prostitution, describing the opulence and hypocrisy of some, as a counterpoint to the pathetic underbelly of society. Wambaugh described the job of a police officer in a gritty, realistic way that upset the prevailing view of policing as a mechanistic, black and white world of good and evil, typified by TV shows such as Dragnet and Adam-12.

No one underestimates the role Wambaugh had on policing and its perception by the public. Police officers came to understand the heroic qualities and tragic frailties of their peers and themselves. The public saw police as dedicated and brave, but imperfect human beings like themselves. Through Joseph Wambaugh’s works, policing became seen as a high-risk profession—physically and emotionally. Police Story and Hill Street Blues became the new TV paradigm of policing.

Today, Joe Wambaugh remains an astute observer of policing from the distance of his California home. He’s a husband, father and grandfathera youthful 82 and sharp as a tack. The Quarterly had the pleasure of interviewing this most unassuming man. Here’s the conversation.

Joe, you grew up in East Pittsburgh and joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Why?

I had been living in southern California for three years before joining the USMC. I joined because after graduating from high school, I did not want to go to college, and was too young to get a decent job. Thanks to the military, I benefited from the GI bill and used it for college later on.

What inspired you to become a police officer?

I took college classes while in the military, then doubled up on classes when I left the Marine Corps at age 20, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts before my 23rd birthday. I had intended to become a teacher but saw an ad in The Los Angeles Times that the LAPD was paying $489 a month to recruits. It was very enticing, as I was bored with school and wanted some action.

At what point in your career did you decide to mix writing with policing?  Did someone influence you to write?

I had majored in English and every literature major who has ever lived is a closet writer. I read John Le Carré’s spy novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. For me, it was the ultimate story of police undercover work. I decided to write that novel.

How did you break into the publishing world?

I sent short stories to all the cheapo magazines and received rejections. I sent one story to the same magazine twice because I was convinced they had not read it the first time. It came back to me with a note: “Dear Schmuck, it’s no better this time than last time.” In desperation, I tried a literary magazine, The Atlantic Monthly. They encouraged me to try a novel. That did it; The New Centurions was the result. I could never find the “Dear Schmuck” letter to send it back to him.

Tell me about the reaction to The New Centurions.

I knew my Chief of Police would not approve of the book. I violated Departmental policy by not submitting the manuscript for editorial approval. It became the main selection of the Book of the Month Club. I received a check for $50,000 in 1970. The Chief ’s public comment was that he was glad Sergeant Wambaugh is making a lot of money because he won’t have a job much longer. The press jumped all over it. Everyone was on my side. Everyone had to see what this young cop had done. The book remained on The New York Times best seller list for 32 weeks.

You‘ve been referred to as the father of the modern police novel. Comments?

It was my intention from the beginning, to tell the story of policing from a different and more realistic perspective – the gritty, cynical, slapstick and emotional side of policing. The public was ready for truth, in place of entertaining propaganda. Jack Webb, the creator and star of Dragnet, became involved in all the kerfuffle over the release of The New Centurions. He got a man to contact me to say that Webb would read the manuscript and if it deserved to be aired, he would protect me from being fired.

My homicide partner and I drove to Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills and dropped off the manuscript. Well, it took a couple of weeks. I finally got a call that the manuscript was there to be picked up. We drove back in our detective car. The manuscript was in a wrapper. I said to my partner that the manuscript was heavier than when I brought it here. Every place where Webb worried about the content, he placed a paper clip – 500 in total. Every page had multiple paper clips. I kept the paperclips and never met Webb.

The practice of letting off steam after a shift is seen in The Choirboys. But that book also described a darker side to the police profession, in which the emotional toll can be greater than the physical danger, occasionally leading to suicide and divorce. Comments?

If I had still been in the LAPD at the time that The Choirboys was published, it would surely have gotten me fired. I have always said that the physical dangers of policing were overstated by TV shows and movies, but police officers are constantly exposed to the worst of people and ordinary people at their worst. This produces premature cynics and makes it one of the most emotionally dangerous jobs in the world.

Your writing style is somewhat unconventional, described as a series of connected episodes involving colorful characters, more so than plot-driven. How did you develop this style?

The style reflects how I see life: episodic. That leads to character-driven stories, rather than plot-driven stories. I am no Agatha Christie.

What techniques did you use to document the many great stories which you fictionalized?

I took lots of secret notes as a cop and kept them in boxes and drawers in case I ever decided to try writing.

You also faced danger yourself.

