I go with E-books for a certain class of my fiction because it won't get published anywhere else, for no other reason than its length. Book publishers 30 years ago would happily take books in the 45,000-60,000 word range; now most of them expect between 80,000-120,000 and some won't take anything shorter than 125,000. Big fat mass-market hardcovers that they can flog for $30 each earn publishers much bigger profits than slim dime-novel style paperbacks. The short story market has also taken a pounding with the collapse of the pulp magazine.

After almost a century of Strunk and White telling us to omit needless words, publishers are actively encouraging their authors to fatten up their novels, and the people who give advice about that sort of thing are completely buffaloed by it. I predicted that the short-story market would find a new home online and went Kindle with three of my shorter-format stories. They don't sell in quantities designed to make me rich, but at least they're out there.

I worked at a very large self-publishing company for a few months. We did about 500 titles a month. For starters, most of them were crap. I mean just awful. Whole books written WITH THE FREAKING CAPSLOCK KEY ON. There were 100+ page books that were one sentence long - one period, at the very end. Dozens of books all claimed to be written by God. This is stuff I would have made one of my ten year old English-as-a-foreign-language students redo from scratch if they turned in.

Occasionally there were beautifully illustrated picture books, some nice prose, and the occasional book of acceptable poetry. But mostly, it's awful. Not surprisingly, most "authors" never made back the money they spent.

Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

Sudo_Make_Me_A_Sandwich: Whole books written WITH THE FREAKING CAPSLOCK KEY ON.

Those are not books, those are screeds. See..Glenn Beck.

knobmaker: Okay, maybe a little perspective from an actually published writer. Bantam Spectra published 3 novels from me, and I have a very good agent-- Richard Curtis. I've also been a Nebula finalist twice. But my next couple of novels will go to Amazon first.

Why? Because the current business model for traditional publishers is nearing extinction. If Richard sells my novel to a big house, they will demand e-rights. This is unacceptable. They are dinosaurs, and I have no interest in allowing them to survive on my potential income. It's only delaying the inevitable.

With Kindle's market penetration and the possibility of print-on-demand publication, there is no longer any reason to support the NYC publishing industry. The only thing you need from the publisher is editing (and it's much cheaper to buy that from out-of-work editors) and promotion. My Bantam Spectra novels were not promoted in any significant way, so even though the advances were high, sell-through was disappointing.

Screw them. If you're a midlist author, you need to be doing your own promotion anyway, and you get a much bigger piece of the money through Amazon and other e-book formats.

I was reading an article by a fairly well-known sci-fi/fantasy author recently, about epublishing - she's completely abandoned the traditional publishers in favor of ebooks, and apparently doing very well.

Ebooks will never go out of print, and your publisher can't cancel your series midway through....I really think it's going to be the way of the future.

I know I almost never even by print books any more, even though I love them -- much more convenient when I can store them all on something that fits in my suitcase.

While we're on the subject of Amazon books ...

Wool Omnibus Edition may be the best six bucks I've spent in years. *Really* good book, and everyone who tries it seems to agree.

kliq: Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

Because if you're good enough, you can end up like this guy.

Knight of the Woeful Countenance: I've been self-publishing for about three months now, and I'm already on track to make above that. As a first time unknown, it's a lot hard for me to get traction, so a lot of what I'm doing is as a loss leader to increase my sales.

Soooo, you haven't made $500 yet? In that time you could make as much working 6 hours a week at minimum wage. I don't want to discourage you, but a hobby is a hobby even if you make some scratch doing it. Heck, I knew a 18 year old who could make $500 on a good day at the rodeo.

If you're serious about going ahead, at minimum forget the concept of a 'loss leader'. That is for retail stores with vast product differentiation or for drug dealers who can actually get customers physically dependent. In this case, you are the only product and you devalue your brand by selling for cheap to get people interested. If you're super serious, go to your local SCORE chapter and get some basic bizniz knowledge for free. Best of luck.

How the hell does Stuart Woods sell so many books?

I briefly get depressed when I read articles/threads like this. And then I remember how much better of a writer I am than the people in the article. I don't expect to get rich, but I think I've got the ability to at least survive on my talents, even though I'm shooting myself in the foot by writing in the scifi & fantasy genres. If I could just get one of my damn projects completed...

