Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
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.
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It's already happening, but you have to be some kind of self-promoting machine like Scott Sigler or have a rolling fan base like the Monster Island guy (being mentioned by BoingBoing doesn't hurt either).
I am neither, nor could I be if I tried.