July 2014 Author Earnings Report
From Author Earnings:
It has been nearly half a year since we first pulled data for nearly every ranked ebook on Amazon.com’s thousands of category bestseller lists. This is our third quarterly report, and every data set tells us something new. With enough reports, we should be able to spot emerging trends in the world of digital publishing in order to help authors make the best decisions with their manuscripts.
As before, we are dividing the ebooks up by publication path while looking at the following four measures: the number of ranked titles, the number of unit sales, gross earnings, and authors’ earnings. Our primary focus at AuthorEarnings.com is the writer, so we pay special attention to the last of these measures.
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Of note here is that all of our graphs show remarkable consistency across data sets taken over the course of half a calendar year. And with our latest data set, we estimate that self-published authors now account for 31% of total daily ebook sales regardless of genre. This makes indie authors, as a cohort, the largest publisher of ebooks on Amazon.com in terms of market share.
Gross sales are where it begins to get interesting. Now we are factoring price into the equation. We know self-published ebooks cost less than ebooks from the Big 5, but how much less? Being able to see the combined effect of price and sales rank in a single graph for 120,000 ebooks is very powerful. A lot of small discrepancies begin to average out with such a massive sample size. And while indies have seen positive movement across all three quarters, it’s too soon to tell if this is a global or a seasonal trend. It could be that indies promote their books year-round while major publishers pull out all the stops around the Holidays. This time next year, we should be able to answer this question.
In February, we were able to announce that self-published authors are earning nearly as much as Big 5 authors combined when it comes to ebook sales on the Kindle Store. In the two quarters since, the earnings for Big 5 authors has shrunk while that for indies has grown. We can now say that self-published authors earn more in royalties than Big 5 authors, combined.
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It bears putting a number here and stressing what we are seeing: Self-published authors are now earning nearly 40% of all ebook royalties on the Kindle store. The days of looking at self-publishing as a last option are long gone. A lot has changed in six months.
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It wasn’t surprising to see that most Big 5 books employ DRM, but we were shocked to see that it is practically 100% of them. Indies, on the other hand, locked down roughly 50% of their titles. Since there isn’t any variation in the Big 5 books, we are forced to look at the self-published titles for any effect on sales, and indeed there is one. The 50% of non-DRM ebooks account for 64% of total unit sales.
Indie titles without DRM sell twice as many copies each, on average, as those with DRM.
We believe this is one of the most important graphs we have ever published. At a glance, we can see how each publishing path performs in the top genre categories, and we can also see how these genres compare to one another in both total revenue and market share by publishing path. This last distinction is crucial, because the old-time advice to “never self-publish” has now faded to the advice that “self-publishing only works in certain genres.”
The truth is that, regardless of which publishing path an author chooses, some genres of trade ebooks sell vastly better than others, period. Other genres languish. For Big 5 authors, Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense is by far the most lucrative genre. But you don’t hear many people assert that traditional publishing is only good for people writing sleuths. Another common refrain is that nonfiction and literary fiction are uncrackable genres for indies. But in non-fiction, self-published authors are earning 26% to the Big 5′s 35%.
It turns out that Big 5 publishers have nearly as small a portion of Romance earnings (18%) and Science Fiction & Fantasy earnings (29%) as indies have of Literary Fiction earnings (13%) and Nonfiction earnings (26%), respectively.
Self publishing isn’t just viable for Romance and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. While indie authors are absolutely dominating traditionally-published authors in those particular genres, indies have also taken significant market share inall genres, including Mystery/Thriller/Suspense and Non-fiction. The market for literary fiction is anemic for indie authors simply because it is an anemic segment of publishing overall.
In fact, Literary Fiction makes up only 2% of Amazon ebook unit sales and 3% of Amazon ebook dollar sales. More startling is the fact that 20% of that 3% belongs to a single aggressively-promoted title, The Goldfinch.
Link to the rest at Author Earnings.
