Tag Archives: e-books

Self-Published Writers Make (Lots) More Money, New Data Suggests

February 13, 2014 By in Bestsellers, Independent publishing, Publishing, Royalties from Books, Self publishing, Self-publishing, Selling Your Book, Traditional Publishing, Writer Power Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

HoweyData released earlier this week provides stunning evidence that self-published authors in several popular genres are selling many more books and making a good deal more money than most of us had previously suspected. Their success in comparison to traditionally published authors may be a wake-up call for everyone in the publishing business, from first-time writers to the biggest of the Big Five publishers. (It certainly has been a wake-up call for me: I’m dropping prices on my e-books as we speak).

Until now, the only evidence for strong sales of indie vs traditionally published books has been anecdotal reports from individual authors, many of whom seemed to be making a disproportionately large amount of money compared to the rest of us. These authors were considered to be “outliers.”

Now Hugh Howey, one of those disproportionately successful authors — well known among avid readers and the publishing cognoscenti for his best-selling self-published fiction series, Wool — has made data available (and will continue to collect and update it, he says, at his own expense) that indicates that he may not be alone when it comes to successfully selling books online, particularly e-books. His report on author earnings (cleverly entitled Author Earnings: The Report) suggests that indie-published books are getting higher scores on reviews and selling more copies than those of small- to medium-sized presses, and that the gaps between positive review scores and sales are even greater when you compare self-published books with those from the “Big Five” publishers. The primary reason? Indie authors tend to publish e-books rather than paperbacks and other formats, and they tend to charge much less for them than traditional publishers do. And e-books are selling like hotcakes.

Howey’s figures are derived from an analysis of data collected by an unnamed writer “with advanced coding skills” who has created a program that can gather and break down data from bestseller lists at a speed that was previously impossible. The initial data collection and analysis looks at book sales on Amazon and includes three genres: Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy, and Romance. These genres were examined first because they account for nearly three quarters of the top 100 bestsellers on Amazon, and more than half of the top 1000. Howey and his “data snoop” will look at the entire range of fiction titles in future reports, he says.

Among their findings so far:

  • In these three genres, indie authors are outselling the Big Five publishers. “That’s the entire Big Five. Combined.” [Words and italics Howie’s]
  • E-books make up 86% of the top 2,500 genre fiction bestsellers in the Amazon store, and 92% of the top 100 best-selling books in the listed genres are e-books
  • Although books from the Big Five account for just over a quarter of unit sales in these genres, they take half of the gross dollar sales — and the authors of those books typically receive only 25% of that profit
  • Indie authors, on the other hand, who keep about 70% of the purchase price of their e-books on Amazon, are earning nearly half of the total author revenue from genre fiction sales on Amazon
  • Self-published authors are, on average, earning more money on fewer books than are those with traditionally published books being sold through the same (i.e., amazon.com) outlet.

A Few Conclusions

The Report is long and complex (but not complicated). I encourage all serious writer entrepreneurs to read it carefully — and to stay updated with future installments.

One of the many inspiring and beautiful charts from Author Earnings: A Report by Hugh Howie

One of the many inspiring and beautiful charts from Author Earnings: A Report by Hugh Howie

(It is also very pretty. I am including an image here from The Report, with proper attribution and an embedded link but used without permission, so if it disappears, you’ll know why. Whether it does disappear or not, I suggest you go and have a look at all the other pretty charts in Howie’s report. They are impressive and illuminating as well as colourful.)

For those who don’t have time to read The Report straight through right now, I’ll extract some conclusions that became clear to Howie, as they must to anyone who examines the data he’s presented:

  • E-books from indie authors tend to be priced much lower than those of mainstream publishers
  • Readers are more likely to buy and review books with lower prices than higher ones
  • “Most readers don’t know and don’t care how the books they read are published. They just know if they liked the story and how much they paid. If they’re paying twice as much for traditionally published books, which experience will they rate higher? The one with better bang for the buck.” — Hugh Howey, Author Earnings: The Report
  • Most traditional publishers are paying authors only 25% of e-book sales, despite the almost insignificant overhead associated with creating e-books
  • Readers are buying many more e-books than they are paperbacks and other book formats, at least from amazon (which is the biggest bookseller in the world, by a huge measure — like it or not).
  • Readers are not buying traditionally published e-books as frequently as they are indie published e-books, because indie-published books cost less. Therefore, traditionally published authors are getting read less often, and are making less money per book sold than indie authors are.

