My Amazon bestseller made me nothing
From Salon:
In one more week I was going to be a millionaire.
At least, that was the rumor circulating around my wife’s family. One more week on Amazon’s best-seller list and I would have seven figures in the bank, easily. Her cousin had looked this fact up on the Internet, so it had to be true.
“Please tell them that is nowhere near true,” I said. “But don’t tell them how much money I’m actually going to make.”
“OK,” my wife said. “Can I tell them how many books you sold?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
I didn’t have a good answer. Secrecy seemed like the practical, professional response in times of success.
. . . .
This past summer, my novel, “Broken Piano for President,” shot to the top of the best-seller lists for a week. After Jack Daniel’s sent me a ridiculously polite cease and desist letter, the story went viral and was featured in places like Forbes, Time magazine and NPR’s Weekend Edition. The New Yorker wrote one whole, entire, punctuated-and-everything sentence about me! My book was the No. 6 bestselling title in America for a while, right behind all the different “50 Shades of Grey” and “Gone Girl.” It was selling more copies than “Hunger Games” and “Bossypants.” So, I can sort of see why people thought I was going to start wearing monogrammed silk pajamas and smoking a pipe.
. . . .
This is what it’s like, financially, to have the indie book publicity story of the year and be near the top of the bestseller list.
Drum roll.
$12,000.
Hi-hat crash.
. . . .
I just started getting my royalty checks from July the other day (the publishing industry is slow like that). From what I can tell so far, I made about $12,000 from “Broken Piano” sales. That comes directly to me without all those pesky taxes taken out yet (the IRS is helpful like that).
Don’t get me wrong; as a guy with a couple of books out on an independent publisher I never thought I’d see that kind of money. Previously, my largest royalty check was about $153. I’m thrilled and very proud to say I earned any money as a writer. That’s a miracle. It’s just not the jewel-encrusted miracle most people think bestseller bank accounts are made from.
The book sold plus or minus 4,000 copies. (The publishing industry is hazy like that. What with sales in fishy-sounding third-world countries like Germany and England.) Being on an indie press I receive a more generous royalty split than most: 50 percent after expenses were deducted.
Link to the rest at Salon and thanks to Margaret for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases. 
50% after expenses…
“Hollywood accounting”, I believe it’s called.
Life’s unfair and then you die.
Now, how many of you authors would want this situation to happen?
Looking at my sales for the past couple months, I’d take a ton of visibility and 12 grand. Would it cost me later? Maybe, but if you can put a book a month out, what’s the problem?
Maybe Eraserhead books isn’t the best option. How are the other 3 titles doing? Did they make any money? Or does that not count? I guess if I was only offering print books on those it might hurt me too.
I don’t know what to think of this. Which indies do you put on your side and which do you spurn? Those going from $153 to $12,000 and then complaining about it, or those putting their head down and doing the work?
4 books since 2009 – congratulations.
He not indie in the meaning of self published. He’s indie in the sense his book was published by a small, independent press. His publisher, Lazy Facist Press, can be found here: http://lazyfascistpress.com/
I’m starting to get the sense that the only author you believe is really “doing the work” is you.
As Abel pointed out, the author is publishing through an independent press, which can severly hamper output. And I think we’ve covered that the “book a month” strategy doesn’t mean much if the books suck.
“I’m starting to get the sense that the only author you believe is really ‘doing the work’ is you.”
You know, I feel that way too sometimes. Unfortunately paying readers could care less.
I’m not sure he’s complaining either. :/
“My book was the No. 6 bestselling title in America for a while, right behind all the different ’50 Shades of Grey’ and ‘Gone Girl.’ It was selling more copies than ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘Bossypants.’”
“From what I can tell so far, I made about $12,000 from ‘Broken Piano’ sales.”
If both these things are true, somebody is screwing this guy over in a big way.
I think a lot of people think indie presses are great because there’s some, like, passion, or something, and they always say “Sure, you give up a huge advance, but you likely get a small and dedicated and passionate team of etc.” but I think in most cases authors are giving up both. Most indie presses don’t have the resources for either high advances or big publicity campaigns.
I say this as the owner of one myself. But my authors get 70% of whatever’s left after Amazon and Apple take their cuts, so I hope that mitigates things. Eventually I hope to be able to offer signing bonuses (never advances).
