Success with self-publishing

Moon Daughter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 8, 2007
Messages
1,864
Reaction score
263
Location
The Moon
For anyone who is willing to answer, I was wondering how many books you've sold during a really successful month and if that extended beyond one month?

I am looking more and more into self-publishing. Quite the scary concept for me, but my reasons for it are to have complete control. I do worry that my book would disappear into the background with all the other self-published books out there.
 

Cephus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 1, 2018
Messages
259
Reaction score
66
Success is based on a lot of factors including skill, marketing prowess, speed of production, the genre(s) you're working in, how long you've been doing it, etc. There's luck involved too. You will likely be doing it for quite a while before you start seeing any real financial returns. You need to build up a sizeable back catalog. You need to be writing to market. You need to build an audience. Once you've been doing that for a while, you can start thinking about success. It's not something you can start today and have a paycheck tomorrow. It takes time.
 

Woollybear

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 27, 2017
Messages
9,708
Reaction score
9,673
Location
USA
Many spend more than they retrieve, but your book will become available, strangers read it, and some of them will enjoy it.

On the first month of my first novel, I sold dozens. That rate slowly dwindled. I still sell books, at this point, about 8 months later, and I'm not certain how people come across the title to buy it, but that's OK. I mention it on Twitter when people ask for new reads for their TBR list, so perhaps that's how they find it.

There are 2000 new book titles on Amazon every single day.

Making the book free on Amazon for a few days, and then promoting through Free Books type promotional newsletters, results in a staggering number of downloads. Hundreds, to thousands. (There were 3400 downloads of Aerovoyant during the five-day free promotional period I ran in March.) There is no financial reward to me for that, but I was pleased to see the interest.

Personally, it will be interesting to me once the sequel is up, to run the free promotion on Aerovoyant again and see how many folks then buy the sequel. Even if it's only 5% of 3400, that'd still be 170 sales.

I'd say you need to define success. To me, success was 4 strangers reading and enjoying the novel. That was the bare minimum, and I set my benchmark there based on one of my lower-performing academic papers (which reports solid science, sound, and advances the field) and the number of citations it had received at the time. (4). That paper took years to write, as did Aerovoyant. So, that number constituted success for me.

Once the sequel is out, success will be strangers picking it up because of enjoying the first installment.

But in terms of recouping finances--from what i understand, that is usually (not always) a much longer game both in self publishing as well as in trade publishing.
 

Al X.

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 9, 2017
Messages
1,032
Reaction score
572
Location
V-Town, check it out yo
Website
www.authoralexryan.com
In my best month I sold 70 copies. I average 5-10 copies a month, although in recent months that average is slipping. As mentioned, there is too much chaff out there these days. Your best bet is to try to build an audience around friends, and grass roots marketing in the trenches - promoting your book in the pubs, the gyms, the libraries where you hang out, maybe even your coworkers if you have a day job.

I keep saying my last one will be my last, yet, I'm still working on another. If I got in this game five years earlier than I did, I think my story would be very different.
 

LJD

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 12, 2010
Messages
4,226
Reaction score
525
I write contemporary romance. I have been self-publishing since May 2018 and now have 13 books (novellas and short novels) out. In months when I don't have a release, I sell about 200 books on Amazon. In months I have a new release, I sell about 600. That's just Amazon, which is about 70% of my income. In 2018, it looked like I made no money from writing. In 2019, only a small amount, once expenses were accounted for, but I also went to an out-of-country conference that year, which drove up my expenses. (Editing is my main expense otherwise, plus I pay for covers.) This year, I'm definitely making money. (And I can't go to any conferences...) Certainly not getting rich, but making money. You can check out my self-publishing thread. I've had no success with FB and BB ads. I've had very modest success with Amazon ads. I had a book free in May and gave away 12,000 of one of my books. I advertised this in a few newsletters, and just from sales for the previous book in my series, I broke even, not counting other benefits. I am also fairly active on Twitter and lots of people in my corner of the romance community know me.
 

lorna_w

Hybrid Grump
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 25, 2011
Messages
3,262
Reaction score
3,236
I have some decent sales as my avatar. I think my best month, I sold almost 9000 books, all formats.

I had, at that point, been writing for over 30 years. It takes a long time to learn to write well, and somewhat less time to learn the business of being your own publisher. I had many, many years in those 30 where my income for the year was $500 US.

Sure, every year 3 writers make more than $50 million per year. Last year 2 self-published writers made more than $2 million. But as I often say, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than to be one of that small group.
 

lorna_w

Hybrid Grump
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 25, 2011
Messages
3,262
Reaction score
3,236
I have some decent sales as my avatar. I think my best month, I sold almost 9000 books, all formats.

