Should You Self-Publish Your Book?
From Public Words:
Here’s the problem with self-publishing: no one cares about your book. That’s it in a nutshell. There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe. Many of those – perhaps as many as half or even more – are self-published. On average, they sell less than 250 copies each. Your book won’t stand out. Hilary Clinton’s will. Yours won’t.
So self-publishing is an exercise in futility and obscurity. Of course, there are the stories of the writers who self-publish and magic happens and they sell millions of books, but those are the rare exceptions. How rare? Well, on the order of 1 or 2 per million.
. . . .
Yes, the good news is that you can create a platform with social media, and that it is virtually free except in terms of your time.
But the bad news is that in a world that is completely oversaturated with traditional media, information, news, hype, marketing, books, other platforms, social media, blogs, magazines, online magazines, advertising everywhere, television, and so on, it’s incredibly difficult to stand out.
To do so, you have to craft an extraordinarily compelling message and story, create a clever platform around it that makes sense for what it is and who you are, and then have the patience to do what it takes to develop that platform through the social media and traditional media you’ve chosen. It can take years.
Link to the rest at Public Words
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
Whereas with a publisher … you don’t need a compelling story, right ?
Self-publish, and you have a 99-percent chance that the book will not sell more than a few copies.
Submit to publishers, and you have a 99-percent chance that it will never be sold at all.
This is not a case of apples and oranges; more like apples and ratchet screwdrivers.
Leave it on your hard drive, and you have a 99.99% chance it will never be sold at all, and certainly not in your lifetime!
I’d rather take the chance someone might throw money at me.
Wow! I never thought of any of that.
Plus, when you finally get the nod and the traditional stamp on your forehead and are placed in the back of B&N, single spine out..the world flocks to find you!! Because everyone is still flocking to B&N.
Oh wait…hundreds of blogs from former traditonal authors say something completely different.
How are any of these words helpful?
Just to the authors of the book at the end of the post, and re-referenced to in reply to the comments…
I’m SO close to add my 2 cents with a link to David Gaughran’s…
Oops, did it.
Why are those of us in the middle always forgotten? You’d think that as a middle child, I’d be used to this by now, but these articles only point to extremes–the poor sap who sells only 250 books and the phenom who becomes a millionaire. What about the many, many self-pubbed authors who have moderate to very good success, but don’t quite make the NY Times or land a 6-figure contract? Are we completely invisible?
Sorry for the rant, but I’ve just been seeing this same attitude over and over on several different blogs and one particular forum.
Because the ones in the middle don’t fit The Narrative, which must be maintained at all costs.
And to expand on that, while there used to be a healthy midlist author population, it demeans Art to admit that for some people writing is a job.
Look, I write because I like to write, but I wouldn’t write NEARLY as much as I do if I didn’t get PAID to do it. Yesterday I sat and cranked out 4,000 words of fiction because the pileup was getting too big, I haven’t been publishing enough lately, and I promised my readers a Reader Reward story. What I *wanted* to do was sit and read my new Iain M. Banks novel (“Surface Detail” in hardcover from HPB – five bucks!) What I *did* do was finish the damn story. I didn’t do it for Art. I did it for MONEY. (And to keep my word.)
But that sounds so, so, so dreadfully commercial. As Kort says, it is incompatible with the Narrative.
Same reason so many claim that Shakespeare of the Globe Theatre couldn’t possibly be the same fellow as that dreadful businessman in Stratford-on-Avon. Heaven forbid that Art and business should mix!
Are we still having this discussion in 2013? Is any idiot allowed to have a blog? (Yeah, I suppose so, if any idiot can self-pub.)
So let’s reload this wonderful little blog post with the words “Self-blogger” instead of “self-publisher” and then we come far closer to the mark.
This is a shoddy and overstated argument. On the one hand, “no one cares” about your book and self-publishing is an “exercise in futility.” On the other hand, with a “compelling message and story” and “patience” and “platform,” one may “stand out.” Of course, this “can take years.”
And, I note, this company offers book and platform building services to writers, and for a fee.
But if you take those same “years” and the writer is producing quality work, and is merely competent in the overhyped and overrated world of social media, I daresay the same results will happen without said fee to said interested party.
