This is a guest post by author and nomad, Liz Shipton
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How I support our fully remote lives with my silly little fantasy books.
Four years ago, I set sail from my home in Santa Cruz California with my partner Trevor and our dog Aloy, on a 43 ft sailboat called Loki. Since then, we’ve sailed from California to the Caribbean, and I’ve become a published author.
In that time, I landed a book deal, self-published a 9-book series, ran a Kickstarter that funded at over $34,000, successfully launched a Patreon, and built a social media audience of around 200,000 followers. My debut trad-published urban fantasy novel Dot Slash Magic comes out August 19th (and it’s about a digital nomad!)
I’d love to share with you how I built this business, and how choosing this lifestyle enabled me to pursue my dream career.
I’d love to share with you how I built this business, and how choosing this lifestyle enabled me to pursue my dream career.
Setting Sail: Planning & Preparing
Casting off and sailing into the sunset didn’t happen overnight. This dream was 6 years in the making – from when Trev and I first started talking about it in 2015, to when we finally set sail in 2021.
TAKEAWAY: Doing this right takes time and planning. The more you can prepare up front, the better.
We made sacrifices: we walked away from low-paying jobs we loved to take better-paying work so we could save for this trip, and spent five years living very frugally (tbh, we still live very frugally.) What we saved during that time allowed us to buy the boat, gave us a bit of a long-term nest egg, and put enough in the short-term coffers for about a year of cruising (or so we thought…)
Running Out of Cash
Turns out, sailing costs more than you think. We made a lot more repairs and spent a lot more on diesel than we’d anticipated in our first 6 months. By Baja I was scouring online job boards for copywriting gigs.
Here are the places I consistently found work:
- Upwork
- ProBlogger Jobs
- Indeed
- Word of mouth from existing clients
Can you actually fund travel with copywriting?
Yes, if your overhead costs are low enough. But be prepared for it to be a grind. Pay per word is low on most general/entry-level stuff. I’m able to parlay my experience as a software engineer into technical copywriting, which pays better, so if you have a niche skill like that, lean on it.
Writing The Thalassic Series
Freelancing was fine, but it was never my ultimate goal. I’d always wanted to write a book, and once we set sail, I finally had the time. That’s the beauty of this lifestyle, and why I think alternative living is such a win for artists: time is your most valuable resource.
Which is good, because writing fiction takes a lot of time. I can easily spend 16 hours a day writing (and I have, a lot.) I started writing Salt because I had a story burning a hole inside me, and luckily, I fell in love with the process.
I completed the ninth book in that series (The Thalassic Series) in April of this year. I also completed a series of 12 NSFW short stories last year (Tales of Mischief & F*ckery.) For those counting, that’s 9 novels and 12 short stories in about 3 years, on top of freelancing, and it’s taken me that much writing to feel like what I’m putting out isn’t utter garbage.
And for all that time invested, there’s no guarantee of success. You have to love it, or it just isn’t worth it.
TAKEAWAY: Writing fiction is not “easy money.”
Learning How to Market
If you do love writing, and you actually want a shot at supporting yourself with it, then you need to learn how to market your books.
This is where I did everything wrong. Don’t do what I did, which is write a story from deep in your heart, without doing any research into “genres” or “tropes” or what it means to “write to market.”
What you should do, if you’re approaching this like a business, is figure out generally what type of thing you’d be happy writing and then figure out what the readers of that genre want, and where they are. You can do this by reading a lot of stuff on Amazon, by using a tool like Publisher Rocket, or…
Booktok
You could get on Booktok. The reader community on social media is huge. Booktok is now so big that most bookstores have a whole table for it. Bookstagram, Booktube, and reader groups on Facebook are also massive.
These readers mostly want romance. Or fantasy. Or fantasy romance. There are other markets, obviously (sci-fi, space opera, LitRPG, historical fiction, literary fiction, middle-grade, kids’ books…) but the market for romance and fantasy (particularly on Booktok, where it’s easy and free to get a foothold) is huge right now.
TAKEAWAY: Scrolling through Booktok will give you a good idea of what’s doing well in the world of indie publishing.
Sidenote
“Indie published” means the book was self-published. “Traditional” or “trad” published means the book was published by a traditional publishing house like Harper Collins or Penguin Random House (or my publisher, Angry Robot!)
Most of my success has been due to social media. I use TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Threads to promote my books. In 2023 I went viral, which got me in front of my agent and led to my publishing deal, but you don’t have to go viral on these apps to sell books.
If you learn what a “hook” is and learn how to use it to make people stop scrolling, you can get people to watch your videos. Learn which tropes are popular, and that will make people want to read your books. Is it artistic? No. Is it romantic? No. Is it what you always imagined writing would be? Probably not. But if you actually want to sell stuff, it’s what you’ll have to do.