I happened to be one of a dozen besieged cops at Manchester and Vermont Streets on Friday the 13th of August 1965 when Watts erupted in rioting and all the shooting started. I don’t know if one of the hundreds of rioters fired or if it was a cop, but a couple of bodies fell. And then all hell really broke loose for three days. We were ordered to 77th Street Station earlier that afternoon from all over Los Angeles and assigned to three-man cars with cops we’d never met before. We were given a box of ammunition and a shotgun and sent to unfamiliar streets, with the intent of stopping the riots.

It was not police work, but a crazy kind of urban combat in a state of anarchy. We mainly tried to protect each other while mobs looted. The windows were smashed from our car within minutes, and at some point, one of the cops I was teamed with fired a shotgun blast in the general direction of a muzzle flash and managed to hit a looter in the ankle with one pellet of double- aught buckshot. Taking that looter for medical treatment and then to jail got us off the street for nearly two hours and was a welcome relief, ut then it was back out to hell. Anyway, that wasn’t really police work.

Joe, tell me then about a police incident that had a lasting impact on you.

I was a patrol officer in south central L.A. We had a lot of shootings and action. I was training rookie named Fred Early. He was only out of the Academy for matter of weeks. We got a call of shots fired at a pool hall and arrived just ahead of another black and white. A guy stepped out of the pool hall with a shotgun. Pellets whiz past us and he heads back inside.

I didn’t pay attention to Fred Early. Everyone was yelling, and the radio was blaring. It turns out that Fred had run around the building and covered the back door. He was assertive and smart. The robber runs out the back door holding the shotgun at port arms. Fred fired one round. I arrived to find the suspect on his back with a grimace on his face and a hole between his eyes.

That, however, wasn’t the end of the story. Five years later, Fred Early was on his way home from work. Something happened. He reported a burglar breaking into a commercial business. He tried to arrest the suspect. A fight ensued, he was repeatedly beaten and kicked in the head by his assailant and shot in the leg with his own gun. The guy got away. Fred eventually died during one of his surgeries, having suffered irreversible brain damage.

You’re a New York Times bestselling author and the winner of many awards, including Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. Did you anticipate your novels’ impact and it would become next to impossible for you to resume work as a homicide detective?

Nobody could have anticipated the instant success. I simply wanted to publish something. I never dreamed that I would be unable to complete my 20 years with the LAPD and get my pension, the security blanket all cops want. Many times, I regretted my success. Fourteen years was seventy per cent of what I agreed to serve. I thought about it a thousand times. I would love to just have completed it. Also, in those years, I was used to packing a gun and no longer had a right to carry a gun.

Do you have a favorite character in your novels?

I don’t really have a favorite character, but nonfiction books are like my step-children, novels are like my biological children.

Is Joe Wambaugh in the novels himself?

Pieces of me are probably in some of the fictional characters.

At some point, you decided to write non-fiction, beginning with The Onion Field, which was a huge hit. Why did you expand from the fiction genre?

I knew there was a great true story that had to be told, not so much about the murdered officer, Ian Campbell, but about the survivor, Karl Hettinger. I was working Wilshire Vice the night that Campbell and Hettinger were kidnapped in Hollywood Division, the next division north of us. Everyone was looking for them. I stayed close to the case. When I heard what happened to Hettinger within the Department, I knew it was wrong and that he would pay a terrible price. He surely did.

Your books spawned TV shows and movies and turned the existing genre of television shows, such as Dragnet and Adam-12, on their head, helping spawn a new paradigm, typified by Police Story and Hill Street Blues. Thoughts?

I’ll give you an example. I worked on Police Story which aired on NBC television. After some rookies have a year or so under their belt, their badge starts to feel heavy and they begin to swagger a bit. We created an episode about what we, at LAPD called the John Wayne Syndrome. For some reason, the producer submitted the script to John Wayne Productions. Their response— “absolutely not.”

The production company got cold feet and changed the term to the Wyatt Earp Syndrome. The badge heavy cop loses everything, including his wife. At the end of the episode he is seen sitting on the bed of his empty apartment. The tough guy suddenly breaks down weeping and the show ends with the sound of a radio call playing over his sobs.

Using a radio call has become a part of line of duty police funerals, where the fallen officer is called on the police radio and fails to respond. Did this tradition begin with your writing?

Not to my knowledge. However, not being too vain, the tradition of playing bagpipes at police funerals started after The Onion Field was published. The book introduced it by recounting Officer Ian Campbell’s funeral. His grandparents on both sides were from Scotland and Ian loved everything Scottish. There is a photo of him playing the bagpipes. They were played at his funeral, and this was repeated in the movie. It was heartbreaking.

Another non-fiction book, The Blooding, tells the story of the first successful use of DNA profiling, which occurred in England. How did you learn of this case and did you anticipate the huge impact that DNA would have on policing?

