Residual income?

I see the marketing advice given for new ebooks. It takes a lot of time and effort to push a new book and that must be sustained for months on end.

It looks like everyone is swinging for home runs with efforts to market the books.

What about bunting to load the basis? What about doing everything you can do to ensure the books come up during customer searches (careful title selection and tags) and spending the marketing time writing the next ebook? New books are supposed to be the best marketing for older works. Multiple books of yours offered are supposed to take on a marketing life of their own, assuming you self publish quality ebooks.

What if the goal were residual income built over time with many ebooks, rather than trying to make a killing off a few ebooks?

If a novella consistently makes $10 per month without advertising, then that's $10 per month in residual income. (Income you don't need to work for each month) Write 9 more that year and it's $100 per month residual. (Thinking 40-70 thousand word novellas, here) Write 50 in 5 years and its $500 per month, plus whatever increase in copy sales having that many up for sale brings. I'd assume all books would advertise the whole collection. (Buy any one book & see the other 49 titles you offer listed in it). I'd also assume you would set up an author FB page & blog and post weekly.

Going for residual income could really pay off down the road. Ebooks you write today could still be paying 20 or 30 years from now. Yet, you never have to write it again after you've finished one. Build up to 50 novellas you offer for sale and I'd bet the income per month would be decent. Not Stephen King decent, but enough for a mere mortal to enjoy.

I am NOT talking about publishing anything less than your best work. You should strive to write a better book than the last one each time. But, you should be able to write full time, upping how many you can write per year, as soon as the others cover your living expenses and you quit your day job. At that point you start putting 6-8 hours per day into writing/outlining.

Fast doesn't mean low quality. For instance, I hit my first 10,000 word day using Dragon speech to text software. (I usually write 3,000 words per day typing on my days off work) I can now "write" while driving to work by recording my voice on my smart phone. To me, that's productivity when writing time is tight. Come home, set up Dragon, & hit play.
Also, I outline well. This also ups my word count per day.
I've been able to hit 3,000 words per day writing for a few hours after work each day, 10,000 on my days off; over 35,000 per week. I spend time each day outlining the next novella and percolating the characters in the next story, as well, so I'm ready to roll as soon as one is finished. I'm on my 3rd novella now. 1st is finished with the editing and a cover is being made for it as I type this. 2nd is cooling off in a drawer, awaiting editing.

My goal is to build a body of work that will financially support me when I retire. That means building residual income from my ebooks/novellas. If I write something that catches on, that's great. Hell, I do my best on each novella, hoping people will enjoy reading it. Wouldn't turn up my nose at a blockbuster. But, I'm more focused on what it will bring me over time. Ebooks don't go off the shelf like paper books do, which leads to the opportunity for residual sales from work completed many years ago.

Anyway, I don't see much discussion about money that just keeps coming in from older ebooks you've written. I write erotica and YA under different pen names, BTW. I'm focused on novellas because they're good for series, which is what I write. (Can get new novellas out quicker and sell them for less per copy; $2.99 target) I'm working on an erotic sci-fi series now & will begin a YA post apocalyptic series soon based on outlines I've already completed. I'm also putting up my old short stories for $ .99. I'm just going to keep keeping on and see what happens. I don't really expect to see an income I can live on for 10 years or more. I've got 20 years before retirement. We'll see what happens.

Thoughts?

Amadan said:

I don't think even Stephen King writes that fast. So I am skeptical anyone can produce 10 novellas per year, year after year, that will be consistently bought. A few writers probably can, but a few writers are also Stephen King and Dan Brown and Tom Clancy, etc.

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You may be right. At my current pace I can, but who knows if I can maintain it? Since I started using Dragon speech to text, I've been, for me, flying with respect to words per day. Maybe I'll get writers block or run out of things to write.
I was able to write the first draft of a 22,000 word novella, or long short story, in less than a week. The final edit took another 3 days, but not full days of editing. Because I outlined, I didn't have holes in the plot or need a lot of rewriting. Because I used Dragon speech to text, I didn't have many awkward sentences to fix. (I caught them as I spoke them and reworded on the fly during the first draft. Hearing everything as its written helps me with the flow and rhythm). At that pace, I could publish 12 per year, not 10. On the other hand, maybe I can't sustain that pace. I'll know a year from now and be happy to report back.
Not sure how good or bad that is, but that's my current pace and that's how I'm doing it.

