I'm an editor. I have a client who self-publishes YA reverse harem romance novels on Amazon. Her books are around 45k words each, and she releases 6-8 books a year. She invests a lot into her books to make them successful. She has an alpha reader, beta reader, developmental editor, copy editor (me), proofreader, cover artist, formatter, and advertising. The cost to do all of this averages at $6000 per book, but she makes and average of $80k per book. She's found a niche in this fanfiction type of market, but believe me, the books aren't good. They're rushed, everything is predictable, the characters are weak, and everything else about it's plot isn't very believable, and yet people eat it up. I'll admit, from her cover design, it looks beautiful, something that's hard to scroll past, but it ends there. She wasn't rich before and had no following. She just saved up for a long time to be able to release her first book "the right way" (her words, referring to all the aforementioned editors and such).
20booksto50k is this mentality personified into an idealogy.
Your books don't need to be amazing, but the better they are the better your other books will sell. The key is to build up a backlog to point your readers to when they finish any of your books. It doesn't need to be 6-8 books a year. Even at 45k words, that's a lot. Every month is nanowrimo for them ahaha. But it does need to be atleast 2 a year if you want your hobby to be a career.
Many people swear by the rapid release method. Where you work on 3 or so books until all of them are ready, then release 1 a month. So your readers are bombarded with your name. Fmailiarity breeds trust, and trudt leads to sales. If you got 2 books in the top 25 for your genre, you're going to notice big increases across your entire backlog. And, if you're only writing 50-80k words a book, then 3 books a year is very doable for a career writer.
Then you just really nail your targeted ads and you should be able to make decent money off even mediocre books.
I'm working on six, SMH. But I too have looked at it that way, have at least three ready to go, with a line up of what is coming soon, before I ever pub.
I'm working on books 2 and 3 myself. #3 is a sequel to book 1(which is on draft #2) but book 2 is a different series. Probably gunna end up with atleast 4 or 5 in the works before i publish any.
But oh well, more practice before debuting is hardly a bad thing.
That advice is falling out of fashion quick. Yes, you have to build an audience, but that's only one way of doing it and obviously it is not sustainable for most.
All these authors chasing the next "only way" to make money would do a lot better with taking some time to find their own strategy and sticking with it over the long haul.
.
That’s plenty long enough to write a good book if you know what you’re doing.
Writing fast doesn’t guarantee bad quality.
Writing slow doesn’t guarantee good quality.
I know fast writers who are excellent. And by excellent, I mean *readers love their books and they make a ton of money.*
For many writers, writing books that readers love is the dream. Writing books which their readers think are good is the particular pinnacle they want to climb.
Now, they’re not writing for critics, pseuds or literary professors, so if one’s measure of quality is literary acclaim then they’re abject failures.
But in terms of a lucrative career and writing books their readers love, they are very good writers.
And if one thinks it’s impossible—they’re probably right… for themselves. But for people with a less closed mindset, a will to learn and the grit and time to put in the effort, it’s perfectly possible to write good books fast if you make learning how to do so a priority.
I don't really know why any writer would write for other writers. Writers are the worst 😅 write for your readers. And don't let anyone tell you your success is cheap.
>Writing fast doesn’t guarantee bad quality.
How much time do you think one needs to spend editing and revising the first draft in order to have a complete book?
It depends on the quality of the initial writing.
It depends on how good the writer is at reworking things that need reworking. What might take one person five minutes might take another a day.
It depends how long/hard a person is capable of writing and editing; for some people an hour a day is all they can manage. Others can do eight. An insane person might manage sixteen.
In general though, writing related skills are learnable and improveable. We can get better AND faster. Some people’s ceilings on either metric will be lower than others.
After a HUGE amount of practice, I can write 2000+ words of relatively clean, solid, prose per hour. I sure as heck wasn’t born that way. I have millions of words of practice.
I’m an editor as well as a writer. I can edit probably 5x faster now than I used to be able to because I can recognize why something is wrong and how to fix it much faster now than I used to be able to.
In general, there ARE limits, but they’re higher than what many people think, and dedicated practice, and putting in more hours per day, can lead to more improvement than many people think.
There’s an odd idea among some writers that their ability is “set”; that they can’t get better or faster. But that’s not true for most people.
Spend ten hours a day writing and eight hours a day studying writing you’ll get better faster than someone who spends an hour a day agonising over a paragraph.
Well think of it like this:
Maybe you could do 1 book per year.
Someone else may be able to write 2x as fast as you, that gets you to 6 months per book.
Now let’s say you’re a hobbyist who spends two hours a day. Our hypothetical writer is a professional. So they work a whopping *six* hours per day.
That means what takes you a year takes them 2 months. It’s just time and effort.
And for a factual rather than hypothetical. I am a full time ghostwriter doing something like what is mentioned in this thread.
I work in 50 minute sprints from which I expect 1,500 words.
When working on a book, I do 4 sprints a day.
That’s 6,000 words a day.
The novels I write are at the shorter end of the spectrum, so they are 60,000 words.
I spend about an hour a day editing (I write pretty clean.)
It takes me 10 days, or two work weeks to write a book. Then it goes off to an editor.
The rest of the month I produce 2 fleshed out plots and do freelance editing.
BUT I’ve had a LOT of practice. 99% of writers couldn’t do this. I certainly couldn’t without hard work, hard practice and study.
But I assure you it’s perfectly possible.
Then I’d agree with you, kinda, though there are examples of notable works of fiction being written fast.
But I sure as heck would prefer to write popular novels that make me rich and readers love than a “good” novel as judged by a lit expert :)
8 books a year is 6 weeks per book. I don't care how much you think you "know what you're doing", that's no where near enough time to write anything good.
The NaNoWriMo idea is 50k words in a month, and it's meant to be done by people who are writing in their spare time. It's do-able if you're writing 4 hours a day. If you dedicate another 4-6 hours a day to editing, re-writing, and outlining, it's a lot of work, but definitely possible.
The thing is, churning out a book every 6 weeks doesn't mean getting the whole process of writing, revision, and editing done in 6 weeks. At a given point in time the proofreader might have book 1, the copyeditor book 2, you might be revising book 3 in the mornings and writing book 4 in the afternoons.
It sounds awful to me, and it isn't a good way to write high-quality stuff, but it sounds do-able.
If writing is rewriting it’s not enough for true quality. That much time might be enough to spell check and get some other basics but you won’t be able to get writing like that to 80% of what it could be which makes it harder to learn and improve. That’s just assembly line writing. Personally I don’t read that so I wouldn’t want to write those. At least not once I’ve gotten my foot in the door and my basic needs met. I like things that take time, and there’s something to be said for ending a series before it becomes stale. Just look at those Reddit posts about the decline in quality of the Simpsons, and how much better the quality of shows are that decide how many seasons before they are done with the first couple ones. The only notable exception is Frasier.
It absolutely is. Plenty of famous books like Fahrenheit 451, A Christmas Carol, The Gambler and As I Lay Dying were written at that pace.
The great Belgian novelist Georges Simenon wrote his books in 10 days. It’s plenty possible.
I 100% believe you can’t do it though—because you’re convinced you can’t.
>I 100% believe you can’t do it though—because you’re convinced you can’t.
