Nowhere near enough.
If I’d taken a minimum wage job and simply worked all the hours spent on writing, researching, and dealing with rights, I’d be far ahead.
The standard rule of thumb was that 90% of slush was immediately identifiable. Yes, you can tell by the first page. (Which is why none of those techniques that were supposed to signal in a returned manuscript that the editor read the whole - like turning a page upside down or even inserting a dollar bill - was of any value.) Then 90% of the rest was minimally competent but sub-par. The 1% that remained was seriously considered, but may or may not wind up being purchased. After all, it was being compared to the non-slush pile, which included known authors who themselves might often submit more than could be published. Editors did like to identify promising new authors from the slush so it was never simply dismissed out of hand. It was always a battle for the lower end, getting put in the places left over by the guaranteed names.
I published with an academic press. My royalty rate works out to about 10% of the retail price.
Not true anymore. I publish both in ebook and paperback versions–for my ebooks I go through Amazon (thoughI had my files generated for me by the place that did my cover); for my paperbacks, I go through CreateSpace. There’s zero upfront cost–you just format your file, upload it along with a cover, and you’re good to go. It’s Print on Demand, so they only print a copy if someone orders one. The only way you’re going to get a garage full of unsold copies is if you buy your own book (CS offers them at a highly discounted rate), try to sell them yourself, and fail.
FYI, my ebooks have outsold my paperbacks by orders of magnitude. I think I’ve sold fewer than 20 paperbacks since I released my book.
No, and fewer publishers have slushpiles these days. The advent of word processing made it easier to write a book, and electronic submissions mean you can easily be overwhelmed. Most publishers only accept agented submissions these days; at least the agent can vouch that the book is worth their time to read.
The expected value of a good manuscript is probably zero at either venue. Once published by a publisher, you will usually make more money (you are given a check on acceptance), but self-publishing can be successful, though there’s no guarantee you’ll earn anything.
People have mentioned Fifty Shades, but more recently wasn’t “The Martian” self-published as an e-book first?
There’s nothing new about self-published books becoming best sellers. You can go back to The Celestine Prophecy in 1993. There was also a book on how to stop smoking that was the size of a cigarette pack a few years earlier.
The Shack was also self-published and became a best-seller, 100% through word-of-mouth.
I offer rates at 35% of net sales on eBooks. That’s after my distributors take their cut, but BEFORE expenses. So Amazon pays 70% of the cover price, then 35% of that goes to the author. So 1/4th the cover price, maybe?
I offer 10% of net on printing, which generally works out to 10 cents a book. Printing is dead.
This is incorrect. As a publisher I see a direct correlation between number of Amazon reviews (number over quality/rating) and book sales. It’s almost linear. Certainly measurable.
This part is true. Amazon reviews are hard to get, but worth their weight in gold.
Most books sell 99% of what they’re ever going to sell in the first month or two of launch. So if I can launch a book with 5-10 Amazon reviews on opening day and get it into the top 100 of its genre, I’m going to do better than an unread, unknown quantity.
Maybe so. And more people are self-publishing. However, there was just a thread recently here on the SDMB about self-publishing not leading to sales.
My company’s books lead to sales. We have a built in customer base, advertising, marketing, reviews, social media, etc. We can at least quadruple the sales of a self-published book. Another thing–you’re not going to make any money until your 5th book. So if you’re writing the great American novel, good luck. If you’re looking to establish yourself as a fiction/mystery/sci-fi writer, etc., write a LOT.
Self-publishing isn’t working. Look at Amazon Unlimited, only the cheapest, non-revenue-earning books are there, and they’re all crap, and they’re all ranked low on Amazon. It’s easier than ever to create an eBook. Amazon imports from Word now, and it looks nice. It’s harder than ever to get noticed. Self-publishing isn’t my competition. Other publishing houses are.
We reject close to 100% of unsolicited submissions and maybe 50% of solicited submissions. And I’m not looking for perfection. I’d happily publish crap if I thought people would like it.
I see that Exapno Mapcase just answered that better.
Huh. My experience is different wrt that.
I self-published two SF novels about 4 years ago…priced them at 99 cents each because I was an unknown. Did my own “advertising” by mentioning them on another website I frequent that has a LOT of people who are interested in the genre.
I made over $10,000 the first year.
And those are two books that I’d had laying around in my hard drive for 15 years, collecting digital dust. One of them made it to the top 10 in SF sales on Kindle IIRC.
I wrote two sequels to one of the two books, and in the year each sequel was released, I made close to $10,000 (from all the books together).
My only advertising has been free, on other websites and via my own blog, Facebook page and twitter account.
I have no publisher and no agent.
True, I would have made more had I been signed by a publisher, but I had already gone that route 15 years ago and accumulated no money and lots and lots of rejection letters, mostly from people who probably never bothered to read either book. Still, over $30 grand over the last 4 years isn’t anything to sneeze at.