I read about the case and knew at once, if it could be true, that this would be the biggest event in crime detection since inked fingerprinting.

One of your most entertaining books must be The Black Marble, a story about dog shows and crime. But there appears to be a deeper meaning in this and other books, which appear to use satire to pan the excesses of modern American society.

That is probably true. As with most of my work, all the comedy is tempered by some intense and painful scenes involving PTSD in police work. I really liked the movie of Black Marble, but the mix of funny and harrowing stories, including the torture and death of a child and a cop going crazy, confused some viewers who either loved or hated it. Harry Dean Stanton was a great comedic villain in the movie.

Do you have a sense of the impact that your books had outside the United States?

My books are fading into distant memory. I’m not sure that there is a large society of avid book readers left, anywhere in the world. At the time, however, I met cops in Europe, Australia and New Zealand during book tours. I did become aware of their impact. It was very flattering.

Have you visited Canada and met Canadian police officers?

I did the book tour to large cities and met a few Canadian coppers. I also spent a month in Toronto prepping Echoes in the Darkness, a TV mini-series, where we made Toronto look like Philadelphia. We brought in palm trees and placed them on the shore of Lake Ontario, turning it into Miami! One day in April it was so hot that we were in t-shirts. The next morning, the snow was six inches deep! While in Toronto, we had to fly to New York to interview actors, but everyone had the same feeling—New York was foreign to us, Toronto was like home. Such a great city. I thought about it the other day when I read about a terrible shooting in Greektown. I used to go there all the time for dinner.

Would you recommend a policing career to young people today?

All my life I’ve seen it getting worse and worse. The police can do no right. They are criticized more and more. Criticism starts before the facts come out.

One important point in terms of police shootings. The critics are endless. So called bad or shaky shootings arise from fear not anger. Fear is the motivator in the case of bad shootings. Shootings arising from police rage are uncommon. This is a fundamental thing that has to be understood. I would not recommend policing as a career today.

How does Joe Wambaugh spend his time today?

Dee and I married when I was an 18-year-old Marine and we have two children and two grandchildren. I hate the idea of retirement. The worst part of old age is the loss of creative energy and being unable to write more books. Three of my four grandparents were Irish immigrants – the fourth being a German-American originally named Wambach – so mostly Irish DNA means that I tend to see the world and my life through a glass darkly. On the other hand, it is probably my Irish DNA that made me a writer in the first place. So, what do I have to bitch about? Semper cop!

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Joe Wambaugh took a chance almost 50 years ago to write about policing from the perspective of a street cop. He forever changed how the public perceives police officers, their role in society, the pitfalls of the profession and its strengths. It’s from such realistic—in your face—writing that we have a better understanding of the mysteries of what it means to be a police officer and the heavy toll it takes on officers and the larger police family. May we continue to learn from the wonderful tales told by Joseph Wambaugh and enjoying his captivating pages.

Acknowledgements

My DyingWords thanks to two retired RCMP members for contacting Joseph Wambaugh for a talk. Staff Sergeant (ret’d) Michael Duncan, who I worked with in the 1980s, is on the editorial board of The Quarterly It’s been the RCMP voice since 1933. Deputy Commissioner (ret’d) Peter German is a Quarterly contributor who spent time with Joe Wambaugh and put this piece together. It’s a unique insight into how Joseph Wambaugh’s police and writing career progressed. It’s also a fascinating insight into Wambaugh’s thoughts that captivating crime writing isn’t about how cops work on cases—it’s about how cases work on cops.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & WHATSUP FOR 2019 WITH GARRY RODGERS’ WRITING

First off, a very Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. And if you’re offended by the “C” word, I’m not sorry. I’m actually offended by the politically and culturally correct crowd who can’t say Christmas. Having worked in different levels of government, I’ve experienced these onion skins. I don’t know what makes these twits tick, but how anyone gets upset by hearing “Christmas” seriously baffles me. For example, some idiot city councilor in Victoria, British Columbia near my home recently got his knickers knotted because somebody gave him a potted poinsettia and he made a big deal because that was too close to Christianity for him. “F” him, I say.

Enough of that rant. So, 2018 was a busy writing year for me, though you wouldn’t know it by the sheer number of books I didn’t publish. This was a swing time where I did an enormous amount of research for forthcoming projects. I also wrote a pile of commercial website content pieces for my daughter’s writing agency. And, from time to time, I managed to pen a few blog posts. But most of this year was prepping for whatsup in 2019. Here’s what’s about to happen with Garry Rodgers and the DyingWords brand in the coming year.