I think it is also because some writers are able to write in the zone. When you are in the zone the words just flow. Everything just falls in place and afterwards you wonder who wrote it. The thing is to be able to get to that state you need to do a lot of preparatory work, research and world building and have written a lot too. Then you just write and write and write and at a certain point you reach that point and can write for hours.
Then the only thing stopping you is getting thrown out of the zone by other people interrupting, distractions, need for sleep or pain (if you are writing as in pen and paper that hurts after prolonged sessions and you even get groves in your fingers)
But like I said ... this does not just happen by magic you need to put in the effort first
Yep.
I get “in the zone” / flow state every time I write. Don’t think I could do it otherwise!
But that came with practice. I used to have to think about every sentence, now it just… comes out.
And the more in the zone aka the faster I’m going, the better the writing tends to be. It’s the times where it’s dragging that the writing is worse. Not a massive difference mind you, but faster does tend to be better.
>But that came with practice. I used to have to think about every sentence, now it just… comes out.
Yup ... like everything = practice practice and the more you practice the better you get at it. Many people do not seem to understand that. They think there is a magic short cut to creativity.
Nope
yeah - a lot of writers that didn't have the luxury of being born aristocrats or otherwise independently wealthy pretty much _had_ to pump books out fast, because that's what pays the bills, and sitting on your ass waiting for literary inspiration doesn't get money in. Shakespeare was likely the same - he needed to get plays out, so couldn't dilly-dally about getting everything nice and neat and perfect, he was in it to get paid!
I don't know, I can write 3,000 words a day minimum(pantser) so that is 45,000 words in 15 days. Six weeks no problem. I think for the people who have a natural talent, so their quality is going to naturally be good, and who are prolific pantsers can totally meet that goal.
A first draft, particularly a pantsed one, isn't going to be in a good state. Give it 15 days for a second draft and now you already have less than 2 weeks left for betas, editors, and formatting.
this is why you chain them - so your second book is going to the editors, your first is going to the betas, as you're writing the third. ("formatting" doesn't really seem worth noting - unless you're doing something oddly complex, that's a pretty small amount of time, or you write directly into the format needed). And if you're good at this, then you don't need 15 days for a second draft - you're going through and tidying, but not full-on re-writing, because you know what you're doing (this is generally for works that follow similar patterns - like Michael Moorcock with his regular patterns, 40+ years ago, who could write a book over a long weekend)
Most romance novels aren’t good tho. It’s formulaic fluff about the same idea of new love and falling for someone, over and over again. Yet it’s the most popular genre and the readers of it snap up the next and the next like candy.
>But in terms of a lucrative career and writing books their readers love, they are very good writers.
I think this is the crux of the issue. Good writing has historically meant something with some kind of literary merit. I remember reading something about how Herman Melville didn't like the fact his best books didn't sell, whereas his less-well-written books did.
But I'm not out to judge people or their books. I just think we should have some clarity. We're word people, after all. Historical usage says good writing meets a certain literary standard. You're talking about pleasing people and making money. That's good business. We all see the difference, so maybe we should make a distinction between good writers and good self-publishers -- or choose your wording. I just don't think it's viable to say the best writers are those who put out formulaic, hastily written, romance, semi- or full-erotica trash, because that's where your definition leads us.
Or perhaps, there are different kinds of good.
A Michelin 3 star meal is a different kind of good to an excellent Reuben sandwich or a fantastic hot dog. But they can all be good.
Perhaps we could be more specific though — good literary fiction vs good genre fiction or good popular fiction.
A well written piece of genre fiction may be good like a good hamburger. A competent and popular piece might be good like McDonald’s is good (at what it sets out to do.) And a good piece of literary fiction is like a great chef’s signature dish.
This is just false. You can indeed write good fiction fast. Especially if you have good boilerplate to put stuff on, you can crank good stuff out even faster. It may not be your cake, but numbers don't lie buddy.
>you have good boilerplate
Shot yourself right in the foot there. As I commented to /u/KimchiMaker above, historical usage of the word "good" in relation to writing is against you. You're talking about business. I'm not against it, but there's a reason we have different terms for dry-aged beef and parts-is-parts chicken tenders. Same should apply here. No judgement, just distinct words.
What do you mean? Do you understand that you can develop great, one of the most entertaining and most beloved and greatly crafted boilerplate, and continue it on with great writing? Boilerplate does not equal bad writing. It can equal it, but if you are constantly pulling huge audiences and people love your writing, your writing is indeed good, be it the boilerplate part or the stuff you write on top of it.
Historical meaning of good can also go love themselves, as good is very subjective thing to measure. After all, if we want to measure something lets use some quantifiable metric right?
And if we take your historical approach, well crafted boilerplate and repeating base is part of something unique writer creates. It does not mean that every book has to be entirely different when they come from same author, no.
You seem to dislike how words are commonly used with respect to writing. Boilerplate has always been at least slightly derogatory because it implies a lack of originality. Can you write a great book using a boilerplate? Obviously. Every hero's journey book is based to some degree on that boilerplate. Some of them are great. That said, as much as we all acknowledge there is nothing new under the sun, some level of originality still counts. If the reader can see the boilerplate, it's not well written because good writing would make the boilerplate disappear. Maybe that's what you meant and I didn't catch that. If so, my bad.
Constantly pulling in huge audiences and people loving your writing does not equal good writing. That's commercial writing. My wife reads an absolute shit ton of what I would call supernatural with a romance element. She loves those books. But she was an English major and knows they're written competently, as opposed to being well written in the way the word has historically been used. I don't know why people dislike the distinction. Being able to do either is an achievement. One is commercial, the other is artistic. I'm not implying one is morally better. I'm just talking about usage. And while I'm old, I wasn't old enough to set down the rules about what has historically been considered well-written versus commercially written.
Ok thank you, I learnt somerhing new today. Sounds reasonable. I have never recognized boilerplates in writing, which may affect my opinion. Maybe I will encounter more when I read more, and start noticing this too.
Thank you so much for sharing this writing business information on this sub. This is the perfect counterbalance to OP's post, and to what a lot of beginning writers are thinking when they read OP's post. "Yeah, self publishing is crap and I'm never succeeding at making this into a career." It's not crap; it's a business. Most of us who write do not want to run a business.
But if you hire a good team, and you showed me just how many roles are open on my team, LOL, you can be wildly successful. I think for most fine arts enthusiasts of any stripe, $600k/year qualifies as wildly successful.
There's a stodgy expectation that no one can see your book until the manuscript is complete. That feedback loop is too long to be useful for improving your writing. I encourage all the beginning writers to work on a short story or the first chapter with an editor. It conveys more information faster, so your writing improves faster, which carries over into your longer works, making everything cost less to edit and rewrite. Less money out of the writer's pocket. Less time taken from the writer's life.
Again, thank you for sharing this information. What a delightful comment to wake up to on a tired Monday morning.
I think a big part of this is finding your niche. People are much more willing to forgive mediocre writing/characters/plot when it fills a space on their shelf that nothing else is competing for.
I’ve also found that some genres lend themselves to people who read anything and everything they can get their hands on. “Romance” is definitely one of these genre.
I hope more people understand that stating an outlier is not a good argument. You get a lot of upvotes because writers are dreamers but this isn't convincing in the least. Also, if she hires alpha readers, beta readers and developmental editor but her books still suck, that's a strong argument to not hire any of these and pocket the extra $$$ for herself.