Using Kickstarter to Fund Your Books
I came to Kickstarter late in the game, but it’s probably one of the most powerful platforms out there for authors. The first Kickstarter I ran (to launch a collection of my NSFW short stories) funded at over $34,000. Many authors run three or four of these a year.
Readers on Kickstarter want to buy books, and they want to buy them primarily from indie authors. They like it if those books are exclusive to Kickstarter (early releases, special editions, deluxe versions of existing books, etc.) and they will pay a lot of money for things like sprayed edges, foiled hardcovers, stickers, bookmarks, and beautiful artwork.
Kickstarter is not a “donation platform.” It’s actually a discovery platform. Readers on Kickstarter use Kickstarter to find new books. They buy the books they want to read by pledging to those campaigns. I brought a sizable audience to my first campaign from social media, but about half of the people who backed my project came from Kickstarter, and I’m confident they’ll follow me to the next campaign. You can literally build an audience through the platform, which is wild.
TAKEAWAY: Kickstarter is a GAME CHANGER for authors.
There’s an excellent book and accompanying Facebook group called Kickstarter for Authors, written and run by the super-knowledgeable (and helpful!) Anthea Sharp. I highly recommend reading the book and joining the group if you plan to use Kickstarter to launch your books.
Amazon, KU, Online Retail and Direct Sales
So where else should you sell your books? Literally everywhere you can. At the bare minimum, you need to have paperbacks and eBooks available on Amazon (yes, we all hate Bezos, no, there is no way around this.) Amazon is where the majority of readers find new books.
You can also sell your books yourself, through an online website, which will earn you more money, but gain you less visibility. Most indie authors do both. YOu can also make your books available through Ingram Spark, which will allow other retail platforms like Barnes & Noble to offer them. You will make almost nothing once Ingram Spark and other online retailers take their cut, so encourage readers to buy direct from you or download from Amazon.
Patreon, YouTube and Other Income Streams
Like all digital nomads, your income will be made up of many things. Right now, the bulk of my regular income comes from Amazon royalties, followed by my freelancing work (yes, I still do it.) Then I get money from Patreon, where a handful of my hardcore fans get weekly chapters of my current work in progress, as well as monthly behind-the-scenes videos of sailing life and a few other perks.
I make very little from social media (the TikTok Creator Fund is only available to people in the US and a handful of European countries, Instagram pays nothing. I make some by cross-posting my viral reels to YouTube and Facebook, but it’s not much.)
Landing a Book Deal
So what about that book deal I mentioned? How come I haven’t been parading that around like it’s the crowning achievement of my life?
To be clear, it is.
I’m super proud of that book and very excited for it to come out (August 19th! Pre-order now!) But I saved it for last because I want to make it clear that landing a book deal isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of being an author these days.
For starters, you can make more money launching a book on Kickstarter than you will from your first publishing advance (I did.) Second, just because your book is traditionally published, doesn’t automatically mean it will be successful.
While publishers can give you access to things like expanded distribution, a contract that guarantees income if you meet certain thresholds, and publicity and marketing help (which is huge), and will also pay to produce and edit your book, they can’t guarantee your book will take off.
Even if you land a book deal, you’re still going to have to work your ass off (and spend your own money) to make it successful. I will probably spend $1000 or more on my upcoming launch, in addition to what my publisher and agent are spending, and I will be posting tirelessly to social media (and writing many articles like this one) to get in front of as many eyes as possible.
And after all that? The book still might flop.
Living the Dream?
So all that being said, is it worth it? Should you cut ties to land (or get in your van, or build that tiny off-grid house in the mountains) to pursue a life of creative freedom?
I think so.
An alternative lifestyle gives you the time and financial bandwidth to really focus on your art. We anchor for free in some of the most beautiful places in the world. We have no car, no rent, no mortgage, and no health insurance. Our primary expenses are groceries and taking care of our dog.
But more than that? This lifestyle gives you experiences to draw on. It gives you an outside perspective, and a peek into ways of living beyond your own. More than any of that, it gives you the time and space to think deeply and figure out what you actually want to say about the world.
I wrote The Thalassic Series based directly on our sailing adventures that first year after we left Santa Cruz. I wrote Dot Slash Magic based on my experience working in tech (including as a nomad) and also incorporated sailing into that. The saying “write what you know” is absolutely true – and one of the best things about this lifestyle is that it broadens what you know.
It isn’t easy. It isn’t always fun. It might not look exactly like what you thought being an author would look like. But you’ll be writing stories you love and exploring places you might otherwise never have seen, and (hopefully) taking moments like this one:
and putting them into your art. And that’s pretty neat.
Liz Shipton is a writer and full-time off-grid liveaboard sailor. She’s currently sailing around the world with her partner and her dog, turning her real-life adventures into speculative fiction.
Follow her:
https://instagram.com/lizshiptonauthor
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