This is important news for traditionally published authors.

It is also important news for major publishers, who are going to lose their authors if they don’t smarten up.

We won’t go into the impact all this is having on good literature, but Howie believes that the data suggests that “even stellar manuscripts are better off self-published.”

A call to Action

In addition to publishing The Report, Howie’s new website, authorearnings.com, invites authors from all sectors to work together to help one another “make better decisions” when it comes to publishing their books.

Howie says that the site’s “purpose is to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Our secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts. This is a website by authors and for authors.”

When you go to the site you will be invited to subscribe for updates, contribute to a survey and/or to sign a petition.

I for one will be closely following the activity on that site — right after I lower the prices on my e-books.

The New Slush Pile: How Readers Are Choosing The Next Bestsellers

March 1, 2012 By in Bestsellers, Literary Agents, Publishing, Publishing, Electronic, Writer Power Tags: , , , , 44 Comments

… or “Whoops! My book has started selling – I’d better get it edited.”

While the old guard in the books industry is still busy struggling to figure out how to give traditional publishers, agents and bookstores some relevance in the new order, a far more significant change is taking place just beyond their (albeit limited and utterly self-focused) lines of vision. Due to the availability of thousands upon thousands of free books by beginning authors in electronic format, and the proliferation of e-book reading devices with fodder-hungry owners, it is no longer editors or agents who are now combing through the slush pile looking for the gold: it is the readers.

A note to the non-writers: the “slush pile” is a term that has been used for centuries to describe the manuscripts that writers have sent to publishers uninvited, in the hope that they would be “discovered” and made famous. The term “slush pile” distinguished these unsolicited manuscripts from those that were sent to publishers by agents, established writers, or a senior editor’s aunt in Rapid City, Iowa. Interns generally read the slush piles, which were mostly full of dross, but (tradition has it) occasionally the readers found a Rowling or a Hemingway in there, and a career was launched.

The transition from editorial-office slush piles to online ones has happened so quickly that the mainstream books industry is largely unaware of it, as are most writers and most readers. The evolution has taken place in a climate where, over the past couple of years, new and inexperienced writers have proudly put their first books out in e-book format – usually created at little-to-no cost to them – only to discover that attempts to sell their novels or memoirs at $2.99 or $1.99 or even $.99 are fruitless. No one wants them.

That has led these writers to discover that if they put the same books out there at zero cost, e-book-reader owners will snap them up by the dozens—as if they were free marbles. Suddenly the writer’s “sales” figures shoot through the roof – from zero sales to 4,000 in a weekend is not uncommon among my social media “writer” contacts. Their books also start climbing up the bestseller-in-their-genre lists (romance, western, etc.) on Amazon.

Of course, their sales are illusions – nobody is actually “buying” their books and the writers are not making any money, and usually after a few days of skyrocketing numbers of downloads, when the writers put a price back on the book – having a new but deluded appreciation for their own worth— it drops off the bestseller lists and sales are once more insignificant.

Building An Audience of Readers

But what happens next? That is the question that all of us who are watching this phenomenon have been asking, and on a recent Monday I began to learn the answer. On that morning, I read a posting by an acquaintance on FaceBook that said, “Oh, whoops! My book has started selling. I’d better edit it.” Someone replied, “If it’s selling, why edit it?” to which the original poster responded, “Oh, nothing major. Just spelling, typos and formatting. Things like that.”

Coming from a background in the books industry—I have published four books with traditional presses, been editor-in-chief at a publishing company, and freelance-edited almost every kind of writing under the sun for thirty years—I was flabbergasted that anyone would put a book out there— in electronic or any other format—without editing it. I expressed my outrage on Reddit and a writers’ forum and attracted great interest from other writers and readers – most of whom were in my corner when it came to the importance of doing as good a job on editing as you can (and can afford) before you offer a book for “sale” – even at no cost.