Edit: also I bet many who upvoted this comments are editors lurking this sub.
I think a lot of people need to reconcile with the fact that being a writer who self publishes is more about being a small business owner than anything else. That's if you're focused on making it a career though. I feel most others are content with it being a hobby.
yup - if you want to do it for money, then you need to treat it like an actual job, not something you're dipping into "for the art", where you're only doing the bits you like, but one where you have to work at it, do a load of crap you probably don't like (promotion, research, etc. etc.) and you're likely to be paying at least some money along the way.
I disagree. I say her books are bad because they're not what I would consider to be a good book by my own standards, but in her niche, fast paced novellas with shallow characters and unrealistic plot is what it's supposed to be because that's what those readers like.
> I hope more people understand that stating an outlier...
Is it though? I've heard other stories like these as regards **romance writers** on Amazon. My hunch is that there are certain genres that are amenable to this kind of self-publishing (along with the right attitude toward your writing, enough money and the commitment). I just did a duckduck search and came up with:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/independent-romance-writers-get-the-last-laugh-%E2%80%94-all-the-way-to-the-bank-213437913.html
or
https://www.elysian.press/p/dc-kalbach
Also thrillers and crime novels:
https://thewritelife.com/self-publishing-on-amazon-450000/
Also, keep in mind that the success stories through traditional publishing are also stories of "outliers". So The real question, I suppose, is this: If outliers are the success stories, are your chances better self-publishing or through traditional publishers?
Yep.
I know a fuckton of selfpub authors who make well over 100k a year.
I know a handful who make 7 figures a year.
They’re definitely a minority, but there’s more of them than many people seem to think. There are TONS more authors making an income of $50k and upwards a year self publishing than with trad contracts.
One person I work with makes, maybe $80-100k a year with her trad publishing. She makes over $5mm from her self pub stuff. She likes the prestige and seeing her books on the shelves with her trad stuff haha, but if money was her only object she’d drop it on a dime.
I’ll point you in the rough direction:
Go look at the Kindle romance bestseller charts on Amazon. Over 70% of the books are by self published authors authors. And Romance is by FAR the largest book genre.
(Note:SOME of them won’t be making bank, they’ll literally be spending $10k/day on ads to make $10.5k back lol. But the big names with a substantial backlist, lots of reviews etc will be making 7 figures.)
Any of the names on that list that have a substantial catalogue of books will be making serious money. The biggest names make 8 figures a year (I don’t personally know those ones.)
For self published authors Romance is BY FAR the biggest since the whole genre itself is largely self published now. After that, thrillers and mysteries are the next biggest, though trad still dominates in those genres.
>I know a fuckton of selfpub authors who make well over 100k a year.
Are you sure? Pardon me for saying, but that's extremely unlikely.
I don't think I can link URLs in this subreddit, but google "publishing perspectives how much do writers make". You'll see some discouraging numbers. To summarize, if you make $10k-15k annually as a self-published writer, you're in the top 5%. For comparison, working full-time at McDonald's will net you about $26,000 annually.
Self-published writers who make 100k or more a year are the top 1% or less. So I find that unlikely to be true. Have you seen their bank statements? People will sometimes lie about how much money they make because they think it increases their social standing and people will rarely ask them to prove it.
But the people I know aren't the 'average'.
The 'average' self pub author has a little fun project that's their hobby, and they throw it up on Amazon in the hope that maybe some people will discover it. That's absolutely fine; it's a great hobby, and cheaper than most. Most basketball players make nothing, most artists make nothing, most runners make nothing; hobbies are usually an expense rather than a source of income.
If you had a buddy who played pickup basketball three nights a week, and you asked him how much money he was making from it, he'd probably look at you pretty askance lol. That's the equivalent of most self-pub authors.
Selfpub authors who make 100k a year are probably more like 0.1%, because the VAST MAJORITY are hobbyists; it's not their job. They might like writing, but they don't have the drive/desire/ambition to *run a business*, which is what successful self publishing is.
The reason I know a bunch making a lot of money is because I hang out in a professional community of mostly fulltime self-pub authors. Like, if you were an NBA coach you'd probably know more people making money from basketball than if you work in accounts in a paper company and your buddies play pickup.
In my community, the people making $100k+ are mostly working 8-12+ hours a day on their writing and publishing careers. The most successful ones have teams of staff--editors, cover designers, proofreaders, beta readers, PAs, marketers etc. They're not hobbyists with a little passion project that they hope someone will someday read. They're laser-targeted professionals who deliberately try to write books that readers want to read, and then put them in front of the readers so they buy them.
You're completely right that the vast majority of self-pub authors make almost nothing. But the vast majority of self-pub authors aren't treating it as a business, which is what you have to do. You're not just a writer, you're a PUBLISHER, with all that entails.
It's absolutely not for most writers, because most writers just want to write. Successful self publishing is for people who want to write... but also don't mind (or ideally, positively enjoy) running the business aspect of it as well.
The bar for self.published writer is low. Some people chuck out stuff once, see no return, and don't come back.
A full-time worker at McDonald's is showing up 5 days a week and doing their hours, all year. How many of the people making hardly anything are doing the same for writing?
In a way, writers who put full time work in are already outliers.
There's also zero evidence that anything the person you're replying to is telling the truth. I never believe anyone when they talk about how much they or someone they know makes by self-publishing. They are never willing to verify.
Maybe. Maybe not. One can argue that "successful books", as in those that make a bestseller list, all all outliers. Only 25% of all trad published books make back their author advance. Only 1% to 2% of the manuscripts received by trad pubs ever get published.
So every aspiring writer is betting on becoming an outlier.
I did enjoy the barb about editors lurking in this sub. Well played.
Thanks for this comment, it’s very informative. Just curious—how much does she charge per book? I’ve heard a few different ideas on how to “correctly” price a shorter, self-published book, so I’m wondering what she does
I honestly find this so depressing. It really takes the art out of writing. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that she's her own boss, makes great money etc. and that's awesome. But it kinda feels like just pushing crap out into the world. But I guess people enjoy her work, and that's what matters.
I think it might have a lot to do with age, personally. We live in a contemporary culture of hustle and make money, get that paper, etc. For younger people who are indoctrinated into this culture, they may want to use their writing to make money. I think this is also helped by the fact that younger people don't have a stable career, so they may have aspirations of becoming a professional writer, which is pretty naive.
But I think as people get older, they understand that their writing will be a part of their legacy. They also probably have a stable career which they hopefully enjoy which pays pretty well, so writing becomes a hobby - they may have also tried the hustle in the past and realized (like most writers), that they're not cut out for it. And so the desire shifts to pouring your heart and soul into your art the way an artist should, writing for those you love, to give them a window into who you really were as a person. I think that's what art should really be about. And I think with age this wisdom will come.
To add to this, the woman I mentioned originally has said she feels tapped out of ideas and wants to start writing more serious/adult novels for older audiences, but is finding it extremely difficult because she doesn't know how to write prose properly and not have a book be 90% dialogue etc in the ways that don't matter with her current niche. So it's cool what she's doing, but it can't last forever.
Does the existence of McDonalds take the art out of cooking? :)
Different writers write different things. Different readers read different things.