“My book was No 6 for a while” might mean for a week or two (and probably does). Two weeks is about 5 percent of a year. So, 12 grand in a couple of big weeks isn’t bad – multiply that by 20 and it would be a quarter million over a year.
Not necessarily, or at least that isn’t necessarily the whole story. As we’ve seen, it doesn’t take much to get on bestseller lists, especially in a slow sales week. The real scam is that people think bestseller lists are incredibly significant.
Everything Salon posts about Amazon is clickbait. This was true when this was posted a year ago, and it’s true now.
What’s more interesting about Broken Piano for President was the mentioned Cease and Desist Letter (which is, incidentally, pretty much the reason it hit the top list):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/jack-daniels-book-cover_n_1696453.html
The income tax is what would stink. $12,000 for a month would make me pretty darned happy.
Of course, making a deal with Jack Daniels to be a product tester would make me really happy, but maybe that would send the wrong message about trademark infringement….
I must have dozed off in Math class when 12,000 was proven equal to ZERO.
Must have dozed off in English class when they went of the definition of “hyperbole” too.
It’s the same math that says Amazon has not yet made a profit.
I wonder how much his publisher, Lazy Fascist Press, made. I bet it was more than 12 grand.
You all have permission to slap me, hard, if I ever whine about getting “only” $12,000 in sales. Just pick whoever is closed to Richmond and send them to my house.
Dibs!
Yeah, but I get to smack you right back for some of the things you said that annoyed me.
Line forms to the left.
Not me. I might hurt that purty mouth.
Did you ever write for sitcoms? You’re the funniest guy here, and that seems to be your sensibility.
Well, thank you, but no. I get annoyed enough with myself when I write. In a room full of other writers, there might be bloodshed.
Probably mine.
Especially if you start doing dramatic readings.
“Line forms to the left.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GW0Vnr9Yc
Exactly the scene that popped into my mind as I was typing.
LOL. I bet.
I’m an hour away from Richmond…but not into physical violence.
I’d come but I don’t have a spare three days to wait in line.
I’d fly to Richmond, but not to slap you. To break into your piggy bank. I could use the money.
I’m starting to think I should organize a TPV Writer’s Conference in Richmond. But without the slapfest.
Maybe a dunk tank, instead.
I’d pay.
I’ll let them slap me twice. And call me ugly as a bonus.
Saw this on Galleycat today and, like Will, wondered if they didn’t know how to read a calendar over there.
When the Salon story appeared a year ago, it did get me to check “Broken Piano” out of the library. It was literary fiction and not to my taste. Not that it’s bad — I didn’t care enough to read it through and form a defendable opinion — but there was a reason it was a short-lived fluke best-seller, as PV explained a couple years ago. (See? You don’t have to give clicks to PuffHost.)
The takeaway from this, as Meryl says, is to understand when you should count your blessings.
I didn’t read it as the guy complaining all that much. It felt more like he was letting people know that bestseller =/= lavish lifestyle. This paragraph sealed it for me:
You mean the Castle TV show is NOT representative of reality ? Man ! That’s SO mean !
No, I have it on good authority that the NYPD only lets authors go on ridealongs, not join the detective team.
That’s reserved for movie and TV stars.
It’s James Patterson’s or Stephanie Meyer’s or JK Rowlings or Stephen King’s or Nora Robert’s or (insert big name here)’s reality. They could afford that domicile in NY proper (millions + millions for that stylish baby.)
You do not know how much I covet that apartment of his.
I’m not getting it, why blame Amazon best seller list? How about the entity between Amazon and this author. Currently this book is sold in Kindle for $8.95, and selling less than a book a day. He should be glad to have sold 4,000 copies.
And if he would have sold that many copies at that price as a self-pub he would have made about $25,000.
I saw that price and guffawed a little. I wonder how many would have been downloaded if they’d halved that price?
Lot’s of silliness from this author, as we saw last year, starting with how he thinks 4k sales translates into millions for anyone, let alone him, no matter what pub system or math you’re using.
Of course, this is all speculative because had he gone straight indie there’s no guarantee that the publicity and resulting sales boom would have occurred but, using given info, and a little KDP 101 math (and just considering e-book figures) we arrive at:
4k copies @ $8.95 X 70% royalty (W/O agent fee) = $25,060.
Lazy Fascist Press?
Hmm. I can’t help but imagine a meeting between a bunch of young hipsters who decide on an inappropriate and offensive company name because they’re so super cool and edgy.
