I met a nice lady at a networking event recently whose company delivers face to face training. She wasn’t too impressed by the presentation we were given on e-learning, which evidently lacked the human touch. When I suggested that a course on self publishing might make an attractive addition to her catalogue her withering look said it all – she only offers courses that help people make money. Well, there are people out there making serious money self publishing via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, to name but three.
Established authors, J.K. Rowling included, are eschewing large publishing deals because they can make more money by going it alone. But money is not the only reason. Authors are not well served by the publishing industry these days which is suffering the same digital decimation that befell the music business. Only about 2o% of printed books make money for their publishers and few authors’ earnings exceed their average $5000 advance. Moreover, readers increasingly prefer to download than wander down the bookshop. In February 2011, e-books represented 29.5% of the market – outperforming hardback books, trade and mass-market paperbacks.
I just sucked up an e-book called Let’s get Digital by author and self publishing expert David Gaughran. David found me on Twitter, this at time when my first tranche of approaches to literary agents with my children’s novel Jasper in the Shadow of the Dinosaurs have come back negative. He endured 18 months of rejections then decided to self publish, achieving considerable sales success. This book is the product of his learning curve and lucidly spells out why traditional publishing is so inefficient and wasteful and why self publishing should be the first resort for many authors, not the last. He also deals with issues such as piracy (don’t worry about it) and investing in professional editing and cover design (ignore them at your peril). I am seriously considering a change of plan (or Plan B) though I still need to do more research on what self publishing entails. Only a fool writes a book with a view to making money though, done correctly, self publishing can deliver reasonable returns. All that assumes you have a good story to tell.
David allowed me to quote his figures about what authors can expect to earn from the various publishing deals. For a traditional $25 hardback sale in a book store, the retailer gets 50%, the publisher 37.5% and the author 12.5% ($3.12) less the agent’s fee of 15%, leaving a royalty of $2.66 per copy. With an $8 mass market paperback, the author is left with $0.68. For a $9.99 trade published e-book, the retailer (say Amazon) takes 30% ($2.99) , the publisher 52.5% ($5.25) and the author is left with $1.49 after the agent’s cut. Meanwhile, a self published e-book retailing on Amazon might sell for say $2.99. The retailer gets 30% and the author (now publisher) picks up the remaining 70% ($2.09) with no agent’s fee to deduct.
Now here’s the really interesting bit. If the author of the trade published e-book sells 5000 copies she/he will earn $7450. The self published author will only have to sell 3565 e-books to make the same amount of money. The production and storage cost per copy is zero. After the initial investment is paid off, circa $2000 for editing and cover design, the rest is profit. Moreover, your book will never be off the shelves or out of print. Using Print on Demand (POD) you can sell in paperback format too or print short runs, say to distribute to reviewers or as give aways. There is a catch of course, you have to do all the marketing yourself, but even authors with book deals are now required do a lot of the leg work. Anyway, it’s fun and the best thing is you remain firmly in control.
In the unlikely event the lady at the networking event is reading this blog, she might consider reading David Gaughran’s book, as should anyone who wants to get to grips with the possibilities of self publishing. There’s a large community of self publishing enthusiasts out there who can help through every stage of the publishing and marketing process. One such is Joanna Penn whose website The Creative Penn features podcast interviews with successful self publishers and advice on how to build your Author Platform. So if you have a novel but can’t get it published by the traditional route, don’t despair. It may be the best thing that never happened to you.
You can download Let’s get Digital free from David Gaughran’s blog.
For a detailed analysis of Amazon’s pricing model, this blog by Alasdair White makes interesting reading. We should never forget who holds the purse strings.
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