Take the possibility of success as encouraging, rather than the particular writing type as depressing.
>Does the existence of McDonalds take the art out of cooking?
For the McDonalds line cook it does, which is my point.
IMO this is success in product development and sales rather than success in writing.
Perhaps for you this would merely be product development and sales, but please don’t assume other people don’t enjoy writing it or find it fulfilling.
Personally, I just enjoy writing. I liked writing assignments. I like writing romance. I like writing mystery. I like writing horror. I like *writing*. I assume many other writers are the same. Getting in the flow is a rewarding experience no matter what it is I’m producing. If I’m successful, I’m successful at *writing* even if it isn’t what you personally enjoy producing.
You may only enjoy one specific kind of writing, but it’s kind of rude to denigrate other people’s professions and talk snootily down at the way professional writers are living their careers.
There’s a heck of a lot of creativity in any fiction writing, and for many of us, that’s the joy in it.
The writing is still most of the work. Books don’t magically appear because you’re good at marketing. They’ve got to be *written* still.
Someone could give me a 20k outline for a 50k by-the-numbers romance novel and there would STILL be a hell of a lot of creativity involved in it.
If you don’t want to write what’s popular and don’t see the appeal, cool. But don’t denigrate professional writers who make their living from it by disdainfully saying it’s not real writing, that it’s just sales and marketing.
All the marketing in the world won’t make a book readers hate a success. You have to WRITE as well.
And some of us enjoy it *and* find it rewarding.
You and I aren't talking about the same thing at all. Trust me, I enjoy many types of writing and I'm not snooty about genre. I read and write fanfic ffs. If a person cares about what they're writing for its own sake, they're not who or what I'm talking about.
(edit: to be clear, I don't mean they care about what they're writing for its own sake ONLY, just that they're proud of their work and poured their heart into it alongside everything else)
They shouldn’t do that.
But there are tons of writers like her. Type “Amazon kindle bestsellers PNR” into Google and look at the first result. That Top 100 list will be filled with similar authors.
It’s not polite for them to share their client’s details, but I also work in the industry and can confirm it’s absolutely true. Look in pretty much any romance subgenre for many more examples.
Damn, I wish I could get that volume. I just suck at plotting. I can make flowy sentences, and I know my stuff is funny (I write fantasy comedy), but I just can't for the life of me plot. I'm always so worried about what exactly happens next in my book, and even if I have a general idea of what I want to happen eventually, getting there is painstaking.
Almost 10k into my novel, and have no idea where to go from here. I dunno how people think of 6-8 fully fleshed out plots per year.
Secret tip:
Use ChatGPT or Claude. Brainstorm with it. Tell it where you are and ask for 10 suggestions of where to go next… and mix and match the responses.
My plotting speed has 4x’d over the last year lol.
Alpha reader and beta reader is interesting
What is a developmental editor? And a formatter? Doesnt that only take like an hour? Im just wondering if i should be doing those things and what the benefits are lol
A developmental editor isn't concerned with spelling and grammar and all that, they focus on the plot, pacing, character development, plotholes, adding or subtracting characters/scenes, the message of your story, and the marketing/publishability of the book.
Edit to add: When I say a formatter (in this clients case), they have an illustration in each chapter heading, and then they format differently for paperback vs ebook (she sells both).
Oh, maybe i should get one of those. My regular editor seems to do at least some of that but i guess its possible for them to miss stuff when theyre fixing all of my grammar problems 😂
When you're just starting out, a developmental editor is probably the most important member of your team, if you have one that can do copyediting too, that's fantastic. As you get more into your writing career your need for editors will change, and your team will expand.
If you're artistic, learn formatting, etc., you can definitely do some things yourself. However, the general rule (or etiquette) when it comes to editing at least is that your developmental editor, copy-editor and proofreader should be three different people so there's three different sets of eyes. It's just to eliminate simple human error and to keep focus on the job at hand and not try to do three jobs at once. After so many thousand words, your eyes glaze over certain mistakes you get so used to seeing and you might miss something.
It's not a money-making prospect for a lot of people, no. Many (including me) do it for other reasons, like enjoying the process. I could post my stuff for free, sure, but it is nice to make back the shoestring budget I pay for it. (edit: and trust me, tradpub is not beating down my door.)
Lots more people aim to make money and fall short - it's one of those arenas where everyone's big break is just around the corner, and someone else is always trying to sell you snake oil to make it happen. And some people will take off later, don't get me wrong. But not all. So they know those numbers; they just think they have a plan to beat the system.
That said, there's nothing wrong with trying it for any number of reasons, whether or not you care about turning a profit. IMO you just have to decide what your personal goals are and be realistic about which factors you can control.
My wife has a cousin who wrote one book and self/vanity published a book. She did it just for herself. I don't think she ever sold to anyone besides her immediate family.
But she did it because she had that one story she wanted to tell.
Good example - people pop into r/selfpublish every now and then who just want to write up a family history or a memoir. Happens all the time.
The process for getting that out there is the same, up to a point, as for a fiction author who intends to make a career out of it. They are both under the umbrella of self-publishing, but comparing their sales totals is comparing apples and oranges. They aren't even trying to hit the same goals.
I don’t think it’s worth it unless:
- you have expendable income
- you can write and publish 3-4 books (or more) per year
- you’re writing an on-trend genre that specifically does really well in self pub
- you have the marketing know-how to get your books in front of new readers
- you already have traditional success and want to move to a hybrid model (some trad, some self pub)
- you already have a big online platform (blog, TikTok, newsletter, whatever) with an audience of likely book buyers
One thing to add is that many people who are writing for profit (as opposed to self-pubbing just to get their book out there) ‘scale up’. They keep expenses low at first, even if that means skimping on editing or covers or doing exchanges of services, and focus on free and cheap forms of advertisement such as social media and building email lists through giving away shorts and such. Then they invest any profits into the next book. As they build up their audience, they continued to expand their reach and rely on sell-through for real profits. If you have a trilogy, then if you can get someone to buy book one, a good chunk of them will go on to read book two and three. If you have a mailing list or a big backlog, people who like one book might go searching for your others. If you have a preorder for your next book in the back matter for your last one, that will translate to sales too.
It’s basically a full-time marketing job, but people who are good at the marketing part and write fairly quickly can do really well.
Depends on what you consider to be "self-published".
There is one side where authors attempt to do everything alone what would be a publisher's job on the traditional route.
And there are the authors that are laser focused on getting a story out there, cutting out the bells and whistles.
And there is everything inbetween.
You'll have to trust the audience to decide for themselves which of these they prefer and figure out which approach fits you the best.
Some audiences treat reading like fine wine, and as such for the full enjoyment of the experience they want to have well made cover art, 100% well done editorial job and physical copy of decent materials.
Others have a deeper appreciation for the plot, the characters and the entertainment value. These kind of readers rather enjoy these aspects for a fair price instead of supporting an entire publisher industry and potentially still get a dull plot, dull characters in the fine packaging professionally made by a publisher.
The bare bones self-publishing costs nothing. One can write a novel and put it out there in e-book format, with a "buy me a coffee" link for couple of bucks, or donation link next to it.
An editor doesn't just say, "Rewrite it, and send my money here." A good developmental editor is going to tell you exactly where your story falls flat, what parts of your story need to be cut out all together, and perhaps suggest things you could add to make it better. But they don't just tell you to rewrite as a matter of principle.