Neeps: kliq: Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

Because if you're good enough, you can end up like this guy.

Oh, another genre writer. Try making it in the literary world self-publishing. I'm sure the tenure track positions and literary awards will come piling in.

kliq: Neeps: kliq: Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

Because if you're good enough, you can end up like this guy.

Oh, another genre writer. Try making it in the literary world self-publishing. I'm sure the tenure track positions and literary awards will come piling in.

notsureifserious.jpg

kliq: Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

This Amanda chick started out by selling 2 million dollars worth of her crappy stories and recently signed a 2 million dollar book deal. She also sold the movie rights but I'm not sure for how much.

Bacontastesgood:
Soooo, you haven't made $500 yet? In that time you could make as much working 6 hours a week at minimum wage. I don't want to discourage you, but a hobby is a hobby even if you make some scratch doing it. Heck, I knew a 18 year old who could make $500 on a good day at the rodeo.

If you're serious about going ahead, at minimum forget the concept of a 'loss leader'. That is for retail stores with vast product differentiation or for drug dealers who can actually get customers physically dependent. In this case, you are the only product and you devalue your brand by selling for cheap to get people interested. If you're super serious, go to your local SCORE chapter and get some basic bizniz knowledge for free. Best of luck.

You say that as if you have any idea of my situation and how I've not been able to find work in the last six months, even at a minimum wage job. However with The Twelve Stones, over the last three months I've been able to make enough money to keep some of my bills current and food on my table. Right now, that's good enough for me. This month, I'm probably going to cross the $500 mark. That's more money than I've ever made before with my books and that's what I was referring to in my initial post.

You have to understand, I had the first book sitting in my drawer doing nothing while I collected rejection notices from publishers and agents over the last three years after I finished it. Now however, it's published and up on Amazon and doing a nifty little business and yes, while it isn't anything I can live off of at the moment, it's money that I wouldn't have otherwise while I am looking for work. During my unemployment, I also wrote and published my second novel, Rosetta. Your condescension aside, I'm well aware of the odds against me making it work/making a living off of my writing. You should know that writing has never been a hobby for me. It's been a dream of mine and something I've worked on consistently since I was sixteen and I'm not giving up on it anytime soon (And neither should anyone else in this thread who are writing their novels and are considering self-publishing).

The loss leader I'm talking about (and wasn't made clear in my last post) comes from the short stories I've been writing as a compendium to my second novel and pricing them for .99. They're novellas designed to get people interested in my writing and the characters in the world I created.

But, you know... thanks for the "advice."

peasandcarrots: I go with E-books for a certain class of my fiction because it won't get published anywhere else, for no other reason than its length. Book publishers 30 years ago would happily take books in the 45,000-60,000 word range; now most of them expect between 80,000-120,000 and some won't take anything shorter than 125,000. Big fat mass-market hardcovers that they can flog for $30 each earn publishers much bigger profits than slim dime-novel style paperbacks. The short story market has also taken a pounding with the collapse of the pulp magazine.

After almost a century of Strunk and White telling us to omit needless words, publishers are actively encouraging their authors to fatten up their novels, and the people who give advice about that sort of thing are completely buffaloed by it. I predicted that the short-story market would find a new home online and went Kindle with three of my shorter-format stories. They don't sell in quantities designed to make me rich, but at least they're out there.

I'm interested in e-publishing for pretty much exactly this reason.

I don't care much for novels. I like novellas. For years most of what I read was published in the 60's and 70's, back when a) the Sword Vs Planet genre was still alive, and b) you could still buy a good ripping yarn that fit in your backpocket.

Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Alan Burt Akers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. All wrote great books (or series) that came in nice 150 page chunks. That's what I grew up on, that's what I want to write. I pretty much gave up on my dream of writing a book when I realized I was never going to be able to write a 1100 page doorstopper.

E-publishing (and nanowrimo) has revitalized my interest in writing. Its just hard to find the time to write while working a full time job.

I recorded my cat purring and loaded it to iTunes.

I make about 40.00 a year off it.

ScreamingHangover: I recorded my cat purring and loaded it to iTunes.

I make about 40.00 a year off it.

Cat purring ringtones, the untapped market.

