Unfortunately not. The vast majority of self-published books sell fewer than 15 copies, and those will likely be sales to the author and his/her family. It's great that you're doing better than that, but it's far from typical.
The biggest reason for my wanting to be traditionally published is so that people will read my work. It's dandy that you've broken through the "ten copies, most of them to family and friends" barrier, but it's unusual for self publishing.
I agree. I've made half the price of a brand-new Ford F-150 quad cab from my writing so far. Its not a flood of money, but it isn't a dribble, either. Keep in mind that the author of 50 shades of gray was a indie writer.
The vast majority of writers hoping to become an author via traditional publishing never get published, too. I know I'm not average, but I'm not Stephen King, either. If you have real writing skills, you can do well in self publishing. If you can't write well, nobody will end up reading you no matter what route you take. Its an option.
These two lines seem self-contradictory. I'm not knocking self-publishing - I do it with some of my books. But I think the second line is more accurate than the first. That is, I think there's a hell of a lot between self-publishing a book and getting that book read. I know from experience that the books of mine that are read most often are those from publishers. Second comes self-published stuff from pen names I've already established via publishers. A distant, distant, tragic third is self-published stuff from an unknown pen name. Now, I don't do a lot of promo. But I do some, and I've done more promo for my book that's self-published under an unknown pen name than I've done for any of my other books. Still didn't sell. Didn't get read. Self-publishing is a hard gig. I'm not against it, but I think it's important that authors go into it with their eyes open.
Really? That's it? I have never looked into self publishing and have no plans to right now, but I never would have thought sales were so low. Sad, really. All that work and than a dozen or so times people buy (and hopefully read) the book.
Can I ask you two questions? And I really am being serious. Why would you decide to self publish after you've already developed working relationships with editors at publishing houses? I'm wondering if they have first refusal and then you can do whatever you want with it if they don't take it. I've heard about that sort of thing happening. And my other question is why so many pen names? Especially if you know some names you use sell more books, why use anything else? Okay, can I ask one more question? Just out of curiosity how many books have you written? You sound very prolific.
The average self-publisher will sell less than fifty books in his or her career. Of course, that includes a staggering number of truly horrible writers, and hustlers trying to pimp forty pages for $5.99. There is a large and lively forum of indie writers hosted by Amazon, and there are a good number of people selling a lot of books. More than a few make a career out of it. The key is: can you write. Not all trad published books sell. And a lot of writers never get their work published. The key is your skill, your genre, and your approach. If you are a poet or a children's author forget self publishing.
Yep. It is very sad. For obvious reasons, we only really hear about the success stories (which are often fabricated or distorted by places with agendas, like AuthorEarnings). But the sad truth is most self-published books will never be read by people without the same surname as the author...
I'm not even RWK. I just hit three random letters. I'm not celebrated by anyone, to tell the truth. On a side note, my family doesn't even know I write.
I write books from the start that I know I'm going to self-publish; I don't think I've ever self-published one because a publisher didn't want it. Sometimes it's because I'm writing a story that's between genres or in an unpopular/over-filled genre (good luck selling a YA dystopian to a publisher these days!) or would otherwise be hard to place with a publisher. But mostly it's because I feel like it's important to be diversified and keep my options open. If a new style of selling/publishing/marketing comes up, I want to have some stories under my control so I can take advantage of the opportunity. I've also seen authors stuck with publishers who go out of business and suck the authors' novels down into bankruptcy with them... it can take a long, long time before the authors get their rights back. So I try to diversify. And of course I self-publish books when I get the rights back from the publishers after the first run. Different pen names for different genres. One for m/m romance, one for m/f romance, one for my non-romance projects. They're not secret from each other, and I'm in the process of trying to streamline my online presence so I do all my promo under an umbrella term for all the names. (See booklives.com for the WIP website). I think I've published about thirty novels and novellas? Maybe a few more than that. I've been at this a while, plus I do write pretty fast/steadily.
Key note re. the not all trade books sell - if you're with a larger publisher, you get to keep your advance anyway. You may well have trouble selling them your next book, but... at least for the one(s) in your original contract, you still get paid. And "not selling" by NY standards is a hell of a lot different than not selling at all.
Very true. But how many authors get picked up by larger publishers? I'm not knocking that route, mind you. But five years ago or so I was sitting in my man-cave looking at a row of binders on a shelf and wondering what to do. I had an agent in the past, but had no success otherwise. I decided to give self-publishing through Amazon (and Createspace) a try. Sitting down at my computer, I had a novel turned in after about two hours. Twelve hours later it went live. In less than twenty-four hours from sitting down at my computer five total strangers had purchased my book. Five years later it still sells. If you can land a gig with a large publisher, by all means, go for it.
True. The same applies to their ability to compete in the self-pub route. We're just talking options and paths here. We all have similar goals, but there are more than one way to achieve what we want.
