Every writer runs low on ideas at some point during their journey. One way I’ve found to get inspired to write again is to take a page out of Hollywood’s book. I look to the past. The entertainment industry is famous for recycling stories, be it retellings of historical events or adding a new twist to a classic film.
As writers there’s no reason we can’t take the same approach. Pulling from places like history, classic literature, and folktales can be a great source of inspiration. No matter how many times a story has been told, there’s always a new way to tell it. Add your unique voice and point of view, and you could have a whole new narrative on your hands.
So, where do we start? Here are a few ideas.
History
One of the best subjects to delve into when looking for inspiration is history. There are literally thousands of years to pull from. I’m not just talking about events, but also people and locations.
Pick any era and you’ll probably find that Hollywood has written countless scripts based on it. Some are updates of old stories while others may be a completely new tale told from a different perspective.
A good example of this is World War II movies. Hundreds of films have been made about this one tragic period, yet every one of them is different. Some are broad in scope, while others focus on specific events or characters. The genres range from action to love stories, and drama to comedy.
While most are told from the ally point of view, looking through the eyes of the axis can add an interesting twist. Think of a time or event in history that interests you, do the research, then turn it upside down and see what falls out.
Classic Literature
Hollywood is famous for tapping into classic literature when looking for material. Everyone from Homer to Shakespeare to Arthur Conan Doyle have been mined for story-gold. One big advantage of this source is that books and characters old enough to be in the public domain are free to use any way you wish, without the cost of licensing the material.
Think back to your school days and the classics you’ve read. Is there one that stands out? Maybe there’s a specific character you remember being drawn to. Try imagining that character in a different setting or even a different time period.
You could try writing a fictional biography for your favorite character to get your juices flowing. Shakespeare In Love and Young Sherlock Holmes are prime examples of fictionalized biographies involving both classic characters and classic authors.
Fairytales and Folklore
One need look no further than Disney to recognize the value of fairytales and folklore as a source of inspiration. A significant percentage of their entertainment empire has been built on these enduring stories. They’ve even done countless remakes and retellings of their own versions of these tales.
But Disney hasn’t cornered the market in this genre. Check out adaptations by other studios, such as Ella Enchanted and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, both complete reimagining of the original tales. My own take on The Three Little Pigs has the Big Bad Wolf cast as a crooked real estate developer trying to run the pigs out of their homes.
What was your favorite fairytale as a child? How would you alter the story now that you have some life experience behind you? Maybe you could try turning the story inside out and make the villain the hero.
Your Past Works
Hollywood is forever creating spinoffs of other projects, and you can too. Whether it’s published works, half-finished stories, or notes to yourself, your previous efforts can be a goldmine. Dig through your prized pieces and cast-offs as well. Look for those nuggets that can be hammered into something shiny and new.
Think of the characters you’ve created in your past works, especially the secondary characters. Is there one that stands out? One that, if developed further, could carry a story forward? Try writing a bio for them and see where it leads you. You might end up with a solid spinoff on your hands.
I’m currently doing this for one of the characters from my James McCarthy series. I had such a positive response to Deputy Sheriff Nestor Yazzi, a main player in both Catching Karma and Cold Karma, that I’m working on building a new series around the character.
Final Thoughts
Be it spinoffs, sequels, series, or remakes, Hollywood is constantly recycling stories, characters, and even entire scripts. There’s no shame in digging into past projects to find your future inspiration. Find something that resonates with you and dig into it, then filter it through your own life experiences and unique voice. You never know what might emerge until you try.
What is your favorite movie, fairytale, or classic book? How would you retell the story? Have you ever taken inspiration from past projects? Let us know in the comments.
* * * * * *
About Bob
Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.
When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives).
His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. He can be found on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.
Many writers make some imposing resolutions. Here at WITS, we keep it simple and stick to one word to guide our writing journey for the new year.
Ellen
My word for 2025 is Dream.
Dreams can be entertaining, frightening, and amusing. They may also inspire creativity, providing clear, surreal, and sometimes weird scenarios. As a writer, you may find that some of your ideas originate in these intriguing landscapes. I plan to use more of my dreams in my writing.
