Has it Gotten Desperate

Has it Gotten Desperate It is funny how emails from readers serve as prompts for each weeks editorial thoughts, and this week is no exception. Received a question from an indie author who asked me where he could obtain statistics on how much money indie writers make. BookScan and other entities attempt to monitor traditional sales (not that they get it correct, but they try), but he felt there had to be something somewhere monitoring the same for indie. Then he gave me his statistics, and how low they were. A friend of mine told me one of his bestsellers sold 300 copies. That was eye-opener for me, because I honestly thought someone in his position would do better than that. I started self-publishing in late 2009 and have put out 23 books. Ive sold 2917 copies for a total of $5793.73. This averages $1.98 a copy. Im personally committed to print books, but probably 75 percent of all my sales are ebooks. This also averages to about 126 copies of each of my 23 titles. However, I can say I have one book which clearly outsells the others and accounts for about 85 percent of all my sales. I love writing short stories (I cant seem to write novels) but readers arent captivated Whats happening these days is that writers dont sell as many books because there are so many books out there. There are also so many tools popping up to advertise books for FREE, 99 cents and $1.99. Daily and weekly publications tell you were all the secret best deals are. So: 1) Readers expect to pay less for books than they used to. 2) Writers receive less money and feel they have to write more to take up the slack. 3) That puts even more books out there, so readers dont know what to buy and they stick to lists. 4) The lists start charging for appearances in their lists. The spiral continues. It used to be that writers had to have three to four books to be a success. Now its closer to ten. And after attending a recent mystery conference, Im learning that the serious writer has two dozen or more. My suggested solution? 1) Dont forget traditional publishing. They still get your name out to more regions. 2) When indie publishing, pump serious attention into quality, to include financial investment. 3) Dont forget to write well. Dont shortchange your craft for quantity. 4) Be patient, keep writing, and know that this phase will change for another. Dont let it freak you out. New indie authors do not make money. Those that do have been busting their asses for a long time. Nobody is an overnight success. So keep on keeping on. Only the diligent survive this business.