Being an indie is hard work - but you can WIN!

[VydorScope]

Okay.. so I have posted some great information about how being an independent author CAN yield you great success. Indies ARE killing it out there, no question about it. The face of publishing has changed... but the stories you don't hear, are those that are not breakouts, that don't make the lists. I would say the vast majority of indies. Heres the deal though - you can still get buy, its a numbers game.

So say you're Hugh Howey and you release a short story called Wool - it goes nuclear and suddenly you are rich and touring the world. It happens, BUT probably not to you. Sorry, that is just the cold hard truth. Hey its not like I am posting this from my personal yacht in the south pacific....

Next option - work hard, write well, kick butt ninja style - unseen.

Do the math - for simplicity I will stick only to Amazon for this example. It will only get easier if you add more stores in. More on that in another post at another time - this one too long as it is.

Release 1 book - sell 5 copies a month @ 2.99. Take home is

5 * 2.99 * 0.70 = $10.47

W00T! You just bought lunch at McDonalds for 2! Dude, that is $10.47 more than you would have had that month if you did not self-pub.

Now, lets play the numbers game. Its fun! A self-pub that wants to win will keep writing. So say that self-pub has 10 books on the market...

10*(5 * 2.99 * 0.70) = $104.65

Sweeeeeeet! Thats a freaking nice dinner for two at a real restaurant. Kicking it high class now. Oppa Gungum style!

Again, an indie that wants to win will keep writing. So that indie in a few years could have 20 books on the self. If each sold 1 copy a day on average...

365 * 20 * 2.99 * 0.70 = $15,278.90

Now, that is not Hugh Howey riches, but heck you could get a decent used car for that or take your family to Disney!

Now if you really want to win, you take some of that money and roll it into marketing and you can reasonably grow that number to a real living. Look at that same collection of books at 4 copies sold a day on average for a year.

4* 365 * 20 * 2.99 * 0.70 = $61,115.60

Again that is an average across ALL the books you have out. So one book might sell 20 copies, and 2 others might sell 1 each. Whatever. If the average number of copies sold per day hits 4 per book, that is what Amazon will pay you.

It is hard work. You will have to discipline yourself to write,and write and write. You will have to learn marketing, book formatting, and much more. It is a business and you have to treat it like one. Case example: Elle Casey puts out a full length novel every month. To do this she puts in 10-12 hours A DAY working on this stuff. She is killing it, and supports her family with that money. Gave up a job as a lawyer for it. It can be done.

So you have to decide, are you in it to make money, or to just have fun? If you are in it to just have fun, then write, publish, repeat and don't worry if you sell. If you want to make money at this game, then you will have to put the work in.

SO my advice for you.. DEFINE "win" as something you are willing to put the work into reach, and then go win.

One final thought - success breeds success. If one or two of those 20 get noticed and makes a big run, they will spill over into your other books. Build a brand around your name and protect it so that you can maximize this effect.

Now - go win!

[HarryT]

Don't forget an inconvenient little thing called "tax" . Earn your $10 and the government's probably going to want half of it .

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Don't forget an inconvenient little thing called "tax" . Earn your $10 and the government's probably going to want half of it .

Not in the US. There is an advantage to not selling well as there is a lower limit on what you have to report and pay taxes on. $10 is well below that. As always - see your tax professional and not some random dude on the net.

[HarryT]

I don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK, your tax-free allowance applies to your entire income, not each part of it separately. So if you have used up your allowance in your "day job", you will have to pay tax on the $10 you make from your book sales .

As you may know, I write and sell software, and although I don't make a vast amount of money from it, every penny that I do make, I have to pay tax on, because my tax-free allowance is used up by my salary from my day job.

[cromag]

I'm still saving up for that large coffee at Starbucks.

But I'm probably going to have to get more realistic about my chances. Dunkin Donuts may have to do.

[Lemurion]

It certainly can be done.

However, it takes more than just hard work, it also takes a modicum of skill and/or talent. Writing a reasonably successful book a month means you need to be able to produce about 3,000 words of publishable prose a day every day, and not everyone can do that.

Making some money is easy.

Making a living is less so. The real problem that I see is that there's no information out there on just how easy or difficult it is to reach any level of success.

I've written four novels plus a novel-length course, and about a quarter-million words of other paying copy per year; that gives me a reasonable yardstick to judge the amount of work involved in producing the books to sell.

The question I'm facing is how hard is it to reach those sales goals? Are sustained sales of four copies per title per day easy for the average author to achieve, or does that represent significantly above average results?

