Would you choose to self-pub over trad pub?

Discussion in 'Self-Publishing' started by A.P. Kadmus, Jan 22, 2017.

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  1. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Have you asked other WF members how they've done with self-publishing lately? I've had no luck getting them to share on open boards, but possibly they'd talk to you via DM? It might be a useful source of information re. what sales numbers to expect, etc.
     
  2. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    That will be because of the sense that you are looking for proof that it doesn't work - also I've never seen a trad author share the exact detail of their advance, royalty percentage and how much they actually made on their sales

    I have written a detailed reply twice now and deleted it before pressing post both times since I have no interest in seeing my numbers dissected and twisted to support an argument that my choices are not valid … suffice to say that in the 2.5 months since I started paid advertising I have sold considerably more than the supposed average figure, and am in the black. - I'm happy to discuss the detail by DM with anyone who has a genuine interest

    I'd also note that that sales ranker thing is hugely inaccurate since it is driven from amazon.com and anyone who is wide (ie not in KU) will have sales from Kobo, B&N, apple, google play, and a multiplicity of smaller outlets, while anyone who is in KU will also have KENP income which is also not reflected in the ranker which only reflects sales(plus either way people will have sales on amazon outlets other than .com)
     
  3. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Create space is now KDP print , the other major POD player is Ingram Spark.. I would not touch Lulu with a barge pole - also its of note that the vast proportion of self pub sales are on ebooks rather than print (about 75/25). I have 5 books (3 novels and two novellas) out now and as I said above i'm happy to discuss the detail by PM

    I'd also suggest facebook groups like the indie author mindset and the self publishing formula community (Adam Croft and Mark Dawson respectively) where you can network with lots of other self publishers who are very happy to discuss their figures and successes and failures... while Adam and Mark may well be outliers (Mark grossed a million from his books this year, adam did about 400k) there are lots of more 'normal' self publishers in the groups who are making okay money through doing it themselves... and they are as I say generally much more happy to talk honestly about their figures than self publishers are here... mainly because they are among other self publishers and not likely to have to have the same tiresome 'self publishing doesn't work' argument
     
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  4. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think I've discussed my advances and royalty rates, have I not? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have.

    But, fair enough, if you're not comfortable sharing, that's obviously your choice. But without more concrete information, I think people are likely to look at, say, Amazon ranks and get the wrong idea. (Although KU reads DO reflect in Amazon rankings, as far as I can tell. they seem to have a pretty significant effect.)
     
  5. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Thanks. I get the feeling these permutations change frequently, so what is good one month might not be good the next. I knew CreateSpace was changing (thanks to @Lew's information.) I have never heard of Ingram Spark, but I'll look them up. Thanks again for the heads-up.

    As for Lulu - I have a good fellow writer friend here in Scotland who has used them for three books, and he's quite happy. However, we'll see what happens when he goes for Book 4. Lulu may have changed as well. I bought his main novel as a print-on-demand and also on Kindle, and I think they were both well-produced. He's promoted that novel very aggressively, and has been rewarded with good sales and a 'following' who have been clamouring for a sequel. So, for him, this was a good move. However, he does say that self-promotion of a self-pubbed book is a major job for the author. Without it, there will be virtually no sales.
     
  6. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    I put mine in this thread. It's a year old now and there've been a few more sales since then, but nothing huge. I've not been promoting it so it's just a few from people who happened to find it.

    What's the issue with Lulu?
     
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  7. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    And if you're in Kindle Unlimited you can't sell the book elsewhere, so Amazon would reflect 100% of your sales.
     
  8. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    But you can sell on other amazon outlets like .co.uk or the various European ones , plus you get KENP for your page reads so book ranker which is powered off .com sales still isn't accurate … some self pubbed authors in KU set their price deliberately high to drive the perceived 'value' of a KU borrow and thus hardly make any sales, but still get a decent income off their page reads.

    i'm wide so I've not tried that strategy myself but I can see it being workable - particularly in the KU heavy genres

    Also KU exclusivity is ebook only so you can still sell print through outlets other than amazon if you want
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2019
  9. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    The main problems with Lulu are that a) the production price is quite high which eats into your profit margin and b) books are often marked as out of stock on Amazon when they aren't (that is also true of Ingram spark to an extent - a lot of self pub authors use KDP Print for Amazon and Ingram spark for other channels c) Lulu don't have the same reach as Ingram when it comes to getting your books into normal distribution catalogues, such as Gardiners - only important if you want to get your books into non independent bookshops (You can get an ingram spark produced book into Waterstones etc if you can get customers to ask for it and thus generate sufficient demand)

    One positive of LuLu vs the others is the wider range of formats so if you want to produce lay flat journals or similar they can do it POD, whereas your only other option would be a print run from a standard printer

    Proponents of Lulu will often tell you that they have the highest profit margin for authors - however that is only true on sales in their own bookstore .. which although it may be as they claim "the biggest independent bookstore on the web" does not hold a candle to Amazon in shifting print books

    Self promo (along with high quality production) is definitely a big part of being a successful self publisher - this is the main reason for the somewhat misleading "the average self publisher hardly makes any money".. if you throw your first draft up with no editing, shitty formatting done in Word, a cover you made yourself in paint or the amazon creator, and don't pay any attention to blurb, meta data, advertising etc , then yeah you can expect to hardly make any money.