I had, at that point, been writing for over 30 years. It takes a long time to learn to write well, and somewhat less time to learn the business of being your own publisher. I had many, many years in those 30 where my income for the year was $500 US.

Sure, every year 3 trade writers make more than $50 million per year. Last year 2 self-published writers made more than $2 million. But as I often say, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than to be one of that small group.
 

Norman D Gutter

Engineer Sonneteer
Poetry Book Collaborator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 13, 2006
Messages
2,144
Reaction score
352
Location
Arkansas, USA
Website
davidatodd.com
Closing in on 10 years of self-publishing. 32 titles for sale, 18 are book length.

Best month: 64 sales
2nd Best month: 32 sales

YMMV
 

MercyMe

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2011
Messages
347
Reaction score
98
Location
Quebec
I had a heady year in 2016 of making 1K/mth from gothic historical romance with no promotion and extremely small outlay of costs. Those books still make me money, just not as much. I have 4 pen names, 2 of which write off-market stuff, but those books are evergreen. They might not fit the pocket, but they continue to sell over time. The best part of self-publishing for me was not the control (I found that to be an illusion) but the insight I gained into what readers wanted and what I was realistically interested in writing on a weekly basis.
 

Polenth

Mushroom
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 27, 2007
Messages
5,017
Reaction score
735
Location
England
Website
www.polenthblake.com
After the first month, my first two books sold one or none a month. After the first month, "Werecockroach" sold a few a month and now seems to be around ten copies a month a few years later.

The real trick here is whether you're writing in a genre with high demand and your book fits really closely to what readers expect. If you write the odd books of your heart and all that, expect low sales. It takes a long time for readers to find books like that.
 

FletcherHavarti

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 7, 2020
Messages
54
Reaction score
8
When I self-published my first novel, I had a few dozen sales a day for a short time. After that it tapered off to a few per month, until the sequel was published and I saw a small spike. It is difficult to get attention on your books with such a huge amount of stuff being published every day. There's no secret sauce, but I think it helps to keep putting out new material, and to build a following by staying active online (social media, etc.). Offering an occasional giveaway of the first book has helped drive sales of the second one, but with only two books out so far, I don't yet have a deep catalogue for readers to come back to.
 

jbmwriting

Registered
Joined
Jul 3, 2020
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
with only two books out so far, I don't yet have a deep catalogue for readers to come back to

It seems that a lot of successful self-publishers are giving this advice, to keep writing and not expect to do well financially until you've released 5, 10, 15 books... and even then it's not a guarantee, obviously. You're ahead of me though. I'm just about to publish #1.
 

Cephus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 1, 2018
Messages
259
Reaction score
66
The common wisdom is to have 30 books in order to consistently make $50k a year. Some do better, some do worse.
 

FletcherHavarti

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 7, 2020
Messages
54
Reaction score
8
It seems that a lot of successful self-publishers are giving this advice, to keep writing and not expect to do well financially until you've released 5, 10, 15 books... and even then it's not a guarantee, obviously. You're ahead of me though. I'm just about to publish #1.

Good luck and congratulations! That advice sounds about right to me.
 

M. H. Lee

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 24, 2012
Messages
501
Reaction score
67
I average about 1,200 sales a month and have for the last two years or so. My first year I sold 53 copies because I was writing the wrong thing. It wasn't the number of books published that mattered, it was what I published that mattered.

Also, units sold isn't really the best measure to use because selling 1,200 books at 99 cents is vastly different from selling 1,200 books at $4.99. And what it costs to get those sales matters, too.

If you want to make money from your writing I would say that you need to write something that readers are already looking for and/or steadily produce books to keep visible or you need to get a handle on advertising your particular kind of book to sell steadily long-term. What you write will strongly impact how many books you need out, how often you need to publish, and how much you need to advertise.
 

Barbara R.

Old Hand in the Biz
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
1,963
Reaction score
242
Location
New York
Website
www.barbararogan.com
Here's a partial checklist of skills needed to successfully self-publish. Basically, you need to reproduce all the services publishers provide, only each of their departments are led by experts.