What are reasonable expectations?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The question I'm facing is how hard is it to reach those sales goals? Are sustained sales of four copies per title per day easy for the average author to achieve, or does that represent significantly above average results?

What are reasonable expectations?

So I am struggling to find information on that. It is easy to get information about the top 10%, and we know the bottom is 0 sales. Its the middle that is hard to solid data on.

I am currently writing 10k words a week (new goal for this year), part time, a couple nights a week. My novels are in the 100k range when complete. I am hoping get ahead of my production curve so that I am putting out several books a year, instead of just one.

Some people get a head on these numbers by serializing their novels. They release a 100k book in installments of 15k. They take advantage of all the "new release" lists by putting out a new installment every 30 days. That is working very well for some. It is a valid option to consider.

I will say this.. it is easy to get in the top 20 of many sub categories on Amazon free books for a short run. It is easy to get a large spike of downloads in a burst on Amazon Free books. If your book is good, both of those should start to give you traction. Exposure matters more than most are willing to admit.

In a promotion (like Bookbub) of a series with a free book 1, assuming your book is good, and well targeted, you can expect 1-2% of your downloads will read the book and buy its sequel. If your sequel is as good or better than the free one, you can expect 80% probably to buy through to the next book.

That is reasonable.

My permafree book is three years old. I assume I am not exceptional. With NO promotion, my current conversion rate is 10% (5% buy book 2, and 5% buy my omnibus). When I run a promotion (I have tried 3 so far) my conversion rate tanks to the 1-2% I mentioned above. This is consistently reported by others. I have been as high as #5 on Amazon's free list. I do not have 20 books out, but if I did, and maintained current sales numbers, I could quit my day job.

Again, I do not think I am exceptional. I think averaging 4 sales a day is probably reachable by authors that put out reasonably decent books (as determined by the market, the real gatekeeper in the indy world).

Again, all of this assumes you can write. If you can't, then well, I don't know how to help you.

[gmw]

VydorScope, you show only the income. What about the costs? To do it right there are costs involved - editing, covers, marketing. These effectively swallow all the early income from your books.

Then there is that oh so simple jump from 1 book to 10 books (sorry, but that's the way it reads in your post). There may be people out there with the talent to write 10 readable books in a year, or even a couple of years, but I'm not one of them. It has taken me almost four years to produce three books (the third isn't out yet but should be soon).

And whatever way you cut the numbers, it's an absolutely lousy per hour rate for the work put in. Short of being both lucky and talented enough to make it big, publishing (independent or traditional) isn't going to replace your day job any time soon.

Yes, making some money is possible, people are doing it, but it's not only about hard work - your books aren't going to sell a copy a day if you earn a reputation for writing crap while getting the volume out there.

It seems to me that thinking too hard about the numbers is not a good thing for most of us. Better, assuming you are doing this because you enjoy writing, just to get on with writing - that is, after all, the only way you're likely to get the back-list of titles required to have the numbers come to anything meaningful.

This isn't meant to rain on anyone's parade, it's an attempt to be pragmatic. A lot of books do not sell anything like a copy a day, so that trip to Disney could be a long way off. If you're pushing yourself to write and write and write, and skipping out on the rest of your life until it feels like the worst job you've ever done, then you're missing the point entirely.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by gmw

This isn't meant to rain on anyone's parade, it's an attempt to be pragmatic. A lot of books do not sell anything like a copy a day, so that trip to Disney could be a long way off. If you're pushing yourself to write and write and write, and skipping out on the rest of your life until it feels like the worst job you've ever done, then you're missing the point entirely.

Again, I will state...

So my advice for you.. DEFINE "win" as something you are willing to put the work into reach, and then go win.

It will take a ton of work to get a ton of money for most people. I said that several times. I also state:

So you have to decide, are you in it to make money, or to just have fun? If you are in it to just have fun, then write, publish, repeat and don't worry if you sell. If you want to make money at this game, then you will have to put the work in.

The point is it CAN BE DONE, but there are no magic pills, no easy buttons. YOU have to decide how much you are going to put into it. Each author has to make that call for themselves. Some want to quit their day job, to do that you are going to have to put the hours in. Some want to get a cup of coffee every month. That is much easier and requires less work.

If you want to get rich fast, head to some other industry where your odds are better.

The point, again, is to show that if you put the work in, it is a doable.

One final note - that is an average across ALL stores for ALL books. Some books will sell better than others. Some authors have books that never sell, and others that sell really well. That is normal. All that matters is the average across all books and all stores.