You’re right about most of the sales coming within a few months of release…it always follows the same pattern for me: spike from a few hundred a month to around $3000 at the highest, then a gradual downslope to the point where, right now almost a year since my last release I am only getting a couple hundred a month. I’m working on a sequel to the other book now and hopefully will have it done in a few months and I’m looking forward to that next upswing. 
RikWriter, you are the one we all hope to be. 
That’s fantastic!
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Do more reviews create more sales, or do more sales create more reviews?
The big issue of course, is getting people to find your book on Amazon. The reviews don’t make much difference since reviews never made much difference in book sales. Hell, publishers used to say that a terrible review generated as much sales for a book as a good one, and I seriously doubt that changed.
You’re not quoting from me, but from the person I was replying to (I may have gotten the tags messed up). I agree that traditional book publishers will do just fine; Vantage Press made millions from Fifty Shades, and you don’t go out of business if you’re making that sort of money.
It’s working a little better than it used to, but you’re right – an author is nearly always better off with a publishing house. The number of successes in self-publishing – and I’ll define it as selling enough copies to go out for a nice dinner once your expenses are covered – are extremely small, and 99% of the people who use it will not make anything.
Yep, that’s inspiring! 
I hope I can follow in your footsteps! So far I only have one book released, but it’s selling well (enough that in the first month and a half I’ve made enough money from it to qualify for SFWA Active membership under their new self-published book guidelines). I have four more finished and in the editing pipeline. I really hope my “upswings” go as well as yours do.
Congrats!
Thanks! Genre is VERY important as to whether you’ll be successful self-publishing, from what I can tell. Science fiction and in particular old-school military science fiction tend to do well in the self publishing market. Basically, the traditional-publishing market on old-school sf and mil-sf is cornered by just a few authors and frankly their e-books are very high priced. If you are willing to set your first book or two at 99 cents, people will give it a chance because there’s not enough mainstream stuff out there. Of course, they have to like it to get them to buy anything else you write…
Interesting - I wonder if the old-school sci-fi (and especially military sci-fi) sells well in self-pub because there isn’t much of it available in mainstream (have you been following the whole Sad/Rabid Puppies kerfuffle over the Hugo Awards? Part of it is over this exact thing).
I’ve currently got my book priced at $2.99 and it’s selling pretty well. When I release the second one I’ll probably drop the first one to 99 cents, but not until sales slow down. I’m tempted to drop the first to 99 cents and raise the price on subsequent titles to $3.99–I attended a presentation at a writer’s conference recently from a guy from Smashwords, and he said that, oddly, books at $3.99 sell better than those at $2.99, despite the fact that there are more books at $2.99.
I’m a little afraid to, though–I don’t want readers to think I’m being greedy, and I don’t want to slow down what so far is a pretty good momentum.
Infovore, I think that pricing your next book at $3.99 is a good plan. My own books have sold better at $3.99 than at $2.99, and $3.99 is the minimum price to be considered for a Kindle Daily Deal offer.
I also suspect–this is an unsolicited observation–that you are in a sweet spot in Amazon’s analytics machine. It has been my experience that having all your active titles enrolled in KDP Select–and set to auto-renew–helps you to achieve this. When I stopped auto-renewing my books, sales dropped from several books a day to zero books a day instantaneously.
So: don’t change anything, unless you’re adding another title.
Good to know. I’ll definitely consider it.
I’m not enrolled in KDP Select, though. I don’t want to limit my ability to be able to sell through other outlets (though, in the interests of full disclosure, my sales through other channels have been abysmal). I’ve heard the pros and cons of it, and decided to try it out without it. So far it’s working.
Never mind me, then 
I tried doing other channels, too. It was abysmal, too.
Not familiar with the Hugo thing…
But I’m very dismayed that at bookstores, “SF/fantasy” is almost exclusively fantasy these days. The person who decided to put fantasy with science fiction deserves to be shot.
It was indeed, and more than that, the author published a chapter at a time on his own web site. From Wikipedia:
Andy Weir, the son of a particle physicist, has a background in computer science. He began writing the book in 2009, researching the book to be as realistic as possible based on existing technology.[5] Weir studied orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight.[8] He has stated that he knows the exact date of each day in the book.[9]
Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website.[5] At the request of fans he made an Amazon Kindle version available through Amazon.com at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price).[5] The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had previously downloaded it for free.[5][9] This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for six figures.[5]
The book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list on March 2, 2014 in the hardcover fiction category at twelfth position.[10]
Since then, it has sold very well in print and audiobook, and Ridley Scott is making the movie with Matt Damon starring.
From an interview on the Twit.tv program Triangulation, by self-publishing in serial form, he got a huge number of editorial and technical critiques that improved the quality of the story. (Would Quiddich be less stupid if J.K. Rowling had gone this route?)
Can I just interject here and tell you all how fascinating I’ve been finding the authoring threads here lately?
I’m a recovering journalist who still writes occasionally and while I’ll never, ever write a book (for me a magnum opus is 3,000 words), I find this whole process, from story conception to tallying sales, really interesting. And the financial aspects of publishing are something that doesn’t get talked about honestly very often, so I am learning a lot here.
And best of luck to all of you who have your work out there!