How many $2.99 books you need to sell per month to earn $10,000 in 5 years

EbookReader said:

If you have 10 such books, it will be $100,000 in 5 years.
If you have 20 such books, it will be $200,000 in 5 years.

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Not so.

1 - you're assuming the books will sell at this rate, and that's a faulty assumption. Books might sell more or less, and the rate will vary on a daily/weekly/monthly basis

2 - If you have 10 books, and they're all selling at the same rate, you have a problem. When you've got a double-digit backlist, and people are buying your newest book at a consistent rate that indicates they like it and word is spreading, what will happen is that the sales rate of your other books will increase as readers seek out more from an author they enjoy.

You're treating variables as constants.

Wait... he expects 4 books a year? A book published every 3 months, including proper drafts, editing, and all of the marketing you take on yourself as a self publisher? Maybe he can do it because he has a built in base, but if I tried that the quality of books I'd put out wouldn't even be worth 99 cents.

It goes to show if you can get a few books out there that huge amounts of copies don't need to fly off the shelf for money to be made (although i do agree, 4 books a year is craziness! It's taken me 6 years to have one nearly done

Matt (Turndog Millionaire)

*headdesk

EbookReader said:

that's why I used the word "average"

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any idea what the number is, by percent, of folks "averaging" even half that?

EbookReader said:

Start from the premise that I can write four novels a year. (About one hour of work per day…1,000 words per day total. 80,000-90,000 word novels.)

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Great. So at the end of your 3 months you'll have a 80-90k first draft. I hope you're not implying that he's telling people to go publish their first drafts. (Though that would explain a thing or two about some 99 cent books I purchased last month.)

Could anyone who is actually pulling 4 books a year explain what their process is? Do they, like, NaNoWriMo style write the first 90k to get it done in a month, heavily edit and then send off to professional for a second pairs of eyes? Then use the last couple of weeks to final-edit? It seems that would still leave a lot of room for errors.

Heads up: I won't be able to respond for another 10 or so hours because I gotta go to work, but I just do not see how this could be done AND produce anything of quality.

collins, I'm sure it CAN be done, by SOME people but that is also a caveat then...how many people write 4 books, really GOOD books, in a year? I don't know; I'm shooting for two and hoping three this year...but I sure wouldn't make it my business plan.

Er, if you only spend 1 hour per day writing your first draft, that leaves another hour or two that you can spend cleaning up your previous "first draft"—and if writing is your "day job," that still leaves 5 hours unaccounted for.

So I'm not seeing the disconnect between 4 novels per year & quality.

Carradee said:

Er, if you only spend 1 hour per day writing your first draft, that leaves another hour or two that you can spend cleaning up your previous "first draft"—and if writing is your "day job," that still leaves 5 hours unaccounted for.

So I'm not seeing the disconnect between 4 novels per year & quality.

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for one, most folks don't quit their day jobs before they have a writing career established (I make $60K helping people with PhDs remember that instructions are a good thing to actually read, so take off so I can write 4 books each year, so I might hit $10K? I like Ramen, but not that much), and for another simply because a good many who do, still don't put out 4. King puts out a book or two a year. so do many other authors. I'm aware others put out 4 or more, including several on this board, but certainly not a majority.


Nobody is saying it can't be done, only that a lot of folks can't or won't, so using that as the basis for your "it is this simple" is like saying "Assuming an IQ of 120 and four hours a day to read textbooks, an average person can test through college-level physics in three months" while ignoring the fact the 120 IQ isn't "average" in the first place.


4 books a year is a variable and not one many people will hit. The sales themselves aren't either. Doesn't mean neither can happen, just that the math is a good deal shakier than the op suggests because it isn't based on bedrock, but rather quicksand

He's also the guy that said he doesn't edit his stuff before he puts it up, right?

If my book sells 5000/5 years it's a bad book. I would try to improve my writing - not write another !0 or 20 bad books.

Start from the premise that I can write four novels a year.

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Notice how DSW starts from the premise the he can write four novels in a year? Not how he starts from the premise that everyone can write four novels in a year?

People who keep holding DSW and Konrath up as examples of what someone else can do are simply ignoring the fact that both of them came to self-publishing with ready-made platforms. And that they have skillsets in the area of self-promotion that most other writers don't have.

So what's your point, EbookReader?

G.Collins said:

Could anyone who is actually pulling 4 books a year explain what their process is? Do they, like, NaNoWriMo style write the first 90k to get it done in a month, heavily edit and then send off to professional for a second pairs of eyes? Then use the last couple of weeks to final-edit? It seems that would still leave a lot of room for errors.

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There are a few people I know who can do this easily. (And one I don't know, but know "of" - Amanda Hocking - probably has a higher per year average.)

I've done three to completion and have another three near that point. Everyone has their own speed, so there IS no constant.

