- Joined
- Aug 25, 2011
- Messages
- 3,262
- Reaction score
- 3,238
Three years of experience and so far, so good. On a good week I sell 1000 books and on a bad week perhaps 100. (My avatar shows a good week, needless to say). Before 2008 when self-publishing became a viable choice, I was also trade published in a small way, and a month of income now is better than my best income year was back then.
I don’t advertise much (last year, I spent much less than 1% of my gross income on it, though I know people earning in the mid six figures who spend 30% on promo), nor am I into daily social media promo. Still, it seems to me that promotional effort is more and more important all the time to midlisters like me, and I’ll be doing slightly more in the future. Make no mistake: there are hundreds of millions of dollars being earned every month by self-published novelists, mostly at Amazon, and that will continue through 2018, but I suspect in the coming few years it’ll take more intense promotional effort to grab a share of it, as more and more writers abandon trade publishing, or augment it, or never consider that option in the first place. As for me, I believe I’ll have to do more promo to keep from sliding from my position. It’s crowded in this pool and getting more crowded every month.
Some people seem mistaken in their belief that this is no way to switch to trade pub if you wanted to. I know a few people much like me who have signed with a trade publisher this year, writers who are not at all famous. (Thinking self-publishing experience is only represented by the rare star, the likes of Howey, Hocking, and Weir, is like thinking King and Evanovich and Roberts represent the typical experience of trade-published authors. We all wish!) On my stronger sales weeks I’ve received emails from publishers, agents, narrators, translators, pro organizations, and fiction magazines. Few can do anything for me I can’t do more profitably for myself. But “book scouting” is getting, if anything, more common.
Again, the secret (that is no secret) to my sort of moderate success is:
I don’t advertise much (last year, I spent much less than 1% of my gross income on it, though I know people earning in the mid six figures who spend 30% on promo), nor am I into daily social media promo. Still, it seems to me that promotional effort is more and more important all the time to midlisters like me, and I’ll be doing slightly more in the future. Make no mistake: there are hundreds of millions of dollars being earned every month by self-published novelists, mostly at Amazon, and that will continue through 2018, but I suspect in the coming few years it’ll take more intense promotional effort to grab a share of it, as more and more writers abandon trade publishing, or augment it, or never consider that option in the first place. As for me, I believe I’ll have to do more promo to keep from sliding from my position. It’s crowded in this pool and getting more crowded every month.
Some people seem mistaken in their belief that this is no way to switch to trade pub if you wanted to. I know a few people much like me who have signed with a trade publisher this year, writers who are not at all famous. (Thinking self-publishing experience is only represented by the rare star, the likes of Howey, Hocking, and Weir, is like thinking King and Evanovich and Roberts represent the typical experience of trade-published authors. We all wish!) On my stronger sales weeks I’ve received emails from publishers, agents, narrators, translators, pro organizations, and fiction magazines. Few can do anything for me I can’t do more profitably for myself. But “book scouting” is getting, if anything, more common.
Again, the secret (that is no secret) to my sort of moderate success is:
- Pro covers
- Pro proofreading
- Page-turner books in series
- In a popular sub-genre, with
- A product description that grabs the reader who is browsing her favorite sub-genre.
- Keyword correctly
- Publish at least five books, ideally completing one series
- ...and have some luck.
- Be flexible in your thinking and don’t cling to outmoded beliefs. Learn the business skill of looking at the real data and use that information to drive your business decisions; don’t guess or listen to rumor when you can know--and these days, you can know, as there is now transparency about a number of facts that ten years ago were hidden from writers.