The sad realities of publishing a book: money!

From Crazy Classic Rock:

In this blog post, we’re going to talk about money and the business side of things. Money is a topic that makes me anxious and it’s not the most fun one to think about, but until we have fully automated luxury gay space communism it’s necessary in order to live. I want to be as open and honest about all the sides of self-publishing so you can make the most informed decision you can as an author. There are many great things like having a lot of creative freedom and getting to call the shots, however that freedom comes with a tradeoff, you have to pony up a lot of money and your hope is to at least break even, or if you’re lucky you might make a profit! Whereas with a traditional publisher, you don’t have to pay anything up front, but they get a lot more control – they may pick a book cover design you don’t like or ask you to omit an entire chapter. Regardless, you’ve poured your heart and soul into this book and you hope that it’s something that will sell and not fade away into oblivion. You don’t want to feel like that person who bakes a cake for a party and then no one eats it.

. . . .

The books are being shipped from my home in England. The book itself costs £13.99. I calculated shipping costs on the Royal Mail website and using my website statistics did estimates for the countries where I have the most readers and followers, so the Anglosphere and Europe, mainly. If you live elsewhere and you want to buy the book through me, contact me and I’ll get you a shipping quote. I want to make sure that anyone who wants my book can get an autographed copy, which you can only get if you buy directly through me. If you order from another website, I cannot sign your book, unless we happen to bump into each other and you happen to have your copy of Crime of the Century with you – in that case I’d be very happy to sign it and take a selfie with you!

  • If you live in the UK, shipping is just £3.50, for a total cost of £17.49.
  • If you live in Europe (not just the European Union, but also other countries in Europe), the shipping is £11, for a total cost of £24.99, which would be about €29.
  • If you live in North America (Canada, USA, and Mexico), the shipping is £16, for a total cost of £29.99, which would be about $52 Canadian, $38 US, or about 645 pesos.
  • If you live in Australia or New Zealand, the shipping is £18.65, for a total cost of £32.64, which would be about $63 Australian or about $68 New Zealand.

. . . .

I wish I could lower the shipping costs, especially for my overseas fans but unfortunately I’m just a writer in a humble abode and I don’t have the economies of scale of a giant corporation. I know it’s the most frustrating thing when shipping costs more than the item itself. If I ate the shipping costs, I would make next to nothing. I love writing, but I need to keep the lights on.

Link to the rest at Crazy Classic Rock

Yes, PG agrees that the author of the OP doesn’t seem to understand how KDP actually works.

Traditional publishing vs. self-publishing. Which should you choose?

From Nathan Bransford:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of agents and publishers or to take arms against a sea of books on Amazon, and by being among them, rise above? To die, to sleep (oh wait you won’t), to sleep perchance to dream of fame and riches… aye there’s the rub.

Ahem. Sorry.

So. You have yourself a book. Should you just go ahead and self-publish and see how it does? Should you try your luck with agents and publishers? Should you try agents and publishers first and then self-publish if that doesn’t work?

. . . .

But once you have a general sense of the differences between traditional and self-publishing, you’ll have decisions to make. Having traditionally published my Jacob Wonderbar series and self-published How to Write a Novel and How to Publish a Book, I’ve seen both sides.

. . . .

Dispelling myths

Before we get to some of the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing, I feel the need to dispel some myths.

For some reason, rival camps of traditional and self-publishing devotees continuously spring up online and besmirch the other side, even as the number of authors who have dabbled in both traditional publishing and self-publishing (like me) continues to rise.

Some self-publishers (often adopting the “indie” moniker) profess that traditional publishing is the stuff of retrograde dinosaurs and haughty agents looking only for authors who aren’t like them and that no one should even waste their time sending out queries.

Some traditional publishing types paint self-publishing with a broad brush as little more than vanity publishing for books that weren’t good enough to make it through the traditional publishing process.

These caricatures don’t have any truth to them. Both self-publishing and traditional publishing are viable paths.

Traditional publishing has its merits. Self-publishing has its merits. Traditional books can catch on. Self-publishing books can catch on.

What’s important is that you choose the process that’s right for your project based on what’s important to you and what your strengths are.

Get in tune with your goals

So before you go down this path, get in tune with your goals.

I’ll get to more detailed questions later in this post to help you weigh that right approach for your project, but really sit with your thoughts for a bit and gauge the elements of writing and publishing that are most important to you.

Why did you write the book? How important is it to you to make it revenue positive? Do you want it out there in a big way or are you content just having copies you can give to friends and family?

Starting this process with some self-reflection and getting in tune with your writing goals will prime you to make the best decision.

7 questions to ask yourself

Okay. You’re now open-minded about choosing the path that’s right for you and you’ve gotten in tune with your goals.

Here are questions to ask yourself to help narrow down which path you should choose. And if you’d like to talk it through with me, feel free to book a consultation.

Is your book a niche/passion project or does it have broad, national appeal?

In order to attract a traditional publisher, especially one of the major ones, you’re going to need to have a book that fits into an established genre, is of appropriate length, and has mass commercial appeal. As in, it’s something for a broad audience, not a narrow niche. And if you’re writing prescriptive nonfiction, you need to be one of the top people in the entire world to write that book if you want to pursue traditional publishing.

Nearly everyone who has ever written a book views it as a potential mega-bestseller, but this really requires some honest self-assessment.

Does your book have broad, national appeal or is it niche? Is it a potential bestseller or something you just wrote to, say, have your family history recorded for posterity or to get a bee out of your bonnet?

I like to use the airport bookstore test here. Is your book something you could potentially see on sale in an airport bookstore?

The major publishers (and the literary agents who work with them) are going for broad, mainstream audiences. If your potential readership is more narrow, you might want to go directly to a small press or self-publish. If you are writing nonfiction and lack a significant platform, you may want to just go ahead and self-publish.

But if you can genuinely see it reaching a wide audience, you can give traditional publishing a shot.

How much control do you want over the publishing process?

One of the things I like most about the traditional publishing process is its collaborative nature. You’re working with experienced professionals who bring a wealth of expertise to bear at every stage of the process.

But this does mean giving up some control. Your agent may want you to revise your work before they send it to publishers. You will almost assuredly be edited by an editor at a publishing house. You won’t have approval over your book’s cover and you’ll probably only have mutual consent on your book title. You’ll have limited control over how and where your book is marketed and things like discounts and promotions.

This all requires a collaborative mindset and ceding some of the decision-making. Your publisher may well make some decisions you don’t agree with, and some that might even drive you a bit insane.

Meanwhile, with self-publishing, everything is up to you. The edits, cover, title, fonts, marketing, price points… it’s all your choice.

So if you have an extremely precise vision of what you want your cover to look like or are dead-set on including your own illustrations, self-publishing may be the way to go. If you’re willing to be flexible, traditional publishing is an option.

How much does the validation of traditional publishing matter to you?

There’s still something gratifying about making it all the way through the traditional publishing process, having your work validated by professionals, and getting paid for your efforts.

The names Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster… they still matter to people.

But maybe you don’t care one whit about the name of the publisher on the spine of your book. And that’s fine too!

Gut check how much a publisher’s validation matters to you or whether you’re fine going straight to readers.

How important is it for your book to be in bookstores and libraries?

Traditional publishers still have a significant competitive edge in the print era because of their distribution and sales infrastructure. If you want your book widely available in bookstores and libraries, you are going to need a traditional publisher.

Sure, you might be able to strike up some individual relationships with local bookstores, but traditional publishing is the surest path to having your book widely available in stores and libraries across the country.

Now, in a world where close to the majority of books are purchased online, maybe this no longer matters to you. If you self-publish, you can have your book available on Amazon alongside all the other big names.