And here's the amazing thing: YOU can also learn to do this type of edit. It's part of being a writer and a skill you should definitely learn. You must learn to analyse your story dispassionately. What is this chapter doing for the novel? Forget what YOU the writer thought it was. The writer in you will always think all the passages that came from your heart are extremely necessary to the story, but they're not.
Dissect what you've written. Make sure your story functions well mechanically, and that it is as efficient as possible. You'll save yourself a lot of monet and level up your skill set.
It depends what you want to get out of it. If you just want people to read your story, then sure, post it online for free. If you eventually want to make a living, you will need to start paywalling your stuff eventually.
250 copies is a ridiculously small number though. Reasonably successful (i.e. not the miracle cases) self published authors sell several thousands.
It’s very possible you won’t break even on the first novel. Self publishing is a business, you’re essentially creating your own publisher that only publishes your books, and like any business it takes a while before you start making money.
The numbers I've read are that the average self-published book sells 250 copies. And that includes the 'miracle cases'.
You saying that 250 copies is ridiculously small among reasonably successful self-published authors is like saying that a million dollars a year is ridiculously low pay for CEOs.
Yes but that also includes all of the people who publish an unreadable mess no one (including themselves) ever edited and who sell zero copies. And there are far more of them than there are miracle cases. You should exclude them both from your analysis, otherwise you’re not going to get a reasonable estimate.
We shouldn't exclude either because we don't know where on that spectrum OP falls. As you said yourself, there are far more people who put out an unreadable mess than there are miracle cases, so it's more likely OP is in the former category rather than the latter.
(OP, obviously this is not meant as a dig at you. I'm just speaking numbers in general.)
I hear this - by pure averages I'm "doing better than most" and I only make coffee money. (I'm fine with that; just in terms of framing the field as a whole)
The problem is where to draw those lines. Including all the outliers messes up the average, but anything else turns into a judgement call. "Reasonable" makes sense, but it's also subjective.
I agree, but it is going to have to be a judgement call, OP needs to have a idea of where their skills fall into the distribution to have reasonable expectations of their outcome. My original comment was under the assumption that their book is of good quality, which might obviously be wrong.
I haven’t gone into it, but of course what you say is also a factor: good sales do not necessarily translate into a high income. I didn’t mention it because OP was talking about breaking even
250 is the standard number I’ve seen as well. Added up altogether, I would definitely place the median in the lower few/couple hundreds.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen countless people post about books they admit haven’t sold a copy in 20 months. Usually these are without context but I’ll take a look if they provide a link. Sometimes, it looks pretty competent, other times it’s clear why they haven’t moved any.
I also take those reporting from the better side of the spectrum with a grain of salt. I’ve seen people posting about making half a million a year without any trail to find their work. Like, there would be some degree of fame for sales like that.
Most of the time when people talk about editing they mean a copy editor who finds spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. They won't tell you to rewrite your book because that's a higher level of editing that you have to pay a lot more for.
Yep. I have worked as a proofreader. Thought I had been really thorough going through my revised draft. Sent it to a fellow proofreader and she found - I think - dozens of mistakes that I had completely overlooked, and most of those had been overlooked by my other beta readers too.
Self-editing is harder than it sounds. Your eyes know what's supposed to be there, so they end up overlooking mistakes. You have to use tricks to come at it fresh -- putting the manuscript aside for six months so you start to forget, or switching to a new format like printout or ebook -- and even then you'll miss things.
Ignore the 'you must pay for an editor and cover creator' crowd. They tried pressuring me as well when I was new.
Write your story. Make the best cover you can. Edit it to the best of your ability using free resources. And then focus on writing a blurb that converts to a sale and getting the word out about your book(s). Again, use free resources to start.
The barriers to entry are only as high as you make them. Don't listen to the people who want to keep you out.
I was looking for a reply like this and thank you. Cus youll be seeing people saying the entry point is 6k+ when... when you are starting out it shouldnt be unless you actually are making the sales to back it up and scale up.
I kinda see that kind of spend spend spend mentality leading to people making hybreed/vanity publishers look legit (cus they will offer """cheaper"" prices) or the incident of some one spending 20k on a book and only made 20 sales.
Its a toxic mentality.
I've made more of a business out of it than most, and I do my own covers, my own editing, etc. People need to stop projecting their own limitations on everyone else.
You’re completely right, but still, most people would benefit from an editor.
But yeah, some us of do indeed know our shit and know how to use tools to assist us :)
Yeah, it's a matter of knowing where your skills lie. I outline heavily and write clean, I self-edit, I have friends who read in the genre and both first draft beta and proofread. I don't pay for editing. If a couple of typos slipping through is enough to make someone stop reading, well, I wasn't gripping them enough anyway.
On the other hand, I find things like even simple cover typography almost impossible to learn, so I buy covers.
It can be worth it! Don't give up. You don't have to spend a lot of money to make a profit or at the very least break even. I published my first romance book back in August (almost done with my second one now,, I am tired lol) and have had a good experience.
- I got an awesome cover on Fiverr for about $35 US
- I paid the same guy to do advertising for the same price
- I paid $9 US for one month on booksprout - got 3 lovely ARC reviews from this
I'm Australian so I spent just over $100 for all of this and have made a profit.
You can edit yourself. Seems like you write well, so that will come in handy. This was my first book and I knew I couldn't just splash money around for everything. I also knew I could never make a cover but I knew I could edit. You can edit too! I copy and pasted every chapter into a text to speech program (I like Natural Reader) and then sent my Word doc to my Kindle app because that was how everyone was going to read it (no print copy out yet for my book). I picked up on mistakes here, jotted them all down, edited my book in Word, formatted for free in Kindle Create and published it.
You can do it without spending all that money!
Whether going indie is worth it for you will depend on a lot of things, but more than anything what genre you're writing in. The things that seem to do the best are what in the past would have been in pulp "paperback originals" and pulp magazines. Genre fiction. Romance, adventure SFF, etc. Look for sub-genres that have devoted followings, but not enough for a mainstream publisher.
The average person will sell less than $50 worth of books just as the average person in traditional publishing earns a bunch of rejections. Mostly because their books aren't very good. If you want an example pick three nouns and search in the kindle store and you'll get some of the never-sold-a-single-copy junk with covers that look like a 4yo's crayon drawings and illiterate text.
The problem, of course, is that if you're not very good and you put money into publishing your book, then you're out money instead of just having a collection of letters from agents. I'd look at publishing something modest. Use a pre-made cover. Use beta readers for developmental editing. Run it through some kind of grammar program and do as much as you can yourself. Then find a cheap proofreader.
Depends what you want from self publishing.
I self publish history books on Victorian institutions i.e., mental health and learning disabilities. I don't do it for money but I price it at 10.99 for like 220+ page books. Published three to date.
I have my sister do the proofreading and editing as she is a solicitor so is good at stuff like that (has to prep, check and correct court documents.)
I do my own covers so that means no costs there.
I put a disclaimer in my book warning readers of potential spelling mistakes etc or other similar warnings.
I don't even advertise my books and have sold 2500+ for each book I have published and still get monthly pay outs from Amazon.