Dreams can be a goldmine for writers. Many famous writers have given credit to their dreams as the origin of some of their best works. Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series was inspired by a vivid dream she had, leading her to create the very popular supernatural world of vampires and werewolves.
Embrace the power of dreams.
Jenn
My word for 2025 is Bloom.
I believe the creative mind is like a plant or flower. You need to cultivate it, water it, and feed it nutrients in order for it to thrive and grow. That's exactly what I did in 2024, I fed my creative mind with classes and new/old art adventures. I worked hard to stimulate the artist part of myself that seemed to be wilting.
So in 2025, I plan to bloom as a writer, illustrator, and designer. I want to push past the boundaries, be braver, be bolder, and break out of my creative comfort zone.
Jenny
My word for 2025 is Implement.
Treatment time is thinking time. During my two years of treatment surrounding triple-negative breast cancer, I had scads of time to think about my goals and dreams. Chemo time, when you're hooked up to your IV for hours on end is supreme thinking time. I changed my entire business type and thought about where I wanted to take it. I dictated a memoir during the 6 weeks of recovery from surgery. I wrote a business book to help my day job crowd.
Now it is time to implement. To edit those books, finish that new business website, and build the dreams I built during those years of thinking time. I'm expecting a pretty exciting year.
Kris
My word for 2025 is Acceptance.
In our craft, our author business, and in life, acceptance can free us up to move forward in practical ways.
Lisa
My word for 2025 is Transform.
2024 has been a time of radical change in the tech industry, and every sign for 2025 is that this will be a time of transformation and rebirth, turning the rubble of the old into fire and fuel for the new.
Lynette
My word for 2025 is Actualize.
I’ve put a lot of things off in my life, often for good reason. In 2025, I’m focusing doing things to actualize my dream writing life. No more saying I can't do that now. No more not yet. No more I'm not ready. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” So— get ready world, that’s what I’m going to do.
I’m a Shopify Partner, but what I am saying applies to ecommerce in general. Ecommerce is relatively new to most authors and so there are plenty of misconceptions.
Books are simply products.
That is the case both with ecommerce and brick-and-mortar-stores. Plenty of shoe stores make billions, but other shoe stores do poorly. The nature of the product is not the issue.
One of the main issues is that authors focus on multiples of a single book. When we are selling on the retailers, we drive people to a single book and hope they buy multiples of this book.
On the contrary, in ecommerce we drive customers to bundles, to products with the value of at least $20. We also focus on cross sells and post purchase upsells. As a single book is a low-priced item, we need to increase our average order value, and that is done with selling customers other products.
In ecommerce we own the customer.
When you are selling on the retailers, you do not have a single customer. Those customers belong to the retailers. If you’ve ever had an Amazon affiliate account, you might have been surprised at the other products the customer will buy after observing your book. People new to ecommerce always express surprise that customers will happily buy a $20 bundle and then also buy more books in the one order.
When you own a customer, you own their data, and that means you can market to them for years to come. I’m not talking about the newsletter campaigns you are used to sending to your retailer readers. Of course, you do that as well, but in ecommerce you would use an email and SMS marketing system such as Klaviyo.
Understanding Customer Flows
If a customer lands on your store, looks at a product, and then leaves, Klaviyo will send that customer a browse abandonment flow.
A flow is a series of automated emails and/or SMS. Klaviyo will pick up 20% of customers who are not subscribers. Yes, this is perfectly legal because these are considered transactional emails. If the customer adds a product to their cart but does not commence checkout, Klaviyo will send that customer an abandoned cart flow, and if the customer commences checkout but doesn’t purchase, Klaviyo will send that person an abandoned checkout flow.
There are numerous other flows such as the post purchase flow, which you can split into first time purchasers and seasoned purchasers or split by order value.
Driving Traffic
When authors first come to ecommerce from selling on the retailers, they think the only way to drive traffic is with Facebook ads. Yes, that is a good way to drive paid traffic, but Facebook sales ads are expensive and should be thought of as Cost of Customer Acquisition. If somebody clicks your Facebook ad, goes to your store but doesn’t buy, then Klaviyo will take over for you.