The biggest news—by far—is that Adam Croft is taking me on as a personal understudy. If you don’t know who Adam is, he’s one of the world’s top-selling crime & psychological thriller writers. At one point in 2018, Adam Croft held the #1 best-selling spot on all of Amazon, right ahead of JK Rowling. Adam will work with me on all parts of my indie writing business from craft to marketing. This will take my writing career to an entirely new level, and I am absolutely honored to be one of five select students Adam will tutor.

Another interesting venture is entering the CBC Books 2019 Short Story Competition. My piece is The Old Stone Butter Church. It’s inspired by an epiphany experienced inside an abandoned 140-year-old stone church on southern Vancouver Island. The first prize is 6-grand in cash plus a 2-week writing residency at the prestigious Banff Center for Fine Arts. Wish me luck. The coin will help offset Adam’s fee for tolerating me.

The Lindsay Buziak murder is one of Canada’s highest-profile unsolved homicides. It’s also one of the most solvable, given the circumstances. Someone knows something and they’ll eventually talk – as long as the suspect tree shakes. Eleven years ago, Lindsay was a vibrant 24-year-old Victoria, B.C. real estate agent stabbed to death while showing a vacant high-end house. There is no doubt Lindsay Buziak’s death was a planned killing and the case is as murky as a pail of used engine oil. The suspect list reaches from her beefcake boyfriend at the scene, his mother, one of Lindsay’s closest friends, into an international organized crime cartel, and upward to the highest levels of a corrupt government scandal. This year I’m helping to shake the suspect tree with a proposed book on the case facts called Someone Knows Something – The Shocking Story of Lindsay Buziak’s Unsolved Murder.

I’m almost finished the manuscript for Sun Dance – Why Custer Really Lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This started 2 years ago with a root cause analysis for a blog post. I found an angle to one of the most researched and written-about North American historical events that no one seems to have dug into. That’s the psychological impact Chief Sitting Bull’s sun dance ceremony had on psyching his warriors to annihilate the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1876. It covers the events leading to, during, and the fallout after this famous event. I’m out of the rabbit hole now and will shop Sun Dance to traditional publishers.

Continuing on my based-on-true crime books like In The Attic and Under The Ground, I’m 2/3 of the way through the manuscript for From The Shadows. It’s about a family of 6 — 3 generations — who were savagely murdered with their bodies concealed. It resulted in one of Canada’s most-encompassing homicide investigations. From The Shadows should be ready for indie publishing in the spring of 2019. If anyone’s interested in a free advanced reading copy (ARC) in digital form, give me a shout.

Next up for 2019 are two more based-on-true crime books where I was involved in the investigations. One is On The Floor which is about the most cold-blooded execution murders I ever saw. The husband and wife owners of a gun store were robbed of a horde of assault weapons and handguns, then laid on the floor and shot in the back of their heads. On The Floor follows the investigation through the biker world and the Asian drug triads before ending in an extraordinary gunfight with the perpetrators. Watch for On The Floor in the summer of 2019.

Beside The Road is next in line. It should be ready in 2019’s fall. Carrying on in the based-on-true crime theme, this story captures a bizarre case where we found a decomposing body down a bank beside a road. This case ticked off all the forensic investigative aid boxes before identifying who it was and the one-in-a-million cause of death. Beside The Road is the weirdest homicide I ever experienced.

If there’s time left, I have a bunch of working titles on the list. There’s no material shortage out there and it makes for great based-on-true crime stories like By The Book, At The Cottage, Behind The Badge, Off The Grid, and Through The Ice. Realistically, these are 2020 or 2021 undertakings because of another previous project taking shape from a 2018 effort.

This year I developed an outline for a screenplay. It’s suitable for a 10-part series, and it’s based on an emotion-evoking true crime investigation I headed. The working title is The Battered Woman. It follows the path of a battered wife’s fight against “the system” after she repeatedly shot her passed-out husband and evoked the battered woman syndrome defense. We’ll see where this goes.

That’s a wrap on an ambitious agenda. I still plan on doing a blog post every second Saturday morning and will keep experimenting with topics. It seems my pieces on analyzing high-profile events are the most popular. However, I have a few interesting guests in the lineup for interviews. Stay tuned to find out who.

Merry Christmas, everyone! May you have more Christmas eats and drinks than humanly healthy. May you have good Christmas times with great friends around you. And may my books make you sleep with one eye open—at 3 am on Christmas morning—when Billy Ray slips down from your attic with his ax.