What amazed me were the responses from people who have been downloading all these books for free. This was the first time I had heard them speaking – the first inkling I had gained into what was happening to cause all of those free books – good, bad, indifferent – to be downloaded onto all those Kindles, Nooks and Kobos. To my surprise, these readers (many of them quite literate) seemed far less perturbed than the writers were about the condition of the editing and formatting – what they wanted to see was good writing and good stories. They had downloaded dozens or even hundreds of free books by people they had never heard of, just because the books were free. They sampled them like new food: if they liked what they read, they kept going. If they didn’t they stopped reading after the first page, or the first few pages or the first hundred pages. They had no commitment to finishing the book: they had paid nothing for it. The only books they finished were the ones that kept them reading: which was, I realized, just the way readers of the slush piles in the publishing houses treated manuscripts.

More importantly, they said they would remember the names of the writers whose books they had liked, and they would follow up and read what these writers published next time. It sounded to me as though they might even be willing to pay for those next books.

It is in ways like this that a new books industry is being born, and the old one being swept away forever. The Publishers of the Future will not dictate what readers want to read, they will learn what readers want to read – from the readers. Then they will publish the NEXT books the readers have found in the new slush pile – which is what the mountain after mountain of free ebooks has obviously become – and they might even offer to clean up the editing on the first ones.

(And if the publishers are lucky, the writers might actually deign to give them their second books. However, after having tested their mettle on real readers without the interference of the books industry, and enjoyed the power and freedom of creating and marketing their own books, they may decide to self-publish the second ones as well. We’ll see what happens there.)

In the meantime, it is nothing but great news for writers that books in the slush pile are no longer being read by those who THINK they know what readers want (publishers and agents), they are now being read by those who DO know what they want: the readers.

I love this brave new world.

How to Sell Your Published Book

January 19, 2012 By in Promoting published books, Publishing, Self publishing, Selling Your Book Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments

Rodney Walther, author of Broken Laces

In which I expound on why most writers’ initiatives to promote their own books are about as effective as patching a leaky boat with Band-Aids, and then interview a writer who has sold more than 17,000 copies of his first novel – self-published! – in just over a year . . .  and the book keeps selling: like hotcakes.

Mary’s Opinion About the Problem With A Lot of Book Promotion

Whether your novel (or poetry book, or work of non-fiction) is about to be released from a major publishing house, a small literary press, a collective, or under your own imprint, the primary challenge once the book is released is how to get it noticed amid the hordes of other authors who have also just published a book, and (more importantly) how to get it selling.

Traditional promotional routes such as a mention in the New York Times or the various outdated forms of “industry buzz” just don’t make it any more. Who cares what “the industry” thinks? (Answer: The industry does. No one else gives a damn.) What we need to do is to build a profile among readers.

I have many, many friends and acquaintances who have published books recently, both on their own or working with established presses. For an unfortunate majority, their marketing efforts seem to be restricted to statements on FaceBook or Twitter that really amount to nothing more than, “My book is out. Buy it.” Or “My book is available for 99 cents today only. Buy it.” Or even, “A big (or small) company published my book and therefore it must be good. Buy it.” Their blog posts are only marginally more interesting and/or informative. Could I care less that they have published a book and that it is for sale? No. Several millions of people have done that (most of them, it seems, within the past two years. ;) )

This “Here I am. Buy me” approach does not work for me for one significant reason: it tells me nothing about what buying the book is going to do for me. And unless you are a very dear friend, I am not going to buy your book, much less read it – much, much less read it and review it – just for your sake. And this applies not only to those who are marketing their first books, but also to those who are publishing their third or fourth books.  I need to get something out of the experience myself before I’m going to invest my time and money in your book. As I get older (and a note to younger writers: we baby boomers constitute a massive audience for books, and we buy them. It is wise to consider us in your marketing efforts), I get even more particular.

Book reviews from trusted outlets and word-of-mouth are the primary sources of information I use to choose which books to buy and read. I choose my sources of reviews and feedback based on my interests: I don’t normally read science fiction or fantasy, for example, so I don’t seek out reviews and recommendations about books in those genres.

As a writer, I want to know how to get my books into the venues that are going to persuade other people who think like me (i.e., readers who want a literate general fiction book) to read the books I’ve written (general fiction with a twist). That is my job today: no one else is going to do it for me. The time is long gone when we as authors could decide that we were “above” all that – that as “artists,” we were too superior and delicate to walk among the mortals – that good literature was self-evident, and that it would reveal itself, and that people would find and read it.

