I May Write for a Living But That Doesn’t Mean I’m Earning One
Written by Scath on October 23, 2009 – 10:18 am
In my last post, I said “Ultimately, regardless of legality, it’s the reader’s decision to ‘lend’ an e-book out and to my fellow authors: dudes, there’s not really anything we can do about it.”
I was wrong, because there is something we can do about it: educate people on how little we actually make.
I don’t mean cry, whine, rant or rave like idiots about it. Just plop it out there so they’ll know.
Following Dhympna’s suggestion, here I go doing just that.
First, a bit of background information I feel the need to share in order to give a clear picture.
A smart independent (or self-publishing) author does research before coming up with a pricing structure for her work. She needs a price that will cover PayPal fees and/or distributors’ splits, while earning her a bit of profit from each sale.
She also needs to keep in mind that e-books are extensively marketed as a cheaper alternative to print books and that readers have no idea who the hell she is because she hasn’t yet built a reputation as a writer.
Now despite the fact I’m perfectly capable of pulling some real boners, I do try to pretend I’m reasonably intelligent, so I researched.
Roughly three dozen small presses later, I’d learned fiction e-book pricing based on word count was pretty standard. I averaged out the prices I’d seen for each word count tier to create my own pricing schedule.
I’d say, based on the fact that I have sold e-books, that I’ve set reasonable prices.
My next hurdle was to decide where to sell them. After all, slapping them up on my website wasn’t going to result in millions of readers rushing to buy them.
No one had heard of me as a writer and I had neither the knowledge nor the time to aggressively promote myself and my titles. The logical conclusion was to go where the readers were buying books.
I chose Amazon and Lulu as my first sales venues, and that’s when I questioned my pricing schedule. While Lulu only collects 20%, Amazon collects 65%. But believing I’d settled on sound pricing, I stuck to my schedule.
I sold 2 e-books to friends, and two months after putting the one title I had up on Amazon, I received my first sale from someone I didn’t know. Earned a whopping 88 cents. I was thrilled (and still am at every sale!), because a stranger had paid for something I wrote!
Of course by then, I’d twigged onto the fact that more titles would hypothetically equal more sales. So I made sacrifices, as did my family in putting up with me, so that in 2008 I was able to write my ass off almost every single day.
More titles did result in more sales – and in regular sales every month. Pretty awesome, right? 
Let’s take a look at those sales and my earnings from them:
2007 – 2 e-books sold, $ 4.30 earned.
2008 – 60 e-books sold, $ 94.97 earned.
2009 – 239 e-books sold, $386.20 earned (as of this morning)
So with 691 days of being a selling author, 301 e-books sold for a total of $485.47 in semi-gross profits. I say ’semi-gross’ because PayPal fees and distributor splits are taken right off the top and I don’t see that money.
In 2008, determined to polish my writing skills, I paid someone to tell me things like I was misspelling ’separate’, dangling participles all over the place and using words like ‘very’ too much. This year, I discovered a couple of causes I really wanted to support.
Take $439.57 out of those semi-gross profits for editing expenses (which have been totally worth every penny!) and my paltry portion of proceeds earmarked for donations from three titles to those causes.
My net profit, for almost two full years as a selling author, is $45.90.
Which means I’ve earned 70 cents daily before expenses, and 6.6 cents daily after them since deciding to become a writer.
I’m not whining about it, but it is a pretty stark realization of how little an author earns. I’d hazard the guess my experience is probably shared by 50-65% of other independent authors.
This is likely the reason why some authors foam at the mouth like rabid weasels about piracy so much.
We spend hella hours and effort on our stories to earn pennies a day. It has a tendency to make you very protective of your e-book babies and what people do with them.
You likely see every instance of a copy going to someone who hasn’t paid for it as money lost, whether that’s the truth or not.
On the whole, we’re pretty much poor people just trying to earn a little extra income by sharing our imaginations and trying to entertain people.
‘Little’ being the operative word.
Tags: Amazon, Babble, Causes, e-books, word counts, writing
Posted in Writing & Pubbing | 18 Comments »
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
Thankya.
As I have stated. I am against piracy and believe that some people who illegally download a file simply do not understand that most authors earn very little.
I think that readers have to understand how little an author makes per book.
I might also add that you forgot the time and effort that networking and building a platform to sell your books (lots of energy and frustration there to be found I am sure).
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Writing for yourself has to be number one. In the end you hope enough people like it and thus reward you for your effort.
With e-books, there is a double-edged sword who’s sharp edge only mimics the fineness of the line drawn that people seem to have no problems crossing that line.
As I told D, I have no problems lending or borrowing, but if that person (or I), truly enjoy what we’ve read, and determine we’ve found ourselves a new favorite read, then pay for it. I always buy my own copy of a book I’ve borrowed – if I love it that much.
I don’t mind loaning, I just mind the taking.
Not sure that makes sense. When I loan, if I loan, it is with the implication if you like it – go get your own copy.
However, this apparently is not the case or the concern.
I myself cannot read e-books. Don’t have the means and not sure if I can. I suffer from severe, recurrent, eye strain. But still, and you know, if it weren’t for the format, I would never have been published myself.
As to the matter at hand – I am so torn and unsure where to turn to for accurate information. I want my work out there, but the method does, and can make a difference.
How to protect myself? How do you protect yourself? And to do it without alienating those you are trying to reach?
I haven’t a clue.
