How much does the average author get paid?

[Peadar Ó Guilín]

Originally Posted by dstampe

For example, I'm reasonably comfortable with using the reviews on Amazon, as long as there are more than one and I know something about the author's style.

Of course, these days, Amazon, fictionwise and others often allow us a chance to read sample chapters of a prospective purchase and that's all for the good. It's one area where e-ink can really come into its own. Readers won't waste more than twenty minutes on a book that won't appeal to them and the whole reading experience becomes so much more efficient.

[dadioflex]

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[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It sounds like this depends on your being "found" by enough people to generate sufficient ratings, good or bad, in the first place. As I suggested above, it's getting found that's the catch for indies and unknowns: How do you find the one book among thousands of unmarketed indies?

[dadioflex]

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[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

I've been following this thread with great interest, as a wannabe writer someday.., but pretty much kept out of because I feel like I'd be tripping round the feet of giants.

How about an iTunes type model with ratings and genre recommendation but with a twist on the pricing. You post your book online and anyone can download it for free. People who download the book can rate it but ratings don't appear for, say, a week or until there are a certain number received. Based purely on the number of downloads the price of the book rises from nothing to a maximum of maybe 5-10 bucks (I favour 5 bucks but I'm cheap.)

So as an unknown people download you and rate you. After a week or a fixed number of ratings that rating shows - this prevents an initial single bad review from jinxing you. If what you're offering is good word spreads, your ratings increase and as more people download your book the price goes up incrementally. Say 50c at ten downloads, a dollar at fifty up to the maximum price at 500-1000 downloads.

It's a self-regulating pricing structure which encourages people to try something new for free and once people know the quality of it they'll hopefully be prepared to pay.

There is already a web site that does almost that. The price is based on how many have been sold. I don't think that starting with free will work but a low price is how the site does it. http://www.bookhabit.com/index.php

Dale

[dadioflex]

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[Peadar Ó Guilín]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

I went onto Amazon and stuck his book on my Wishlist for when I'm next spending money on myself. (a) he's Irish

I don't know if it's strictly related but this thread made me think about a fellow called Lindsay Brambles who I used to exchange PMs with at a now defunct SF forum. He'd written an SF novel and had... well I Googled his name to see what he was up to so I guess you can read for yourself if you want to see how his story turned out:

http://www.helium.com/items/583764-t...writing-a-book

Thanks, dadioflex -- I knew being Irish had to be good for something

I would recommend the link you posted to anybody thinking of jumping into this game without the help of a real agent. Over half of my writing-related earnings came from the eight foreign language deals my agent found for me so far. You can't do that by yourself and even if a publisher takes you on from the slush pile, an inexperienced writer will never know how far to push in negotiations.

What is a real agent? Somebody who makes all of their living from selling books and none of it from charging reading fees to newbies. You can find links to the websites of such people here (UK):
http://www.writersservices.com/agent/uk/agent_uk.htm

And here (US):
http://www.writersservices.com/agent/us08/agent_us.htm

[nekokami]

Wow. That's quite a horror story.

I've always heard that you can submit proposals for books without an agent, but you should have one before you sign any contract. I think this story really drives that point home.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

You post your book online and anyone can download it for free. People who download the book can rate it but ratings don't appear for, say, a week or until there are a certain number received. Based purely on the number of downloads the price of the book rises from nothing to a maximum of maybe 5-10 bucks (I favour 5 bucks but I'm cheap.)

I was considering including something like this in my proposal (above). I think for unknowns it makes sense to start at zero for the price, though a more established author could possibly start at whatever their last book got up to.

Another interesting idea would be for authors to revise based on reader comments, and re-release a later revision of the book, possibly with a slightly higher price (or at the same price as the last revision had gotten to, but it would hopefully improve the price ranking more quickly with revisions).

[gandor62]

It seems to me that it is all about the money. Which of course is a fair thing. I mean I see that the writer wants to be paid, the person that spends an hour or more inspecting the book for grammatical errors or even if the book is any good wants to be paid. The Printer/Binder and Publisher want to be paid. The Promotional agency wants to be paid and of course the retailer is paid. A lot of money is required to get the book out to the masses that have all this money in thier pockets.
What all this means of course is that there is a finite amount of spare cash available, reading is a luxury that not all can afford. A lot of mid list authors will never make any money and would have to treat it as a hobby. I personally used to make wooden ships for my hobby, I never made any money, spent a lot though, in having the hobby. Of course some people end up making a small amount of cash from a hobby, just the same as some authors do. If you are any good at your hobby you could make a business from it at some point.

