A year's worth of Classic Fiction to Study - and Entertain...

Why Stephen King says writers should read daily - a year of study for you.

The Fiction Writer's Challenge: I frankly don't know if anyone can actually do this one. It's a study course with 26 (or so) classic fiction books. If you can get through all of them in an average of 2 weeks, then you'll have covered the gamut of styles and plot twists, characters and story elements which all the truly great fiction writers have used for the last couple of centuries (at least) - all in a single year of reading.

The point was to set up a series of books and a simple program so that while authors read daily, they'd be able to surround themselves with quality editions of the top-selling fiction works of the ages.

And if sitting at the Masters' feet weren't enough, these are all available first as epubs, so you can carry them with you wherever you go - on smartphones, tablets, ereaders, or anything with a screen.

The trick is that it includes really long-winded books such as Les Miserables, War and Peace, and a few others that are otherwise meant to balance tipping bookshelves.

The first year's fiction bestsellers study list is released!

Writers' Club Homework Assignment List

Relax - I didn't mean to give you a flashback to college days (well, maybe just a little...)

I was compiling the most popular classic fiction from Goodreads, Feedbooks, and Gutenberg.org - and came up with this list. The tie-breaker was Goodreads in all cases, since they have people wanting to read a title in both paperback and hardcover versions - so this gave an extra oomph to certain books.

Otherwise, it was your usual popularity contest.

Why only public domain works? Because this gives us a better view without current fads incorporated, or certain fan clubs which can skew results. (Dead authors don't usually have active fan clubs populating the social media.)

Your Audience, Your Responsibility, Your Advice

Any Writer Starts By Listening

This comes up over and over again. People who listen can have conversations. People who "soapbox" often end up standing there alone.

The key to successful books is writing for the audience. Sure, you may be scratching your own itch - but when you write that how-to book, or that fiction masterpiece, you are exchanging value with your audience.

Authors who start making a living at their craft - and those who go beyond this to crafting their fortune with bestsellers - all know this to be an evergreen truth: your audience is always right.

Your audience may be small, but in this day and age, they don't have to be physically living in the same area in order to find one another. You can and will grow your audience by continuing to produce content that they need, want, and love.

I was updating "Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors" right along this line recently - and again today discovered that I had hit on a nerve there.

Because when you use an ebook launch to develop your next book, you are surveying (listening) to what your audience wants - and then crafting your product to that, so they get what they are yearning for.

It doesn't matter what genre you write in, or whether it's fiction or non-fiction (or a "memoir" somewhere in between.) The point is that you actually listen to your own audience and deliver the goods they want.

The point of this is to help them improve their lives.

After that, the basic marketing techniques of coming out with tons of well-crafted books at affordable prices takes over. Each and everyone of these well-crafted masterpieces are determined by the public they are written for.

A bottom line is that more you improve their lives openhandedly, the better your book and your series will sell and keep selling.

Of course, you are encouraged to leave a comment below so we can have a conversation about this idea. Who knows - you may wind up in the dedication section of my next book as being the genius who inspired it...

Learning to write by studying bestseller fiction books. Novel? No - classics.

(photocredit: Amusafija)

So begins yet another writing adventure.

Found a great book, via Feedbooks, of a classic - "The Technique of the Mystery Story." This gave me a complete inspiration to help writers learn to write better. This came up earlier when I was researching for "Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors." During that, I created a great tool for fiction writers, "Becoming the Fiction Storyteller of Your Dreams" - just to help people overcome writing difficulties and study up on how storytelling worked in its basics. 

It came to me in studying Stephen King's "On Writing," that writers should be reading daily. The next problem is what to read. Louis La'mour is understood to have studied the classics to perfect his own writing style. 

Lobbing around Feedbooks gave me another insight - the classic and still-popular bestsellers. 

What if these were assembled into a bi-weekly email delivery of the most popular classics. Every other week should allow you to get through whatever was sent (on average, anyway) and give options of getting a download version for your smartphone/tablet, and/or a paperback. Whatever you find easier to use. 

The variety of styles and genres should get a writer well-rounded on their studies.

A funny thing was that in comparing the most popular book on Feedbooks, Gutenberg.org, and Goodreads - I found something like 4 years worth of books to deliver on a bi-weekly basis. 

Heckuva lot of work, though.

But you're worth it, aren't you?

Here's the page I'm starting for this. Turns out I never got a page for that "Becoming a Fiction Storyteller..."  So this new page on bestseller fiction books will help you with that. All set up to list the books as I get them polished up.

Just for you - and as well... wait for it... this gives yet another book in the making. Something along the lines of "Becoming a Mystery Writer". Might even have to do a course on it's own for that one. 

Just sayin'.

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