“Of course, there are the stories of the writers who self-publish and magic happens and they sell millions of books, but those are the rare exceptions. How rare? Well, on the order of 1 or 2 per million.”
This is a tremendous logical fallacy, and I hear it over and over again about self-publishing. Yes, you’re not going to sell a million books. But so what? There are many, many numbers between 0 and 1,000,000 (specifically, one million) and many of them are good numbers. Selling 100 books is pretty good.
By that logic, if an unemployed man can’t land a job as a Fortune 500 CEO, he shouldn’t attempt to look for a job. Or if a man can’t run a marathon, he shouldn’t attempt to exercise at all.
Actually, now that I think about it, that’s very common logic. But that kind of thinking is a tremendous self-limitation, and should be avoided.
Technically, there are 999,999 integers between 0 and 1,000,000. There are several infinities of numbers between them.
*ducking and running*
*from a safe distance*
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. You are of course completely correct. This reminds me of cousin Eddie from the “Vacation” movies, a perpetual ne’er do well who mostly lives off (his and others) government benefits.
When Clark asks why he’s been employed for umpteen years, he is told that “he’s holding out for something in management.”
*from a safe distance directly above Marc*
“Hey look up!”
*drops giant snowball*
Doing a little back-of-the-envelope math, the number one needs to reach — or exceed — isn’t a million, but 10,000. Which appears be an achievable number by any competent writer who can manage some marketing.
Why 10,000? Assume one releases an ebook priced at $2.99 on Amazon: each copy sold will generate about $2.10 in royalties, multiply that by 10,000 & one has $21,000. Write two or three books a year, & one has a decent income.
And more books one gets published, the lower the target number becomes since fans who discover an author thru one book will want to read all of the other books that author has written.
But I suspect I’m preaching to the choir by making these points.
Geoff, don’t forget that those books also continue to sell in the next year, and maybe the year after that too, especially if you’re adding to a series each year.
I’ve been indie since 2006, and now have 39 books on Kindle, plus some translations. Each year I add another 4 or 6 books to my catalogue. Some sell 5000 copies in that first year, some sell closer to 15,000. Most continue to sell a minimum of 3000 the next year and the year after that. My backlist meant I was earning enough money to go full time author just 7 months after beginning to use KDP in Jan 2010 (I’m British, we couldn’t use it until a while after American authors). A good backlist is an amazing thing!
I read this as a joke. Laughed the whole time.
I’ve read Guys book and found it to be informative. I’ve also examined a few of his others. Does he give some good advice? Sure. Some of it is well-known to most self-publishers already, but he tends to speak to all audiences.
What bothers me about his books is that he seems to be following the Rich Dad formula for writing/producing them. The majority of them are simply a rehash of the previous advice, applied to a different subject. The end goal seems to be sell more books rather than offer new advice. To me it’s the non-fiction version of the JP book factory.
As for the article, I see an obvious fluff piece for Guy’s books. Nothing wrong with that, like I said previously, the majority of the advice is not bad. However, this whole opinion piece can be shot down fairly easily by even a slightly educated self-publisher. It’s antiquated at best.
I haven’t read it, but I think I’ve read other similar advice, from what I gather of the reviews of it. The problem is that non-fiction gurus often make platform a basis for fiction authors, even though they have no experience in fiction.
I have some non-fiction writer friends who are always talking about platform, and they are puzzled when I give my numbers, knowing that I don’t really try that hard when it comes to my platform. I haven’t even put out that many books yet, and I do just as well. Fiction is just a different ball game, and I kinda wish the self-appointed referees would understand I’m playing hockey and not baseball.
Look at it this way, Lynn. The self-appointed refs won’t call you for high-sticking since they think that’s how you should be holding the wood.
Very true. That’s why it’s always better to ask the other hockey players or refs and ignore the baseball refs.
At least, in fiction, the fight scenes are all in good fun….
The problem with statistics like the average book sells 250 copies is that they don’t apply to the person who is seriously considering an offer from a publisher and wants to make a career as an author.