Lets drop it to 5 novellas (60,000 words) per year, if that seems more reasonable. That's 25 novellas for sale in 5 years, 50 in 10 years. Point is, over time, it should be possible to build up to an inventory of 50 ebooks for sale. I'd think 50 quality ebooks would provide a decent income for retirement, since they'll remain for sale indefinitely. Maybe it doesn't take that many. Maybe it takes more. Maybe no amount of books will reach a tipping point where they consistently sell themselves.
That is what this topic is about.

Amadan said:

Have you actually written anything that anyone has paid money for yet? Because until you have accomplished that, I see a few flaws in your plan.

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Yes, I was published years ago before ebooks were viable for income. People paid money. I ran into financial trouble and wound up working 2 full time jobs for 6 years in order to pay off all debt. I didn't write during those years, though I continued to read and listen to audiobooks from my local library.

Now that I'm finally back to writing, I find ebooks are a serious business and growing. First thing I thought of was the potential for residual income. I could be wrong, which is why I'm posting here.

You all plug in whatever number of books you, as individual writers, feel comfortable with writing. My productivity isn't really relevant. Maybe others write better books that simply take more time due to a higher quality or writing in other genres that require more time. I definitely couldn't write a mystery as quickly as an erotic sci-fi novella in a series or a YA post apocalyptic novella in a series. I like writing a series because I've already built the world the series is set in, which reduces the time it takes to write them. First one took a fair amount of outlining and thinking through the world I created, second one didn't. As well, I'm using a speech to text program, which almost tripled my output. Again, my productivity isn't the topic. The topic is building residual income by building up an inventory of books for sale. Will it work?

Beachgirl said:

Keeping up that consistent pace is hard, if not impossible for most people. I started writing my first novella 14 months ago and I now have six published. I'm finishing up edits for my seventh. That's one every two months and let me tell you, it's been exhausting. I still work a full-time job and have a family that does actually expect to be given a bit of attention every now and then.

The excitement of being published and having a box full of rabid plot bunnies helped to propel me through the frenzied pace of the last year. But I've had to come to grips with the fact that I cannot sustain that pace for years on end. Not if I want to keep that day job with the shiny benefits and still have my family on speaking terms with me.

As for residual income, my numbers level off after the first few months and seem to stay fairly consistent after that. Every time a new book is released, I see a spike in my previous books. I've seen very little movement in sales that I can trace to my own feeble marketing efforts, which reinforces the above wisdom that writing a new book is the best marketing tool.

I don't ever expect residual income to replace my day job compensation package. I have no idea if the books I write now will still sell 10 or 15 years from now. Would it be nice? Absolutely. Time will tell.

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That's great. Looks like 5 or 6 per year at that pace. Does 40 ebooks for sale in 10 years (4 per year) sound doable to you on average each year over a decade? This assumes you'll never get faster at writing them and gives you some down time each year.

If 4 novellas per year sounds reasonable, we'll stick with that number for this topic.

Once your books' sales level off, what is their average sold per month? Do they average roughly the same sales each, or are some performing substantially better than others? Hope you don't mind my asking.

merrihiatt said:

I have sort of done what you're suggesting. I focused on writing trilogies, then added short stories, as well. Since I began self-publishing almost two years ago, I've been fortunate to have maintained at least one paid sale a day. Some trilogies sell better than others, but I still see sales from the very first trilogy I wrote.

I write lighthearted romance/chick lit and generally write about two thousand words a day (after my day job). I have found real life interrupts my schedule more often than I thought it would.

People have suggested that I slow down, but I write/type fast. The only pressure I feel is from the characters in my head. Ha!

I'm close to having thirty titles available, but one of my trilogies (fantasy) doesn't sell but one a month or so and my short stories sell sporadically. My books are not professionally edited and I create my own covers with stock photos due to financial circumstances.

I hope to one day have one hundred titles available. That would be amazing.

I don't know if there will ever be a time where I don't have new releases. I believe new releases draw readers to the other titles. So, there may not be a time when I can just sit back and continue to receive the same kind of royalties with no new releases to encourage readers to check out other books.