Product Pages
Most people make the mistake of simply throwing up product pages and thinking that’s all they need to do, but product pages need to be set up in a specific way. For example, Google will penalise the repetition of the H1 heading.
Reviews are also super important both for social proof and for SEO. Reviews should never be scraped from Amazon for two reasons. Firstly, it is a breach of copyright because the reviewer owns the copyright, and secondly, Google penalises duplicate content so this will cause a negative strike against your store.
A good review app/plug-in will send a reminder email, and if you wish, a discount for a video or a photo. The best review apps have rich snippets which are a big help with SEO. SEO will drive free traffic to your store and make you money.
Let’s talk about pricing.
The average 5x8 inch 300 page paperback should sit around $15.99. Charge more for large print. Whatever you do, don’t cut your prices in the mistaken belief it will encourage people to buy. Research has shown conclusively that cold customers are not motivated by price.
Business is all about numbers—the price you sell it for and the price it costs you. You need to have a decent margin.
And under no circumstances sell your products for less than on the retailers. In fact, you might need to increase your retailer prices.
Have confidence in your products and realise that people will buy them at the asking price. You don’t need to cut your prices down to an untenable figure to tempt people to buy them. Readers will be driven by the story not the price.
Sure, there are plenty of people buying from Amazon who want bargain basement prices and free books, but those are not the customers you are looking for. There are millions of readers out there. Please realise that there are customers outside the Amazon ecosystem.
As authors, we can make the mistake of focusing on Amazon and nothing else but bear in mind that this is an author-centric issue, not a big wide world issue.
Sure, Amazon has Prime shipping, but that doesn’t stop plenty of stores from making money in ecommerce. Many brands make 8 figures a year from their ecommerce stores with paid shipping yet sell the very same products on Amazon.
Free and 99c have no place in an author store.
Leave those for the retailers. Customers are quite happy to pay $5.99 for a single ebook, but remember, you should be selling in bundles. You can discount your bundles. For example, you could have a six ebook bundle on sale for $21.99. But don’t have everything on sale. You don’t want to look like a bargain basement dollar shop.
And whatever you do, don’t give anything away for free. It will completely ruin your data.
Fighting Misinformation
As selling direct has become the hot new thing, the misinformation has increased.
Nobody needs special methods. To be successful, an author simply needs to know sound ecommerce principles, not listen to a guru who has invented a system. The 8 and 9 figure brands adhere to sound ecommerce principals.
There is a lot to learn because it’s not simply a matter of uploading a book as you would upload a book to retailers. When you have an ecommerce store, you are the retailer. You must have systems in place. Your product pages cannot be a hot mess.
Print on Demand
The two print on demand systems available to authors are BookVault and Lulu Direct. Both integrate with Shopify and WooCommerce.
BookVault prints within the UK and US and ships worldwide. It offers fancy special edition books from the UK. BookVault’s printing costs are low so it’s great if you have customers in the UK or the US. Customers anywhere else in the world will have to pay very high shipping rates.
Lulu Direct prints in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US, France, and India. It uses local shipping rates for each location. As an example of printing costs all up, a 5 x 8 inch 300-page book is around $8 USD.
Lulu Direct is particularly beneficial if you have customers within the EU.
And remember, the customer pays the shipping so don’t make the mistake of factoring that in to your costs.
Ebooks and audiobooks are also easy to sell from your store. I recommend BookFunnel because as well as delivering the files, it handles customer support. If a customer has an issue downloading their books, you simply reply to them telling them that BookFunnel will help them and copy the email to BookFunnel. That’s the end of it for you—BookFunnel will take over.
Bundles
It’s also easy to do bundles with BookFunnel for both ebooks and audiobooks. And while I’m on the topic, both BookVault and Lulu Direct also offer bundles. And again, never drive customers to a single book. Always drive customers to bundles. Customers will happily buy all the print books in a series in one order.