Scott Sigler has an interesting self publishing history. He was signed to a label, 9/11 happened, the downturn killed the label, so he started to give the book away for free on iTunes. This got his name out there, got him a small publishing deal yet he continues to give away his novels for free.

Link

His stuff is pretty good overall. I've purchased a few of his paperbacks and some of his ebooks. The first I read was an e-book of Infected that was on a free giveaway.

Even now, he has a publisher, but he's producing more books than they want to publish so he self publishes those.

snake_beater: kliq: Neeps: kliq: Why would anyone self-publish? If you can't make it in the big leagues, maybe you should try something else.

Because if you're good enough, you can end up like this guy.

Oh, another genre writer. Try making it in the literary world self-publishing. I'm sure the tenure track positions and literary awards will come piling in.

notsureifserious.jpg

You're not sure? Of course I'm not serious. If you want to make it as a real writer, as in, the literary world, there's no way you can self-publish.

Upper-tier literary magazines only accept less than 3% of submissions. The road to literary fame involves a long, hard slog. Why should I take someone seriously as a writer if they don't make this journey like everyone else?

MadSkillz: spidermann: as soon as it was open to anyone with Word and an internet connection I knew this would happen.

Fan fiction, crap "get rich quick" and "self help" books, and so much other junk is just flooding the self-published market.

it now takes one person doing the work of two teams to get their mediocre works recognized and to make money, let alone just to get someone to buy it.

/also, anyone who prices their "good" book at 99¢ deserves to not make any money. pricing is all about perception; price it at $7.99 and more people will buy it because in their mind it is actually worth something

This is why I harp at my boss to stop doing stuff for free hoping to make further business.

I honestly had to scroll up and check to see if this was something I posted last night after a couple of beverages. Needless to say, I share the sentiment exactly.

Because no one wants to read your self-published garbage?

Knight of the Woeful Countenance: Your condescension aside, I'm well aware of the odds against me making it work/making a living off of my writing. You should know that writing has never been a hobby for me. It's been a dream of mine and something I've worked on consistently since I was sixteen and I'm not giving up on it anytime soon (And neither should anyone else in this thread who are writing their novels and are considering self-publishing).

So you're not going to go get totally free business advice from retired execs? OK. Actually, the best part of those places is seeing the other would-be business people and chatting with them. Some are pretty inspiring and can share how to market yourself and make good money from a creative outlet.

I said nothing about the odds of making it work in publishing fiction or criticizing your writing because I honestly know nothing about either. Maybe you're an awesome writer. My criticism was meant to be constructive. If less than $200 a month is putting food on your table and paying bills, then good for you but I sure hope you've considered what happens if it never goes above that, or even only goes up by a factor of 5, say.

As for the hobby comment, that is a specific IRS term. You can deduct business related expenses, but if you have no profit a few years running the IRS will declare your business a hobby and reject your deductions. Needless to say they don't care what your dreams are.

Bacontastesgood:
So you're not going to go get totally free business advice from retired execs? OK. Actually, the best part of those places is seeing the other would-be business people and chatting with them. Some are pretty inspiring and can share how to market yourself and make good money from a creative outlet.

I've studied more about online marketing and business strategies over the last few months than most Wharton MBAs do. I'm not opening up a franchised store here. As part of my last job, I interviewed hundreds of small business owners and got tons of advice on how they made their life's dream/small business succeed work. The most common message I heard was:

1) Believe in yourself.

2) Work harder than the next guy. That's what I'm doing with my self-published novels.

I get what you're saying and I'm not trying to come off like I know it all. I know I have barely scratched the surface. But as an unknown author, the important thing for me to do right now is:

1) Get my name out there as a reliable self-published author who writes fairly good science fiction/action adventure thrillers.

2) Write more material that I can sell.

The only way I AM going to make it is if I continue writing, studying and marketing myself and my writing to those who would be most interested. If you check my reviews on Amazon, I've done fairly well on the impressing people part. It's the getting a wide audience of people to notice me that's key and the only way I do that is by writing, writing, and then writing some more. That's where the loss leader of pricing my novels at $2.99 and the novellas at .99 comes into play.


I said nothing about the odds of making it work in publishing fiction or criticizing your writing because I honestly know nothing about either. Maybe you're an awesome writer. My criticism was meant to be constructive. If less than $200 a month is putting food on your table and paying bills, then good for you but I sure hope you've considered what happens if it never goes above that, or even only goes up by a factor of 5, say.