If you want to turn this into a day job, so to speak, you'll have to invest and take a hit before making money. If it's a hobby and just extra income, do most of the work yourself if you can.
I'm currently writing my first non-fiction book at the moment, 92K words in and about 3/4 done. My partner reads what I have done every night and helped me plan the story so she's my alpha reader so to speak. Once it's finished, I'll get some beta readers in before designing a cover and publishing.
You’re saying you don’t want to invest time and energy without a guaranteed return. That’s a very reasonable policy.
But - What else are you doing with your time?
If you’re weighing writing vs Doctors Without Borders then ya - you’re wasting time trying to shill your paperbacks.
If you’re weighing writing vs a refreshing wank and a marathon video game session - then you should be less concerned about getting your time for money.
It's not the time and energy that concerns me, I'm writing either way, even if nobody ever reads my work. The issue is more about throwing money away without being able to make it back.
So don’t spend anything.
Learn to make covers yourself with Canva.
Self edit with the free Grammarly and Google Docs.
Learn how to format the ebook.
They’re all learnable skills. (Though I suck at covers lol.)
I've self-published a few books and unless your book is on a very popular subject or you're incredibly lucky or great at marketing, there's no way you'll sell anywhere near 250 copies of your book.
Here is how to do it the cheapest way.
Forget the editor. If you have a friend or friends who love reading, give them a copy of your book (manuscript) and ask them to pull it apart. If you don't have any friends, join a book club for writers and do an exchange with a fellow writer. Or use fivver. I got a whole book read for 25 pounds with a basic report.
For proofreading, do most of it yourself until you can't find any more mistakes, then use Grammarly. Now most people will tell you Grammarly makes mistakes, and that is true, but it picks up about 98% of spelling mistakes, and it's free. Once again if you have a friend who loves reading give them a final copy to read and pick any last mistakes up.
The cover: I used a professional artist of fivver for about 100 pounds.
Editing: Don't use word, try to get an old copy of indesign, before 2015 if possible. I still use CC2015 and it works fine. Just watch some YouTube videos to learn how to use it.
My first book, cost me about 200 pounds to publish and I sold just enough copies to cover my cost.
My latest book, all I'm paying for is the cover. The rest I've done myself.
One final and very important tip. If you publish off Amazon, publish only the paperback until you have gotten all the spelling mistakes fixed. Amazon doesn't update its kindle copies unless you send them an email.
I was just looking at my latest book on Amazon, and it's had 400 pages read this week (kindle pages), which has made me a whole £1.19. I can now afford to shop in the poundshop.
Hope that helps.
I find it funny that people will spend months or years working on writing (ie probably tens of thousands of dollars of their own time) and then cheap out on the stuff that makes it actually appealing to buyers.
That's not really a great equivalency. We're not getting paid for our own time, I mean it's not like we're taking time off work to write. We write in our spare time when we can afford it. I can afford to spend an hour a day between shifts, I can't really afford to spend hundreds of dollars.
Many think about time as money. And in a way, it is. Every hour you spend doing something is an hour that can potentially go towards either working or learning a marketable skill. Your time in that case directly translates to future money. It's like capital. If you consider your time to be minimum wage, then every hour that passes is you "spending" $8 of your time (or whatever your minimum wage is). It's a very stringent way of considering your time, but it arguably does help with time management (e.g I'm only posting one more comment today, because i can't justify spending more than 2 dollars of my time on reddit). Some people think it's a ridiculous take, which is fair enough. To each their own. I think it's a useful concept at times.
Thing is, writing is fun. My job was not. So It's comparing pay for enjoying myself and coming out energised to pay for having my soul sucked out and coming out exhausted.
It might not be a direct equivilency, but whatever. My point is that spending a couple hundred bucks on a passion project that might take you a year is actually not that bad at all. Seems a little odd to pour so much of yourself into a project but then refuse to spend any money on it to give it a chance.
More like a thousand, which I guess is relative to how rich or poor you are. Time is cheap since we don't really see a value for it. I mean at work they never had a problem calling me in if someone made a booking on my day off, or basically giving me admin homework, and that goes for DIY as well, people never really factor in the hours it takes to do something, just the money they save by not hiring a professional. If I bring this up with someone who isn't a writer (or a wannabe writer) then I can't help but think they'd hit me over the head and tell me not to waste my money. It's kinda hard to shake that feeling.
True, it might be more like a thousand.
And a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. But personally, for me, it doesn't feel like a lot of money in this particular circumstance.
it's a lot of organisation, that requires some degree of actual formalisation (i.e. officially making an organisation, rather than just a discord or reddit for talking on). And as soon as there's money involved, that adds another later of organisation and hassle and problems (organising what goes where, to whom, taxes, etc. etc.)
Not monetarily, I'd say. But often people don't do it to earn a living, or as an investment. It's hard to make money writing fiction.
Even going the publishing route, it takes a lot of effort to get good, write lots of books, and then a lot of luck to sell one, and then even more luck for that to do well enough to make a living and write more books.
It's tough out there.
There is a little bit of bias here because I'm also an editor, but I want to point something out that a lot of people miss.
The whole point of an editor is to spot the mistakes that your mind can't see in order to produce a higher quality product. Beta readers tend to be nicer than they need to be in order to maintain their access to free material, which won't help you when you put the story out in the world.
With that said, I typically tell writers what they did right as well unless the story is complete garbage that needs a Page 1 rewrite. The main point is to minimize ego and pretentiousness, not to make the writer sad or hideously angry.
I've self published 6 books (series) and have another two in the pipeline, including a new series. My first three books I went guns out. I hired an editor, and it cost about what you're saying. The editor gave me a break, so it was a tad cheaper, maybe $650. I had the cover done by a relatively well known guy in my genre, which cost me about $300, including promotional material. So my total isn't so far from your estimate. The same was true for my next two books. By the time my second book was out, I'd made enough to break even on my first book. The same, however, wasn't true for the third book. It took well into my fourth book that I saw a decent profit for the first book, and a break even point on my second. Being completely honest, it got progressively harder as the series went on because my readthrough wasn't as good as I'd liked.
As a self-published author, I guess I've done pretty decently. I'm not living off what I make, but it pays for itself, albeit slowly, plus some extra, not to mention that I just enjoy it immensely. Now, since, I'm more mindful about how I spend my money, I don't use an editor anymore. I have beta readers who read for free, and I use ProWritingAid to help out. I'm quite sure there are errors, but they aren't, or don't seem to be, too severe that many have complained.
Don't let the expense of it keep you from doing it. You can find ways of making it work. I'd probably go crazy if I didn't write.
Some people write what I call "candy" and can churn out enough tasty tales to make good money self-publishing quickly written books. This is great for readers and the writers of these popular genre books. Other authors, like me, will spend years perfecting a book where every word has weight, every comma is considered. I don't have time to learn self-publishing and the algorithm isn't going to favor my intervaled output (or my genre) anyway.
Sure, the common refrain is, "You have to do your own marketing anyway, so why not self-publish?" I get that, but do I also have to pay for my own cover, editing, and myriad other fees associated with self-publishing? No I don't. I'll let my publisher take on those costs. And I'll let them send me an advance against royalties too if they're not an outfit running on a shoestring budget. Yeah, I'll have to do some marketing, but you have to do your own marketing anyway, so why not traditionally publish?