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30 titles in 2 years. That is impressive. How many are short stories and how many are trilogies?
Can you see the day coming when you can support yourself from this income or are you a long way from that at present?

AnneGlynn said:

Mangydawg, I admire your thought process but I think you've made some assumptions that may not prove to be true.

The $10-a-month plan for each novella? I wish. Recently, my own fall in royalties has started to accelerate. I write under another pseudonym, too, and my second most popular piece -- the one with 1000+ downloads -- came out three years ago. Month before last, it had three downloads. Last month, one download. The reviews are still good but the reader interest is dwindling fast. If I could be guaranteed $10 a month in royalties from that one story, I'd take it.

I have several novellas that sold nada last month. They're buried beneath all of the new product and all of the free product. My own mother quit buying stories for her Kindle because she can't keep up with the giveaways.

I wonder, too, if anyone will want our stories twenty years from now...at any price. Tastes change and interests change.

My local library is huge, with a big membership, but they sell the books that haven't been checked out in three years. Last Saturday, I picked up an Arthur Hailey novel and a Harold Robbins book for pocket change. When I checked, I saw the library only has two of Robbins' many novels still on the shelf. And he used to be a big, big name.

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I can most definitely be wrong about this. I posted to get thoughts from you all. A big concern of mine for the future is that all those other books don't go off the shelf, either. They're still there and competing, only as time passes, there are even more of them. 5 years from now, there will be millions more ebooks for sale on top of that---the ones up now plus all the others coming in the future.

Out of curiosity, are you publishing new work on a regular basis? When you do publish something new, do sales of your other books increase? Just wondering.

GeekTells said:

A pedantic aside: the term the OP is describing is recurring revenue, not residual income.

Residual income is the money one has left over after paying the bills.

I think it gets conflated with the term, "residuals, an entertainment industry term that includes payments for subsequent showings/performances/airings of a work.

Recurring revenue is money earned on a periodic basis for ongoing services or new sales.

Those are all my loose efforts at definitions, so if someone can out pedant me, please do, but for the sake of people referencing this thread, I thought I should mention something.

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Duly noted and acknowledged. I didn't know the proper term. Thanks.

So, recurring revenue it is.

It looks like a writer will have to consistently put new material up for sale in order to keep sales of older books going. Guess you can't really stop writing and expect your previous work to support you.
That's all right. I never really planned to stop writing until I'm dead, anyway.

Quality should go without saying, but I'll say it. Stories must be of good quality or you won't make many sales no matter how many titles you have up for sale.

I just read about an author who put up 80 titles in 18 months. They are mostly short stories. I calculated that she's written at least 240,000 words based on her average length of 3,000 words per story. She's not getting rich, but she's making enough to live on. Many of her titles are 5 story compilations. She writes erotica. She's doing this full time, so she writes every day.
I can't imagine she writes high quality stories with so many titles, but she is making money based on the volume of her output. She puts new stories up for sale weekly, which keeps attention on her. The new stories drive sales of her older work.

I don't want to do that, exactly, but it is evidence that quantity has a quality all it's own in terms of sales. I'm going to keep that in mind.

merrihiatt said:

This is the second time in as many days that I've read the term churning out books. I guess I would be considered someone who "churns out" books since I write quickly and release books every couple of months. I never thought of my work as being "churned out." I don't try to write fast, I just do. I don't try to proofread fast, I just do. I don't try to create covers quickly. I am simply fast at pretty much everything I do, always have been. That term is just bothering me, I guess. It has a negative meaning to me and I get images of sweatshop writers working hurriedly to release their work.

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Don't feel bad at all about your speed. It is a blessing to be able to write quickly. Fast does not mean low quality.

Efficient workers with a solid work ethic are valued. Efficient authors with the work ethic and self discipline to write every day are accused of "churning out" work, often by other writers who lack discipline, a solid work ethic, and who refuse to embrace efficient work habits. (Not talking about any members here at this site. I'm referring to comments I've seen elsewhere about some of the most prolific authors alive today.)

Anyway, speed is no measure by which to judge an author's work. Actually reading the author's work is the only reliable way I know to judge it.