    If on the other hand you do it properly with high quality production and promote it effectively there is no reason why you can't make decent money... the reason the average is what it is, is that it is pulled down by the number of people who take the former route

    (of course if you go to a vanity publisher you are more or less guaranteed to make a loss - predominantly because they are really expensive and they don't care about selling books, since their business model revolves around taking money from authors)

    This is also the reason why those who do do it properly like the term indie author as a dividing line from the stigma of the more half arsed end of self publishing... I only don't use the term here because it always leads to the same tiresome argument about what indy means
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2019
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  10. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    By Lulu's production price, do you mean what they charge to print each book?
     
  11. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Yes on KDP you get 60% of the sale price minus the production cost , Ingram is broadly similar. Lulu was a tad lower in percentage but the production cost was higher although its so long since I looked at them I can't remember the detail … it's not the same price you pay if you want to buy physical books yourself (this is also true of the others who can provide author copies at a discount)

    Theoretically there's no reason not to set up an Lulu book just to sell on lulu and not use them for Amazon or catalogue distribution, but so far I haven't been bothered (paper thickness and trim size varies slightly so its not as simple as uploading the same cover on all three)

    Draft to digital are setting up a POD service too but its not ready to go yet ( I think B&N may have a print service purely to sell on B&N but again I haven't looked into it)
     
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  12. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    So, in a nutshell, the Lulu books are going to be less attractive to the buyer because of price, unless the author is willing to take a lower cut of the profits?

    I just checked my friend's book again on UK Amazon. It's a large format paperback (10" x 6.5" with 385 pages) still selling for £11.99 printed, or £3.99 Kindle. I don't know how much of a cut he takes from that, but I'll ask him when I see him again at the first of February. I'll be interested to find out.

    If you're curious, here's the link to his book on Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metallic-Dreams-Mark-Rice-ebook/dp/B0058UE6HK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548009691&sr=1-1&keywords=Metallic+Dreams
     
  13. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    At least on Amazon that's right - on the Lulu store itself the Author probably does quite well, but not that many people shop there
     
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  14. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I vaguely recall some small publisher that actually took a loss on every single paper copy sold through Amazon, but they still felt that they had to be listed on Amazon.
     
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  15. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Fortunately, that's not Mark. He's made a fair amount from the book on Amazon, although he worked really hard to promote it. It's one of the reasons he's in a lather to get the sequel done. He wants more money!

    We get treated to a reading from the WIP every month, at our writers' group meeting. It's a bit of a niche market—a magical realism novel about a heavy metal band—but among metalheads it's quite popular. People from this area of Scotland who are not metalheads recognise a lot of what he's writing about as well. He's got the local vernacular down to a fine art.

    His writing is really laugh-out-loud funny. I read it before I got to know him (I had just joined the group) and I really loved it. It could do with a bit of an edit for length and tangents, but his writing voice is unique and carries us along, even up and down the tangents.
     
  16. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    It shouldn't be possible to make a direct loss with KDP as even at minimum price it still covers their cut and the cost of printing - but of course you can make an indirect loss by not covering the costs of your marketing or editing, covers or whatever … Or its certainly possible to make a loss by getting a print run done by a non POD printer and doing your own fullfilment
     
  17. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    That really is not how you get compensated for KU/KENP. Basically you get a share of the Kindle fund, which currently is at about 0.4 cent US, per KENP page read, regardless of the Kindle purchase price. On your bookshelf, you can find your KENP page figure. E&D, which is 550 paper pages (240k words), is 1150 KENP pages, so a full read nets me about $4.40, vs. $2.10 royalty for a regular Kindle purchase. And KENP makes up about 1/4 of my sales, with paperbacks a distant 10%. However, shorter books <500 KENP (~100K words) are at a disadvantage at the same Kindle price. And I am a fan of Kindle Select, as it has worked well in getting me sales in ten countries, and huge numbers of free downloads, which seem to generate follow-on sales after they end.
     