~Garry

DEVELOPING THE MILLION-SELLING INDIE AUTHOR MINDSET — WITH ADAM CROFT

Adam Croft is one of the world’s most successful independent authors. As an indie author, Adam is a remarkable example of the mindset required to build and maintain a self-publishing enterprise that’s sold well over a million books. Adam Croft has the distinction of holding the overall best-selling author spot on all of Amazon. That’s regardless of being indie, traditional published or what book genre or category Adam competed with. In fact, on recent charts, Adam Croft was #1. JK Rowling was #2.

Adam Croft predominately writes and publishes profitable crime thrillers and mysteries in the fiction department. Now, Adam’s ventured into non-fiction with his new release The Indie Author Mindset — How Changing Your Way of Thinking Can Transform Your Writing Career. In it, Adam Croft selflessly shares his secrets of what it takes to develop the million-selling author mindset. And, on the DyingWords blog, Adam gives followers his personal insight into The Indie Author Mindset.

Welcome back to DyingWords, Adam. I have to say you’ve made milestones in your indie author career since we met online four years ago. Not to say you weren’t already a successful author back in 2014, but something extradordinary’s happened since. What changed in your life to hurdle you over the million-selling mark?

In 2014, I was successful in that my writing was just about paying the bills. In an industry where the average income for a full-time writer is around $10,000 a year, even covering the bills can rightly be considered successful, as you say.

Mid-2015 I started to get serious about my writing. I’d been just about rumbling along for far too long and was desperate to take the next step and earn more money from my books. I discovered a few good non-fiction books around this time, as well as Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors course. All of those things, plus my mind being in a good, receptive place to take on these new ideas, meant that everything came together for me at the right time and I had a huge shift in mindset—in the way I thought about my books, and that proved to be a great platform for moving forward in a huge way.

Adam, you open your book The Indie Author Mindset by discussing what self-publishing is and what self-publishing is not. Can you give us a recap on that?

Yeah, that chapter is very different from the rest of the book, but it was something that needed saying. The whole purpose of The Indie Author Mindset was to try and address the base issues that most writers have—or certainly those writers who are struggling to make headway. Although the specific issues and symptoms are different, 95% of the time the actual core problem is mindset.

But there’s the other percentage of authors whose problems aren’t anything to do with that. I regularly get emails from writers who’ve paid someone to publish their books for them (vanity publishing, not self-publishing) and have handed over their rights to a company who, unsurprisingly, have done nothing for them. One writer told me he’d given over £20,000 (around $28,000 US) to a company to publish his book. He was stunned when I told him that a) self-publishing is free, and b) a publisher should be paying HIM £20,000 to publish his book.

There’s just so much misinformation and rubbish out there. A lot of it is fairly harmless and will only result in authors wasting their time and effort—that’s the bulk of what I go into in the book. But there’s an undercurrent of these absolute scamsters who exist solely to exploit authors, and I was keen to get straight to the point on that to help as many writers as possible avoid them. I hate seeing people exploited, especially when it’s something they can easily do themselves for free, or let someone else do and get paid in return for it.

You speak a lot about professionalism. What’s your definition of professionalism, and how does this apply to an indie author’s mindset?

This is a question I ask myself in the book. The Oxford English Dictionary has two definitions: one refers to something being your main paid occupation, and the other states you only have to be competent and capable of doing said thing. Even the OED can’t come to a definition which doesn’t contract itself.

For me, professionalism is less about money and more about attitude—or mindset. Again, everything comes back to mindset. It’s about treating your writing like you would any other job, turning up on time and getting the work done. It’s about giving your books and your career the respect they deserve, and the respect you want your readers and potential readers to give them.

Many writers never cross the line between being hobbyists and dedicated full-time authors. What’s the difference between the mindset of part-timers and those who commit to making their writing a financial success?

It’s the professional mindset you mentioned a moment ago. It’s quite literally a shift in attitude from ‘this is my hobby’ to ‘this is what I do’. Whatever your main job is (or was, if you don’t currently have one), you need to treat your writing in the same way.

People who’ve run small businesses tend to ‘get’ this much more easily. I’m one of them, and I think having that background was a great help to me. It did take me five years to realise that I could—and absolutely should—take that attitude and experience into my writing career, though.

I like your quote in The Indie Author Mindset that says “Being a writer is not something that happens to you. It’s something you make happen.” Can you elaborate on how you made it happen?

As writers, we’re always told to make sure we write in the active, not passive voice. People do things—things don’t happen to them. The same goes for your writing career. You can’t expect success and good fortune to turn up on your doorstep. They won’t.

There’s a famous sportsperson—I don’t remember who—who was being interviewed and the interviewer mentioned the huge amount of luck and good fortune they’ve had in being so successful. Said sportsperson replied along the lines of ‘Yes, the harder I work the luckier I get’. No-one’s hanging around for you. You’ve got to jump on the train or get left behind.

