Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's common sense. If you have 10 books that you make $5000 a year each from, that's an income of $50,000. Price your book at $5 at Amazon, and you'll get $3.50 a sale, so to make $5000 you need to sell about 1400 copies. That's certainly not bestseller territory.
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In tradpub circles 1500 copies in a year (~4 copies a day) is a book that doesn't earn out, even at $9.99, despite current low 4-figure advances. Probably a career-ender in most genres, too.
(Back around 2010, midlisters were getting dropped at the BPHs when sales dropped below 30,000. Which netted them maybe $50K. In Indie land, 30K can bring the author double that, selling at half the price.)
Again: the math favors the very small and the very big.
As for actual numbers, several authors have been transparent enough about their sales over the last few years to validate the math. And then some.