Here’s the irony: judging by the slowness and confusing opacity of their royalty process, how little sales information flowed to the author and the pittance he feels he received, their name seems fitting.
While we’ve all come to expect rampant, anti-Zon bias from Salon, the content of the article, I think, suggests that a different title should be used:
Change –
“MY AMAZON BESTSELLR MADE ME NOTHING.
My novel shot to the top of the site’s bestseller list last summer. You won’t believe how little I got paid.”
To -
“I HAD AN AMAZON BESTSELLER AND MY PUBLISHING DEAL LEFT ME WITH NOTHING.
My novel shot to the top of the site’s bestseller list and you won’t believe how little I got paid after my publisher took their cut.”
But all in all we have the real moral of the story here:
“The publishing industry is hazy like that.”
Seems so.
Okay, seriously, he never said that. He said the complete opposite in response to what others were saying:
Ok, he didn’t honestly expect “millions”, but from 4K sales, through a publisher no less, he still seems shocked that he only made $12K. Total sales (using his e-book price point) without ANYONE taking a cut was only $35,800.
If $12k is s “high-hat failure” then what, did he expect 20-30 grande? Or 90% of the total sales? Through a publisher?
Still seems silly.
At least he gets to claim he is an Amazon bestselling author from now on.
The author is lucky he had a bad (infringing) cover or he would have made a lot less. Also, isn’t $12,000 about 2.5 times as much as most represented authors receive for a novel. From what I understand, most never earn the full advance (as against royalties).
There’s a moral to this story, somewhere. Maybe someone less cynical than me can take a stab at it.
Most people who get rich with a single bestselling book have that book on the bestseller list for more than a week.
For example, Hunger Games (which the author claimed to have sold more copies of during its Jack Daniel’s-induced heyday) was on the NYT bestseller list for 100 consecutive weeks and USA Today’s for 135 weeks.
If this author had the same sales volume for 100 weeks, the book would have made more than a million dollars ($12,000 x 100 = 1.2 million).
What I got out of this article: The author was just trying to say that it doesn’t take as many sales as people think to get high in the Amazon rankings.
Yeah, but getting the Amazon Editor’s Pick–now THAT’s the brass ring. If I ever got that, I’d be standing on a mountaintop singing Amazon’s praises.
Also, if I got to the top of the bestseller list. Because sales.
Back in the 1980s, I read a survey that said most authors average $4000 a year from their writing. No one is quitting their day job over $4000 a year, not even in 1980s dollars. Now it looks like inflation has tripled that, but so what? It’s still just beer and pizza money.
My illusions about making money off my writing died right about then. I have known all along that I’ll never get rich at this, but at least I’ll die happy.
The only time the poor returns on writing bothers me is when non-writers breathlessly ask how many millions my last novel made…
Conversely to Lynn Mc Namee, maybe the point is that getting to the top of best-seller lists doesn’t equate to the zillions of dollars you might imagine. I’d probably do the same — think I’d hit the big-time, before bothering to do the maths (and since a publisher is involved the OP wouldn’t have had access to actual sales figures, just ranking, right?).
I know someone who has supposedly been temporarily near the top of sales for her chick-lit novel and has been lurking around Yachts-R-Us shops. But she sells it for 89 cents…
And I don’t blame the OP for re-raising the whole thing. It’s a viable marketing theme and we’re all looking for good blogging subjects.
What on Earth is this dude complaining about?! $12K is ridiculously good money for literary fiction, especially in a single month.
If he wants to be a millionaire (or if his family wants him to be), he needs to man up and write romance (or his in-laws need to do it). That’s where the millionaire potential is.
$12K for a lit novel is enough to make me take four sh*ts and die.
I’d be in the stall next to Libbie’s taking a celebratory dump, too. But I intend to survive the poo-fest to make good use of the 12K (or whatever after Uncle Sam grabs their slice.)
(And I’d tell him to hit the New Adult Romance or Steamy Paranormal for the big moolah.)
I remember this when it came out a year ago. I’m dubious that he was on the overall Amazon bestseller list because I know people who are and they are moving way more than 4000 copies. More likely he was on a top 100 for a subcategory, which is frankly pretty easy.
So it took him a year to learn how much he made, and that it was disappointingly little? Sounds like a problem.
There’s a big difference between $12,000 a year later and $24,000 that gets paid out each month during that year. Depending on where you live and your needs, that could be life-changing money.