Whenever I mention that I prefer traditional publishing to
\nself-publishing, two things happen.<\/p>\n
First, I get a slew of e-mails from writers telling me
\ntraditional publishing is awful — small advances, low royalties,
\nand publishers not promoting their books.<\/p>\n
Second, I get another flood of e-mails from authors telling me
\nthat they or other self-publishers are “crushing it,” making
\nmoney hand over fist.<\/p>\n
They often cite Amanda Hocking, who has sales of over $2.5
\nmillion for her self-published Kindle e-book.<\/p>\n
But according to a survey of 1,007 self-publishing authors by the
\nweb site Taleist, conducted by Dave Cornford and Steven Lewis in
\n2011 (yes, it\u2019s a bit dated), the truth is quite different.<\/p>\n
“The majority of the information out there is about the outliers,
\nwhose success is inspiring, but as we can now confirm bears scant
\nresemblance to the experience of most authors,” said Dave
\nCornford and Steven Lewis.<\/p>\n
According to their survey, half of self-published authors make
\nless than $500 a year.<\/p>\n
That’s because, as reported in a 2015 article by Chris McMullen,
\nthe average self-published book sells less than 250 copies.<\/p>\n
Derek Murphy, an expert in independent publishing, says, “The
\naverage self-published author spends $2,000 to $5,000 to publish
\ntheir books, and few earn any money.”<\/p>\n
If you spend two grand and sell 250 copies, you are losing a lot
\nof money on your self-published book!<\/p>\n
By comparison, in traditional publishing, the money flows from
\npublisher to author, even though advances are much smaller today
\nthan when I started writing books 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
The mainstream publishers not only give you money up front; they
\nalso pay for everything, from printing and cover design to
\nediting and proofreading — saving you a considerable amount of
\ncash.<\/p>\n
The bell curve for self-publishing is skewed, with less than 10%
\nof self-published authors earning about three-quarters of the
\ntotal revenues from sales of self-published books.<\/p>\n
The average self-publisher from the group surveyed by Taleist
\nearns just $10,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Notice also that many self-publishers with good sales, from El
\nJames (“Fifty Shades of Grey”), Robert Ringer (“Looking Out for
\n#1”), and Roger von Oech (“A Whack on the Side of the Head”)
\neither immediately or eventually look for and get a deal with a
\nmainstream publishing house.<\/p>\n
Take note: I am not saying mainstream publishing is great or the
\nbetter way to go.<\/p>\n
My purpose here is to just present some cold, hard facts for all
\nthose self-publishing cheerleaders I constantly hear from to
\nponder — and to inform the rest of us about the good, the bad,
\nand the ugly of being your own publisher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whenever I mention that I prefer traditional publishing to self-publishing, two things happen. First, I get a slew of e-mails from writers telling me traditional publishing is awful — small advances, low royalties, and publishers not promoting their books. Second, I get another flood of e-mails from authors telling me that they or other self-publishers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}