But if you care about being in bookstores, traditional publishing may be worth a shot.

Link to the rest at Nathan Bransford

PG stifled himself (a rare occurrence). Feel free to comment.

USA – Bookstore Sales Fell 17% in August. Ebooks fell, or rose, depending on where you look.

From The New Publishing Standard:

Publishers Weekly carries news of a US census Bureau report showing that US bookstore sales “dropped 17.3% in August, falling to $872 million.”

Per PW, “traditionally, August and January are two of biggest sales months for bookstores, since they incorporate the rush period at college campuses.

Jim Milliot notes, “For instance, Barnes & Noble Education, one of the nation’s largest college store chains, is making a major effort this semester to promote its First Day Complete program, which provides students with all the course materials they need—mostly digital—which are included as a fee or as part of tuition; the strategy has resulted in the decline of print textbooks.”

Thus far, it is not clear just how much college books shifting to digital are contributing to the 17% August decline, but the overall message is clear – print sales in bricks & mortar stores slumped in August compared to last year.

At the same time, the AAP BookStat reports book sales overall (inc. online) up 8.5% in August, with PW’s John Maher running with the headline “Publishing Industry Sales Rebounded in August“, but noting ebooks were down 5.4%.

Important to remember here that, while print sales, easily tracked by ISBNs, cover pretty much all the market, the ebook numbers tell only a partial story.

Contrast the 5.4% AAP-recorded decline in ebook sales against the 10% rise, year on year, in the Kindle Unlimited pot pay-out for August.

August 2023 saw Amazon pay out $49.6 million in royalties, mostly to self-publishers and small presses, all untracked by the AAP.

(PG note: This report appears to include only Kindle Unlimited payments, not the almost certainly higher total for royalties on sales of indie authors who don’t participate in KU or participate with some books, but not all books.)

Link to the rest at The New Publishing Standard

Canada’s Wattpad Updates Its Paid Program: ‘Originals’

From Publishing Perspectives:

Not since it opened its “Paid Stories” program several years ago has the Toronto-based Wattpad updated its remunerative offer to writers in any substantial way.

Announced this week, “Wattpad Originals” is a newly offered approach, an apparent recognition that some writers are looking for more in return from the platform than readers. The change may reflect the fact that serial writers who like the rhythm, the hustle, and the interactive tenor of online storytelling-and-response have more options, more companies, more platforms available to choose from, especially as graphic-narrative options have expanded from Asia into Western markets.

Tokens, called “coins” and a subscription called “Premium” are familiar brand-terms being offered to Wattpad readers, who make up the vast majority of the current 85 million people who “on average discover and share stories on Wattpad monthly,” according to company figures. (It has always been best thought of as a reading platform, the minority being its many writers, as company officials have stressed in the past.)

Those currently posted numbers state that 92 percent of the audience remains in Gen Z and millennial parts of the populations on which it draws. The main graphical idiom of the company’s online sites has persisted in its youthful appeal. Wattpad remains reliably international in its presence in Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin and North America. As in the past, it today carries content translated into at least 50 languages, according to the company.

Typically attracting far more female users than males, the platform cites an average session spent on Wattpad as lasting 60 minutes. The aggregate usage meter on the system reportedly is 23 billion minutes being spent on the platform monthly.

. . . .

The ‘Wattpad Originals’ Option

What’s being described now as the next step in writer revenue delivery, “Wattpad Originals” gives reader several options:

  • They can pay to read ahead, using those “coin” tokens or a “Wattpad Premium” subscription.
  • Wattpad Premium subscriptions are offered at US$7.49, which opens two Wattpad Originals per month.
  • Another Wattpad Premium subscription goes for US$4.99 per month, but does not unlock Wattpad Originals
  • Or they can wait for content to become free to read.
  • A new chapter added on the front end of a serial means that a previous chapter becomes free, thus incentivizing writers as well as readers to keep moving.
  • A maximum of 10 chapters, the most recently published, will be behind the “Originals” paywall. The program also expects to show readers how long they will need to wait for a free chapter to become available–which means that writers are making some sort of commitment to when they’ll be adding something new on the front end.
  • When a Wattpad Originals story is finished, a sample of it will be offered free to let readers see some of the content and , with luck, buy the full narrative.

Regular subscribers to television’s streamers will recognize this as not unlike the tactic weighed by consumers of those systems: They can pay for a monthly subscription and see each episode of a show as it rolls out weekly, or they can wait and buy, say, one month’s subscription and binge-watch the entire season of that show after all of its weekly episodes have been released.

This is a model that Wattpad says it has gotten from Webtoon, the comics platform based in Seoul with which Wattpad became closely connected when Webtoon’s parent Naver bought Alan Lau’s Wattpad for a reported US$600 million in 2021. It’s unclear whether Wattpad’s local administration in Canada has opted to adopt the new “Originals” plan or has been directed to do that by the South Korean ownership at parent company Naver. Media messaging simply asserts that Webtoon has used this approach “to great success” and that the new plan “will strike a better balance for readers and authors, creating more opportunities to build fandoms and reading communities while also making money.”

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

PG admits he hasn’t spent any time looking at what Wattpad has been doing for several years.

From Wikipedia:

Wattpad is a free online platform that allows users to read and publish original stories.[5] Wattpad has stories available in more than 50 languages, and nearly 300,000 writers from 35 countries take part every year in the largest writing competition, The Watty Awards.

. . . .

In January 2019, Wattpad launched a publishing division named Wattpad Books in an effort to take the “guesswork” out of publishing for authors.

In January 2021, Naver Corporation announced that it would be acquiring Wattpad; the deal was completed in May 2021. As of November 2021, Wattpad has a monthly audience of more than 90 million users, who can directly interact with the writers and share their opinions with fellow readers.

. . . .

Wattpad was developed in 2006, as the result of a collaboration between Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. The company is based in Toronto, Ontario.

. . . .

As of January 2018, Wattpad had received almost USD $117.8M in funding from investors. In 2011, Wattpad announced that it received $3.5M in total funding from its current investors, and from W Media Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Union Square Ventures. Then in June 2012, Wattpad raised $17.3M from a group of venture funds led by Khosla Ventures.

In April 2014, Wattpad announced $46M in the Series C funding led by OMERS ventures. In January 2018, Wattpad announced USD $51M in funding from Tencent Holdings Limited, BDC, Globe Telecom’s Kickstart Ventures, Peterson Group, Canso, and existing investor Raine.

. . . .

In January 2021, Wattpad announced that it was to be acquired by Naver Corporation in a $600 million cash-and-stock deal. In an interview, Lau states “it’s also been very clear from Naver, and we agree, that we should operate as independently as possible.” Wattpad will remain headquartered in Canada and under its current leadership.

Link to the rest at Wikipedia

From Kindlepreuneur:

What Exactly Is Wattpad?

Wattpad describes itself as a ‘social story-telling platform’.

It makes use of technology and community in order to help writers find an audience for their serialized novel, short stories, etc., and for readers to find new up-and-coming writers to check out and follow.

The company is based out of Toronto, and has a very hip ethos and aesthetic. They make it clear that the platform is primarily intended for Millennials and members of Generation Z. As such, you can expect a pretty groovy, inclusive type of vibe from Wattpad.

However, the way a company describes itself is one thing. What it actually does is another.

So what is the actual bread and butter of Wattpad?