When I wrote fanfiction regularly (and yes I know it's easier to churn out fanfic because a lot of the heavy lifting is already handled.) I could do 20-25K a day.

Personally, what I usually do, is do a quick blocking of 1-3 scenes with screenwriting software. (10-20 pages, which really isn't a lot of words in script form) Then I'll draft it out in 3rd to fill in the action, and then go back and put the action from my POV character (as the books I've handed in were all 1st person) On a good day, I can end up with 7-12K for a final tally if I got through all three steps in one day.

I generally don't use betas. So I'll edit the draft and send it off. (I know it's not self-publishing, but it would be the same process if it were.)

Terie said:

So what's your point, EbookReader?

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His "point" is that he is entirely here to drive traffic to his blog--and it's beginning to really piss me off.

This kind of faulty information is precisely the kind of thing that is luring so many writers with promising books into the swamp of self-publishing. Particularly since the biggest flaw I see in this "math" is that there's not only not one damn word about the FACT that a writer will only make 70% of that 2.99 at best from any third party etailer or the FACT that said writer must pay for cover art, etc. or the FACT that I seriously doubt Konrath and Smith are throwing their first drafts out there as 'finished' books.

Terie said:

Notice how DSW starts from the premise the he can write four novels in a year? Not how he starts from the premise that everyone can write four novels in a year?

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I don't agree with everything DWS writes but this mischaracterizes his position.

He starts with the position that every writer is different, so nothing will apply to everyone. From there he posits that it's not unreasonable for someone dedicated to becoming a professional writer to actually find time to write on a daily basis. From there assumes you'll average an hour or two a day, perhaps less on weekdays, more on weekends if you have a full time job. Whatever. Average. From there he gets the number of about 1000 words per day of production. Then multiply that out and you have 4 first drafts over the course of a year.

From there he does advocate having a trusted beta reader go through it for proofreading and plot holes or any other points of confusion. You then fix those things and only those things. So the editing cycle is rather light but not non-existent. (His opinion is that young writers do more harm than good in redrafts based on his experience teaching young writers. And the young writer should apply most feedback to their next book rather than trying to fix the last.) Then you submit it to agents/editors or self-publish it depending on your personal choice. He believes the market knows better than the young writer at that point and so the market will decide. Some books will fail to capture the interest of the market and that's just part of the process.

It's reasonable. Fairly Heinleinesque. It won't work for everyone, and it doesn't quite work for me, but I think it's worth a try for someone who isn't experiencing success with the method they're using.

Cyia said:

Personally, what I usually do, is do a quick blocking of 1-3 scenes with screenwriting software. (10-20 pages, which really isn't a lot of words in script form) Then I'll draft it out in 3rd to fill in the action, and then go back and put the action from my POV character (as the books I've handed in were all 1st person) On a good day, I can end up with 7-12K for a final tally if I got through all three steps in one day.

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This sounds interesting. I used to write scripts so am familiar with that but never thought to use it as part of novel writing. Do you have any longer postings (here, blog) that explain more in detail? Do you use Final Draft software or Scrivener or what?

juniper said:

This sounds interesting. I used to write scripts so am familiar with that but never thought to use it as part of novel writing. Do you have any longer postings (here, blog) that explain more in detail? Do you use Final Draft software or Scrivener or what?

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I use celtX, since it doesn't have to be in any real "polished" state.

I usually open a new project, slugline the scene for a setting and get through the scene to figure out who's in it and what they're saying. This yields maybe 5-10 lines of action for a scene.

Then I print that out, scribble on the pages to make sure none of the dialogue is redundant, and go through it in 3rd person to add in the details of the setting, scent and sight cues, etc. that don't belong in a screenplay. Writing it in 3rd also cuts down on the filtering so rampant in 1st person because you're not in the character's head.

Then I'll open a new document, and take the 3rd person version and go through it again with the character's voice in mind, changing words and deciding what bits of the environment he/she is actually most likely to notice. This pass yields more of the internal stuff missed with the 3rd person version.

Once I've done 3-4 scenes like this, I'll read them as a whole to fix the flow, because when you do things piecemeal, there's always a bump or two.

If all I earned in 5 years was 10,000 dollars, I would have to move back in with my momma, and live in her basement and I have not done that since I was 17...

Me thinks Ebook reader is here to promote Ebook reader and not to truly discuss the pro's and cons of self publishing...

I was thinking you could make more than $10,000 in five years panhandling. And you wouldn't have to go to all the trouble of writing a book. Heck, you probably wouldn't even have to shower.

Colin Wright is another writer who likely makes more than this doing this.

J. Tanner said:

Terie said:

Notice how DSW starts from the premise the he can write four novels in a year? Not how he starts from the premise that everyone can write four novels in a year?

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I don't agree with everything DWS writes but this mischaracterizes his position.

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I wasn't mischaracterising DWS's position at all. The OP was. I was pointing out the gaping flaw in the OP's rhetoric.