Howdy,
Just joined the boards and I thought I’d provide some data on my own personal efforts at self-publishing my ebooks.
This is just an example of what one newbie author with no previous publishing history accomplished in 8 months. Your results may vary, and your goals might preclude you from starting down this road. But for me, epublishing has been an outstanding success.
I epublished my first ebook back in late September 2010. I now have 4 titles available. I’ve sold over 7500 units and earned over $6300 in 8 months. I’ve had about $4100 in expenses, resulting in about $2000 in profits. If sales continue at their current rate, I should gross about $15000 in my first 15 months as an author.
For those of you who like backup data and nifty charts, here you go:
(I’ve been experimenting with price, which resulted in May’s royalty spike. For full details, see this post on my blog.)
What can you take away from my results? I’m not a wunderkind like Hocking but I’ve managed to make a fair bit of money in a short amount of time.
Am I making more money than I could have in trade publishing? I emphatically believe the answer is yes.
Even if I started looking for an agent last September, I probably wouldn’t have found a publisher yet. My first books are cyberpunk, which are not flying off the shelves right now. It’s very doubtful a publisher would have been interested. And even if I wrote in a popular genre, it would have likely taken months to get a publisher interested. I’d say that if I had gone the trade route, I would still be looking for a publisher.
After I found a publisher, there would be 3-6 months of wrangling over a contract. Then, 12-18 months for my book to hit store shelves. I’d get anywhere from $1500 to $2500 when I turned in the manuscript, and another like amount when the book hit the shelves a year or more later. Then, my book would have to earn out the advance before I saw any more royalties. Who knows how long that would have taken?
But with epublishing, in 8 months I’ve made a net $2000. In 15 months I’ll net around $10,000. Ten grand is a LOT more than I could have gotten from a trade publisher as an unknown author.
For me, epublishing has been a great success. I hope it continues to be.
But is it a good idea for you to epublish? Well, if you can afford to spend up to $1500 on cover art and an editor, and you can wait 8 months or more to break even, than I so go for it. Your story isn’t earning you any money languishing on your hard drive while you hunt for a publisher.
I’d say that the chances that you’ll earn a profit in a year are just as likely, if not more so, than finding an agent and a publisher.
Hope this helps any folks out there debating whether they should self-publish ebooks.
Over on my blog, Adventures in ePublishing, I post monthly sales reports like those above. I also talk about advertising, marketing, pricing, and other epublishing topics. I’ve also just started POD on CreateSpace. So if you want to learn from my experience, hop on over!
Just joined the boards and I thought I’d provide some data on my own personal efforts at self-publishing my ebooks.
This is just an example of what one newbie author with no previous publishing history accomplished in 8 months. Your results may vary, and your goals might preclude you from starting down this road. But for me, epublishing has been an outstanding success.
I epublished my first ebook back in late September 2010. I now have 4 titles available. I’ve sold over 7500 units and earned over $6300 in 8 months. I’ve had about $4100 in expenses, resulting in about $2000 in profits. If sales continue at their current rate, I should gross about $15000 in my first 15 months as an author.
For those of you who like backup data and nifty charts, here you go:
(I’ve been experimenting with price, which resulted in May’s royalty spike. For full details, see this post on my blog.)
What can you take away from my results? I’m not a wunderkind like Hocking but I’ve managed to make a fair bit of money in a short amount of time.
Am I making more money than I could have in trade publishing? I emphatically believe the answer is yes.
Even if I started looking for an agent last September, I probably wouldn’t have found a publisher yet. My first books are cyberpunk, which are not flying off the shelves right now. It’s very doubtful a publisher would have been interested. And even if I wrote in a popular genre, it would have likely taken months to get a publisher interested. I’d say that if I had gone the trade route, I would still be looking for a publisher.
After I found a publisher, there would be 3-6 months of wrangling over a contract. Then, 12-18 months for my book to hit store shelves. I’d get anywhere from $1500 to $2500 when I turned in the manuscript, and another like amount when the book hit the shelves a year or more later. Then, my book would have to earn out the advance before I saw any more royalties. Who knows how long that would have taken?
But with epublishing, in 8 months I’ve made a net $2000. In 15 months I’ll net around $10,000. Ten grand is a LOT more than I could have gotten from a trade publisher as an unknown author.
For me, epublishing has been a great success. I hope it continues to be.
But is it a good idea for you to epublish? Well, if you can afford to spend up to $1500 on cover art and an editor, and you can wait 8 months or more to break even, than I so go for it. Your story isn’t earning you any money languishing on your hard drive while you hunt for a publisher.
I’d say that the chances that you’ll earn a profit in a year are just as likely, if not more so, than finding an agent and a publisher.
Hope this helps any folks out there debating whether they should self-publish ebooks.
Over on my blog, Adventures in ePublishing, I post monthly sales reports like those above. I also talk about advertising, marketing, pricing, and other epublishing topics. I’ve also just started POD on CreateSpace. So if you want to learn from my experience, hop on over!
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