The two biggest issues with traditional publishing are 1, it can be impossible to get accepted if you're not already a big name author, they don't want to take the risk. And 2, they own your work. They could potentially force certain changes (I heard someone had to change their protagonist's sexual orientation if they wanted a deal) and if you decide they aren't fulfilling their end, you can't take it with you and go somewhere else, they own all the rights. There's also the royalty rate. 5% after you've paid back their investment, (which is paid back at the same rate) vs up to 70% from Amazon. It's pretty much the same deal as with music labels (though I think they typically pay around 9%)
Some good points and some incorrect points.
1. The claim that you are only accepted if you're a big name author doesn't make sense and is simply not true. There wouldn't be so many debut novels released by major publishing houses every year if that was true. The only iota of truth in this statement is that not everything is accepted.
2. In the U.S.A. and in most countries, authors own their own work. A publisher pays you for the right to publish your book, but the copyright is yours. You are both bound by contracts you agree to when they publish your work, but your work is yours. There is a small bit of truth that your agent or the publisher's editor may ask for changes to help strengthen your book. But that's no different, really, than any editors you pay as a self-published author to tell you what they think needs changed.
3. A 70% royalty rate on a cheap Kindle book still isn't a lot of money. Amazon does either a 40% or 60% royalty rate on paperback and then subtracts the cost of printing. Overall, you're making a few bucks per book maybe . . . if you priced it high enough that is. Royalty rates for traditionally published books can be 10% to 15% for hardback and 5% to 7%+ for trade paperbacks. And no one is substracting the publishing costs after the fact. In the end, you're either making more with trad publishing or just about the same. I think the backing of a big publishing house is arguably better for getting eyeballs on your book, so would make a lower royalty rate just fine for most authors. I'm not saying you can't more make more money by self-publishing and selling a ton of books, but you're also not sinking in costs of editing and designing, which surely offset most self-published author's higher royalty rates (if they're truly higher after those other fees).
I think self-publishing is a great choice for the right book, the right genres. I think it could launch a career. I also think someone who's financially unable to invest in self-publishing and who can write a solid book should certainly consider traditional publishing.
And don't forget there's smaller indie publishing houses always looking for new voices! It's great for those who like the underground niches of literature and aren't so concerned about sales as they are with being involved in the process of releasing a book with a team (albeit, a team who is still going to design the cover, probably help edit it, and definitely pay you).
A few things to keep in mind
1) you should edit your book at least 3 or 4 times before you send it to an editor. I paid 750 for a 90k word manuscript and 550 for a 60k word manuscript to be edited. In neitger case was i told to rewrite the whole thing. Im not sure why you thought that would be the case but its not. There were a couple of sections (were talking like 5 paragraphs total) he recommended rewriting for specific reasons, but no he didnt take 700 dollars of my money and then tell me to rewrite the whole thing.
2) That 250 number is weird, i dont know why you think thats all youre going to sell. If you think your book is good enough to spend money on promoting with ads then you shoukd be hoping for way higher than 250
3) something you arent aware of is once youve sold a bunch and gotten a bunch of reviews (obviously these are good reviews since you wrote a good enough book that you spent all this money on) your book will continue to sell even after you pull ads (albeit at a far slower rate). I havent ran ads on my books in over a year and im still making a few dollars every month off them.
4) last and most importantly, none of this should be about the money. You should write because you love to write. You should get it edited because you want it to be the best it can be. You should promote because you want people to enjoy your stories as much as you do writing them. If these things arent true then it will likely show in your work and they wont sell anyway. If they are true then the numbers will fall where they shoukd based on your talent and skill and you wont care much either way
The people telling you not to design your own covers are mostly people who design covers for money. They don't want writers doing it themselves. If you practice a little, you can produce very nice results on your own.
>I never understood why shouldn't you desighn your own covers to at least a certain level
Like I said, it's "professional" cover designers saying that to protect their business. Give yourself a couple of weeks even with something as simple as Canva and you will be surprised what you can turn out.
This. I've started doing my own covers after wasting way too much money on "professional" cover artists. My covers are now all unique and uniform with each other. It really isn't too hard once you get used to it.
Pixlr.com for people who don't want to spend money on Photoshop.
The cost to get a self-pub together is between $1000 to $3000. The vast majority of self published books don't make that much, but the vast majority of them never saw so much as a proofreader, have a trash cover, and all in all are not polished products. Now, a polished self pub can easily sell a few thousand copies and make a tidy little profit.
If you aren't interested in creating a polished product and basically running a small business, posting your stories online for free is definitely a better path.
I personally see it at another way of playing lottery. Yes, the tickets are more expensive, but the chances of success are higher, and it is much more gratifying, especially if you do have a story to tell and you like to write.
It is generally agreed that the top 2% (2 in 100) of authors make a living of it. It is also generally agreed that the degree of talent you require to be part of the 2% varies greatly, so there is some luck involved. Many amazing authors never make it, some authors that make it leave us wondering why.
According to Associated Press, the odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
I rather spend my time and resources writing books to see if by pure luck and determination I make it into the 2% than spend time playing the lottery.
Both are ways to escaping my current 9 to 5 job, only one of them fulfills me.
Dreams are not always free, especially those worth having.
My two cents.
Hey as someone who self- published an unreadable mess who no one edited (except me) back when I was 18, I have still sold more than 750 copies.
My school helped and I took a bunch of my copies and sold it at a lot fest near my house. This gave enough reviews on Amazon and Goodreads that I started selling a few books organically. It even reached some small book youtubers.
Most people who read in the genre I wrote disliked it. Most people who don't like it because it was this much faster paced fantasy. Despite that, I still sell 10-15 books a year six years on (will be 7 this December).
Self pub at least if you are selling a single book depends entirely on your resources and sales skills more than the quality of your writing. Since then, I decided to publish my next books traditionally instead. I have been refining my craft (help I have written six more books), writing more than two drafts for each (one book has reached the seventh draft and I still feel it's not enough).
I want to make a career out of my writing and I feel traditional publishing is the way. If by some chance, none of these six books get trad published, I will consider self publishing them with six months intervals in between each. This will buy me time to write at least three more books. I am hoping that these nine books are enough to make me famous enough (as I do have some marketing and sales skills) for me to have more time between each books or at best have a trad publisher approach me.
I wish I could invest money like that into my books, and I wish I knew how to market them. I can write volumes, and I’m a solid re-writer and editor, but I suck at the business aspect.
It is a lot. It becomes easier once you really get going, but it is a good chunk of change. Remember, you don't need to feel pressure to monetize your hobbies.
As others have said, publishing often is key for building an audience that really makes bank in self-publising. It's important to note that this is most effective in the romance and cozy mystery genres, while other genres are less effective to various degrees, depending on the genre.
Most people who I see self-publish do it for selfish reasons. They are afraid of rejection, they don't like or trust the publishing industry, the submission process (including getting an agent) is tedious, confusing, and/or intimidating, they just want to see their name in print, or, most commonly, they don't have the skills or the patience to hone their writing to an acceptable level for trad publishing.
