Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Why do you think they will sell 50000 copies of all books sold for $0.50? The number sold of most old books that is re-published are much lower than that. And books is not a product with perfect plasticity.
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Not sold for .50, but with .50 author royalty. (Which is books sold at 1.50 or so through Amazon; books sold at 2.99--one-quarter or less of standard new ebook prices--pay the author a dollar or so.)
Many self-publishing authors have managed to sell 50,000 ebooks. Some have managed to sell a million or more.
20,000+ sales in one year--from a newbie with no other titles in print.
100,000 copies in a year, split between two authors.
42,000 copies in one month, also split; they've also acquired a publishing contract from Harper Collins.
1100 ebooks a day--more per day than Random House did in 6 months. He doesn't say he's broken 50k, but somehow, I don't think his sales are all going to happen in the space of two months.
I can't find the blog post I saw last week, about a woman with a hope to sell 50k ebooks in a year--without actively attempting to seek sales until December. She's got the book in a few places for sale; it's just also available on several free sites like Feedbooks & Manybooks. It's August, and she's got ~34,000 sales so far, and 50k by the end of the year looks very feasible.
I don't believe any author that a major publisher would sign on, couldn't sell 50,000 copies of that book on their own.
That doesn't mean self-pub would absolutely be best for them; maybe they hate managing business. Maybe their internet access is sporadic at best. Maybe they really, *really* want to be in print with that logo on the spine. Maybe the publisher will arrange book signings, and even if the author has to pay for transportation, they *love* book signings & meeting fans. Maybe the advance is sweet, and they don't care that they're signing away 75% of the cover price for the life of the book.
But any book that one of the Agency Six would print, should be able to sell 50k copies independently. Authors should sort out the maths themselves, and decide which platform is better for their careers.