If a publisher puts your book out with no fanfare, no distribution except digital, no marketing, a homemade cover and lukewarm blurb… it also sells like crap. Those are the things that make a book sell poorly, and those are the things that the bulk of those < 250 sales are doing. They put it out "to see what happens" and then nothing does.
I would love to see a survey that takes into account only those who paid for a) professional editing, or b) a professional cover. Those who spent at least a couple hundred on marketing or promotion (can be spent on anything, as long as that was the goal). On those authors who put hours a week into promotional activities (of any kind) for their book in the months following its release. Because that's what publishers are doing (and self-publishers ARE publishers).
That's what authors published by traditional houses are doing. So those self-published authors who act the same way are the only valuable data to compare with.
Can you sell more books with a multi-million dollar marketing and distribution juggernaut behind you? Uh… yeah, probably. That's a no-brainer. But can a career-focused author make more money money when you take into account higher royalties, control over pricing, etc. Maybe, but we'll never know as long as flat surveys gloss over those things.
Most big publishers don’t ‘care’ about your book, beyond how many they can sell. I, the self-published author, can do a LOT more for my career than wasting away as a debut/midlister in a large publishing house, where a book is just another widget.
In the 20 months I’ve been self-publishing, I’ve sold 2x the number of units that my previous NY publisher was able to do, even with their large-scale print distribution. And yes, my self-published income has also exceeded the advances paid on both my tradpub books.
The beautiful thing is that my indie titles will continue to actively earn for me for the next 20+ months (and far longer). Now if only I could get the rights back to my NY books, I’d be happy as a mollusk.
my favorite line that reveals his bias: “Your book won’t stand out. Hilary Clinton’s will. Yours won’t.”
Oh so you know me do you? And the thousands of other indies who write daily? Mr Morgan, with all due respect, you know nothing.
Whether a book does or does not ‘stand out’ is not decided by what this or any other self important blogger says. It’s decided by the readers. The millions of readers who bought countless millions of ebooks in the last couple of years. And they decide based on …drum roll…. the story!
When Amanda Hocking was writing they told her “You are not Stephen King” (remember she wanted to get published before she was 26 because that was when King got published).
“You are not Stephen King”
Turned out she didn’t HAVE TO BE. She was Amanda Hocking.
And MP you are so right–there are many writers who are doing quite well, the socalled middle writers who earn a nice income from their stories.
Note also the blogger is trying to promote a book on marketing later in the blog post, this is supposed to give you hope. No HOPE comes from writing fine fiction. A fine story WILL find its audience. And then a fuse is lit. But you need to keep at it. Hugh Howey had enough patience to see it lit, and so did many others.
What’s annoying about articles like this is that they offer no balance. One doesn’t need to sell a million copies to be a full time writer. Time and time again its been proven that sales that would be considered abysimal by a large publisher with expensive overhead are enough to create a comfortable lifestyle to a self published author.
Yes its true that nobody cares about your book. But its also true that nobody k ows about it. But how about pointing out that the field narrows a bit when we get into genre, and that with 10 or 20 books floating around, someone is going to find you.
Cold hard truth is a healthy thing, but not when its colored with obvious bias, which seems to be the tone here.
Ramon I agree. And also he makes it sound like some sort of random lottery, whether a book finds an audience, or ‘stands out’. Genre narrows it down and so does a good story. A good well written genre story is not competeing with bad fiction, its in a league of its own. Now Morgan would probably say: “yeah but if nobody knows about it you have to promote” Actually reviewers are more then enough promotion I find. And then their is that little “free sample” button on Amazon. Ah yes… the best promotion on the net and its free. Wow the reader in the free sample and with a decent ebook price and they will buy it. There’s your promotion.
I write in a very specific genre of erotica. I also maintain several “Listmania” lists for that genre. I am on the fifth one.
Someone asked me if I wasn’t being foolish making it easy to find the books of my “competitors.” I said, “No, because a person who buys a book a week will go through my lists in less than three years. Either my books are competitive – in which case they won’t be the last ones bought anyway – or they aren’t, which just means I’ll get their money after they’ve burned through everything else and are desperate for a fix.”
Never mind the fact that by encouraging interest in the genre in general by making it easy to see a variety of examples, I increase my own potential readership automatically.
