[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by Luke King

Steven, I'm surprised you're doing as well as you are. I've visited your website twice in recent weeks. I've followed your ebook links and got nowhere: one is broken, one leads to the sign in for goodreads (I don't have an account), and the other leads to the Smashwords home page (where you have no books).

Well, I *DID* have ebooks up there, but, well, it's complicated so I'll save you the Tolkien sized explanation on that. The short answer is, it's being fixed. (as the note next to the link on my site mentions) As for the broken links on my site, I'm not finding any. If there are some, by all means report them. I try to stay on top of things like that, but I'm not wetwired into the web (oh, would I ever love to be though!) so I can't catch everything that breaks, regardless how much I try. So in the future if you ever see a broken link or feature on my site, by all means use the feedback form to report it, or drop me an private message here.

I've searched for you on Amazon, where there appears to be only one book -- a print copy of The Oort Perimeter.

It only takes a little hunting to find the books on there. It would probably be easier if I'd used a uncommon pen name. But I hate pen names, because they confuse me. So I use my real name which kinda sucks as it's rather popular apparently. Here's links to the three (3) books I have up on Amazon right now:

Oort Perimeter
Destiny's Mission
TDA1

As for ebooks of my novels on Amazon, I don't have them in kindle format yet because I still haven't decided if I want to offer them in that format. (which, sadly enough, is the only version Amazon will allow. Argh.) Mostly because I don't want to encourage Amazon's dominance of the market (never encourage a tyrant to further oppress people), nor do I want to foist Amazon's DRM onto people, or their reader. Does it hurt my sales? Probably. But I'm one who prefers to stick to his ideals. If at some point I think that it'll be alright to put my books up for offer in Kindle format, then I'll do it. Until then, I'm only selling dead tree editions through Amazon.

And I can buy print copies of your books from your website. It's a little hard to understand how you can be lamenting not being better known. I'd suggest offering a book for free. If there were one, I'd take it.

Yes, as twobits pointed out, I *DO* have a free ebook available on my website. You just have to scroll down to see it.

Are the hundred sales per month print sales, or is there somewhere I can buy an ebook from you?

Right now about 99% dead tree sales. I only started getting into ebooks when I came here. Before that I was selling nothing but print editions. I figure that once I can get all the ebook issues sorted out (why does this stuff have to be such a pain right from the get go!?) then my sales will probably be about 20% ebook, 80% print.

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

Another old saying -- One writer's trough is another's pinnacle. For my own books, I consider sales of less than 500 copies in the first week to be failure. I have friends who consider not making the NY Times list to be failure. As with many things, YMMV.

Congrats Doreenjoy! I haven't reached the point of 500 first week sales on new releases just yet (I'm having too bloody much trouble getting out of the f'ing gate without faceplanting! *sounds of profuse cursing* Just once I'd like to have a flawless release!! Argh!), but I would love to have that some day. And even if I don't, I think that you getting that is awesome. It's always wonderful to see authors succeed like that!

Originally Posted by EileenG

What really annoys me is that if I went back to work as a journalist, I'd be able to afford a cleaner and two family ski holidays a year. As a novelist, when I finally get published, I'll be doing well to pay for a weekend in London.

I'm actually starting to find that the books are only the foundation on which your income is made. Believe it or not, I've been doing some research into merchandising my books (ie, posters, bookmarks, dolls, etc) and so far from what I've seen of the results from other authors doing the same thing, depending on how memorable the book/characters/story is, or how popular, cute, cuddly, etc they are, pure merchandise can make up 50% or more of your income.

Case in point. I ran into one author locally who writes children's books. Her books have sold like mad, but the stuffed toys she had made of her book characters have gone like gangbusters. Even people who haven't or won't read the books have been snatching them up by the case. (ok, not the case, but certainly the handful) I think she told me that for every new book she releases, only about 20% of her income is from the book, and the other 80% is from merchandise she's made to sell as companions to the books.

Now I'm not all about selling out and going the merchandising way, but dang, if you can 2-4x your income just by adding a few collectible items to your list of things for sale, then I'm game. And for those who are getting all moral about how this spoils the true nature and reason for writing, I think that you're wrong. Why? Well, if the extra items pay your bills and keep a roof over your head, and allow you to write to your heart's content without having to worry if the gas will be shut off, then I think it's worth it. If it's done purely out of selfish greed, then it's wrong. But if it is done with the mindset of helping you continue doing what you love, then I see nothing wrong with merchandising your books.