We can be delicate artists while we’re writing, but when the book is published, we need to put on our running shoes and hit the streets (the Internet streets as well as the ones outside our doors). To my mind, a work of art is only complete if it has an audience. Our publishers (if any) aren’t going to do it for us: we are the ones who need to take responsibility for making sure that our books get read.  We need to deploy new forms of creative energy in the marketing of our books. We need to study business models, to strategize, to take the “customer is always right” approach.

If we’re going to sell books, we need a mind shift: we need to stop thinking of our books as our “babies.” It is hard to sell a baby. Our books, once published, are commodities, and people are going to criticize them – and us. We have to let that roll right off our backs.

We need to create a feeling among our prospective readers that they want and need to read our books, not that they “ought” to read them. We need to figure out our target audiences: promote ourselves among people who really are going to enjoy what we’ve written – and we need to disregard the ones who aren’t in our target audience (and this includes non-readers for the most part, by the way). If our book really is intended for the entire world (a universally appealing serio-comic western, shall we say, just as an example?), it will cross genres on its own.

I actually find this part of the process exciting, and one of the best parts of the new world of books. No longer do we need to leave this crucial component of the publication process (and the source of our future incomes) up to the vague if earnest attempts of interns in publicity departments who have a dozen temperamental authors with several books to promote as well as ours, which they haven’t had time to read and probably never will. Now we can do it all on our own.

To start my investigation into how to become a really effective marketer of my own book, I interviewed multiple-award-winning novelist Rodney Walther, author of Broken Laces. In just over a year, Rodney has sold more than 17,000 copies of his self-published first novel, and I was very pleased to be able to talk with him.

With The Whole Clove Diet – my next novel, and the first I am self-publishing – due for release in about a month, I am eager to learn all I can about this subject—and to share what I learn with others in my situation. So if you have additional suggestions, please add them by way of comments at the end of this article. I appended a few links I found myself while preparing to write this post.

Interview with Rodney Walther

MWW: Broken Laces, your first novel, concerns a father coming to terms with the tragic death of his beloved wife, while also coping with the grieving process and parenting needs of his seven-year-old son. It is set against the backdrop of a suburban community and particularly a Little League baseball team, which serves as a catalyst for many lessons learned by both father and son during the course of the novel.

It is unusual to read a domestic drama with a male figure as the central protagonist, but this one works. What was your primary target audience when you wrote it?

RW: In the original draft, I envisioned my reader as someone like me, a baseball parent or coach who could empathize with the redemption-through-sports angle. As I developed the story over a number of years, I came to understand that the ideal reader was any mom or dad, which led me to emphasize the father-son connection and the hero’s grief journey even more.

While a domestic drama typically appeals to women (and usually features a female protagonist), both women and men have responded to Broken Laces for its unique male voice and its complicated male protagonist. I think that’s allowed my story to stand out from similar books in the genre.

MWW: What made you decide to self publish?

RW: Although I had the interest of agents, the process was agonizingly slow. After five plus years of writing, my novel was finally ready to go, and I didn’t see the need to wait any longer.

Scanning the landscape of the print-on-demand (POD) world for paperbacks and the digital bookstore for e-books, I sensed that the time was right to self-publish. Looking back, I believe my instincts were correct.

MWW: How long has Broken Laces been available? And in what formats did you make the book available?

RW: I originally published Broken Laces in paperback via CreateSpace in November of 2010. Within a few weeks, the e-book was available on Kindle. In early/mid-2011, I made it available on the Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords platforms.

Writing Competitions

MWW: Your novel has been a finalist and a winner of several writing awards. Tell us about those.

RW: The world of writing contests has been a great experience. Initially, I entered a few contests to get feedback on the work, as I was committed to improving my writing craft. I did receive excellent feedback, but I also began to win awards.

For novel-length fiction, I’ve won first place honors from Houston Writers Guild, West Virginia Writers, Maryland Writers’ Association, Panhandle Professional Writers, Crested Butte Writers, and North Texas Professional Writers.

My work has garnered multiple second- and third-place awards as well, including being named as a state finalist at Writers’ League of Texas and an ABNA 2011 quarterfinalist.