Perfection. Many authors beat themselves to death with writes, re-writes and more re-writes while trying to achieve perfection. Is there such a thing as perfection, or does there come a point where close enough is good enough and you just ship it?

There is absolutely no possible way of attaining perfection in any form of art. Too many people beat themselves up over trying to attain the unattainable.

Objectively speaking, there is no such thing as a good book. Subjectively, of course, we all love some books and hate others. Same with art, TV shows, movies and just about any other form of art or creative endeavour. I hate Star Wars. Does that mean it’s a dreadful film franchise? No. I’m seriously outnumbered. It doesn’t appeal to me, but it clearly does to millions of others. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to call Star Wars objectively bad.

I can’t stand Shakespeare, either. But again, I realise it’s me who’s missing something. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume that everyone who likes Shakespeare is deluded and mad (even though they are).

The point is that for every piece of creative work, there is someone who thinks it’s absolutely perfect, someone who thinks it’s the most dreadful thing ever created and a million other people somewhere on the spectrum between. It’s irrelevant which one you are—you are not the moral arbiter of good art. No-one is. So just get the book written, get it out there, accept that there’ll be a whole spectrum of lovers and haters and move on with the next book. Anything else is self-defeating and likely to eat you up from within.

Production. What’s your process for being productive and proficient in both creativity and business?

I don’t really have much choice. I’ve got a family to feed and an ever-increasing inbox. I’ve just got to sit down and get on with it. No-one else is going to do it for me.

Put it this way: 95% of writers procrastinate, dither and are generally quite unproductive. If you can sit down and bash out a thousand or two thousand words a day, clear your inbox and have a good stab at your to-do list, you’re easily in the top few percent of the industry. Sooner or later that will put you in an extremely fortunate position.

Dealing with doubt. I think all writers—myself for sure—encounter self-doubt with their work. Do you buy into the so-called “imposter syndrome”, and what should a writer do about overcoming self-doubt?

Absolutely I do. I have it myself. The more success I have, the surer I am that at some point someone’s going to find out I’m a massive fraud.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the only real way to combat it is to accept that it’s a part of you, but don’t let it win. Like any bully, if you ignore it it’ll go away. Don’t feed the trolls, as they say.

Some of the most successful writers I know are the ones plagued with the most self-doubt. Self-doubt has nothing to do with success, money or achievement. It will ALWAYS be there. So accept it, refuse to give in to it and move forward regardless.

You’ve got a section in The Indie Author Mindset about the power of others. What’s your view on who to listen to, and who not to listen to?

Quite simply, it’s a case of doing a bit of research. There are hundreds of websites, books and resources out there. Lots of people somehow feel qualified to teach others how to write and publish despite having only written one book and sold a few hundred copies.

Personally, I want to learn from people who’ve been there and done it, not from people who are barely any further along the line than me. There are too many people who either follow the old adage of ‘keeping one lesson ahead of the pupil’ or, worse, make things up or hash together strategies based on what they assume should work, rather than experimenting to find out what does work.

As an indie author/self-publisher, you obviously can’t do it all yourself. What work do you personally take on? What do you delegate or sub-out?

The answer to the first part of that question is ‘too much’. My wife works with me and tends to handle the business side of things. She does the bookkeeping, spreadsheet tracking, background stuff for promos and all of the ‘back office’ stuff. Anything front-facing is me. I reply to all reader emails personally, help other authors, participate in online discussions, set up and run my ads and marketing activities—and occasionally get time to write some books.

Do you ever become overwhelmed? With so much on your professional and personal plate, how do you avoid burnout? After all, you have a young family as well as a thriving business.

All the time. But I also realise that won’t do me any good. At the moment I’m two-thirds of the way through my next psychological thriller, which I hope will be even more successful than HER LAST TOMORROW and TELL ME I’M WRONG. I’ve got high hopes for it and am writing 2,000 words a day towards it.

I’m also battling against an inbox which I can’t ever get below 100+ unread emails, producing a weekly podcast, directing a theatre production for November and doing 2-3 podcast or radio interviews a day. 16-hour days are perfectly normal for me at the moment. The only saving grace is that my wife and I both work from home, so I can at least be in the same house as my son, even if I don’t get to spend a fraction of the amount of time with him as I’d like.

I really admire and respect your visionary mindset, Adam. Can you share your views about short-term vs long-term thinking?

Put simply, it’s all about long-term thinking. We’re often blinkered and worried about daily sales or instant impact. Business doesn’t work like that. For instance, I have a couple of books that earn me maybe £5-6 a day. Certainly not life-changing. But they do that every day and have done for eight years or so. That £5-6 a day is now almost £20,000, and they still earn money every day, despite me having done no work on them for eight years.

