What is the lifespan of an Ebook?

forever since once it's uploaded to many locations they don't charge you to keep it there.

Smaddux said:

I was just curious about people saying that you would have to sell thousands to have a publisher consider your self pub work. How long is a lifespan of an Bbook and how long to be termed successful?

Click to expand...

Most publishers won't consider a book that's already been on the market and generated sales. Unless it's a standout success with thousands and thousands sold.

To clarify, somewhat - if you epublish, you've published that work. Period. Virtually no traditional publisher will even look at that work afterward except as a reprint (at a substantially reduced royalty and advance rate (if any at all)).

Once an ebook is published somewhere like on Amazon or B&N or Smashwords, it's there forever until you take it down and it counts as having been published because the internet's backup servers have it stored on those servers forevermore. There're also all the folks willing (and able) to burn disk images from web files they have their armies of little ebots up online searching.

Basically, once it's up on the web, it's there in some fashion forever until something catastrophic takes the whole system down (and fries all the backups - something exceedingly more difficult to do every day).

I think within the first year if you're still considering trad publishing.

The thing is, of course, if you're selling that much, you don't need a publishing contract so much anymore.

if you're selling that much, you don't need a publishing contract so much anymore.

Click to expand...

Exactly. If you can move even a few thousand books a year on your own. You're set up to make more money than most commercially published authors.

Oops, sorry. Just realized we're talking about e-books. You'll have to sell a lot more of those to make a living (especially if you sell them for less than 2.99 that--35% royalty).

About three months. Then, it spins a cocoon and 5 days later emerges as a butterfly.

Focus

zpeteman said:

Oops, sorry. Just realized we're talking about e-books. You'll have to sell a lot more of those to make a living (especially if you sell them for less than 2.99 that--35% royalty).

Click to expand...

Why? I mean ... why do you have to sell lots more to make a living? Compared to what? Traditional published books?

And isn't even 35% royalty way more than you'd get from a traditional publishing deal? At least percentage wise?

TheBigEasy said:

Why? I mean ... why do you have to sell lots more to make a living? Compared to what? Traditional published books?

And isn't even 35% royalty way more than you'd get from a traditional publishing deal? At least percentage wise?

Click to expand...

Most small epub houses offer 30-40% royalty on their ebooks. They also provide professional cover art, promotion and publicity far beyond what the average author can do on his/her own.

As far as selling "lots"... I guess it comes down to what you value your work at. Is a dollar a fair price (really 35 cents when you get the royalty from Amazon) for your 50K novel?

who knows...