Author Earnings, Ebook/Ereader Growth, Royalties, Self-Publishing
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Ain’t it grand? It made my eyes hurt, but I rather liked the animated pie chart GIFs, watching the indie wedge grow and the trad pub wedge shrink.
Where does YA fit into the genre chart, do you suppose?
There’s just so much richness in this data for analysis, for all the reports on the site, including the just prior Tenured vs Debut report.
I do write romance mostly and new adult but I wouldn’t mind knowing how YA does as well. It would be interesting to know.
I’m betting there is a strong corelation between literary fiction fans and having to read in traditional book form.
None of my book loving, literary fiction friends owns a Kindle, though I keep extolling its virtues.
Fascinating charts.
I’m curious about YA as well, not so much as a separate category as to where it shows up in the charts above. After all, the present top 4 2014 Amazon Kindle bestsellers are: The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant. Can’t imagine they’re ignored in the above, but I’m not sure where they show up.
A real service again from Hugh Howey and Data Guy. Thanks, to both gentlemen!
As to the Goldfinch capturing 20% of literary fiction dollars:
I’m half way through the book and I am enjoying it but what I notice is that in all respects it’s a Young Adult novel clothed as literary fiction and, in that guise, won the Pulitzer.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
Obviously, it was a good decision, whoever made it, and the result was a book easily promotable.
But read it yourself. See if you agree.
I think this was a maneuver possible only because of the fuzziness of the boundaries we draw in trying to describe and classify fiction.
And I’ll predict that other YA-eligible titles will be positioned and marketed, trying to learn from the example of Goldfinch. Easy reading makes for easy word of mouth.
Seriously, please, what really differentiates literary fiction from genre fiction these days? I ask because a WIP might just be *ahem* LitFic but I’m not sure.
Time or the belief that you’re a ‘literary author’ appear to be the only two things that define it.
Historically, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (a classic lit fic now) was popular fiction back in its day. Hell, it was the fifty shades of the Victorian era, top shelf and everything.
Jane Austen was a popular romance author for a very long time until someone found literary value in what she wrote.
You either self-proclaim yourself literary, or you wait until someone else does it for you.
But if you want to define if what you have written is literary or not, your story will have layers of stories hidden beneath it. It will have a deeper meaning. Saying that, most authors don’t know they write lit fic. They just write, and it happens. Then fifty years after they’ve died, someone interprets the inner meanings in the story.
Star Wars is lit fic now. ‘The force’ has many levels of meaning to people. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intended to be lit though. ^^
Write it, enjoy it and let the readers decide if it’s lit.
P.S. Great reports as always. Thanks Hugh and Data Guy.
Is Cormac McCarthy literary or genre? He’s written westerns, apocalyptic science fiction and suspense thrillers.
Genre/literary is just a label booksellers and publishers use to identify a work so that readers can easily find it. Everything else is b******.
I disagree with that on the BS. Literary critics have been interpreting literary fiction for longer than there have been publishers. Some publishers might use the term to market a particular book, but it doesn’t change the fact that Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written as a protest against Oscar Wilde being imprisoned in Reading Gaol under the La Bouché Amendment (which was imprisonment for being homosexual).
It doesn’t change the fact that Catcher in the Rye is the most banned book in history, or that Voltaire and Swift were so vile because they were heading towards the Age of Enlightenment.
Lit fic has always existed. It just used to mean something.
it doesn’t change the fact that Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written as a protest against Oscar Wilde being imprisoned in Reading Gaol
Nothing could change that ‘fact’, because it is an obvious lie. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in 1895. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886.
According to Wiki? Oh, it must be true if Wikipedia said it. Also, published, not written.
Oh god, I’m gonna have to dig my first year research out of the attic again to make a point aren’t I? It’s amazing how much literary criticism that’s in old university libraries is not online for the masses. Gimme a few hours to venture into the attic, and I’ll be back with the actual timeline.