MWW: Broken Laces has also occasionally risen quite high in various Amazon best-seller lists. Can you tell us how many copies you have sold? Did sales build gradually or did the book start strong?

RW: My expectations were modest when I released the book. Although I was confident in the work, I knew the long odds against sudden success. The first two to three months had decent sales, with Christmas, 2010 giving the book a nice jumpstart.

Then when I lowered my price in March 2011 (e-book, from $6.95 to $2.99), that set in motion a significant increase in sales. I feel blessed that I’ve seen eleven straight months of sales greater than 1000 (mainly due to Kindle).

Broken Laces regularly stays in the Top-3 of multiple categories (currently #2 in sports fiction behind the 2011 Amazon Book of the Year The Art of Fielding; #2 in baseball behind Moneyball, and #1 for months in Death & Grief). My novel reached the Top-250 of all Kindle books in June 2011.

To date, I’ve sold more than 17,000 copies of Broken Laces.

MWW: Fabulous!! I’ll just pause here to take an admiring breath.

Okay, then. On to the next question. . . .

Your book is very “clean” from an editing perspective. Did you consider this an important part of preparing it for publication?

RW: I am very proud of how well edited the book is. I work with a number of writers in a critique group, who help identify structural flaws and discuss ways to improve characterization, story, etc. Between their contributions and my almost-obsessive attention to details, the book is indeed “clean.”

One of my reviews came from a reader in Spain (!), who said that he was initially wary of reading a self-published book. But after reading the whole book he decided, “This is a well-written novel, up to the standards of any big publisher.” That quote brings a lump to my throat each time I read it.

Pricing

MWW: How did you decide how to price the book? Is price important to book sales?

RW: Price is a huge factor for sales. Especially for self-published works. I originally set the price at $6.95 (Kindle) and $14.95 (paperback). In March 2011, I lowered the e-book price to $2.99 as an experiment, knowing that I’d have to sell two and a half times the number of books to achieve the same royalties. That move has paid off. I have considered the price point of $0.99, but because I’ve enjoyed strong sales at $2.99 and know that I’d have to increase sales six-fold to make the same profit—and because the $0.99 price point does have some negative connotations—I’m staying at $2.99.

Promotions

MWW: What promotional mechanisms have you used (e.g, in-person, social media, YouTube, sending out review copies, etc.)?

RW: I have done a little of everything: held book signings (sold books at several Little Leagues during Opening Day; attended a book and author dinner arranged by the community’s Literacy Council), participated in Facebook/Twitter (although not as much compared to others), participated in Amazon message forums, and sent out review copies. I haven’t created a YouTube trailer.

MWW: You have an excellent website at http://www.rodneywalther.com. Is it important for writers to have a website? Why?

RW: If people are serious about the process of crafting and selling a book, they should take the time to be serious about the way they appear in public. My website is professional and thorough, although I doubt it’s generated many sales. And I try to maintain a helpful, professional appearance in my Internet life. You won’t see me getting into flame wars or trashing others online: self-published authors do not need enemies.

MWW: Do you blog? Why or why not?

RW: I do not blog, but that’s because I try to focus on my writing.

MWW: Is targeting a specific audience important to book sales? On your website and in other places you have compared your books to other similar books by other (possibly better-known ;) ) authors in order to help readers know what to expect. Is this a worthwhile tactic?

RW: I believe so. It doesn’t make sense to try to sell my book to everyone—it’s much better to identify the audience that will respond to my story. For example, because of the complicated protagonist and the dysfunctional family dynamics (and because of the writing itself), readers of Jodi Picoult tend to buy my book. The emotional aspect of my work also attracts readers of Nicholas Sparks. Looking at Amazon’s “People who bought xxx also bought yyy,” Broken Laces is definitely being bought by that audience.

MWW: Do you have other suggestions for writers who are either self-publishing or are picking up some of the promotional responsibilities for their books from established presses?

RW: Be professional and treat it as a business. For writers who are self-publishing, pay great attention to the cover design. Mary, you and I have discussed this in the past. There are way too many unprofessional covers out there, ones that scream “Look what I did in a couple of hours!”

Building A Fire

MWW: Can you summarize the critical factors for launching a book?

