Step 6: Seed, Synopsis, Story

Engineering your "supply chain" for self-publishing commercial fiction.

Commercial Fiction Club is a paid newsletter documenting the steps of building a $1,000,000/year self-published fiction empire—starting from $0. If you want to make money from your fiction, and learn what’s working in real-time, this is for you. New posts every Friday.

Dear Fiction Writer,

One of my primary goals with pursuing fiction wasn’t just to “write fiction.”

I mean, yes, I consider myself to be a purist when it comes to writing… I love and respect the art of writing… I prefer reading literature to genre fiction… As much as I support new technologies and AI, I also really do love sitting quietly and staring at a blank page and waiting for the right idea to land in my brain… All of these things are true.

HOWEVER…

I also want to make money. Lots and lots of money. (I like nice things, what can I say.)

For this reason, I have always been fascinated by James Patterson.

While he’s not my favorite writer, he’s a writer whom I deeply respect—specifically because of his business savvy. If you’re unfamiliar with his story, the TL;DR is that he started his career working in advertising and climbed his way to the C-Suite, eventually becoming the CEO of the North American division of the J. Walter Thompson. He was “successful” long before he became an author. But he always loved writing, and one day decided to leverage his advertising skills for himself and his own stories.

Fun fact: he was one of the first authors to run TV ads.

Something a lot of writers don’t know, however, is that James Patterson’s original love was literature. He tells the story in his memoir, ironically titled James Patterson, about how he grew up wanting to be a great literary writer. That is, until he started working in advertising, and realized literary writers win awards and make no money.

My first job out of college was at an advertising agency, and I came to that conclusion too.

As a result, James Patterson has built an empire not just writing genre fiction, but building a machine around him that allows him to scale his talents for writing genre fiction. It reminds me of the Elon Musk quote about Tesla: “We don’t build cars. We build factories that build cars.”

• He was one of the first traditionally published authors to publish more than 1 novel in a year.

• He now publishes upwards of 10 novels per year (usually 1 novel per month, give or take).

• He “scales himself” by outlining all of his novels—doing the highest-leverage work—and then deferring the lower-leverage work (the in-the-weeds writing & editing) to co-writers.

• And he borrows credibility for some of his novels by also partnering with celebrities like Dolly Parton, and former presidents like Bill Clinton.

He’s done a lot of things in the publishing world that had “never been done before.” And so, whether you agree with his philosophy or not on mass-publishing, you have to respect what he’s built.

He doesn’t write novels.

He builds factories that write novels—with him as the nucleus.

Supply Chain Publishing

James Patterson is a writer I think about a lot when it comes to my own writing.

Maybe it’s because we come from similar worlds (advertising). Maybe it’s because we are both entrepreneurial. But as much as I love the art of writing, another side of my brain (the business side) loves the idea of finding every possible efficiency.

What gets lost, whenever I talk about things like “business” and “efficiency” in the context of “art,” is that I (and maybe James Patterson does as well) actually view business as being in service of the art—not as a replacement. I have very little interest in being so business-minded that art becomes soulless (which I believe is the conclusion a lot of passers-by come to about me and my writing). What I AM interested in is using business, building systems, gaining leverage, etc., as a means to unlocking MORE time to spend focused on the art.

Said differently: the reason many writers struggle to spend time on their art is because they are bogged down doing lots of lower-leverage tasks that aren’t “their art.”

Through this lens, “business” can actually be a support system for:

• Protecting your time

• Reducing switching costs

• Defending against distractions

• And ultimately unlocking the most productive mindset for your art

Which is why, going into building this fiction vertical, I am spending a lot of time thinking about how to build a highly efficient Supply Chain for my publishing process.

The Steps Of A Publishing Supply Chain

So, if we break down what “publishing a novel” on a reoccurring basis looks like, what are the sum of the parts that make up the whole?

Well, “publishing a novel” is a bundled term.

Let’s unbundle it into steps:

• Step 1: Story Idea - This includes everything from:

  • Category Choice

  • Worldbuilding

  • Research

  • Etc.

• Step 2: Outlining - Two approaches here:

  • Pantser (figure it out as you go)

  • Plotter (plot the major points out first)

• Step 3: Writing - Including

  • First draft

  • Rewrites

  • Etc.

• Step 4: Editing - Different types of editors here (you choose what you want/need):

  • Stylistic editing

  • Structural editing

  • Grammatical editing

• Step 5: Interior Formatting - Prepping the final manuscript for…

  • Print (PDF)

  • eBook (.PUB)

• Step 6: Audiobook Recording - Choices here are:

  • Record yourself (costs time)

  • Hire a narrator (costs money)

• Step 7: Cover Design - Can do this in tandem with the above, and includes:

  • Sourcing the right designer

  • Going through multiple rounds/revisions

  • Maybe also working with an Art Director

  • Etc.

• Step 8: Pre-Publishing Checklist - All the things required to self-publish on Amazon/your own website, including:

  • Researching the sub-category

  • Researching major keywords

  • Writing the book’s description (with the above in mind)

  • Buying an ISBN number

  • Determining price

  • Etc.

• Step 9: Final Proofing - Once interior formatting is done, audiobook is done, etc., need to do a final review:

  • Page/formatting errors

  • Grammatical errors (you didn’t catch the first 10 times)

  • Checking platform approvals / correct file types

  • Etc.

And this doesn’t include all the things you need to do AFTER the book is live! (Aka: marketing.)

Being a self-published author, especially in the world of genre fiction, means wearing a lot of hats. And so, just by skimming the above list, you can see how a lot of these other required tasks actually take AWAY from your time spent on “the art.” Said more directly: if you DON’T learn how to build processes, efficiencies, systems, etc., that COSTS you “time spent on your art.”

No bueno.

Now, with some leverage, you can actually “automate” (either by hiring someone else, and/or soon with AI agents) Steps 4-9. All of these tasks are either very easy to delegate, or train AI to do 80% as well as you. So, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how to do this.

However, even in Steps 1-3, I think there’s a lot of room for innovation from writers. No, you don’t want to “automate away” the joy of writing—completely removing yourself from the process, deferring all thinking to robots, and just spam-publishing slop. That’s not what I’m advocating for.

Instead, I’m more interested in assembling frameworks that allow for the use of AI and new technologies to give creative writers (like myself) more leverage.

Here’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot:

Seed, Synopsis, Story

This is a framework I learned from a friend and fellow fiction writer (who thinks in a similar way I do), Sean Platt—who runs a publishing business called Sterling & Stone.

This is how he approaches consistently publishing commercial fiction is first by generating lots and lots of high-quality story ideas.

And so Step 1 of a Publishing Supply Chain essentially goes like this:

• Seed: The elevator pitch of the story.

• Synopsis: The 5-page detailed summary of the story, start to finish.

• Story: The full outline, chapter by chapter, beat by beat, of the story.

So, here’s how I implemented this framework in the original creation of The Monster Deck.

And as a reminder, you get a free downloadable copy when you subscribe to Commercial Fiction Club!