Claire, with all due respect, absent mischievous Gallifreyans it’s not possible to write a book after it’s published. You may be right about this, but lashing out before getting your facts in a row will not help your position.
If Wiki’s timeline of the writing and publication (and inspiration for) Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is in fact that far in error, the thing to do is not to point and scoff, but to fix it. In the meantime, while of course one shouldn’t rely on Wiki for serious scholarly matters, the notion that a simple and verifiable statement about one of the most famous books in literature is that far off beggars imagination.
Kurt Vonnegut thinks he writes literary fiction. Everybody else says he writes science fiction.
A huge factor is the way the book is packaged and sold. Within reason, of course, give it a litfic title and cover and tag line, let litfic readers find it, et voilà!
Thanks for all the responses. We’ll have to see how it’s received by the LitFic community. It should be an interesting distraction…
Fantastic report. Thanks Hugh & Data Guy
“Easy reading makes for easy word of mouth.” – Ryan Petty.
That is well stated. It summarizes the element I think most readers want, word choices and concepts that help the reader easily slip into the narrative. It requires not only skill, but a certain empathy that I think some writers don’t have.
I consider that perhaps the single most important thing for successful writers – empathy for the reader. It may not be intentional or deliberate, but the ability to perceive the impact your writing may have on someone is an overlooked topic in writing circles. It’s the difference between an engaging read and a navel-gazing collection of words that inspires boredom.
You can have a lot of sophisticated detail and nuance in your writing as long as the work has a welcoming flow. Simple to explain, nigh impossible for most to manage.
More on topic, it takes some real courage in this climate to self-publish literary work and non-fiction work, what with most of the community composed of advice and comments from genre writers. Hats off to those authors. Carry on and godspeed.
the ability to perceive the impact your writing may have on someone is an overlooked topic in writing circles.
On the other hand, Thomas Wolfe didn’t know or care what the impact of his writing would be on his readers. After “Look Homeward, Angel” was published, nearly everyone he knew shunned him because they saw themselves (correctly) in his semi-autobiographical novel. He didn’t care, nor should he have.
You write what you write. You write how you want. Maybe you’re not writing for this generation. Maybe you’re writing for forever. In that case, screw the demographics and the market reports and the pie charts. Just write.
Fair enough, but I’m not saying you should write what is popular or comfortable for the reader, only that you should empathize with how the reader takes in the material. You can write whatever you wish and rattle a lot of cages. Your writing can cut to the quick and really wound, or it can be for future generations while being dismissed by the current one.
However, if the writing is dull or self-indulgent, if it is little more than masturbation on the page, it won’t strike a cord with readers. Scribbles and fury signifying nothing are not what Wolfe wrote. I submit he did care about the quality of the writing, which is my (perhaps poorly explained) focus, not the subject matter of the story.
Amen, Sarah.
I don’t aim for simple word choice with my writing. I aim for beauty, whether I’m writing historical fiction or literary fiction. Beauty doesn’t mean it’s necessarily complicated, but it certainly doesn’t mean that I take the path of least resistance with my words, either. If it’s not to an individual reader’s taste, then that just means I’m not the writer for them, and I’m fine with that.
While I’m certainly not a millionaire, I do just fine sales-wise by doing what I do, so there are at least some readers out there who don’t require the barest simplicity in order to enjoy a story.
I didn’t argue for simplicity either. Empathy doesn’t equate to writing to the lowest common denominator, but the failure to effectively communicate what I intended is my fault.
You didn’t fail to communicate effectively, SM. I understand completely what you mean, and I agree. I also agree with Libbie that beautiful does not mean complicated.
Indie titles without DRM sell twice as many copies each, on average, as those with DRM.
That’s a statement of fact.
Let’s imagine that the only reason for this reality is that (egads!) some purchasers buy non-DRM titles so they can share the book with their friends and family members.
Does this really matter if it means the author makes twice as many sales?