And *really* never mind that the list entries for my books are (naturally) quite positive, whereas the ones for my “competition” aren’t always so positive. (If I like one, I say so: I don’t downgrade other people to make myself look good. But if I don’t, I say so, and I say why.)
@Marc. My wife has been on me about writing an erotica novel. Never thought about it, but not closed minded to it. How has it been for you?
I enjoy it tremendously and people pay me money to read it. Those were my two main goals.
Can you share a link to one of your listmania lists? I’d like to take a look at some of the good stuff in the genre. I have no experience with it at this point.
Thanks!
I will post one at the bottom of this reply. If our gracious host finds it inappropriate, I respectfully request that he remove the link without removing the reply. If the link is gone, you can find the Listmania! lists by going to my Author Page on Amazon. (And, similarly, you can find my author page by searching for my name, going to any of my books, and clicking on my name where it appears as the author under the title.) There are links to all five lists in my profile.
Here is the first list:
http://amzn.com/lm/R202I9AZNSH76M
It looks like a list to me, Marc.
Thanks, Marc. I didn’t think about just going to your Amazon page. Duh.
oops pardon the typo meant to say “and then THERE is …”
haven’t had my coffee yet today!
PG if you want please edit that typo. thank u!
arrg sorry edit#2 “give the reader a free sample and a decent ebook price…”
sorry PG coffee. you understand.
I thought the last four words of the article were the most interesting: “It can take years.”
Getting traditionally published “can take years”
Becoming a successful as a traditionally published author “can take years.”
Selling enough books to make a living either self or traditionally published “can take years.”
And there was me thinking writing was a way to earn lots of money overnight. Oh well, back to the lottery then.
Exactly–it could take years, and you’ll actually have to work at it. Shocking! And so unlike every other profession!
“It can take years.”
And success with trade publishing is instant?
Really?
As others have said – same tired rehash of the extremes. I gave away 10k copies last December in 5 days. It didn’t make me into Amanda Hocking (dang it!) but I did sell e-books, consistantly all year.
Some of us aspire to mid-list – to having a job that we LOVE instead of HATE. Is that such a terrible thing?
And, of course, he ends it with ‘BUY MY BOOK!’
Gee, if I wasn’t a well-mannered person, I could end my comment with ‘buy my books’ and a website.
Maybe next time.
The article comes across as thinly disguised advertising for the book and as link bait. Don’t waste your time.
+10 This.
Now I feel bad, I ignored that advice and sold more than 250 copies. Lots more. I promise to pay more attention to my betters in the future. Maybe some day I can have lunch with an agent.
Here’s the problem with self-publishing: no one cares about your book.
Here’s the problem with you: no one cares about your blog. Now, I shall continue with my tasks for the day, which include writing, and prep for launching my book.
This is an infomercial to buy a “how to” book. Read enough blogs and you’ll learn everything there is to know about self-publishing.
But, to answer “Should you self-publish” question, here is what I say: It’s my time and my money and I self-publish, not for money but for my gratification. If I keep at it, I’ll get better and the money will come too. And if I stop amusing myself by pretending to be a writer I shall stop.
“It will save you from yourself and that obscurity.”
Wow. Really? Gee, thanks! This is just another blatant attempt to lure authors who lack confidence and sell more of his friends’ book. I always note with interest, like many others here, how these apparent experts in the field of indie publishing seem to focus on the two extremes. Yes, there are a lot of indie books out there, but that surely means there are a lot of people making decent money from their work? What about all those authors and books between those two extremes?
Personally, I’m enjoying sitting somewhere between them, making a living from my passion and having a damn good time of it too… without fading into obscurity.
I guess that makes me an Author-Publisher-Entrepreneur too… maybe I should write a book about it too! Maybe we all should. I’m sure many of us here at PG’s place are all three of those things.
Yes, Guy is trying to lure people into buying his book, but so what? The biggest thing I took from the post is that most people won’t sell because most won’t do anything beyond the “normal” stuff to get it out there.
He’s right – most people won’t give a damn about your book, so you have to, and then you have to somehow convince others to do so.