See my above comment that you replied to about how I know the odds are long against me and how I'm not counting on this becoming my primary source of income anytime soon, as much as I may want it to be. It's been enough to help me out with a few bills here and there while I have been looking for another job and I'm forever grateful for that - but a job (even minimum wage) is something that's been next to impossible for me to find in Las Vegas. I understand that you're trying to come off as if you're helping me, but really, you just sound like an ass.


As for the hobby comment, that is a specific IRS term. You can deduct business related expenses, but if you have no profit a few years running the IRS will declare your business a hobby and reject your deductions. Needless to say they don't care what your dreams are.

I'm not deducting anything or treating this like a business until I start making enough money to do so.

abkaiser: Knight of the Woeful Countenance, may I ask about your marketing? What specifically are you doing in regards to point 1? I ask because I'm finding it extremely difficult to spend time on marketing (at the expense of, for example, writing), and have a very low sales volume. I have had very little success with sales coming from online reviews, paid promotions, GoodReads and GoodReads giveaways, personal blogs, book trailers, or "natural" sales as a result of Amazon's algorithms. Have you found methods that work for you?

There's a couple of different approaches

Blogs are good, if you have a blog that you regularly post on, sign up for Triberr which can help expand your blog's reach, and indirectly (hopefully) your sales. It gives people an idea of what your writing is like and give them a link to either direct sales, or links to your Amazon pages.

Twitter/Facebook are the obvious ones, but I find that those aren't great for anything but for already established fans of your fiction. However, strategically using hashtags on tweets from you about your book/genres works for me. For instance, when Fringe was on, I would tweet during Fringe and compare the show to various scenes in my book (with a link to the amazon page).

KDP Select is my main source of promotion and I've done very well with them so far. I tried putting my stuff up on Barnes and Noble, but afterwards, my sales took a dive and haven't really recovered since. I unpublished from Barnes and Noble and reenrolled my first book in KDP Select. The first give away day is this Thursday, which hopefully will help rekick my sales into gear. If you use KDP Select and their free giveaway promotions deals, go to this site and sign up for them to announce when your book goes on sale for free. Generally, the more you give away, the higher your sales ranking becomes for people who buy them afterwards (because your book shows up paired with a wider variety of also given away books).

Submitting your book to blogs for review is worth a shot, but generally those people already have a huge backlog of books to review. If you can afford it, try to pay for reviews on sites that offer them (I cannot afford that at the moment which is why I avoid that for now). They'll give you an honest review of your book, and generally if it's a bad one, or one you don't want published, they'll let you withhold the review (they still keep the money though obviously).

I've heard of some great results for authors who use Goodreads advertising (but again, I can't afford to spend to much money, so I've mostly stuck with the free stuff I've found). My advice is to get involved in a few forums in your genre on Goodreads/Shelfari and post as often as possible with relevant (and somewhat subtle) advertising about your book. That's the real nitty gritty of advertising work... just takes time and commitment on your part. I don't post much on Goodreads, something I kick myself about on a daily basis.

The main thing you have to remember is to advertise to READERS, not writers. It's tempting to advertise to the people who write for a living, but they don't really care usually. They're too busy writing their own stuff and trying to get noticed rather than buying what you have to offer.

The most important thing you can do, and I cannot stress this enough, is to WRITE. Write more novels/short stories/novellas, anything you think your audience would be interested in. Get yourself a decent body of work together and constantly add to your catalogue. It's all about marketing yourself and catch that lightening in a bottle. Once someone finds a book/short story that they like and that has inspired them to buy more of your material, then that's when you become unstoppable and able to make a living off of it. As a new self-publisher author 90% of your work should be on creating new material, and the other 10% should be on marketing. As you build up more material, that ratio should start to shift somewhat.

Another main focus for you should be designing (or paying someone to design) a great cover and having a good description that will at the same time draw people in, and not give away the meat of the book. The description can sometimes be harder than the book itself to write. So, experiment with that and try to figure out what works best for you.

For me, the biggest sales driver has been KDP select. I know not everyone is as enamored with that system as I am, but it's been the best thing for me and my work so far.

abkaiser: Thanks, KotWC, this info is very helpful, and I'll jump into implementing some of this later. I appreciate your time and advice.


