Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Also, these days we (indies) have much higher ongoing costs in the form of advertising or in putting out a free book. These costs have really skyrocketed in the last two years and become more and more necessary. The upfront cost of getting a book edited has also gone up. Artwork has gone up too, but there's still some leeway with shopping around.

With ads, one of the problems is that they are a moving target. A site that is moving books today may not move a thing two months from now. ALL the ad sites have gone up in price, some more than double (many about double) and almost all of the sites move about half of what they used to move.

It seems like some advertisers are running basically the same books on a quarterly basis. I check 2 on a daily basis. Since July, I think I have found maybe 12 books from those 2. Most were either .99 or 1.99. Note only one of those was an Indie. Wait does Russell Blake still count as an indie?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Rizla

That's all based on an "if" and is supposition. I asked f j torres if he had actual data to back up his statement.

Here are a few names. You can look at their standings on Amazon to tell they are making a living.
Russell Blake, Ryk Brown, Joe Nobody (although he is $9.99 for his books), Boyd Craven.
All of them hit 4 to 5 figures a month.
Amanda M. Lee and Annie Bellet are two more that make at least high 4 figures a month.

Ryk and Joe both make enough a month to have paid monthly employees.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by theducks

That happened when Tony went for the traditional (W/middleman) channels for (e)book distribution. Prior to that, you only could get Baen ebooks at Baen.com. Another fallout of that move, was the Baen Free-Library size dropped many titles.

That's Toni (Weisskopf)

I like your description of Amazon &c as Traditional

The Baen Free Library would have had to be reconstituted anyway as authors reverted their rights for self publication.

[Josieb1]

I know authors who actually publish with a small publisher who don't even make sales of 100 ebooks.

Needless to say they can't make a living off writing and couldn't afford the initial outlay to self pub.

[BearMountainBooks]

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.

I maintain that at least the first in that 10 must have reached much higher numbers in order to sell 1400 in subsequent (or other) titles. Without at least one big book, you don't have the visibility to sell those kinds of numbers on 9 other titles. And few authors have 10 books in a series that all sell that many. Even trad books sell the MOST in a first is series with 30 to 40 percent sell through on subsequent books considered VERY good (these are old trad figures that were published probably 10 years ago). I don't think the sell through has changed any--50 percent sell through on subsequent titles was common 5 and 7 years ago with kindles, but that is partly because Kindles were new enough that people were still collecting titles. There are fewer readers doing that now.

And even at 50k a year when you are self-employed, is not a high-on-the-hog a living because 15 percent comes off the top for social security in the US. That's BEFORE Federal or state taxes, which is going to eat another 15 to 25 percent. If there are 10 titles, the author is probably producing books. Expenses to get ONE book out per year is going to run about 1000 per book AT LEAST. Some authors spend even more. This doesn't count ad expenses if the author is actively advertising those other books. It doesn't count the two or three thousand required to get a book in audio and if you sell that many per year, an author has to be considering audio.

I work with several authors and a few have 10 titles (including myself). Selling 1400 of a first in series isn't impossible--but the price may vary from 99 cents to 2.99 or even require a couple of free runs that don't count towards the 1400 sales. If you have to take out ads to sell that amount, the "earned" money doesn't count because it's spent on ads. Then too, getting those other 9 titles to sell 1400--or ALL first is series to sell 1400 is a LOT trickier. You really need a LOT more than 1400 of a first series to have enough fans to try your other series and to continue to read the series that IS doing well.

It's also very difficult to sustain. Amazon's algos now take into account publication date--they don't show older titles as often and they don't show titles that don't have recent reviews as often. So an author has to constantly work to keep the momentum going. Fifty thousand one year is no guarantee of 50k the next. Authors have to plan ahead even if they have that kind of income.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, it's not supposition, it's maths. You don't need bestseller sales levels to make a decent income, as my calculation demonstrated. You can argue about what a decent income is, but whether it's $50k or $80k, you can achieve it with at most a couple of thousand sales each from a dozen books, which supports what fjtorres stated.

I am more inclined to go with what BearMountainBooks says, who is in the business of indie publishing.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Here are a few names. You can look at their standings on Amazon to tell they are making a living.
Russell Blake, Ryk Brown, Joe Nobody (although he is $9.99 for his books), Boyd Craven.
All of them hit 4 to 5 figures a month.
Amanda M. Lee and Annie Bellet are two more that make at least high 4 figures a month.

Ryk and Joe both make enough a month to have paid monthly employees.

They are in best seller status--not just your average indie. It's not impossible at all to make a living, but indie, like trad, have a few at the top and a lot of others not at the top.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I know authors who actually publish with a small publisher who don't even make sales of 100 ebooks.

Needless to say they can't make a living off writing and couldn't afford the initial outlay to self pub.

This is very true. I have done editing for at least two of such authors (many also self-pub and in the case of the two I am thinking of they do both small publisher and self). The one author sells more via self-pubbed on a per copy basis and the other bobbles back and forth. NEITHER is making a living from the books. The one author has been with a couple of different small publishers and mentioned one time that selling 20 copies the first month a book was out was not at all unusual. It would then bounce around that 20 number for a few months before tapering off. If the publisher took out an ad, the number would float back up for a month.