  18. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    @BayView, I have made a point of not sharing specific sales info to avoid being accused of bragging, or perhaps scotching my luck. E&D is well into four figures of on-line sales (paper/Kindle/KENP) for the first two years as of February, a huge number of free downloads on my quarterly five-day give-aways, and about 500 book-signing sales. And three awards, so yes, I am satisfied. Not breaking even, but satisfied that I have apparently done something right, quite by accident, since I didn't know what I was doing. And results, as we said in the Navy, above Fleet average for the indie author.

    I intend to self-publish the sequel, The Long Road Back to Rome (title for now). That one is about 1/3 done at 100K words (almost) in the first draft. All of my characters from E&D have finally gotten to the Middle East from China, Mongolia and Italy, in time for the war with Parthia over Mesopotamia.

    I also intend to self-publish Riding on a Light Beam, an Engineer Looks at Relativity, because I do not want to go through the time and angst of peer review on the latter, since I am not a physicist and have never worked or published in the field. I'll take my peer reviews after publication, for better or worse. it WILL be beta read extensively by experts in the field, especially by selected members of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Riding on a Light Beam is about 2/3 done, through mass, momentum and energy, 75 pages but only 15,000 words due to graphics and equations. The final chapters will deal with my own novel solutions to accelerated motion and the Hubble expanding universe. @K McIntyre is my first echelon editor, with the intent that this be written at the AP Physics High School level, though also insightful to the PhD level, a tough audience range. She has to be able to understand each chapter before I can go on to the next, and no, she does not work in physics.

    I am planning on traditionally publishing the non-fiction True Believers, the Founding Fathers of TACAMO (pronounced (TACK-a-moe), an anthology of autobiographies of the birth of my Naval Aviation community, partly because the editor of the US Naval Institute Press expressed a personal interest in the book, and because I think it is a good fit for USNI , and an unusual topic; new communities do not emerge frequently in Naval Aviation. Also, USNI takes mostly direct submissions, so I don't have to go find an agent. I got an interview with VADM Jerry O. Tuttle, who actually gave the community its name when it was still just a project and he was a LT in 1963: the name stands for "Take Charge and Move Out", an unusual acronym. As a three-star, he spoke thirty years later at the commissioning of the TACAMO wing in Tinker AFB. I also have a foreword lined up from our senior alumna, a TACAMO girl made good, who just retired as VADM and Commander, THIRD Fleet, and the first woman to command a carrier battle group. Not bad for a community which once was considered professional suicide. Waiting for the final signature on the security review.
     
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  19. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    I know how you get compensated Lew - my point was that if you price your book at 4.99 people are more likely to borrow it via KU than they are to buy it... if you set your price at 99p people may chose to buy it because its so cheap even if they are in KU... at which point you will make about 35p rather than the amount you'd net from a full read.

    Thus there are authors deliberately pricing their books high in order to look better value and encourage borrows and thus page reads

    I'd also note that there are a lot of short books killing it in KU - the key there is volume, it makes no odds whether a reader reads 1 1000 page book or 5x 200 page books the pay out is the same.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2019
  20. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Can you clarify why you aren't breaking even yet … I'd expect to be well into profit on a single book with mid four figure sales

    Is it an issue with advertising cost ? Or is it more a conscious decision to reinvest profits for a greater long term gain ?
     
  21. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    Yes to all. Karen and I formed an LLC so we can deduct costs from our income tax, so we get a considerable savings on taxes on April 15, something you guys in the UK don't have to contend with. And I don't count the generous tax refund, because that includes all of our dedcutions. But the LLC section includes a hefty writeoff, not only monthly advertising, but all the writing conference @K McIntyre and I attend,etc. And I only make about $2 per book, $4 for a KU read. But yes, it is a conscious decision to invest in sales, without regard to making profit.

    It is interesting that E&D seems to be an outlier, in that it is the only one of our four books that generates good sales. We are still trying to figure out how to target Karen's books because she is very frustrated with her sl0w sales. She was, however, pleased to have her latest, Ruby, win the NABE Pinnacle Award for Women's Interest.
     
  22. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Have you been spending most of your promotion budget on E&D?
     
  23. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    Almost all. The short story "Come, Follow Me," with its kind of amateur cover, was more of an experiment, though I boost once in a while to keep it going. Those are my only two out now, the other three I talked about are WIP. Karen has her own budget for her two, Parham's Mill and Ruby
     
  24. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    TBH that come follow me cover will be hurting your credibility as an author - which won't help your other sales, I'd suggest prioritising getting it a professional cover might not be a bad idea

    With Parhams mill - I'd tend to suggest that the slow sales could be down to the blurb on amazon which isn't great -I'd suggest investing $3.99 in getting Bryan Cohens book "write a sizzling synopsis"

    Also you'd get more bang for your buck if you used actual FB ads rather than boosts
     

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