If you expect instant (or even quick) results in this business, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s no other way of putting it. Even my ‘overnight success’ was my ninth book and my sixth year of publishing.

Let’s talk about the dreaded marketing end of being an indie author. I realize The Indie Author Mindset is really about the mental end of being a commercial writing success rather than the production end, but can you give us a basic formula for what works in today’s book distribution and marketing?

No, because there isn’t one. Different things work for different people. There are far too many variables to say that any one thing will work for everyone. That’s why you need to find an approach which works for you. It’s also why I didn’t go into any specifics about marketing strategies or tactics in The Indie Author Mindset. It would be disingenuous of me to try and sell a book off the back of things which I know won’t work for 90% of authors.

Your big run-away novel was Her Last Tomorrow followed by Only The Truth, In Her Image and Tell Me I’m Wrong. These stories have been huge commercial successes, and I can only imagine what’s coming next. Was there a particular catalyst that sent these books to the top? If so, what was the tipping point?

My two biggest sellers to date are HER LAST TOMORROW and TELL ME I’M WRONG. The latter overtook HER LAST TOMORROW as my biggest-selling book a few weeks ago, after only six months on sale.

Both books are domestic psychological thrillers with extremely compelling hooks (Could you murder your wife to save your daughter?/What if you discovered your husband was a serial killer?). That approach works for me. It won’t work for everyone. I know lots of people have tried to emulate it and use the same strategy, and it doesn’t work for them. Their audience might not respond to that sort of hook. Mine does. I think there’s a more specific recipe and set of reasons behind it, and I’m going to try and replicate it with my next book. If I’m right, that book should be a huge success too. I’m putting my cards on the table here! Fingers crossed…

In The Indie Author Mindset, you talk about three inseparable and crucial parts to commercial writing success—the author, the publisher and the businessperson. Do you mind elaborating on these important parts of mindset?

When you’re an indie author, you need to wear many hats. Those are the main three, but I also find myself having to be a strategist, broadcaster, customer services assistant and many other different roles.

Being flexible and adaptable is key—not only to having to switch between different personas and job titles, but in order to keep up with a fast-moving industry and ensure you’re able to adapt to the changing landscape.

Besides reading, re-reading and making notes on The Indie Author Mindset, I also listened to your interview on Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing podcast. You make an extremely important distinction between business expenses and business investment. Can you talk a bit about this, as well as how you parlay profits into investments?

Too often we think about things as expenses. I hear so many authors saying how they went for a $50 book cover because $400 was too much to spend. They’re missing the point entirely. That $50 cover will be nowhere near as good as the $400 one. Everyone knows that. Even they know that. It might be eight times cheaper, but I can guarantee their sales will be eight times lower than they would be with the better cover. This is an investment, not an expense. Putting the money in now will reap rewards for years to come, and you’ll make your investment back many times over.

Too many authors expect to be able to do things on a shoestring and as cheaply as possible, which shows an extraordinary lack of respect for themselves, their books and their readers. Why should a reader take a chance on a new author and part with their hard-earned money when even the author herself won’t put her money where her mouth is?

You also touch on marketing/advertising, publishing wide and developing multiple income streams in The Indie Author Mindset. I won’t ask you to detail what works for you, Adam. Rather, I urge all authors to read your new book and absorb your wisdom. However, can you say a few words about branding?

This is another aspect of marketing. We get obsessed about needing a direct and measurable profit. But marketing and advertising just don’t work like that. No other industry or business expects to measure a direct ROI on advertising spend. It goes wider than that.

Do you think Coca Cola run a TV ad then look at how many bottles of Coke they sold directly off the back of it? Of course they don’t. It’s about branding, having their name seen rather than their competitors’. It’s about keeping in the minds of their potential customers, so next time they’re ready to buy a bottle of soft drink it’s them they choose.

Just an observation here—even though your new non-fiction release is called The Indie Author Mindset, the mass of information inside seems applicable to traditionally published writers as well. What will traditionally published authors learn?

It will, because the lines are now blurred more than ever. Even traditionally published authors are expected to do their own marketing and PR. No-one’s immune from that, so trad’s no longer the ‘easy’ route it once was. Trust me, I’ve been there.

I think this just highlights the fact that the difference between indie and trad publishing is nowhere near as big as people think. It’s the same machine, the same monster. As an indie author, you aren’t an author without a publisher—you’re an author who IS the publisher. The only difference in trad is that the two are separated a little more, although, as I mentioned above, even that small distinction is quickly disappearing.

I can’t let you go without expanding on how important it is for commercial authors to track sales and distribution data. What do you recommend writers do in order to know how we’re performing and formulate a marketing plan?