Not at all! I wish you the very best of luck!

Self-publishing isn't for selling books that you're going to sell a ton of copies of and get rich from. It's great for niche stuff. Like if you're into local history and want to write a book about a certain neighborhood or event in your city's past, it might be very appealing to people that live in your city, but it's not going to sell well at a nationwide level. Or if you want to do a biography of someone who's not going to have a gigantic fanbase, like you want to write about a scientist who made big contributions in a specific field of research, or a band that wasn't a mainstream chart topper. Big publishers aren't going be able to make money distributing and promoting it. But you might still have enough special interest to be worth self-publishing and putting it on Amazon.

Most of the folks I know that have self-published, it was stuff like that, that no publishing house was going to invest in because no matter how good the writing or the content was, the audience was too narrow. The authors aren't looking to get rich. They're not really out to quit their day jobs. Self-publishing makes it so that they can get their book into the hands of folks that want it with minimal risk and a little potential for a little reward. They get to share the story they wanted to share and maybe have a little money for gas in the tank to go on a research trip for the next book or to have a few beers to celebrate the completion of this one.

Knight of the Woeful Countenance: I understand that you're trying to come off as if you're helping me, but really, you just sound like an ass.

I wasn't "trying to come off" as anything, I could give fark all to what anyone here thinks of me. I responded because you have some very mistaken concepts about extremely basic business practice. Apparently you didn't learn much by talking to all of those people. "Believe in yourself"? Seriously, I think they were farking with you if they said that.

I'm not deducting anything or treating this like a business until I start making enough money to do so.

If you're earning income it is taxable. If you're selling goods, sales taxes can also apply. It's a business, of course you can not deduct things to keep it "profitable". I think Wharton MBAs might even know that kind of stuff. But whatever, you don't need criticism, you're well on your way to 4 figures revenue.

Bacontastesgood: Apparently you didn't learn much by talking to all of those people. "Believe in yourself"? Seriously, I think they were farking with you if they said that.

Are you really so dense that a basic message of believing in yourself and your business (in this case, a person's writing) isn't something to hold on to when first starting out? Especially a business beset by naysayers who tell you that you'll never make any money at it, or it's not good enough and you should just give up and work at a minimum wage monkey job? For fark's sake just shut the fark up. If you can't be bothered to believe in yourself or your product, why should anyone want to buy it?

Of course there's other advice I got from these people, I was referring to the two most common things I heard, but your condescension is really just indicative of how you see the world. Everyone is dumb except you.


I'm not deducting anything or treating this like a business until I start making enough money to do so.

If you're earning income it is taxable. If you're selling goods, sales taxes can also apply. It's a business, of course you can not deduct things to keep it "profitable". I think Wharton MBAs might even know that kind of stuff. But whatever, you don't need criticism, you're well on your way to 4 figures revenue.

No farking shiat. That's why Amazon/smashwords/Barnes and Noble sends W2's at the end of the year so I can declare that income on my taxes. However, if my expenses aren't more than the standard deduction (which, surprise surprise, they aren't), then it's pointless for me to deduct anything relating to my writing, especially when I'm making fark all as I am at the moment.

Your general assholishness aside, I doubt you have any idea what it really takes to write a book, or even the sort of drive one feels to get their stuff out there. You came into the thread basically mocking me for having turned a profit on his novel (meager as that income may be), it's still something I'm proud of and something I'm continually working to build into something bigger. But no, your advice was for me to get a job making more money at minimum wage as if money was the only thing that I was writing for. Jesus Christ, people like you piss me off.

So, seriously, I'm sure you're full of all sorts of "advice" that would be my golden ticket to instant success, but my advice to you, is to put it in a book and throw it up on Amazon. I'm sure you'll be the one who makes millions.

This self publishing stuff sounds really cool. Glad to see it is a good outlet for fellow farkers to get their creativity out of the bottle, so to speak. Been kicking around ideas myself for a few decades, and this self publishing stuff sounds like something I'll jump into when free time allows.

Takes guts to put little pieces of yourself out into the world. Money is nice, but the Writing and being Read seem to be the bigger drive to do something like this.

Not every story starts at the beginning.