In short: Decent writing + hard work over time = reasonable shot at success.

[Lemurion]

I agree with GMW, 10 books is a million words, near enough, and that's a lot of typing. Lots of people can't handle that much typing in a reasonable amount of time, or at all, because of physical limitations.

As for speed, I could probably write 2-3 novels a year and have them come out pretty readable. Two problems, one, I don't have the time to write that much fiction at the moment, and two, it's taken me 25 years to get to this point.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

[...]
In short: Decent writing + hard work over time = reasonable shot at success.

Yes, your post did acknowledge the possibility that a person isn't in it for the money, and that a person needs to define "win" to be something they are willing to work for, but you said it in a post that was all about the numbers. When you start to define winning by the numbers, you have to look at them clearly. Skipping the costs and the time factors involved is not a good way to do that. All I was trying to do was place a little more pragmatism around it.

People are making a success of independent publishing, I'm not denying that, but let's not get carried away and think that it automatically means any person that puts in the work and writes 20 books, has got it made. It doesn't work like that.

Some talent is required, but it's not enough on its own. Lots of work is required, there may be exceptions but you'd be better off checking the sky for pigs than relying on it. But there is more. You have to be writing in genres where the aggregation of a back list is useful. You have to be writing what people are currently wanting to read, and that changes over time. And luck plays a part as well.

You acknowledge that you can't help people that can't write. But the point is that (I assume) most people that publish something think that they can write. The numbers show that a very large proportion of these people are either wrong, or they have written something that most readers aren't interested in reading. So it's not just a matter of hard work over time, it's a matter of getting all the other bits right as well.

I believe the point to take away from your numbers is that working hard may be your best shot at success, but whether it's a reasonable shot is an entirely different story. From a purely statistical perspective, looking at the huge numbers of books that simply don't sell in any appreciable volume, it doesn't really look that reasonable. Now sure, many of those will be ones that haven't put in the work, but is it all? I doubt it.

This means that a writer who has defined their idea of winning around the numbers is going to have to take a look at how their own numbers are panning out. They may need to change what they're writing to match what's selling, they may need to come to the realisation that they can't write (in a way that matches their definition of winning). In short, by defining your success by the numbers you are changing what sort of writer you are. There's nothing wrong with that, but it should be acknowledged as part of the tradeoff you are making.

[VydorScope]

I only used numbers because that is the only objective measure I could point to that we all can understand.

When I release my first book, I was like "if one stranger reads it and finds enjoyment, I am a success." I clicked that ticker long ago. Since then I have found readers emailing me that my books helped them through really tough times (as a form of escape). That to me is a HUGE win. Much bigger than the dollars.

Personally, I am in this because I love to tell stories and bring joy to people's lives. That is why I right clean optimistic novels about good guys that fight evil and win. I want to give readers a feel good time. If I was in it for the money only, I would be in the Romance sub-genres where 70% of the readers are.

"Why do I do this?" is a key question every author needs to answer for themselves.

So yeah, you can define your win about something other than the numbers. But thats harder to address in a simple forum post.

There are no guarantees this side of the grave. You either try and have a chance, or you don't and have no chance. That is for each other to decide for themselves.

[gmw]

I do take comfort in numbers like those on Author Earnings - showing that there is a possibility that I may one day see some financial reward for the effort. To be perfectly honest, I doubt if I'd bother to publish if I was fully convinced there was no chance at all. I'd still write, it only costs time and it's what I like doing, but I wouldn't put in all the effort that feels like work, and costs out-of-pocket dollars, to publish the result if that chance didn't exist. To that extent I suppose I am in it for the money.

And I would like my books to sell well, both for the money and as a measure of my success as a writer, so I'm not trying to say that the numbers mean nothing to me. But I think that spending too much time worrying about the numbers at this point (while I still only have two books out and third on the way) is probably counterproductive. I think that a certain fatalism is required. We keep writing and trying to improve ourselves, and take comfort in knowing that independent publishing does not stand in the way of success, while still remembering that it doesn't guarantee it either.

[mrmarlowe]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Not in the US. There is an advantage to not selling well as there is a lower limit on what you have to report and pay taxes on. $10 is well below that. As always - see your tax professional and not some random dude on the net.

Same in India. We have what we call 'tax ceilings'. Right now I am too poor to even get noticed by the tax guy haha. I got royalty only twice from Amazon and each time the money was just enough to buy me a plate of chow in a cheap hotel. But I am holding on.

[mrmarlowe]

P.S. I write for fun rather than money, so I am not too worried.