One reason I would choose non-DRM over DRM is platform death. When the Barnes & Noble NOOK finally dies (any month now, according to pundits), it will leave all NOOK owners with a whole library of DRM books which cannot be read on another device, even though the NOOK owners paid for the books. This is like having a publisher go out of business AND take all its books off your personal bookshelf. The NOOK format is .epub, the international standard, so all that prevents me from reading my ebooks purchased from Barnes & Noble on any compatible viewer is the DRM. Not cool.
One reason that might be true is authors who don’t put DRM on their books also enable lending. It’s a big factor in my purchasing – can I lend it once to 1 friend/my husband if I enjoy it to turn another reader on to the author/book? Or am I denied the joy of sharing?
Who in their right mind would want to prevent the sharing of books?? The stupidity of publishers–it astounds.
It’s a lost sale if you allow a book to be shared once with one person for as long as the ereader/retailer exist. Sharing is baaaad.
I’m always a bit shocked when indie titles don’t permit sharing.
A surprising number of small presses don’t allow sharing either. I don’t get it. But it’s right up there with thinking DRM prevents piracy.
It’s a lack of the ability to look at books from a readers perspective. Same failure they had with Bookish and that I’ve seen with many of their online stores like HarperCollins.
Non-DRM also means TTS is available. It also means unlimited reading devices.
In the real world it means an easy conversion to non-Kindle devices or if the reader supports mobi format, no conversion.
DRM-free may not be causing the higher sales but odds are savvy publishers that know how to effectively promote their books also know DRM buys them nothing meaningful so DRM-free can serve as a proxy for “publisher savvy”.
Now that’s a great point! I wonder if the DRM titles are also priced high as well?
It’s worth pointing out that someone in the comments said that, after he did his own analysis on the raw data, eliminating the top 1% of book sales as outliers, there was practically no effect of DRM on sales one way or the other.
Given that book sales occur in a Pareto distribution, the top 1% are not outliers, but the bread and butter of the business. I would therefore strongly question whether it is appropriate to exclude them from any analysis.
Except they’re generalizing from that across all sales, not all popular ones. If two titles from three authors can make a difference across an entire price category of all e-books, it seems that their inclusion doesn’t speak for the majority of titles.
Those titles might be the “bread and butter of the business,” but they’re only the bread and butter for those fortunate few writers fortunate enough to have written them. They don’t necessarily say anything useful for all the people whose titles aren’t selling in that range.
Had a chance to check the effect of outliers. Eliminating the top 1% of all titles as suggested has an unintended consequence of unfairly skewing the averages against non-DRM titles, because there are more non-DRM titles than DRM titles in that top 1%.
A far fairer way to eliminate outliers in each category is to separately eliminate the top 1% of each.
After doing so, we still see the non-DRM titles outearning the DRM titles by 55%.
The remaining Non-DRM-enabled indie titles are also selling better than the remaining DRM-enabled indie titles at every price point:
http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/drm-author-earnings-by-price-no-onepercenters.png
I also looked at it by publication year, thinking that perhaps more recent books might both be selling better than older titles and be more likely to not have DRM enabled. Nope. Non-DRM titles published in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 are all outselling DRM-enabled titles from the same year:
http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/drm-author-earnings-by-date.png
The correlation between DRM and lower sales stands.
Could it be that authors savvy enough to disable DRM also happen to produce books of significantly higher *wincing* quality, and thus they sell better anyway?
I’m feeling very dim (it’s late over here in my time zone) but what are the figures on the left hand side of the last graph? $450,000 for what? What is the dollar amounts measuring?
To my eye it’s self pub romance earnings for the month of July (?).
The figures are measuring how much money much went to the authors of e-books in each of the various categories on July 14, 2014.
For example: $450,000 daily payment, via Amazon sales, to authors of the romance e-books included in the survey.
66% of that romance e-book money will go to writers that the survey classifies as “indie”.
And what’s even more amazing is that our July 14 dataset only captures 50% of all Amazon ebook sales and author earnings on that day.