  • Talent discovery: Wattpad is a little like shows such as the X Factor or The Voice, but specifically for writers. Anyone is welcome to join and start publishing their work for free. Only the ones who get a good response go further in the process. How? Wattpad offers resources for writers to grow and develop. The best of the best become eligible for specialist programs connecting them with publishing houses and even TV and movie production companies.
  • Social platform: You can think of Wattpad as a sort of social network for writers and readers. Instead of it being a place to like cat videos shared with you by a distant relative, it’s a platform to discover stories. It aims to give writers a place to express their unique voice, and has a broad and inclusive approach to genre.
  • Technology: As you’d expect from a start-up company targeting millennials and members of Generation Z, tech has a big part to play. This is apparent both on the front and back ends of the Wattpad service. Behind the scenes, Wattpad makes use of machine learning and AI to spot the brightest stories among its many uploads. On the front end, Wattpad offers a mobile app to allow readers and writers to connect on the devices they love the most.

In a nutshell, Wattpad is a social platform for lovers of the written word. It offers opportunities for writers to get their art discovered and for readers to find new favorite stories and artists.

The rest of this Wattpad review will focus on what the service has to offer for writers. If you’re a writer, what can Wattpad do for you, and is there anything you need to be wary of?

. . . .

Wattpad Review For Writers – The Process

Signing up for Wattpad is easy, as you can see from the below image. You can either quickly register through email, or use one of your social accounts to gain access.

So how exactly does Wattpad claim to help writers? They break up the process of using Wattpad from an author perspective into three stages.

  1. Create: The first stage of using Wattpad as a writer is to create your story. You are given pretty much free reign to write how you want and in whichever genre you wish. You can check out a full list of genres a little later in this article, but it’s fairly comprehensive. You can shoot from the hip, or make use of the writing resources provided by Wattpad to shape your story.
  2. Build: Wattpad describes the “build” stage of the process as “establishing a global fanbase.” To be fair, the service does have over 70 million readers from around the world, and the metrics show that readers do spend a large amount of time on the platform per session. However, there are, of course, no guarantees. Your ability to tap into this potential fan base will depend upon the quality of your stories and the effort you put in to promoting them.
  3. Amplify: If your work gains traction on Wattpad (as judged by the service’s machine learning algorithm, taking into account factors such as popularity and engagement) you may get a chance to monetize through the Wattpad platform. Top performing stories gain the chance to get a publishing or movie deal. Of course, these are a minority of the stories published. Most writers will not be able to monetize through Wattpad.

Now that we have an overview of the three stages of the Wattpad process, let’s go deeper and see exactly how Wattpad aims to help you.

What resources does it offer, and what claims does it make about helping you as an author?

. . . .

You now know that Wattpad is a social tech platform for writers and readers, and you have an overview of the three stage journey for Wattpad authors.

So what specifically is being offered?

Readers. Wattpad has a passionate community of readers, currently over 70 million. I would expect this number to grow, as the company has some major investors behind it and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. As a writer, finding a passionate and engaged readership is often half the challenge. Wattpad gives you an off-the-shelf audience to share your work with.

Genres. Wattpad offers a ton of genres you can publish in. 

. . . .

The bottom line is Wattpad is a suitable platform for niche authors and a great place to find engaged readers of almost any persuasion and preference.

Contests: Wattpad regularly offers writing contests. These are often offered in conjunction with events and major brands, such as a recent partnership with Converse sneakers in order to celebrate International Women’s Day. As well as being a fun community feature, winning a contest is good for your author CV, and there are prizes as well.

Awards: Wattpad has their own awards ceremony, “The Wattys,” which has been going since 2010. It celebrates a mixture of established and breakthrough writers who publish through Wattpad.

Authors can also gain exposure through Wattpad by being featured as a “pick.” Picks are stories chosen by the Wattpad editors, and they gain a greater level of exposure than regular stories.

Conference: Wattpad hosts an annual conference, known was Wattcon. It is a chance for authors and readers to get together, share tips, find mentorship opportunities, and take their online love of reading and writing into the real world.

Community: The community aspect of Wattpad is a cornerstone of the platform. It offers a chance for readers to give feedback and help writers grow. Authors can also directly engage with fans of their genre and hopefully turn them into fans of their work in particular.

. . . .

What You Need To Know Before Signing Up for Wattpad

Authors are often skeptical, and rightly so. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there.

So what are the no-gloss, straight up facts about Wattpad you need to know as an author?

  • Rights: You own the full rights to your work. Wattpad doesn’t. Your writing is protected by copyright as soon as you publish it. You can remove it from the platform and publish it elsewhere any time. You can also offer stories you’ve shared via Wattpad to publishers, and these are not legally viewed as reprints.
  • Monetization: The monetization stage of Wattpad is in beta. It’s not the primary purpose of the platform. However, the top-performers receive opportunities for publishing deals and even links to movie and TV studios.
  • Growth: Wattpad offers a ton of free resources to help you grow as a writer. These include craft tips, such as character development, and marketing tips, such as boosting the engagement your work receives on the Wattpad platform.

If your primary purpose is to make money through your writing, Wattpad might not be the best pick for you. However, it definitely doesn’t impede you from doing so elsewhere.

. . . .

Wattpad Pros and Cons

We’ve explored everything Wattpad has to offer. So, in a nutshell, what is my take on the service?

Wattpad Pros

  • Free: No cost to read or write on Wattpad — and plenty offered in return.
  • Open: I really feel this is a platform for creative writers. It encourages expression and is open to the most modern of genres.
  • Community: Having a community of 70 million readers is an awesome resource. This is like if everyone in the United Kingdom, plus a few more million, was reading on Wattpad.
  • Growth: I love the free resources offered by Wattpad and the mentorship and development opportunities available.

Wattpad Cons

  • Monetization: I feel as if Wattpad could offer more opportunities for authors to monetize through the platform. The new beta program is a step in the right direction, but this could definitely be developed further.
  • Not for everyone: Although there are no age limits or anything, I definitely feel older or more conservative writers wouldn’t feel at home on Wattpad. It is a very liberal, very young-focused platform. That’s fine, but a lot of authors do not fit into those categories.
  • Requires Time and Effort to Succeed: In order to see results from Wattpad, you’re going to have to invest more time in your marketing of your book. There are lottery winners out there, but most need to invest time and energy. (Emphasis provided by PG.)

. . . .

Overall, I feel Wattpad can be a great resource for up-and-coming authors looking to hone their craft. If you want to get feedback and grow as an author, Wattpad can be the place to do that. It also allows you to connect with relevant writers and find fans for your work.

However, in order for an author to build a following and gain real results, they’re going to have to become a Wattpad marketing guru and truly know how to get their book in front of Wattpad readers.  The way I see it, though, is why not focus on a paying market like Amazon and get direct sales from all that marketing effort? If you’re going to market something, might as well get paid for all your hard work, right?

Link to the rest at Kindlepreuneur

The Kindlepreuner article sums up a lot of PG’s impressions over the years. A lot of people have spent a lot of time and effort to become successful writers on Wattpad, but to what end?

Unlike KDP, it has always been PG’s impression that not very many people are making serious money from their writing under the Wattpad Way. Can you earn substantial money without selling your books to a traditional publisher, small or large, or, even better (in PG’s opinion), self-publishing on Amazon?

Is Wattpad some sort of knockoff of a social media company for bookfolk and would-be authors that is mostly a consumer of lots of time and effort on the part of would-be authors in a system that generates only a minimal return for all but a relative handful of authors?

Who has gotten rich from Wattpad?

In 2021, Naver, South Korea’s internet conglomerate, acquired Wattpad in a cash and stock transaction valued at more than an estimated USD $600 million. From Naver’s press release:

With a global community of 94 million people–including five million writers–who have written more than one billion uploads on the platform, Wattpad is a global leader in social storytelling and entertainment. Wattpad’s creator-first approach to nurturing and supporting reading and writing communities has helped authors around the world.