Posting manuscripts into a forum and letting other people be part of your hobby would be a start. At least you would have satifaction when someone says that "your book is awesome." It wouldnt put food on the table but still give you a nice warm feeling. From their I would imagine that word of mouth promotion would start and maybe, just maybe a few publishers would be keeping an eye on a site that may have that gem that is worth their time and money. See back to the money.

[dstampe]

Originally Posted by gandor62

Posting manuscripts into a forum and letting other people be part of your hobby would be a start. At least you would have satifaction when someone says that "your book is awesome."

I'm not sure I would be comfortable doing that myself. You'd have to accept someone with very different ideas ripping it to pieces, or posting a rewrite that makes you unhappy. Criticism and editing are a part of writing, but it's lot more painful in public once you've invested a lot in your creation already. A public forum might be a good way to try out ideas, turns of phrase, and so on but I'd hesitate to post anything that took more than a few days of work. (Forums like this are more like a brainstoring session, with ideas being thrown about for feedback *before* too much has been invested in them, in the expectation that feedback will help develop them).

Even worse, you might see what you've spend weeks or months on appearing elsewhere with minor revisions, and someone else taking credit for it. I've been there.

That's just (a highly edited version of) my gut reaction which surprised me a bit, frankly. I would have to say that it would be important to ensure there was something like the impersonality of judgement and protection of material that should exist with a reputable agent/editor/publisher. That might involve a data trail of who reviewed what. Anonymity of the reviewers and authors (often the case in academic paper reviews) would result in more objective but critical feedback, but hopefully not to the point of traumatizing the beginning writer. Some kind of multiple rating system might help to prevent bloodbaths by perfectionist reviewers who are more interested in nit-picking than making constructive suggestions. Or maybe authors could rate reviewers by helpfulness, to select those who are best at this level. (Of cource writer ratings of revewers would have to be combined with the rating the reviewer gave the writer, to balance helpfulness scores against the tendency to select those that give positive reviews.

[nekokami]

Writer's workshops, with consistent membership over time and constructive participation guidelines, seem to work well. I've had very positive experiences with them face-to-face, and I'd be willing to try an online version. It's actually quite helpful to have people who don't share your tastes read your work, too. (One fellow writer at a workshop told me he really didn't like my story, but he was sure there was a market for it, and was still able to offer helpful suggestions to improve it further. As he put it, "Not everybody likes everything. Don't ask me for recipes for asparagus, either.")

So I wouldn't propose putting ms into a giant slushpile for everyone to pick at, but at some point, the work has to go out to a wider audience or there's not much point in having written it, and when it does, it's going to get criticized (even if only by people who "don't like asparagus, either"). Better to develop a thick skin about your writing while still in the safety of a workshop group before sending it out to the public, but eventually you're going to have to deal with public criticism.

Regarding the plagiarism problem, there are numerous automated ways to check for that these days, and putting your work into a database that feeds into TurnItIn or another plagiarism-checking system is probably one of the best ways to protect your work.

[dstampe]

Yes, I think my reaction was more conceern that someone might expect good things to happen and be unprepared for the reality. I'm a perfectionist myself when it comes to releasing any kind of product, so would not want unlimited distribution unit until I'm completely happy with it. But then my field is software and technical/scientific writing, where clarity and correctness matter, not plot. So personal taste does not enter into things to the same extent as for fiction.

Any online writer's workshop would have to be limited to viewing by participants only, or the type of writers that would be willing to participate will be limited. Anything in a public forum (such as this) will almost certainly be archived and searchable, so even though it may feel like a small group to the participants there are many thousand potential viewers. Tossing around ideas is one thing, exposing early drafts of creative work to a critical free-for-all is something else. I wonder how the writing process is affected for writers who are published by Baen's ARC publications? I suspect more care is taken in early drafts than would otherwise be the case.

Partial plagarism issues is a lot more commonplace (even expected) for open-source programming and technical literature. There ideas and structure are the core feature and are somewhat independent of exact wording or names, and it is quite possible to change things a lot without changing the value of the work. For finished fiction works, especially good ones, major changes to the text are unlikely as this would almost certainly destroy the value of the work. So for those text fingerprinting might work.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

There is already a web site that does almost that. The price is based on how many have been sold. I don't think that starting with free will work but a low price is how the site does it. http://www.bookhabit.com/index.php

Dale

This is great! Note 40% cut for authors! Personally I will feel much better knowing that almost half of the money goes to the author as opposed to a wasteful distribution system.

As for ratings/reviews/recommendations system, I'll check it out. Seems they have a good start. Any system won't be perfect, but then who cares. As long as I can find meaningful and decent quality reviews and recommendations it is good enough for me.

Thanks

[dadioflex]

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