Thread: What is with these Publishers?
View Single Post
Old 01-12-2010, 06:31 PM   #125
Kali Yuga
Professional Contrarian
Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Kali Yuga ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Kali Yuga's Avatar
 
Posts: 2,045
Karma: 3289631
Join Date: Mar 2009
Device: Kindle 4 No Touchie
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dumas View Post
Are you claiming writers need 10K or 100K dedicated readers to make living wage and on what basis do you make this claim?
FWIW, I suspect he is correct. Let's say you are a newly signed author, you get a 15% royalty, and the cover price of your paperbacks (no hardcover for you, Mr No Sales Yet!) is $8. You get $1.20 per copy sold, so 10k sold = $12,000. Write two books a year (which isn't easy), and you're making about the same as the guy working 40 hours a week behind the counter at the Gap, yes?

The shift to ebooks won't change this fundamental dynamic that much, it just makes it easier to self-publish. If you actually want to live off your writing, the advantage is that at least in theory, self-publishing could help you build up a bit of a fan base, and you can then go to a publisher and say "dude, my blog gets 10k hits per week, and my free ebook novellas have been downloaded 100k times." Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen.
Kali Yuga is offline   Reply With Quote