PG was not able to determine how much money the two Wattpad founders banked from this $600 million sale nor how large a payoff several large New York City venture funds realized from the sale. He expects the answer is some variant of “quite a lot.”

PG will be happy to hear any information about how much of the $600 million authors received. After all, the authors provided the large majority of the content that generated a lot of the traffic that made Wattpad so valuable and its founders so rich.

PG is familiar with the old Silicon Valley truism that goes, “If you can’t understand what the product is, it’s you.”

PG would be happy to hear the opinions of authors who have been or are Wattpad regulars in the Comments section for this post regarding whether he’s right or wrong in his outside-looking-in opinions about the platform.

PG understands that a very high percentage of all participants in social media platforms large or small are spending their time because they find the online experience and resulting electronic friendships to be enjoyable in and of themselves.

PG has a couple of social media accounts he regularly participates with just because he finds them enjoyable diversions. (No, he won’t divulge what they are or any of his screen names.)

If PG learns that a great many participants on Wattpad were/are engaged with the platform for the same sorts of reasons, he’ll acknowledge that his snide remarks about founders and funders getting rich at the expense of authors are incorrect.

Although PG doesn’t gamble, he understands that a great many gamblers know they’re almost certain to lose far more money than they win. But despite that knowledge, they gamble for the emotional buzz that accompanies their participation – the roll of the dice, the spin of the roulette wheel, etc.

Chat GPT on Self-Publishing Via KDP Earn More Money

PG gave ChatGPT the following prompt:

write a 500 word article about why authors who are publishing using Amazon KDP earn more money than authors who publish through established publishers

Here’s what showed up on his screen:

Title: The Amazon KDP Advantage: Why Self-Published Authors Earn More Money

Introduction

In the rapidly evolving world of publishing, authors now have more opportunities than ever to share their work with the world. Traditional publishing houses have long been seen as gatekeepers, controlling access to the literary market. However, with the advent of self-publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), authors now have the chance to take control of their careers and potentially earn more money. This article will explore the reasons why authors who publish using Amazon KDP often enjoy higher earnings compared to those who choose established publishers.

  1. Greater Royalties

One of the primary reasons why authors utilizing Amazon KDP have the potential to earn more money is the royalty structure. Traditional publishing contracts typically offer authors royalty rates ranging from 8% to 15% of the book’s cover price. Conversely, Amazon KDP allows authors to earn up to 70% in royalties for eBooks priced within a specific range. This substantial difference in royalty rates significantly impacts an author’s earnings, particularly in the digital age where eBook sales are flourishing.

  1. Direct Control and Flexibility

Self-published authors using Amazon KDP have complete control over their work, including pricing, cover design, and marketing strategies. This control enables authors to experiment with pricing strategies, run promotional campaigns, and make changes to their books at any time. Traditional publishing often involves relinquishing these decisions to publishing houses, limiting an author’s ability to adapt to market demands swiftly. The freedom and flexibility offered by KDP allows authors to be more responsive to readers’ preferences and optimize their earning potential.

  1. Global Reach and Market Accessibility

Amazon, being a global online marketplace, provides unparalleled reach to authors publishing through KDP. It has a massive customer base that extends across multiple countries, making it easier for authors to tap into international markets. Traditional publishers often focus on specific regions or territories, limiting an author’s potential readership and earning opportunities. With Amazon KDP, authors can target a global audience and potentially gain exposure to millions of readers worldwide, thereby increasing their earning potential.

  1. High Digital Demand and Accessibility

In recent years, the demand for eBooks has surged, fueled by the rise in e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Amazon dominates the eBook market with its Kindle devices and app, providing a seamless reading experience to millions of users. As a result, self-published authors on KDP can capitalize on this growing digital demand. Additionally, eBooks have advantages like lower production costs and the ability to reach readers instantly, enhancing an author’s potential earnings.

  1. Enhanced Marketing and Discoverability

Amazon KDP offers various tools and promotional opportunities to help authors market their books effectively. These include Kindle Countdown Deals, Kindle Free Promotions, and the ability to participate in Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service for readers. These features can significantly boost an author’s visibility and attract new readers, leading to higher sales and earnings. In contrast, established publishers may not dedicate the same level of marketing support to every author in their catalog.

Conclusion

While traditional publishing still holds its value and allure, the rise of Amazon KDP has revolutionized the publishing landscape. Through KDP, authors have gained the ability to publish independently, retaining greater control over their work and potentially earning higher incomes. The platform’s favorable royalty structure, global reach, marketing tools, and the growing demand for digital books all contribute to the financial advantage enjoyed by authors who publish using Amazon KDP. As the publishing industry continues to evolve, it is becoming increasingly clear that self-publishing platforms like KDP can provide authors with lucrative opportunities and a path to success.

PG invites opinions, disagreements, alternate (polite) contentions, discussions of errors in reasoning, items that should have been discussed (within the 500 word article limit), etc., etc. PG does admit that Chat GPT went 99 words over the 500 word article request, but PG didn’t see a lot of wasted wordage.

European Publishers See Audiobooks, AI as Inevitabilities

From Publisher’s Weekly:

The Readmagine publishing conference ran from June 7-9 in Madrid, featuring an A-list of publishing pros.

. . . .

The boom in audiobook sales, which continues to transform the landscape across Europe, was a point of conversation. Enrico Turrin, deputy director of the Federation of European Publishers, told the audience that when all the data from FEP’s members is in, audiobooks are likely to account for as much as 4-5% of sales. This shift follows that in the U.S., where Michele Cobb, executive director of the Audiobook Publishers Association, noted that the U.S. has seen 11 years of double-digit growth. “Now, 53% of the U.S. population has listened to an audiobook,” Cobb said.

Cobb noted that there was a potential shift in prevailing business models, moving from a credits-based system to the all-you-can-consume model. “There is growth in both areas,” she said. Discovery too is changing as new consumers are increasingly finding books on TikTok – “you might call it AudioTok,” Cobb said. People are building online communities around listening to audiobooks, but like with print, “the biggest challenge is marketing” and many publishers are “using influencers to do their marketing.”

Kurt Thielen, CEO at audiobook publisher Zebralution, said that he was seeing the market shift in Germany, where the company is based. “We’re seeing people do an audiobook with everything, from books to magazines to personal brand content. It’s a fundamental change in the marketing approach.” Thielen said that short, 30-minute episodic serialization is becoming more prevalent.

Growth for audiobooks has been strong across most demographics, but the born-digital Gen Z – those 18-28 years old—are showing a preference for audiobooks over digital reading, said Shauna Moran, trends manager for Global Web Index, an U.K. based consultancy. “68% of European Gen Zers say they prefer audio books to e-books,” and “28% regularly listen to podcasts.” Moran noted that the content Gen Z preferred was “engaging and goal oriented” – meaning self-help and publishers of DIY content might have an opportunity with short form audio. As far as discovery goes, there was no surprise when she referenced the power of TikTok to persuade readers. “People want to be told what to [read],” she said.

Matt Locke, director of Storythings, a media consultancy from the U.K., concurred. He went on to say that future innovation in publishing would require some tangential thinking, insofar as the past patterns of consumption are evolving into a situation where people want “everything, everywhere all at once,” which has helped fuel the shift from “visual to listening.”

When it comes to innovation from inside the established publishing industry, HarperCollins’s Restivo-Alessi, was part of a panel that tried to peer into the future. The panelists made several observations. They saw the possibility of famous authors, following in the footsteps of Swiss bestseller Joel Dicker and fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson, going the self-publishing route; and authors merging genres, such as romance and fantasy becoming “romantacy,” which was already a big trend as of Frankfurt 2022.