RW: I look at the publishing/marketing of a novel much like trying to start a fire. Some people hope to ignite a successful book launch, but strike a single match and nothing happens. So they give up. Some people spend all their time striking individual matches, trying to win over one reader at a time. That’s a lot of work!

I was committed to giving Broken Laces its best shot at visibility. To continue the fire metaphor, I figured the best way to ignite a blaze was to bring everything together before striking matches haphazardly.

First, I took care in crafting the story and making sure it was well edited. I worked with a graphic designer to develop an effective cover. I identified my target reader and tried to figure out how to make my book visible to them (e.g., use of Amazon tagging, praying to the Amazon suggestion algorithm gods). I made FaceBook friends and ABNA friends, not for the selfish purpose of selling to them but to build relationships. I carefully considered my price point. I wrote a solid pitch and made sure to highlight my writing awards. And I tried to time my book launch for Christmas season.

Thanks to all these factors, plus solid reviews and great word-of-mouth, the fire has been burning for more than a year. Yes, every day I worry that a big rainstorm will come along and put it out.

That’s why I’m working on my next novel, so the blaze can continue well into the future.

* * * *

I am very grateful to Rodney Walther for taking the time to answer all of the questions I asked him — so clearly, thoroughly and honestly. His willingness to share everything he knows about the process of writing and selling has made him a popular and respected figure in the writing circles we share, for good reason. His generosity is appreciated. He’s also a fine writer. If you want more information about his book, click through the link I have posted to his book cover, or go to his website which is, again, www.rodneywalther.com

While researching this article I found a couple of lists of ideas re: book marketing that I think will be useful to my own initiatives — if I use them in conjunction with a few ideas of my own and the suggestions Rodney has provided. Here they are. And again, I welcome feedback from readers by way of comments if you have additional ideas that have worked for you – as a book marketer – or on you, as a book purchaser.

Update: Check out an additional comment from Rodney Walther  on ineffectual marketing, thoughts with which I concur completely. Thanks again for all your help with this post, Rodney.

E-books and self-publishing are NOT THE SAME THING!

May 27, 2011 By in Publishing, Publishing, Electronic, Self publishing Tags: , , , 6 Comments

I am currently working on a blog post tentatively entitled, “Why do We Even Need Publishers?” which I hope to have posted by Sunday night, but in the meantime I want to clear up a rampant misconception that I’ve noticed among writers AND readers.

Yesterday I was discussing the issue of self-publishing (or “independent publishing”) with another widely published writer, explaining how I felt that the writers’ organizations to which we both belong were not doing justice to the dramatic way in which the new opportunities for publishing were affecting our industry and improving opportunities for writers in the future. The friend said, “Well, [one organization] did have a few really good sessions on e-books last year.”

And that reminded me of a problem I have noticed over and over again in writers’ and readers’ forums and even in articles from some established media outlets. For some unknown reason, there seems to be a confusion among many people between electronic publishing and self-publishing. They are not the same thing at all, and aside from being co-incidental in that they are both arising in the past few years, and that they are part of the same transformation, they are entirely unrelated.

Electronic publishing refers to the production of an electronic version of your book. That is all it refers to. It doesn’t matter if you are self-publishing or if you are being published by Simon & Schuster (are they still in business?), there can be a print version of your book and there can be an electronic version of your book. There can also be softcover and hardcover versions of the print edition, and there can be an audio-book version. These are merely different formats: they do not indicate different publishing paradigms.

The confusion has arisen because many of those who self-publish choose to publish ONLY in an e-book version, which is short-sighted on their parts as I will explain later. But that doesn’t mean that e-book publishing and self-publishing are synonymous in any way.

If you are publishing with ANY established press, you must make sure that they are going to make an e-book version available at almost at the same time as the print version appears, that the e-book will be available to the different reader platforms that are now available: Kindle, Kobe, iBooks, Sony Reader, Nook, etc.

There is a big argument going on about how much writers should get in royalties on e-books, which is an issue I intend to explore as soon as I finish this series on the death of the traditional books industry. But in the meantime, don’t get locked into any particular royalty for e-books in your contracts with established presses for the time being. The Writers’ Union of Canada recommends that you allow for renegotiation of the clause in your contract that relates your e-book rights/income in two years or so when this issue has settled down a bit, and I agree.

More soon .  . . .