Historical and Contemporary Romance Author
For the record, I totally agree with folks who’ve said that the much-discussed, ballyhooed, and denigrated Author Earnings report way overreaches the conclusions that can be drawn from the current data set. Both Dear Author and Courtney Milan have done excellent posts on the subject, so I won’t belabor the point. But the defenders of the traditional publishing model who…
Because I’m apparently incapable of staying out of trouble lately, I got into a discussion on Mike Shatzkin’s blog the other day about advances and earn-out. In discussing Hugh Howey’s comparison of earnings for authors in traditional publishing versus self-publishing, Mike (who’s an industry consultant) pointed out that it’s hard to pinpoint a traditionally published author’s income based on royalty…
One of the statistics that’s commonly batted around these days in publishing is that 70% of book sales in trade publishing are in print. This figure is commonly touted by the AAP (no, not the American Association of Pediatrics, but the American Association of Publishers). And I’d bet it’s pretty accurate. Yesterday, however, Hugh Howey posted some data on his…
Some comments on another blog got me wondering which digital books are more profitable for Amazon to sell–those from Big 5 traditional publishing houses or those put out by authors/publishers using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). At first blush, you’d think it would be the traditionally published books, since they generally sell at a higher price than self-published books, but I…
In the past few days, I believe I’ve given some people the impression that I hate traditional publishing.1 I don’t. I don’t think publishing houses are evil. I don’t believe authors who choose to go with the traditional model are doing anything stupid or wrong. I don’t want print publishing to die. None of those things are remotely true. What…
I have been debating for the better part of the day whether I should type up this post or not. If it gets me into even more trouble than I already am, I’m blaming Cecilia Grant, Kinsey Holley, and Olivia Waite. I’m not going to bother you with the background here. There’s a lot of it. Most of which it…
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about print books, book sales, and bestseller lists. My thoughts have been spurred by several blog posts/discussions, primarily these: A Note on Historical Romance Sales in Print on Courtney Milan’s blog. USA Today released its list of the top 100 bestselling books of 2013, and Publisher’s Weekly noted that not a single self-published…
A natural consequence of writing books with the intention of making a profit from their sale is that the author and publisher (sometimes different entities, sometimes the same) tend to think of the books as having an intrinsic dollar value. In other words, if selling books is your business, you tend to associate a “reasonable” price with those books. What…
Today, the Guardian brought us a story ominously titled “Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500.” If you haven’t read it already, go ahead and click the link. I’ll wait for you to get back. Okay, there are two bits of this that I want to comment on. This first is this: …the average amount earned…
Okay, that’s a trick subject, because this isn’t going to be a poll or a question. It’s going to be a statement of fact. I am willing to bet that everyone reading this post has either read or is extremely familiar with the story I am going to name below. I would further be willing to bet a large sum…