Amazon’s overall total numbers for July 14 are roughly double what our dataset includes.
Gee, I wonder if the lady from NYC-BPH-DBW, y’know, the one with the Phd in something, will say this report is innacurate, toxic and not to be relied on because it doesn’t include the mean avg. daily temp of Bezos’s ass in his chair, or that of monkeys asses in the Congo, and therefore does not provide an acurate picture of E-book sales. All while completely avoiding parsing the raw data herself and actually showing anyone why it’s wrong.
Hmmm?
Dana is a very well-qualified statistician. Her problems are twofold:
1) She was handed a very horrible sample for her survey.
2) She doesn’t know enough about publishing to recognize (1)
DBW’s problem with our reports (and the most vociferous and vacuous rebuttals have come from DBW and their partners, like Mike Shatzkin), is that we are giving away much better data than what they were charging $300 for and using to lure people to their conference.
It isn’t our fault that their survey of Writers’ Digest readers was awful. But they sure act like it.
I disagree with Hugh about one point. If you look at what the DBW survey was supposed to accomplish, the sample was perfect. The whole point of that survey was to the answer a simple question: Are there enough suckers, er, aspiring writers who haven’t noticed that a contract with a legacy publisher is a bad deal. And the answer is yes, still enough “aspiring writers” to keep the pipeline full.
If you don’t believe that was the point of the sample, check out the demographics (emphasis added):
Now you know why they hate the Author Earnings.
I agree. The minute I saw “aspiring writers”, it was clear what the survey was actually about. We shouldn’t try to force it to be something it wasn’t. It very clearly reveals itself despite whatever the authors may have intended to show.
I wish they had included definitions of their categories. What is the difference between “Indie Published” and “Uncategorized Single-Author Publisher”, for example? What is the difference between “Indie Published” and “Small or Medium Publisher”? Not too long ago, “independent publisher” meant small presses, which were just small publishing houses, not to be confused with self-publishers.
If we were to combine some of these terms, the results shown in those pie charts would be even more overwhelming. In the first pie chart, the combination of “Indie Published” and “Uncategorized Single-Author Publisher” would be 38% of sales, MORE THAN DOUBLE the sales of the Big 5.
They’ve defined them all before. If I recall correctly, indie is self-publisher, uncategorized means that while there’s only one author published by the house, they don’t know that it’s a self-pub, small and medium is multiple author under the publishing company (such as WMG which publishes both Kris and Dean and will publish more).
Uncategorized could be either.
And there is a link to our methodology for publishing types in the 1st or 2nd paragraph of this report.
Thanks for pointing that out, Hugh. Don’t know how I missed it.
All this data by Howie and his lackey has been debunked time and time again. It’s worthless propaganda that has no basis in fact. Dozens of websites have gone through torturous explanations as to why they hope and pray this data is wrong. Traditional publishing is the only successful way to publish. The average self-publisher only makes pennies a day, if that, and only the megaseller authors count. And we nurture. And save literature and stuff.
I’m trying to cover all the arguments before we inevitably hear them. What have I missed?
You forgot that I’m a college drop-out! And people who have monied interests in us being wrong have Harvard degrees!
Data Guy is a sock puppet.
Hugh is doing it for attention. He keeps hoping he’ll eventually sell a book or two.
Me? I’m doing it for the money.
“…What have I missed?”
- A fresh screed from yet another embittered failure who was never good enough to truly succeed in real publishing.
- A shilling effort for Overlord Bezos, from one of the few he has annointed, and aptly rewarded with 30 pieces of silver, to lure more lottery hopefuls away from the proper path to the dreck spewing sewer that is KDP.
- More opining from the dilettante section, comprised of those not recognized as true “publishing thought leaders”.
Oh how I wish we could worth the word screed into more conversations. It’s a word that doesn’t get enough play as far as I’m concerned. Hehe.
Hell yeah, have to work “screed” in whenever you can.