Unsurprisingly, AI was a main point of discussion, with the panel referencing a variety of ways the industry has already been impacted, from the launch of Reedz, an AI-powered translation company based in Sweden; Bookwire’s incorporation of ChatGPT into its platform; and the launch of Sudowrite, AI-powered writing software. Restivo-Alessi quoted HC CEO Brian Murray’s speech at the London Book Fair earlier this year, noting that “AI is both an opportunity and a risk.” It offers publishers a chance to streamline some editorial and marketing tasks, such as the production of metadata and production of social media posts, but also threatens the integrity of “human-centric storytelling.”

Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly

As PG has said before, he sees AI voices replacing humans very quickly, but takes no pleasure in the disruption of the lives and businesses of human voice actors.

That said, AI for ebooks will provide a great many benefits to publishers and self-publishers. AI will do the job much faster, enabling indie authors to publish ebooks, hard copy and audiobooks at the same time or stage the entry of each of those versions of the book if that appears to be a better way of maximizing revenue and profits.

PG expects to see creators of AI voices wanting to monetize their investments in building and perfecting text to speech, but he predicts that there will be a whole lot of competitors in text to speech showing up in a hurry and, at least some systems designers, perhaps academics, who will make an text to speech AI widely available at no charge or much lower charges than commercial versions of that service.

One interesting issue PG predicts will surface relatively quickly with AI narrators vs. human narrators will be a squeezing out of humans in this process for both cost and time-to-market benefits.

Amazon Publishing Statistics

From WordsRated:

Amazon was initially founded as a bookselling platform in 1995. Since then, the company has gone through massive changes, becoming the world’s biggest retail company in which bookselling represents just a fraction of profit.

However, even in the book sales sector, the company dominates the book publishing industry with an upwards trend, threatening to overtake the market in the future completely. On the other hand, the company did a lot of positive things for the book industry, such as the emergence of self-publishing accessible to anyone. In this report, we’ll cover all the aspects of Amazon’s book publishing business.

Amazon book sales

Even though Amazon’s book sales make up only 10% of the company’s profit, they are still the biggest seller of books in the United States and worldwide.

Amazon generates around $28 billion worldwide from book sales every year. The company is responsible for over 50% of sales from the Big Five publishers and controls between 50% and 80% of the book distribution in the United States.

  • Amazon sells at least 300 million print books every year.
  • The company reportedly controls at least 40% of the print book sales in the States.
  • Some estimates show that by 2025 Amazon could take over more than 70% of the US print book market.
  • In the UK, Amazon controls at least 50% of the market, selling over 106 million copies each year.

When it comes to ebooks, Amazon is dominating the market by a wide margin.

  • Amazon sells over 487 million ebooks through Kindle every year.
  • The company’s market share in ebook sales stands at least 67%, climbing to 83% when Kindle Unlimited is included.
  • Amazon is estimated to control over 87.9% of yearly ebook sales in the UK.
  • Even though the company sold more ebooks than print books in 2011, nowadays, Amazon sells 3x more print books than ebooks.

Self-publishing on Amazon 

Amazon has been the driving force behind the massive emergence of self-published books in the United States:

  • Amazon releases over 1.4 million self-published books through its Kindle Direct Publishing every year.
  • This doesn’t even take into account self-published ebooks with no registered ISBN number, so the extent of Amazon’s self-publishing figures is much higher.
  • Kindle Direct Publishing is regarded as the largest ebook publisher of self-published ebooks, even without official numbers available.
  • Amazon pays over $520 million in royalties each year to over 1 million authors who decided to self-published through KDP.
  • Only 1% of audiobooks on Audible are self-published
  • Self-published books account for 31% of Amazon’s ebook sales
  • Self-publishing authors have the option to publish their work in 40 languages.

Amazon’s Royalties Paid to KDP Authors

Link to the rest at WordsRated

Boost Your Book Launch by Perfecting Distribution and Metadata

From Jane Friedman:

The major self-publishing platforms have made the publishing process easy—perhaps too easy. We’ve been conditioned by our use of consumer technology to expect instant results. Errors are not difficult to fix. A change of heart or opinion? Re-upload the file or edit your book’s listing!

But in practice, some things in publishing can’t be changed, and other changes don’t happen anywhere near as fast as you might think. The truth about publishing is that you basically get one shot with many essential aspects of the process. Do-overs can be expensive if not impossible, or they may not be successful.

During the past ten years, AuthorImprints has helped more than 200 self-publishing authors publish their books. We’ve experienced virtually every conceivable pre-release production challenge, discovered pitfalls to avoid, and found several opportunities you can use to streamline the publishing process. Here are the most important lessons self-publishing authors can integrate into their first or next book-release plan.

Determine your distribution strategy first

The first question I ask a self-publishing author is if they have special print requirements as these may preclude the use of print on demand (POD). Those requirements can include the need or preference for special paper, color printing, or non-standard dimensions.

Beyond the cost of printing, the big hurdle for books that are not POD is selling the book on Amazon and listing it in the Ingram catalog. For this you’ll need to find a distributor or fulfillment company that can do this for you.

On the other hand, the two big POD providers—Amazon KDP and IngramSpark—offer printing with distribution as a single offering. Compared to printing books in bulk and having to find a distributor, the process is simple to set up, assuming your book meets POD requirements.

This is what makes POD so popular with self-publishers. It’s a terrific solution, but it also carries those expectations of instant results and the assumption that updates are easy. They can be, but make sure you avoid these three gotchas when using IngramSpark. They can bring chaos to an otherwise well-planned book launch:

1. Do not enable distribution until the files are final. IngramSpark clearly states that they may begin printing books “as soon as the title is enabled for distribution.” If you’ve uploaded a draft or advance reader copy, and distribution is enabled, that’s the version your buyer may receive. It has happened to novices and experienced authors alike.

2. While your book is available for pre-order, don’t make changes to the files close to the release date. This relates to the preceding lesson. If your book has been enabled for distribution, IngramSpark states it will be removed from distribution while the changes are processing. I’ve found that books sometimes remain for sale. You never know.

For example, a client’s hardcover was available for pre-order two weeks before the release date when he asked us to update the dust jacket. It was indeed removed from distribution, and as of this writing, three weeks after release date, it still isn’t available for purchase from Amazon.com. Other stores have it, including Amazon.co.uk, but not Amazon.com.

3. Do allow for listing delays. We’ve found that books distributed by IngramSpark will appear on Barnes & Noble relatively quickly, in about a week or so. But we’ve seen it take weeks for a book to appear on Amazon in full—cover, price, and order button. It can also take weeks for the formats to be connected or joined on a single page. Other times, these processes may take only days.

Does that mean Amazon KDP is a better choice? No, they aren’t even an option if you want to offer pre-order. KDP also does not allow you to control wholesale settings, which you need to control so bookstores can order your book.

I suggest you upload final files at least six weeks before release date and don’t make changes to the files.

Get the price right from the start

Leaving margins aside, your paperback’s retail price can generally be competitive with traditionally published trade paperbacks. It’s almost impossible, however, to be competitive with hardcover pricing. Printing in bulk helps, but larger publishers also have distribution efficiencies that enable them to price hardcovers more attractively than self-publishers can.

The biggest difference between self- and traditionally published book pricing can be seen with ebooks. One reason for traditional publishers’ high ebook prices is to protect the pricing of their print editions, which in turn benefits bookstores. But traditional publishers also enjoy distribution advantages unavailable to self-publishers via KDP or from a self-service ebook aggregator. Traditionally published books often aren’t subject to the download fees charged by KDP, and the royalties are different. These terms can be negotiated by traditional publishers.