1. Great editing skills. If you're self-publishing, you need to hire a pro. Prices start around $8, $10 a page.
2. Eagle eye and a solid grasp of grammar and punctuation. You'll have to proofread and copy-edit your ms. before it gets published...or hire someone to do it.
3. Book design. How are you at graphics and book design? Books need to be visually appealing.
4. Artistry. Someone has to do the book cover and make it look professional. For best results, you need not just an artist but an art editor.
4. Tech know-how: It's not hard to upload a book to Amazon or other self-publishing venues, if you've done it before.
5. Marketing: Know the best way to reach appropriate readers? Know how to make your book stand out from the crowd? Know how to attract free publicity and create buzz? If not...oh well.
6. Publicity: Have lots of influential media friends, preferably some who can get your book discussed on tv and public radio.
7. Reviews. Have a contact list of mainstream reviewers who know you and will agree to review your book for their paper, even though mainstream media won't review s-p books.
8. Advertising: Not every published book gets an ad budget, but the big titles do. What's your budget?
9. Social media: Have a huge presence on your social media of choice: 20K is a reasonable number for starters. Must be real followers in order to convert to buyers.

If you can do all these things well, self-publishing may be for you! If not, maybe you should consider looking for a publisher, tough as that is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: VCAckerman

LJD

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 12, 2010
Messages
4,226
Reaction score
525
Here's a partial checklist of skills needed to successfully self-publish. Basically, you need to reproduce all the services publishers provide, only each of their departments are led by experts.

1. Great editing skills. If you're self-publishing, you need to hire a pro. Prices start around $8, $10 a page.
2. Eagle eye and a solid grasp of grammar and punctuation. You'll have to proofread and copy-edit your ms. before it gets published...or hire someone to do it.
3. Book design. How are you at graphics and book design? Books need to be visually appealing.
4. Artistry. Someone has to do the book cover and make it look professional. For best results, you need not just an artist but an art editor.
4. Tech know-how: It's not hard to upload a book to Amazon or other self-publishing venues, if you've done it before.
5. Marketing: Know the best way to reach appropriate readers? Know how to make your book stand out from the crowd? Know how to attract free publicity and create buzz? If not...oh well.
6. Publicity: Have lots of influential media friends, preferably some who can get your book discussed on tv and public radio.
7. Reviews. Have a contact list of mainstream reviewers who know you and will agree to review your book for their paper, even though mainstream media won't review s-p books.
8. Advertising: Not every published book gets an ad budget, but the big titles do. What's your budget?
9. Social media: Have a huge presence on your social media of choice: 20K is a reasonable number for starters. Must be real followers in order to convert to buyers.

If you can do all these things well, self-publishing may be for you! If not, maybe you should consider looking for a publisher, tough as that is.

I feel like this is meant to be very discouraging, and as someone who is a modestly-successful self-published author, yes, get your book edited and have a nice cover, but I can't say I agree with the advice overall.

One thing you have to ask yourself when you're self-publishing is what your goals are. What does success look like to you? Often self-publishing advice assumes certain goals which might not be relevant to many writers.

The list above seems to assume you are shooting for a very large number of sales. And that...isn't what everyone's goal is. I remember listening to a podcast and a romance author was interviewed. She was published with a trade publisher and talked about fearing a book would sell only 5000 copies. And I would LOVE if one of my SP books sold that much. It would make me a good chunk of revenue, too, since I make close to $3 per sale for my novel-length books.

The list is a list of things a trade pub would do...ideally. But, many writers get shoddy editing, limited marketing, etc. even with such a publisher, and the advantage of self-publishing is that you have control, and control means you get to decide where to focus your efforts.

Addressing some of the specific points: $8-10/page is high for edits, and I assume this would be for multiple rounds of developmental edits, plus copyedits. I only pay for one round of edits (not ideal, but I'm still reasonably happy with what I put out) at 1.5 cents a word, which is less than $4/page (assuming 250 words/page)

Cover art: I pay my cover artist $115 USD per cover. (Plus a little more to get Twitter ads, social media banners, etc) I choose the stock photos (my preference). We go back and forth a bunch of times to perfect it. People generally seem to like my covers. I have no idea what an art editor is.

Social media: I'm going to focus on Twitter, because I think Twitter has done more for me than anything else in terms of selling copies. I write romance. Most romance authors I know don't have 20k followers. They certainly didn't have that many before they started publishing--those numbers came later. I have only 2885 followers (just checked), and I STILL find that Twitter does quite a bit for me. From what I can see, actually, getting more than 10k followers as a romance author is often accompanied by a lot of trolling and bullying on Twitter, which can be quite annoying, so I don't particularly aspire to have that number of followers.


To me, the most things to consider are:

1) What are your financial resources and what are your skills?
2) What is your projected output (books/words per year)
3) What are your goals with self-publishing, and why are you self-publishing?