There often seems to be no rhyme or reason why a book will sell for a while and then not--bursts in sales are common. It can easily be a conversation that an author/publisher never sees. This is why I say it takes thousands of fans, not hundreds. Fans come and go. They switch genres. They switch authors. They have LIVES and often forget authors or stop reading for periods of time to do something else--this means they often stop spending on reading. They aren't always online. They don't all frequent book signings.

We authors are in constant need of new readers and ways to keep earlier readers engaged and interested enough to sign up for a newsletter or at least interested enough to check back every few months.

[fjtorres]

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.

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.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

[snip]

Expenses to get ONE book out per year is going to run about 1000 per book AT LEAST. Some authors spend even more. This doesn't count ad expenses if the author is actively advertising those other books. It doesn't count the two or three thousand required to get a book in audio and if you sell that many per year, an author has to be considering audio.

It's nice to hear that not all authors purchase the $100 "editorial service."

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I don't follow the Baen boards like I used to, but I suspect that Baen will be gobbled up by a larger publisher within a couple of years.

I think it's idiotic that the world is globalizing to such extremes that in some industries, the entire world is basically dependent on one or two companies. In IT, it's Microsoft/Apple for OS's, Intel/AMD for desktop/laptop CPU's, NVidia/AMD(ATI) for dedicated graphics cards.

Publishers are also moving in that direction, with subsidiaries, sub-subsidiaries and even sub-sub-subsidiaries. As if that is not enough, huge publishers are merging (Random House / Penguin), or bought by even bigger companies (HarperCollins is part of News Corp).

Take a look at the gigantic number of imprints HarperCollins has. Most of these imprints were publishers, way back when.

Random House is even worse.
Penguin is comparable to HarperCollins.

Now Penguin and Random House have merged into Penguin RandomHouse... to form a publisher of mammoth proportions. I shudder to think that it is possible that PRH merges with Simon&Shuster and/or HarperCollins.

In the end, I think it would be possible to be left with only two publishers; one giant company that is basically a merger of all of the Big Six (now 5), and the other is Amazon; and the rest fights over 1-2% of the market.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Fbone

It's nice to hear that not all authors purchase the $100 "editorial service."

To be fair, the first two anthos and first two books I put out did not have any editors. This is probably true of a lot of indies getting started. For one, there is a learning curve, but back when I started out, finding an editor was a lot more difficult (one who was good/understood plotting and one who was good at copy editing--not always the same person). The anthos were actually clean and one of the books had about 5 copy edit problems. The other book needed tightening and additional copy editing other than my own eyes. The four "free" copy editing passes that were done by various people didn't catch all the typos.

Now it's easier to find editors, but it's still difficult to find GOOD and GREAT editors for a reasonable price (especially for plotting/characterization/pacing). A lot of trad publishers outsource various pieces of the editing. I've worked with one lady who did contract work for a trad publisher, and I know another editor who has turned down trad editing jobs because they do not pay enough (both did copy editing, not storyline type things). Right now it's quite possible to hire an editor who works for both trad publishers and indies.

[BearMountainBooks]

@katsumani - I don't like it either. There are a couple of things readers can do to help publishers and/or authors: Buy direct whenever possible and leave reviews. Sadly, like it or not, the most valuable reviews for an author are still those left on Amazon because of the way their algos currently work, but ANY review helps, including just a star rating on GR or Leafmarks or other reading groups/forums.

Keep a list of your favorite authors on various forums or places like facebook (liking the authors or the series on FB actually does help because the more likes an author has, the more visibility the author has. FB algos will show posts to about 5 percent of the people following an author unless the author gets shares or likes or comments on a post. The more often a share/like/comment occurs, the more often that post AND the next post will show. Basically if people show an interest in an author's posts, they are seen more. This is why many, many companies have resorted to dog/cat videos. They will run a cute animal video. It gets LOTS of likes, shares and comments, especially if the caption says something like "If you think this is the cutest thing you've seen all day, LIKE and SHARE." At the same time, the company is likely to post something that is more product related.

Radio companies on FB have INUNDATED FB with these videos or little cute sayings and people share them all day long. Right underneath or on top will be the name of the company/radio station/etc.

Now and then, if you are a library-goer, ask your library to buy books by your favorite authors. Even if you have read them, always check out a book that you request as a show of good faith when the library orders books in for you.

Those are the easiest and most obvious things you can do for an author. I've probably left some out, but those came to mind.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Here are a few names. You can look at their standings on Amazon to tell they are making a living.
Russell Blake, Ryk Brown, Joe Nobody (although he is $9.99 for his books), Boyd Craven.
All of them hit 4 to 5 figures a month.
Amanda M. Lee and Annie Bellet are two more that make at least high 4 figures a month.

Ryk and Joe both make enough a month to have paid monthly employees.

I imagine those authors are the exception, and the examples doesn't answer f j torres comment:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And Indies don't need a deep fanbase to survive. No need to be the idol of millions to make a decent middle class income if they build up a catalog of a dozen or so good titles over a few years and acquire a few hundred followers.

It would be just great if those figures were true. But I find it hard to believe. If it is the case, I'd love to see some actual data backing it up.

You can make a decent middle-class income with a couple of dozen books and a few hundred followers? Please, show me the data.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They are in best seller status--not just your average indie. It's not impossible at all to make a living, but indie, like trad, have a few at the top and a lot of others not at the top.

IIRC at least one of those I listed also spent $3000 on his first book before publishing the book. At last count, I think in 4 years, he now has 50+ books.