Quote:
Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank
These authors are doing all right self-publishing and get 65-70% royalties off the sale price. A few self-published millionaires among this list.
http://selfpublishingsuccessstories.blogspot.com/
The "200,000+ self-published ebooks sold" club:
<here a list of 36 authors>
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I love these kinds of posts that are made to prove that success is just around the corner for self-publishing authors. Smashwords alone has more than 50,000 authors and nearly 140,000 books listed. Who knows how many more authors there are that are exclusive to Amazon. But just using the 50,000 Smashwords authors, the 36 success stories represent 0.00072% of authors -- not very good odds in any gambler's book.
The reality is that very few authors will be successful as self-publishers.
The statistic I'd like to see is how many of these successful self-publishing authors became self-publishing authors and successful
without first having been published by a traditional publisher. What I mean is this: How much of, for example, Konrath's success is based on his having first been published traditionally and having built a fan base that way? I don't doubt that Konrath has added tremendously to that starting fan base, but it is generally harder to start from zero than from something.
I'd also like to know how many of the successful self-publishers are one-offs; that is, successfully self-published 1 ebook and then saw a decline in sales of subsequent ebooks or simply didn't publish additional ebooks.