I've put out 13 books (novellas and short novels) in just over two years. I'm definitely not rich, but I was never trying to get rich. Among a certain part of the romance community, I am somewhat well-known, and I got an agent and book deal with a Big 5 publisher, (without a completed ms)...and the strength of my self-publishing career definitely helped here. I still plan to keep self-publishing (because I like it) and be a hybrid author. I can publish about 250,000 words a year. This year, that amounts to 3 short novels and 3 novellas. I think it's hard to have a single book achieve really amazing success in self-publishing, but I have a lot of books in me, and my income has built over time, and I get to tell the stories I want to tell.

One thing I do think is important is knowing a lot about your genre. And I don't mean reading the classics...I mean, what's currently selling, what kind of covers are people using, where do readers hang out online, etc. Also beware of taking advice from self-published authors who built up their audience 5-10 years ago...stuff changes rapidly, and what worked then doesn't work now.

For me, self-publishing was the best publishing decision I ever made, and I don't have much in the way of connections or marketing, art, etc skills. (My degree is in engineering.)
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,202
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
I can't speak on a lot of these things, but I can on marketing, since that's my day job. Do not do ads on Facebook/Twitter unless you have money to burn or you have stupidly high margins. This only works for "brand awareness" (like politicians), drop shipping (cheap crap from China sold for much higher to you) or startups (like how Uber was happy to have cost per acquisition of $100 or more per user).

You need to know who your target audience is. I don't know if that's info that Amazon will give you (as in demographic info) but if you have Google Analytics installed on your website then you can collect that info. If you have something like a mailing list that'll help, too. Do market research. Where are those customers? That's where you need to be. If you want to target Gen Zs, then Facebook and LinkedIn will be a waste of time and money, for example. Twitter is a good middle place as lots of people are on it and it's very easy to get viral (compared to Facebook's very money-hungry algorithim).

There's two ways you're charged for paid marketing: how many people look at it (cpm) and how many people do the thing (cpa, but sometimes cpc). Ye Olde Marketing (news papers, billboards, flyers, radio/tv ads) were all cpm. The New York Times would cost a lot more than your local paper. But with digital we now can do cpa. When you look up an item on Google Shopping, when you click an item and go to buy it then Google charges Target or Joe's Books or whatever some % of the purchase as their commission. A lot of things, especially social media, are cpm, but views don't translate to sales. An ad being loaded doesn't mean an eyeball looks at it or a brain processes that information. Try to look for cpa/cpc ads since those will get you the most bang for your buck.

Also build up your email list. When you send out emails, you'll have links to your site and your store, so even a very banal "here's nothing special" email can still lead to clicks and sales. Do giveaways that they have to give you their email to enter, or give them a free short story. They used to let you put a widget on your Facebook Page (i.e. a business Page TM) to collect emails for goodies but not anymore. Think of events or reasons someone may want your book and do marketing pushes related to that. OK Cupid knows that people are more likely to check out their site on nights that it's raining (since they're stuck inside) so they do emails reminding you to go on the site and check it out when those conditions are met in your area. They pay a LOT of money for that data and automation but that's because it works. When are people most likely to buy your genre? Are there holidays its given as gifts (graduation, easter)? Look at your historical data, is there seasonality (people buy textbooks in july/august and december/january)? Are there things happening in the real world that would make your book more relevant (all the gardening/hobby/religious/self-help books during quarantine, plus kids books and fiction in general)?

Marketing can be really hard and there will be mistakes or missteps, but take it all as learning opportunities. The more you learn about your audience the easier it'll be.
 

pattmayne

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Messages
50
Reaction score
5
Location
Ottawa, Canada
Website
www.pattmayne.com
Just be careful of the infinite number of shills out there telling you to spend money on advertising and self-publishing services. You'll drown in predatory encouragement.

I love self-publishing and I intend to make a living from it, but almost nobody does.

I think the decision is fairly simple though: If you truly have a good book that people want to read, it almost doesn't matter whether you self-publish or find a traditional publisher. Self publishing puts more work onto YOU, but it's a legitimate option. The problem is that, statistically, there's a nearly zero-percent chance that your book is actually marketable (again, statistically) so there's no reason to trust anybody who encourages you. They should not encourage you to spend your money on what they know statistically to be a doomed enterprise.

If you know that your book is good (hopefully backed up by genuine responses from people), then self-publishing is a risky-yet-worthwhile endeavor.

But from my standpoint, all I see is a never-ending stream of people whose questions are identical to yours, and my thoughts are always, "this person isn't going to sell any books, but they're vulnerable to shills." To you, I should look like the same kind of person. You don't know if my books are any good.

So the real question is, "Is my book any good?" If you can figure that out, then you know whether self-publishing is a good idea.

Working with a medium-to-large traditional publisher is preferable. I've worked with two very small publishers, and I prefer self-publishing. Medium-to-large publishers will actually advertise and invest in you.