The Range of Money in Epublishing
Obviously I think it’s very true that money is to be had in epublishing. I’ve made enough to quit my day job, and that’s not shabby. We’ll probably make high five figures this year, which according to many an article and estimated average, is better than a lot of authors can hope for.
However–so many factors contributed to this, and I firmly believe one of the biggest ones is that we’ve published with at least one publisher who has managed to effectively sell our books. If it were as simple as our name selling books, we would see a far smaller range between our lowest selling book and our highest selling.
For the sake of example, I’m going to give two (rough) sets of number representing one of our least profitable titles and one of our most profitable titles. They both came out within a few months of each other, over a year ago.
Book #1 – Erotic Paranormal Romance
Copies Sold: Less than 200
Royalties Earned: Less than $125
Book #2 – Paranormal Romance
Copies Sold: Over 4,000
Royalties Earned: Over $7,000
(edit: updated figures put it over $24,000 in July 2011)
One of these books is currently earning over $500 a month. One of them is averaging $5 a month or less. I don’t think it’s difficult to guess which is which.
I think there are a lot of factors that go into this, and I think not everyone would have the same experiences with which publishers offer them the most money. Many epublishers have niches and if you don’t fit into that particular niche, you may never find the fan base you’re hoping for.
This just circles back to the most important thing in epublishing: research. If you haven’t purchased and read (or at least skimmed) ten books from an epublisher, don’t submit there. If you can’t bother to go through a complicated checkout procedure to get the books–why would any other reader? If you don’t like the books…why would you want to publish there?
You want to be sold alongside books you like, books that match the theme and tone of your writing. Breaking this rule will very often lead to heartbreak in the long run. Trust me. I’m speaking from my own broken heart on this.
In: Real Anecdotes, Show Me the Money · Tagged with: sales stats
on August 29, 2010 at 1:02 pm
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[...] been posting on my geeky blog this morning, sharing a little bit about the range between our lowest earning books and our highest [...]
on September 2, 2010 at 11:50 pm
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I love all your data posts, whether they have pretty graphs or not.
Thank you so much for sharing this info.