For more on pricing self-published books, read Kim Catanzarite’s post about the wisdom of giveaways and low pricing here on Jane’s blog. Her experience is my own, and I give most of our new author-clients the same advice: price aggressively low from the outset. If you start high and later reduce the price, you may never recapture momentum. You want to maximize reading, not margins. Having lots of readers translates to getting customer reviews. And books with lots of reviews have pricing leverage.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

Self-published authors earn more than traditionally published counterparts, according to ALLi report

From The Bookseller:

New research by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) claims authors who self-publish currently earn more than traditionally published authors.

ALLi circulated the survey to its members and subscribers, as well as “through other key self-publishing and author organisations” in February 2023. It was answered by more than 2,000 respondents – 60% of whom were in North America, with 21% from the UK and 8% respectively for Australia/New Zealand, and Europe. It found the the median revenue for independent authors in 2022 stands at $12,749 (£10,229).

This compares to the findings of a report into authors’ earnings commissioned by The Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) and published in December 2022, which showed that median earnings from writing alone for authors with third-party publishers stands at approximately $8,600 (£7,000).

The ALCS’ report showed “a sustained fall in professional writers’ real terms income from writing over the past 15 years of around 60%, pushing median earnings down to minimum wage levels,” a trend which ALLi suggests self-published authors are “bucking” in light of its survey’s findings, which suggest average incomes of self-published authors are rising, with a 53% increase in 2022 over the previous year.

By contrast, its report goes on, “previous author income surveys, which have focused on revenues received by authors with third-party publishers, have repeatedly reported falling incomes.”

. . . .

ALLi has commissioned the UK Copyright & Creative Economy Centre, CREATe – which conducted the ALCS’ survey – to expand analysis of the findings, particularly in relation to “key demographic groups and factors that contribute to higher incomes.” ALLi will publish the full report including demographic data in June 2023, together with a collection of insights from several peer self-publishing organisations, as the Big Indie Author Data Drop. This compilation and final 2023 report will be presented at the Self-Publishing Live conference in London in June 2023 and will repeat as an annual event, which the organisation says will fill “a notable gap in author income research”.

Orna Ross, ALLi director, said of the findings: “ALLi has always believed that authors are financially better off self-publishing. Now that the results of this survey confirm that belief, we want to make sure all authors know that they can make a living as an author, if they do the work and acquire good publishing skills, alongside good writing skills. And that they are not alone. There is full support for talented and dedicated authors at ALLi and throughout the self-publishing community.”

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

PG notes that Orna Ross, the founder of The Alliance of Independent Authors, has been doing good things for indie authors for a long time (ALLI was founded in 2012).

Those who recall 2012 (including PG, just barely), will remember that this year included a notable antitrust suit filed by the U.S. Justice Department against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster for trying to fix prices for ebooks, and strangle Amazon’s ebook business in the crib.

Basically the five big publishers agreed to refuse to sell ebooks to Amazon unless Amazon sold their ebooks at the publisher’s list price. The agreement was made at the instigation of a top Apple exec and provided that Apple would sell the majority of e-books between $9.99 and $14.99, with new releases being $12.99 to $14.99.

Apple also adopted the agency model which it used in its App Store for distribution of e-books. This let Publishers control the price of the e-books with Apple receiving a 30% commission. The joint agreement provided that the Publishers would establish ebook prices on Amazon so ebook prices on both platforms would be identical.

On the day Apple launched its ebook store, a Wall Street Journal reporter asked Jobs why people would pay $14.99 for a book in the iBookstore when they could purchase it for $9.99 from Amazon. In response Jobs stated that “The price will be the same… Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they are not happy.”

As PG has opined on more than one previous occasion, doing this reflected the rank business and legal stupidity of the major publishers. What Jobs and the publishers agreed to do was a classic example of illegal price-fixing that was (and still is) clearly prohibited by US antitrust laws.

Jobs was a highly magnetic and innovative individual who built Apple from nothing into a major world-wide computer brand, a wonderful American business success story.

However, Jobs was dying of cancer at the time, kept this information secret and (PG suspects) decided to propose this agreement without any input from Apple’s lawyers at all. A law student who had taken a single antitrust class would have recognized this was prohibited conduct.

After being sued, the publishers quickly caved, took their financial licks from the Justice Department and some state attorneys general who joined in the suit, and went back to business as usual. Apple lost at the trial level, lost at the United States Court of Appeals. The US Supreme Court declined to take the case.

Amazon kept pushing ebooks, including more generous royalty terms than authors could get from traditional publishing, and never looked back. PG has suggested on numerous occasions that traditional publishers missed a wonderful opportunity to earn a lot of money from ebooks because they didn’t want to harm their printed book sales or relationship with traditional bookstores.

It was a classic example of one bad decision after another.

Orna Ross and ALLI have provided a lot of help for indie authors ever since the Apple antitrust case was still roaring along, so she’s seen the thick and thin of indie authors. You may want to check out the membership benefits the organization offers.

4 Pillars of Book Marketing, or How to Sell More Books in Less Time

From Jane Friedman:

When I first started marketing my wife’s books, I thought we needed to be everywhere and do all the things in order to be successful:

  • Facebook ads
  • Amazon ads
  • BookBub ads
  • YouTube ads
  • Promo sites
  • Facebook groups
  • All other social media platforms
  • Newspapers and magazines

The list goes on—and on. The truth of the matter though, is that you don’t need to do even half of what’s on that list.

The do all the things approach likely does more harm than good, especially in the beginning. Sure, further down the line, you can start adding to the list, but even then, don’t feel you need to.

My wife’s books currently earn a healthy six-figure income. And we use two traffic sources:

  • Facebook ads
  • Amazon ads

Now three years into the journey, we are starting to explore other traffic sources so as not to rely so heavily on Facebook and Amazon. But these two platforms alone, along with a small spend on BookBub and promotional sites for launches and promotions, drive the results for us.

. . . .

Marketing for 30–60 minutes per day came about as more of a necessity than anything else; with three children under the age of three in the house, time isn’t something either my wife or I have much of! If you currently have young children or have done so in the past, you’ll know where I’m coming from. So I had to make sure every minute I spent was on the right marketing for us.

Avoiding the shiny objects discussed in Facebook groups, i.e. the latest fads, I identified what was driving results for us and doubled down on them, eliminating everything else.

This is when I (accidentally) identified what I now call the four pillars of book marketing. And, after speaking with many authors over the past couple of years, I believe these four pillars are critical for every author.

Without them, you’ll be spinning your wheels not knowing what to work on and when, or worse, spending your resources on things that don’t move the needle.

So, here’s what you’re going to learn:

  • What the four pillars of book marketing are
  • Why 30–60 minutes per day spent marketing is all you need
  • How and why to craft a strategy for your author business
  • Identifying your lever-moving activities
  • How to plan out your days, weeks, and months for maximum productivity and results

The 4 Pillars of Book Marketing

Some activities in your author business may not be exciting but are essential to keep your business going, such as accounting, taxes, replying to emails, and other admin/auxiliary tasks.

When it comes to marketing and driving book sales, there are really only four pillars that truly matter:

  1. Book product page
  2. Traffic
  3. Audience building
  4. Profit

Book product page

Something I say to authors a lot is: Your book sells your book.

No amount of marketing or advertising is going to sell a poor-quality book.

You could be the best marketer in the world, but if your book itself isn’t up to scratch, isn’t up to the standard it needs to be in today’s world of publishing, it’s not going to sell.

You may be lucky and get a few sales, maybe even a few hundred sales right off the bat. But when the reviews and ratings start coming in, the performance of your marketing is going to decline over time.