But given that we agree that the Big Five route is the preferred one, we'd both recommend people try for it first?
We didn't agree upon that. I would recommend the approach that suits the individual. With self-publishing you can get immediate feedback on your writing abilities, and if you are any good, immediate presentation to readers. You can write what you wish, how you wish, and accept the consequences. You can focus upon writing. Or you can go the trad route, meeting other peoples' standards of what should or shouldn't be included, and accepting rejection after rejection in the hopes that you are one of the handful of new writers that get picked up, nation-wide, each year. The wait in hopes of a better starting position. Slow and steady versus the hope of a sudden burst of energy. The beautiful thing is that you can use both approaches. You can market one work the trad route while self-publishing others.
This is the idea that I believe is incorrect. I do not believe that merely being good is enough to get you noticed in self-publishing. If I'm going to a bake sale with a hundred thousand plates of cookies, most of them simply dreadful, the fact that plate # 85,432 contains the most delicious cookie ever known to man doesn't assure that those cookies are going to sell. And the fact that the seller of plate # 85,432 is holding up a fine high-quality sign and speaking with great eloquence about those cookies, while surrounded by perhaps twenty thousand other bakers also holding up signs, dancing, singing, shrieking about their cookies, doesn't help all that much. (The other 79,999 bakers just dropped off their cookies and wandered off. Most of them have sold one cookie, in most cases to their mothers.) People became aware of your books. That's great. It doesn't remotely ensure that people will become aware of other self-published books, no matter how good they are.
I guess I misunderstood And I definitely disagree that self-publishing is the route more likely to allow you to focus more on writing - that seems nonsensical on its face. But I sense that we're heading down a well-trodden path here, and it's nowhere I'm interested in going again. I'm glad you're pleased with your choices.
What are your experiences with self-publishing? You analogy is incorrect. Amazon search engines filter things out a great deal; if you understand how those work, and on their forum there is plenty of help, you're not at a base sale with six figures of cookies, you're looking at a rolling dessert table with a suitable selection. Beyond that, it is up to you. Trad publish it is reversed: the publisher strolls down a line of tens of thousands of would-be authors, all proclaiming their own greatness, to pluck one or two out per year. Either way, a writer faces long odds. It just seems sensible to me to examine all possible options.
Not if people don't ever even see your work. And that's important here. Because there are a huge amount of self published authors out there. Yes you can immediately get your work out to the public. But so can everyone else and there's no way to stand out. Literally none. You can do the marketing work and sort of get a little bit more traction. But if you put up a new book and no-one buys it for six months; would you decide this is a bad book? Or would you think that there's some other reason here? Because some books just never sell. It could be the best book you've ever written and never sell a copy simply because that's the way the cookie crumbles. If you need to just continue onward with the belief that you are a good writer than that's not even feedback. The reason why people worry about what they write (other people, not me despite being way out there and very difficult to market) is because in the most crass way possible a book is only successful if lots of people want to read it. Compromising to fit what the market wants is a good thing, ok? It's fine to say that in self publishing you can just focus on your writing; but by your own admission your writing isn't making you more than a few bucks anyway. When you talk about 'meeting other peoples standards' what you mean is 'writing things that other people want to read', ok? When you happen to be Roark from The Fountainhead then you can get away with not compromising on your artistic vision, because he's written to be the guy who does actually know best and Rand is clearly so in love with him for sticking by his principles and blowing up his master work before he lets it be sullied. But that's not how the real world works. And, perhaps more importantly, when you are working for a publisher you get someone else to do you marketing and someone else to help you find exposure, someone else to help you build your audience. That leaves you just to write. And yes, you have to think about what you write. But that's because to get on the inside you need to write things that lots of people want to read and most people won't get there first time out. I think a huge amount of the publishing business needs to change. But at least the creaking old machine is pretty good at handling everything else so that the writers can write.
But you're thinking about this like it's all just matters of chance. It isn't. And that's why people are uncomfortable about self-publishing. Because they see that a lot of it is just chance. In the traditional publishing world there is certainly some luck, but there's genuine skill there too. You have to learn how to write pitches, you have to learn to sell the most interesting parts of your books, you have to learn and improve and do better. Write better synopses, write more compelling opening chapter. It's not a coincidence that after two and a bit years of submitting that my last round of submissions were the only ones I had decent answers among. My ideas have gotten better, my pitches have gotten better, my work generally has gotten better and agents have responded to that positively. I've gone from sending out 100+ pitches (covering 4 books and 2 years) and getting no interest to sending out 10 pitches and getting 2 agents ask to see the manuscript within a few weeks. That's not luck dude. To most of us self publishing is roulette and traditional publishing is poker. There is luck to getting out there in traditional publishing. But there is also skill. And you can push those odds in your favor, both in terms of developing ideas that are more commercial and improving your abilities in presenting your work. In self publishing the same book with the same presentation might just get ignored anyway.