Track everything. Use AK Report or Book Report to track your KDP data, get the rest directly from the distributors. Track your advertising spend. Look for trends and interesting stuff in the data. You might be surprised by what works.

Test everything. Again, you’ll be amazed and what works and what doesn’t work. Just because you like a graphic or an image or a piece of copy, your audience won’t necessarily take to it at all. In fact, they almost certainly won’t. My best ads and best-performing graphics have all been ones I’ve hated. The ones I like don’t do well. I clearly have very different tastes from my audience, and that’s the same for most writers. Separate yourself from the work and do what readers want, not what you want. It’s rare the two are the same.

Finally, Adam, over the years you’ve met and interacted with many writers. If you had one piece of advice to leave us with—based on your experience and success—what would it be?

I always give six words in this situation: Arse on chair, fingers on keyboard.

Of all the marketing strategies and techniques, of all the ways you can spend your day trying to boost your book sales, the only thing guaranteed to move your career forward and increase your sales is writing more books.

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My sincere thanks to indie author and million-selling writer Adam Croft for his time and generosity in stopping by DyingWords to talk about his new release, The Indie Author Mindset. This concise and easy-to-absorb book was the kick-in-the-arse motivation I needed at this point in my writing career. It’s re-affirmed that hard work, dedication and positive mindset are the key principles behind making commercial writing lucrative and mentally rewarding. It also helps to have a good heap of talent like Adam Croft has. Here’s my Amazon review of The Indie Author Mindset.

Amazon Description for The Indie Author Mindset

Do you want to sell more books and earn a good living from your fiction?

Discover how to change your way of thinking and revolutionize your writing career.

Are you struggling to take your author career on to the next stage? Do you wish you could sell huge numbers of books and make a good income for you and your family? Before he learned to change his mindset, Adam Croft’s fiction books earned him around $30 a day. But, after developing the indie author mindset, he was earning $3,500 a day within a matter of weeks.

The Indie Author Mindset shows you how simply changing your way of thinking about your writing business can revolutionize your career. Using Adam’s personal experiences and examples, you’ll be able to think differently about the business side of your writing career and lay down the foundations for long-term success.

In The Indie Author Mindset, you’ll discover:

How to decide who to listen to — and who not to listen to

  • How to unlock the power of residuals
  • How to create more than half a dozen income streams from one book
  • Lessons and advice from Bryan Cohen, David Gaughran, Brian Meeks and Mark Dawson
  • Why almost every writer misunderstands profit and is doing advertising wrong
  • And much, much more!

This life-changing book is the motivational kick-up-the-backside all authors need. If you like a non-fiction book with a personal touch, practical tips you can apply every day and all the motivation you need to kick your career on to the next stage, The Indie Author Mindset is for you.

Adam Croft’s Biography

With more than 1.5 million books sold to date, Adam Croft is one of the most successful independently published authors in the world, and one of the biggest selling authors of the past few years.

His 2015 worldwide bestseller Her Last Tomorrow sold more than 150,000 copies across all platforms and became one of the bestselling books of the year, reaching the top 10 in the overall Amazon Kindle chart and peaking at number 12 in the combined paperback fiction and non-fiction chart.

In 2016, the Knight & Culverhouse Box Set reached storewide number 1 in Canada, knocking J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child off the top spot only weeks after Her Last Tomorrow was also number 1 in Canada.

During the summer of 2016, two of Adam’s books hit the USA Today bestseller list only weeks apart, making them two of the most-purchased books in the United States over the summer.

In February 2017, Only The Truth became a worldwide bestseller, reaching storewide number 1 at both Amazon US and Amazon UK, making it the bestselling book in the world at that moment in time. The same day, Amazon’s overall Author Rankings placed Adam as the most widely read author in the world, with J.K. Rowling in second place.

Adam has been featured on BBC television, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, the BBC World Service, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Bookseller and a number of other news and media outlets.

In March 2018, Adam was conferred as an Honorary Doctor of Arts, the highest academic qualification in the UK, by the University of Bedfordshire in recognition of his achievements.

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Visit Adam Croft’s Website at  AdamCroft.net

Connect with Adam Croft on Facebook

Follow Adam Croft on Twitter

Here are links to two other Adam Croft posts on DyingWords.net:

The Tipping Point For Best Selling Authors

The Mystery Novel And Human Fascination With Death

Update: February 2019 – Adam’s Croft’s sequel to The Indie Author Mindset titled The Indie Author Checklist is now available on all internet book outlets. It’s a must-read for anyone serious about their writing career. Available in Ebook, print & audio. I highly recommend it!