This is why, yes, you need to write a stellar book. But you also need to present your book in the best possible light. And you achieve that by creating a superb book product page.

After all, sales don’t happen in your Facebook ads, BookBub ads, Amazon ads, etc. They happen on your book product page. That’s where readers make the decision to buy or not to buy your book.

The key assets of your book product page you need to focus on are:

  • Book cover
  • Book description
  • Pricing
  • Reviews and ratings
  • Look Inside
  • A+ Content, specific to Amazon (optional)

With a compelling and engaging book product page in place, all of your marketing and advertising will perform that much better because your conversions (i.e., sales directly from your ads) will be higher.

And the more sales your ads generate, the more organic sales (sales that come as a result of your Amazon rank) you’ll enjoy.

. . . .

For my wife’s books, we are exclusive to Amazon. Authors who have books in the Top 500 of the Kindle store generate 80–90% of their sales directly as a result of their bestseller rank. These are all, essentially, free sales.

But to achieve a great bestseller rank and enjoy those organic sales, you need to tickle the Amazon algorithm enough to take notice of you, which you do by driving sales through your own marketing and advertising efforts, such as Facebook ads and Amazon ads.

. . . .

Audience building

As an author, your biggest asset is your books. Your next biggest asset is your audience.

I’m not talking about your Twitter followers or Facebook likes. I’m talking about true fans of your books, who you have direct access to through email.

The issue I have with building an audience on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is that you’re building this audience on rented ground. If your account on one or more of these platforms is suddenly shut down, you would lose your entire audience overnight.

To avoid this situation, by all means, build an audience on these platforms, but, make sure you are de-platforming people by encouraging them to join your email list, which is best achieved through offering them something in return for their email address, such as a short story, a novella, a bonus chapter, or even a full book; this is commonly known as a reader magnet.

With an email list, you can contact your audience at any time (within reason, of course), ask them to buy your new release, leave a review of your book, and let them know about a flash sale you’re running.

When your email list becomes large enough, you can drive a LOT of sales of your new releases and your backlist, and it won’t cost you a penny in advertising. Your world really is your oyster when you have an email list.

Just respect your audience, don’t spam them, provide value (yes, even entertainment is considered value), and share a little or a lot, whatever you’re comfortable with, about yourself, your writing—even Tibbles, your cat, who accompanies you whilst you write!

Remember, you are communicating with real people, so be sure to treat them as such. And ultimately, be your true authentic self.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

How to Get a Book Deal in 4 Steps + Why You Shouldn’t Bother

From Kindlepreneur:

Here are the 4 steps to take to get a traditional book deal:

  1. Ensure your book is fit for market
  2. Find an agent
  3. Submit to publishing companies
  4. Choose an offer

Let me be clear: Traditional book deals are a thing of the past. If you do not actively reach 25,000+ people regularly before a deal, no reputable publishing company or literary agent will take a risk on your book.

In 2022, don’t bother trying to get a book deal without an existing, sizable audience.

If you have a relative or friend who works for an agency, you have a much better chance of your book proposal falling in the right hands.

For the rest of us: Self-publishing is a legitimate way to earn a living as a writer. Publishing your own book may not come with the prestige of earning a book deal. However, publishing prestige is an outdated concept, and readers certainly don’t care. Many self-publishers make more money than their traditionally published counterparts.

If you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you’re not a celebrity. If you don’t have a regular audience of 25,000 or more (and you don’t have close connections at a press or agency), just self-publish. My website and email list are great resources to walk you through the process step-by-step.

. . . .

What is a book deal?

A book deal is a contract between an author and a publisher. Sometimes called a traditional book deal, this is when the gatekeepers of the legacy publishing industry offer you an advance on book profits in return for several benefits.

How much do you get for a book deal? You can get an advance between $5,000 and $100,000 if you land a book deal. However, it is both difficult to get a book deal and unlikely that a first-time author will receive such a significant advance.

What are the benefits of a book deal?

  • A monetary advance before publishing the book
  • Bookstore placement
  • Professional editors, formatters, cover designers at no extra cost to you
  • The ability to say you landed a book deal

What are the disadvantages of a book deal?

  • Massive time investment for a slight chance at a traditional deal
  • Loss of control and ownership of your work and brand
  • Minimal financial upside (in the long run)

Let’s face facts: Traditional media is on its way out, including traditional book publishers. Readers don’t care if something was self-published or traditionally published (as long as it looks professional). Book contracts often require you to sign away your rights for an advance.

Self-publishing is more viable than ever — and more profitable, thanks to Amazon.

I recommend seeking a traditional book deal only if:

  • You are a celebrity of some sort.
  • You have more than 25,000 loyal followers on social media or listeners on your podcast. (Honestly, that’s a low number.)
  • You have a friend or relative who works at a publishing house.
  • You would be cripplingly ashamed to say you self-published (Self-publishing is far more respected these days, so this shouldn’t be an issue).

Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing vs. Indie Publishing

Traditional Publishing

Traditional publishing is the industry in which a publishing house publishes a book. This usually requires a literary agent as an in-between for the author and publishing house.

How hard is it to get a publishing deal? It is tough to get a traditional publishing deal. The chances of landing an agent, then a traditional publishing book deal, are about 1 in 1,000 — and even worse if you don’t have a massive online following.

Traditional publishers typically cover the cost of a professional editor, book cover artist, back cover blurb, ISBN number, printing costs, final proofreaders, and more. But they also take a sizable chunk out of your royalties.

They offer authors an advance, usually in the form of a five- or six-figure lump sum. This is not in addition to royalties. Instead, you won’t make any royalties until you would have made as much as your advance (called “earning out”). If you don’t earn out, you do not have to pay back the advance. It’s a risk the publisher takes by fronting cash before they’ve made a profit.

How much of a book price goes to the author? After a publisher has earned out their advance, about 5-15% of the book price is paid to the author in royalties. Not only will the publisher take a huge chunk, but you’ll also need to give your literary agent the standard 15% commission of what you make.

I know many writers want a book deal so they don’t have to market their own book. Unfortunately, traditional publishers provide little marketing support for their authors. They reserve most of their marketing budgets for their top bestsellers (a tiny fraction of books written).

Traditionally published authors still have to do their own marketing, including:

  • Social media
  • Blog posting
  • Video blogging
  • Book signings
  • Email newsletters
  • Promotional giveaways
  • Podcasts
  • Book reviews (including paid/sponsored)
  • Organizing a launch team
  • Establishing a solid track record by writing good books in the first place

You may have heard of the Big 5. They’re the biggest publishing houses in America, primarily housed in New York City. The Big 5 traditional publishers are:

  1. Hachette
  2. HarperCollins
  3. Macmillan
  4. Penguin Random House
  5. Simon & Schuster

Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is when an author publishes their own book. This is a legitimate publishing route that many authors of all shapes and sizes have chosen.

Self-publishing can be more lucrative than traditional publishing.

Although you will not receive an advance on your self-published book, you keep a lot more of the profits. Amazon KDP might take 35-70% of self-published ebook profits, whereas traditional publishers and literary agents would take 80-95% of the royalties and retain printing rights.

But to be a real author, you have to go through a traditional publisher… right?

No! This is an outdated, offensive way of thinking. “Self-published” is not a dirty word. But if you like, you can say “independently published” or simply “published” to your friends.

Although Amazon does take a portion of your profits, they command 70% of the market share for selling eBooks. And Amazon gives little to no advantage to eBooks that are traditionally published.

You can always seek a book deal after you’ve successfully self-published. Make sure your first book is a great book that earns rave reviews. Your second book should do even better.