Even those who publish actual books know that one copy can be passed around forever and each time it is, it is a sale lost unless that person goes and gets their own copy.
We are at the mercy of morality and ethics.
And if that is the case….[buries face into hands]
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
@Dhympna
You’re welcome!
Yeah, I did miss that and yes, it’s totally frustrating.
Especially when you build up a good head of steam at it, then something happens so you have to slack off the marketing/promotional efforts and that basically results in wasted time.
That’s happened to me since June.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
@BiblioBrat
Nope, that makes perfect sense to me.
I do factor in that a lot of avid readers are probably just like me: we can’t afford to go pay $10 or more for a book on any kind of regular basis.
So we hit the library, borrow books from friends and wait to find a deal on those we absolutely must have our own copies of.
I seriously didn’t realize that many traditionally published authors actually earn less per sale than independents do.
The fact they score advances meant I never even thought about it. And they usually lose all rights to their books in the process of being traditionally published (at least for a period of time).
So, little as independent authors earn selling e-books, we actually have it better than traditionally published authors where earnings potential comes into play.
But they have their publishers behind them, while we’re all trying to figure out the marketing stuff ourselves through trial and error.
As for the ‘copy being passed around forever’ part of your response, legally authors have no right to expect to earn past the first time the book is sold.
Once that first sale has occurred, ownership of the book is no longer theirs. It’s called ‘first sale doctrine’ and is what allows readers who legally purchase books to resell, lend or give those books away.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
This is a great post, Scath. I’ve been focusing my writing lately on zombie articles for Associated Content, and after scrambling to write 2-3 articles a day, then promoting those articles, I’ve earned some $4-5 this month. It seems like such a paltry sum when I think of the amount of work that goes into it — I could earn more than that in an hour flipping burgers, but then, it’s a different kind of money making. Once I’ve written an article, it’ll make me money for the rest of my life — same with your ebooks — and if I keep writing day after day, this time next year I’ll be making a lot more than I am now.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
@Gabriel
Thanks, and dude, I’m so sorry! I meant to do a post here linking to your articles and a few other cool reads, but brain bubbles attacked.
I’ll get one up (hopefully today!).
But wow, I’m kind of jealous because you’ve earned about half what I have this month. With five articles vs. 11 e-books!
Go you!
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
5 articles? Try 73.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
@Gabriel Gadfly
Whoops, just getting your link to the list of them . Must have had brain bubbles attacking, because I have no idea where ‘five’ came into my head.
Okay, I’m not jealous now, I’m sympathetic as hell, dude! But keep hustling, and I’ll get a post up this evening linking to them, and maybe push a few people your way (and I’ll go read them all myself too!).
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
No need to be sympathetic.
I enjoy writing the articles, even if they don’t earn me much. I see them as a form of productive procrastination: if I’m working on article, I’m probably not working on my webnovel or poetry (which I really need to focus on), but at least I’m earning a few bucks off it.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Cool, then I can say ‘go you!’ again, because really, 2-3 articles a day? That’s some impressive writing effort going on!
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jesse P. Luna, Gabriel Gadfly and Dhympna du Maurier, Miladysa. Miladysa said: RT @GabrielGadfly RT @Scath I may write for a living, but that doesn't mean I'm earning one. New blog post: http://bit.ly/2iz6C9 #weblit [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I loved your article. I’m most definitely in the same boat. Though you’ve sold many more books than I have and you might have made more per title than me. I never looked at the actual numbers. All I know is that I’m still down there under a whole lot of red.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 pm
@Anna
We must be insane, right?
If my experience is anything to judge by, sales will grow. Perhaps not as fast as any of us would like, but they will grow!
October 24th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dhympna: RT @Scath I may write for a living, but that doesn’t mean I’m earning one. New blog post: http://bit.ly/2iz6C9...
October 25th, 2009 at 12:35 am
@Scath Sales will grow. Every new reader is a potential source of new readers, because people like to tell other people about writers they like. Every new book you write is another entry point through which readers can discover your work, and if a reader likes one of your books, chances are, they’ll want to read the others.
October 25th, 2009 at 2:49 am
@Gabriel
And that’s the reason I keep trucking along!
I have a pretty low goal set: I would like to have 500 loyal readers by my fifth year as an independent e-book author.
That won’t make me rich, but it will probably help with my kids’ college expenses!
October 25th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
That’s kinda how I look at it. I make enough at my day job to (barely) cover my expenses. Anything I make off my writing from there is pure profit, whether it’s $10 or $100. At this point, I’m just happy if it means the difference between buying a case of ramen for groceries for the month or actually being able to afford real food like milk and eggs.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
@Gabriel
I remember times like that!
I guess the good thing is that I’m not depending on my writing to pay bills or put food on the table. We have our webhosting company and a few other sidelines to take care of that stuff.
Writing income, that little bit I’ve actually pocketed, is for the occasional important thing (like that trip to California to see my mom, who has Younger Onset Alzheimers, which you helped with!) or for minscule ‘extras’.
Like .99 mp3s from Amazon so I have something to listen to while writing.
Hey, can I count those as an expense?
I’m lucky my Story Tamer loves me, because I’m still in the hole with her on the editing of Rising Moon, but we worked out a deal so that now she gets a percentage of my semi-gross for each title she edits.
So actually, I’m not the only one earning from any sales I get on 8 of my titles. People, buy more! LOL