On the Internet, no one knows your statistician is a dog.
You forgot the hidden agenda part.
1-3 snapshots isn’t enough to mean anything. How AE figures out what trad authors make is wrong. Not including print and audio makes it inaccurate. It doesn’t map to bookscan so it must be wrong.
I know I’m forgetting something.
And he steals lollipops from babies.
Amazon sales ranks are meaningless — they don’t tell you anything about how many copies a book is really selling.
And those 3 “successful” indie outliers?
The only reason they are selling any books is that they used to be traditionally published first. That’s how they gained their readers.
And now they each write 100 books a year.
And only sell them to each other.
And make pennies on each.
And think Amazon is their friend and buddy.
And are bitter and angry and jealous because they were rejected.
And only write porn — that’s where all the money is.
And are all still secretly sending their manuscripts to traditional publishers and still being rejected.
Oh, and ebook sales are flattening and declining.
WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN
There’s children reading this?
The ones looking for the stolen lollipops.
I helped fund a kickstarter for a 12-year-old to write a book this summer. She might read this. Check it out https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1679684631/casted-ebonhaunt-book-1
Bwahaha
JFK assassination? Author Earnings.
Reichstag fire? Author Earnings.
Black Death? Author Earnings.
Kentucky meat shower? Author Earnings.
Oh my god, I had completely forgotten about the amazingness that was the Kentucky Meat Shower.
Thanks, Author Earnings!
I had to do a search for Kentucky Meat Shower.
OMG. Buzzards for the win.
You left out the Hindenburg, the Titanic, and the Biblical Flood.
As well as Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin…
This is all just Amazon propaganda. People should not be misinforming aspiring authors. Shame on them.
Another Author Earnings report? *gulp*
Maybe if we keep really quiet, it’ll just go away…
Author Earnings is a bald-faced attempt at hiding the fact that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was fake, while the 1938 Martian invasion of Grover’s Mill, NJ, was real.
Stare at the graphs. Do the math. Tell me I’m wrong.
What you all fail to realize is that Hugh Howey + Data Guy is actually an anagram for “Gateway Dogy Huh-Uh,” which careful translation reveals as “Gateway dodgy? Huh-uh!” Meaning that the tradpub gateway to white-gloved, nutured caretaking is entirely Real and a Good Thing.
Data Guy and Hugh Howey are merely pen names of Scott Turow and Douglas Preston. Only writers of their caliber could create fiction as extensive, as believable, as that contained in Author Earnings.
LOL
+1
Hugh and Data Guy, can you tell us whether there are any plans to further break down genre categories to see how they compare? For example, upthread people wondered where YA fits into the current report. I wonder where Historical Fiction fits in. It would be awesome to see an expanded comparison of genres (and very helpful for some of us in planning near-future releases.)
The short answer to your question is yes, time and schedules permitting.
I did take a brief look Historical Fiction earlier today.
Historical Fiction makes up 7% of the overall gross Kindle sales. Indie books are somewhat underrepresented in Historical Fiction today, having so far captured 10% of the unit sales and 14% of the author earnings. I’d tend to see that as an opportunity.
I’m curious to see if the DRM free books also have lending enabled. That is something I suspect people do look for.
Great work guys.
YA (Teen and Young Adult) is another interesting category.
RIght now, YA makes up 7.7% of overall gross Kindle sales. Indies have captured 35% of all YA author earnings on Amazon, while the Big-5 hold 45%.
But half of the Big-5′s share is comprised of just two authors, Veronica Roth and John Green.
Sorry to add to the questions, but I’ve got one more for you Data Guy. If an author (such as myself) writes books that are fantasy and romance do they show up under both categories in your charts?
Also, thanks for continuing to do such a great job with the reports!
Books listed in multiple categories will show up under all of them in our charts.
In general, it’s a good visibility strategy to have your books show in as many different genre best seller lists as possible, as long as readers with those specific genre expectations don’t feel misled by the book’s story once they buy it.