Once you’ve gained tens of thousands under your banner, perhaps it’s time to look into traditional book publishing for your new book. (I expect you will have fallen in love with self-publishing by this point.)

I know many writers don’t want to deal with marketing their book, but don’t be fooled. Traditional publishers hardly lift a finger to sell your book unless you’re an author superstar. When you traditionally publish, you still need to market your own book at signings and on social media.

. . . .

Indie Publishing

There’s a third option: indie publishing, sometimes called hybrid publishing or independent publishing. Different people mean different things when using these terms, but typically an indie publisher or hybrid publisher tries to combine the benefits of self-publishing and traditional marketing.

The main advantage of an indie publisher is that you usually don’t need an agent, but you can still tell your friends you landed a book deal.

They may offer small advances but still take a large chunk of the royalties. They may provide minimal design and formatting services but could ask for the copyright (a big no-no; never hand over the copyright for your book). They will still offer little to no marketing while expecting the author to market their own book.

Feel free to look into indie publishers with a critical eye. However, many of you reading this will benefit from simply self-publishing, utilizing professional freelancers along the way.

Pro tip: Avoid vanity presses. A vanity press is a type of publishing company that charges you upfront for publishing, usually resulting in a net loss for the author. Vanity presses prey on writers desperate to get their book published. Never pay upfront to distribute your book.

To be clear, self-publishers should pay for a professional editor and a book cover designer, at least, on top of other self-publishing costs. But never pay a publishing company. While we’re on the topic, never pay a literary agent to represent you. (Same as in real estate, acting, etc.)

Link to the rest at Kindlepreneur

The Publishing Ecosystem in the Digital Era

From The Los Angeles Review of Books:

IN 1995, I WENT to work as a writer and editor for Book World, the then-standalone book-review section of The Washington Post. I left a decade later, two years before Amazon released the Kindle ebook reader. By then, mainstream news outlets like the Post were on the ropes, battered by what sociologist John B. Thompson, in Book Wars, calls “the digital revolution” and its erosion of print subscriptions and advertising revenue. The idea that a serious newspaper had to have a separate book-review section seems quaint now. Aside from The New York Times Book Review, most of Book World’s competitors have faded into legend, like the elves departing from Middle-earth at the end of The Lord of the Rings. Their age has ended, though the age of the book has not.

Nobody arrives better equipped than Thompson to map how the publishing ecosystem has persisted and morphed in the digital environment. An emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge and emeritus fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, Thompson conducts his latest field survey of publishing through a rigorous combination of data analysis and in-depth interviews. Book Wars comes stuffed with graphs and tables as well as detailed anecdotes. The data component can get wearisome for a reader not hip-deep in the business, but it’s invaluable to have such thorough documentation of the digital publishing multiverse.

. . . .

One big question animates Thompson’s investigation: “So what happens when the oldest of our media industries collides with the great technological revolution of our time?” That sounds like hyperbole — book publishing hasn’t exactly stood still since Gutenberg. A lot happens in 500 years, even without computers. But for an industry built on the time-tested format of print books, the internet understandably looked and felt like an existential threat as well as an opportunity.

Early on in his study, Thompson neatly evokes the fear that accompanied the advent of ebooks. The shift to digital formats had already eviscerated the music industry; no wonder publishers felt queasy. As Thompson writes, “Were books heading in the same direction as CDs and vinyl LPs — on a precipitous downward slope and likely to be eclipsed by digital downloads? Was this the beginning of the end of the physical book?” That question has been asked over and over again for decades now, and the answer remains an emphatic No. (Note to pundits: Please resist the urge to write more “Print isn’t dead!” hot takes.) But publishers didn’t know that in the early digital days.

The words “revolution” and “disruption” get thrown around so often that they’ve lost their punch, but Thompson justifies his use of them here. He recalls the “dizzying growth” of digital books beginning in 2008, “the first full year of the Kindle.” That year alone, ebook sales for US trade titles added up to $69 million; by 2012, they had ballooned to $1.5 billion, “a 22-fold increase in just four years.”

Print, as usual, refused to be superseded. Despite their early boom, ebooks didn’t cannibalize the print market. Thompson uses data from the Association of American Publishers to show that ebooks plateaued at 23 to 24 percent of total book sales in the 2012–’14 period, then slipped to about 15 percent in 2017–’18. Print books, on the other hand, continue to account for the lion’s share of sales, with a low point of about 75 percent in 2012–’14, bouncing back to 80­ to 85 percent of total sales in 2015–’16. (Thompson’s study stops before the 2020–’21 pandemic, but print sales have for the most part been strong in the COVID-19 era.)

For some high-consumption genres, like romance, the ebook format turned out to be a match made in heaven; Thompson notes that romance “outperforms every other category by a significant margin.” But readers in most genres have grown used to choosing among formats, and traditional publishers have for the most part proved able and willing to incorporate those formats into their catalogs. That’s a net gain both for consumer choice and for broader access to books.

. . . .

Thompson quotes an anonymous trade-publishing CEO: “The power of Amazon is the single biggest issue in publishing.”

It’s easy to see why. With its vast market reach and unprecedented access to customer data, Amazon has made itself indispensable to publishers, who rely on it both to drive sales (often at painfully deep discounts) and to connect with readers. For many of us, if a book’s not available on Amazon, it might as well not exist. “Given Amazon’s dominant position as a retailer of both print and ebooks and its large stock of information capital, publishers increasingly find themselves locked in a Faustian pact with their largest customer,” Thompson writes.

That pact has proven hard to break. “Today, Amazon accounts for around 45 percent of all print book sales in the US and more than 75 percent of all ebook unit sales, and for many publishers, around half — in some cases, more — of their sales are accounted for by a single customer, Amazon,” Thompson points out. That’s staggering.

Does Amazon care about books? Not in the way that publishers, authors, and readers do, but that doesn’t change the power dynamic. Amazon derives its power from market share, yes, but also from what Thompson calls “information capital” — namely the data it collects about its customers. That gives it an enormous advantage over publishers, whose traditional business approach prioritizes creative content and relationships with authors and booksellers.

Workarounds to Amazon exist, though not yet at scale. Just as authors have learned to connect with readers via email newsletters and social media, so have publishers been experimenting with direct outreach via digital channels. Email feels almost quaint, but done well it remains a simple and effective way to reach a target audience. Selling directly to readers means publishers can avoid the discounts and terms imposed on them by Amazon and other distributors.

. . . .

Authors can now sidestep literary gatekeepers, such as agents and acquiring editors, and build successful careers with the help of self-publishing platforms and outlets that didn’t exist 20 or even 10 years ago. Self-publishing has become respectable; we’ve traveled a long way from the days when book review editors wrote off self-published books as vanity press projects. Newspaper book sections have mostly vanished, but book commentary pops up all over the internet, in serious review outlets like this one and in the feeds of Instagram and TikTok influencers. It’s a #bookstagram as well as an NYTBR world now. To me, that feels like a win for books, authors, and readers.

. . . .

Some authors hit the big time in terms of sales and readers without relying on a traditional publisher. Thompson returns several times to the example of the software engineer-turned-writer Andy Weir, whose hit book The Martian (2011) got its start as serialized chapters published on his blog and delivered to readers via newsletter. (Newsletters represent another digital-publishing trend unlikely to disappear anytime soon.) “The astonishing success of The Martian — from blog to bestseller — epitomizes the paradox of the digital revolution in publishing: unprecedented new opportunities are opened up, both for individuals and for organizations, while beneath the surface the tectonic plates of the industry are shifting,” Thompson writes.

Link to the rest at The Los Angeles Review of Books