And yes, we call them bundles not box sets in ecommerce. Make your ebook product images clearly ebooks and make your paperback images 3D. Manage customer expectations.
Common Errors
Accessibility
Some of the common errors I see on product pages are the use of bold or italics which is not compliant with WCAG2 accessibility guidelines and regulations. The use of headings must be done in a particular way for search engines, and the metadata must be done correctly.
Positioning and Page Construction
Another common error is putting download information in an image which also does not comply with WCAG2. Download information should be closer to the bottom of the page under the description. A significant error is to place it at the top of the description. Search engines index these which you certainly do not want. You want your hook, the hook about the book, at the top of the page.
Above the fold is a term from the old newspaper days. Sometimes, people now refer to it now as above the scroll, but whatever you call it, it means that the important information must be at the top of the page.
You can have a collapsible box explaining how to download or how the book will be shipped, and you can have another collapsible box with a sample chapter. You can have yet another collapsible box with your series order, but all these collapsible boxes should be below your description. With Shopify, you should have a separate default template for each format.
Cross sells should be at the bottom of the page.
Collections
Collections pages are particularly important for search engines, and you need at least 500 words on each collections page.
So then, you can see there’s a lot to it and I’ve only skimmed the surface. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you simply have to throw up a product as you would on the retailers.
You need properly constructed product pages and collection pages. You need an app/plug-in to collect reviews and one to offer cross sells. A post purchase upsell is a wonderful idea because the post purchase page has a 100% open rate and the customer has already given their credit card details.
Email and SMS Marketing
You need an email and SMS marketing system such as Klaviyo and you need all your flows in place. Klaviyo typically provides 30% of the store’s income. The three abandonment flows are good money spinners as is the birthday flow.
The standard way to acquire a subscriber is with a pop-up form. You can offer a 10% or 15% discount on their first order in exchange for their email or phone number. Within this pop-up, I like to have a birthday capture. People can enter the month and day of their birthday to receive a discount on their birthday. Birthday flows are good income producers. Once you set it up, it’s automatic—the person receives a unique code on their birthday.
Training Readers vs Understanding Audiences
Another misconception is that you need to train readers to buy from you. This is based on a misunderstanding of audiences. Audiences are either cold, warm, or hot. Cold audiences are people who have never heard of you. You could be an alien from Mars for all they know. Warm audiences are people who have heard of you—maybe they are on your socials—but they haven’t bought your products. Hot audiences are people who have bought your products.
So all this talk of training readers is talk of hot audiences, current retailer readers authors wish to get across to their store. Some readers will and some won’t, but do not make the mistake of thinking this is your audience pool. It is, in fact the tiniest segment.
Ecommerce is based on cold audiences and these people don’t need to be trained to do anything because they don’t even know you exist.
Ecommerce and selling on the retailers are two widely different businesses and authors run into all sorts of trouble when they bring their retailer systems across to their ecommerce store. That simply won’t work.
Having an author store is also not a get rich quick scheme. Some people who have blown up on TikTok or are making seven figures on Amazon have splashed around figures they are making on their stores, but it’s relatively easy to replicate whatever you are making from TikTok or Amazon with an author store at first. This is because you are leveraging your hot audiences. These hot audiences will buy from a terribly setup store.
However, this is not sustainable, and the author usually ends up spending over 90% of their store income on paid advertising. This displays a lack of correct systems in place and a zero-return customer level.
Now let’s sum up.
An author store is absolutely nothing like selling on the retailers. If you have an author store, you are the retailer and you have an ecommerce business. Businesses take time and effort. Don’t have a bargain basement mindset. The point of a store is to make a profit.
Beware of misinformation. Beware of get rich quick schemes and special methods.
It’s not simply a matter of throwing up products as you do on the retailers. There are plenty of considerations involved in ecommerce.
Have you tried selling books from your own website? What have your experiences been? If you haven't, do you want to?
About Morgana
USA Today Bestselling author, Dr. Morgana Best, started in ecommerce in 2003, selling ebooks (PDFs back then!) and print books from her websites. Morgana Best is a Shopify Partner, a Klaviyo Partner, and a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors.