Absolutely, thanks!
I haven’t thought through all the implications yet, (and really, I’ll leave that part to others much more qualified than me.)… but would this not skew the comparison of Author Earnings indie vs. Big-5 in the genre charts, simply because the indies are probably more aggressive at tagging multiple genres?
Of course, that doesn’t change the aggregate value of all bestsellers, which was the big reveal in the first place.
I can’t speak for all genres, but I write urban fantasy. Because of the elements that make it up it tends to fall under numerous genre categories (more than the retailers will allow authors/pubs to list). I have looked at comparable authors with traditional publishers and they usually have theirs listed under just as many categories as I do (often the same ones). At least in my genre the categories are on a level playing field regardless of publishing method.
Thank you Susan… my entire comment was based on an assumption, and we all know where those lead.
I see that as an opportunity, too. My new release is two clicks behind Sherman Alexie on a Top 100 list.
That’s good to hear, though. It confirms my suspicion that getting a foot into romance will be a good idea, and not a waste if I divert a little effort and time away from my established historical fiction fanbase for a short while.
Thanks!! And I’m looking forward to seeing a further genre breakdown, if you guys get the chance. Hooray!
Oooo! Libbie’s going smutty! (Welcome to the club.
)
I hope you’re ready for sexy ghost hunters. ‘Cause that’s what I’m bringing to the table. Apparently Seattle is plagued by ghosts, and only the horniest ghost hunters in the 206 can deal with ‘em.
My big quandary now is how to break into PNR as somebody with zero name in the genre (I’ll be doing it under a pen name so as not to scandalize the easily-scandalizable fan base I’ve built around literary fic and historical fic.) If anybody has any suggestions on what to do, kindly email me (my name links to my web site) and let me know.
1. This is one reason why Mark Coker should get to grips with his woefully inadequate discovery channels for mystery, thriller and suspense. Nothing for International Mystery and Crime, just five old-fashioned categories. Meanwhile look at the fantastic division into categories for sci-fi fantasy and romance that those authors enjoy.
I know I’m beating my own little tin drum on this, but it would make a big difference in meeting authors halfway.
2. Same problem with historical fiction which Mark is doing fine for the ancients. He’s got Historical Fiction Greece/Rome. But on Amazon, we’re resorting to using the non-fiction category “Rome” for a historical fiction series set in the 4th century because it’s not available on amazon as historical fiction Greece/Rome/ancient. Their only ancient category is you’re lucky enough to drill down in historical thriller. Seems counterintuitive.
Sheesh — Greece/Rome doesn’t even cover the ancients! I quit my day job on the back of Egyptian historical fiction, and I know another author who makes a living from ancient Mesoamerican stories. Syria and Persia are on the rise as hot new ancient settings (yay Xerxes!) and more obscure ancient cultures are also starting to get a lot of attention from authors.
Yeah, the categories on Smashwords need a lot of work.
Oh, come on. You guys all know that Howey fella and Data Guy — who is obviously ashamed and hiding his real identity — are making this stuff up! It’s all lies to fool people so they buy all that swill from Amazon, Destroyer of Worlds, in a quest to ruin literature.
Go get a contract from a real publisher, and sell some books so you can make a living and pay your bills. Sheesh.
Oh, that’s right. I forgot these guys are on the payrolls of Big Amazon.
Author Earnings is the Haliburton of SelfPub?
I’m seeing a lot of ‘anonymous’ comments here… I’m wondering if trad pubbed authors are sneaking over here to read the latest AE! Hey, welcome!!
I was just thinking how fortunate that we have Author Earnings data available because as KU grows, we’ll have a baseline to see whether KU is a good thing or a bad thing for indies.
You can bet we’ll be looking at the rankings of Select vs. non-Select books in quarters to come.
I would love to see that data.
And thanks to you and to Data Guy for doing this. It must be quite a time suckers, so I really appreciate it.