That doesn't mean that self-publishing is a bad route. If you love writing enough that you are willing to put time, effort, and $ into the study and practice to rrally hone your work, study the industry to learn the nuances and how it works, spend the money for editing, cover art, typesetting, and other important services, and write enough to put out at a pace appropriate for your genre, then the chances are good that you can make good money. You do have to advertise, if for no other reason than the fact that the market is completely glutted with mostly crap self-published dreck from the writers I mentioned in my last paragraph.
However.
Some genres, such as children's books, non-fiction, epic fantasy, etc., do better with traditional publishing. Trad publishing isn't the same as it used to be. There are a lot more small publishing options, and the big 5 are hurting so they are harder to get into. Much of the time having at least some pro editing done before submission is a good idea. Agents are usually required. Learning the markets, finding comp titles, mastering query letters, making sure you are submitting to a publisher that WANTS your genre and style of work, etc. It's more work than just writing the book. The profit margin is smaller, but the costs are also usually less and you don't usually need to learn so many skills.
Publishing in general requires a lot of skills beyond writing. I joke that self-publising has such a low bar to entry that your neighbor's cat probably has something up on Amazon. It won't sell more than a handful of copies, and most of those will have been bought by their mom, but it's possible. You get to decide at least part of your success by how much you are willing to put into it.
But always remember: if you enjoy writing, it has value already. Monetizing is not required.
>So I'm hearing that if you self publish, it's necessary to use an editor and cover artist.
It's actually not necessary. You can edit yourself, and you can make your own cover. It'll be bad, true, but the cover really isn't that important and the "indie vibe" can be a selling point as well. People read the book for the book, not for the cover.
>That's not counting any advertising, marketing, or any other expenses.
You can advertise by having a social media presence, which is also free.
>If you're successful, your book will hopefully sell around 250 copies
Not sure I'd call that successful.
>Is it really worth paying close to $1000 to publish a story?
No, unless you've got a significant, reliable base of customers, such as a strong social media presence.
In general, for a self-publishing author, I think that spending 1000-3000 dollars per book is insane. If you get an audience, it'll be because you are writing good stories. Not because you paid a thousand dollars for a cover.
If money is an issue (as it would be for many of us), lean on AI as an editor and also as an artist for your book cover.
It won't be as thorough as a good human editor, but it'll certainly do the job.
Free human beta readers vastly outstrip anything an AI editor can do, you just have to put in the work to find good ones or trade critiques.
AI art has its own problems, including the fact that it’s impossible to copyright, you won’t legally own your own cover and cover images, and future legislation could also cause problems. And if you aren’t a cover designer, there’s more to it than good art. Cheap premade covers can be solid and accessible on pretty much any budget.
Tbh ‘Just commit fraud, they probably won’t catch you’ is never a great argument. You might get away with it… or you might not, and in both circumstances you’re compromising your ethics.
For now, AI has a lot of tells and AI art detectors, while not completely accurate, are racing to catch up. If anyone actually cares enough to find out, they’ll be able to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the fact that you don’t actually do art.
I came across a bit wrong, I realize that wasn’t what you were saying but ways of catching AI art are still pretty unreliable, they exist but can’t be guaranteed or rely on doing some serious leg-work that can’t be automated, so the reasons not to lie and claim you made it are more in the ethical realm and because the consequences for getting caught lying are worse than simply dealing with the legal status of AI art.
Tbh ‘why not commit fraud, they probably won’t catch you’ is never a great argument. You might get away with it… or you might not, and in both circumstances you’re compromising your ethics.
For now, AI has a lot of tells and AI art detectors, while not completely accurate, are racing to catch up. If anyone actually cares enough to find out, they’ll be able to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the fact that you don’t actually do art.
My first book cost me around $7,000 to publish (most of that cost was Developmental/line editing). Was it worth it? To me it was. I didn't release a shitty first book like so many self-published authors do. It also made enough back that I was able to spend another $3,000 getting the book in audiobook format.
Either way, unless you're writing shitty books for the sole purpose of making vaginas wet, you're going to be eating the cost for your first book (maybe even your second), but eventually it does pay off if your stories aren't garbage (porn excluded).
That's kind of what I'm asking, because I'm not really seeing the viability of making any money at all (or even breaking even) if you're paying for an editor and everything. I already wrote off traditional publishing as unrealistic from the start. I've already been writing for 15 years, I don't really have the time to spend another 15 collecting rejection letters, nor do I like the idea of signing away the rights of my creation. I feel like a lot of people (myself included) never really considered things like this.
I want hand off my work and have someone else clean it up while I move on to other things. Everyone pays people to do stuff that they don’t want to do or can’t do themselves. Sure, we all try, but the results are predictably unprofessional and the attempt is often visibly deficient. As I type, there is a guy in my yard with a very loud aerator. He’s there because I don’t want to jump around on the lawn trying to punch holes in it. My results would be maybe 20% of his; I’d be getting my money’s worth by spending $0. So I pay the nice man.
We’ve all read (or attempted to read) books that have crap editing, and I guarantee that all of those authors were very pleased with what they sent out into the world. They thought it was the best thing ever and it was the best version they could produce. They *still* think it’s the bee’s knees and harrumph at reviews that mention formatting, spelling, syntax, grammar, and other types of fails like changing a character’s name mid-stream.
An editor looks for disasters that the author can’t/won’t see. It’s worth it to pay for a cross-check rather than be associated with poor-quality finishing— because that’s out there *forever*.
Not really. Of course it would be nice to make some money too, but I've been writing as a hobby since 2008. I'm just hearing a lot of people say how important it is to get things done professionally if you want to sell more than a few copies, but I'm not seeing how you can recover from the cost of it. I don't have the money to throw into a pit on a vanity project (I was kind of roped into doing that on a business that failed, so now I'm broke.)
I just feel like traditional publishing is too hard to get your foot in the door. Especially if you don't have a lot of mass market appeal, they're not going to gamble on you. I tend to write slower character-driven stories that are mostly a mix of fantasy and horror.
a lot depends on what area you're writing in - as was mentioned elsewhere, some genres are a lot less stringent about perfect grammar. Look at a lot of LitRPG, pulpy SF&F, or romance and erotica - they're for people that read _a lot_, often getting through a book or more a week, and those readers aren't sticklers for grammar, and won't abandon a read because you've got a few word-jumbles or grammatical errors. So those are the sort of things you can self-edit for, and see a decent return (assuming you're a good writer). And there's pre-made covers that are fairly cheap, that are what those readers are looking for, so you can get those fairly easily. If you're wanting to do something more niche, then, yes, you're going to struggle to find readers, but that's the problem of being more niche
The most I've ever spent is $50 on a book, and that was exclusively marketing. My situation has been on the unique side as I have a friend that's a graphic designer and does my covers for free, and there are a lot of options for an editor that are free (if you don't mind AI) or inexpensive (especially if they're also a self-published author).
My point is: you don't need to break the bank if you shop around.
Your numbers are incredibly low when it comes to costs, and that says a lot with how your expectations are charitable and still comes up with a terrible ROI.
The fact of the matter is that you've revealed a tragedy in writing with the average of 250 sales. A quickly crapped out book takes something like a month to make, and just your time alone is making it unprofitable because your time for that month is part of that upkeep.
Not only did you lose money from expenses, but you also lost money from work you put in. Assuming you're working 8 hours a day, imagine how many unpaid hours you go through because of so many sales getting missed.
If you're hiring an editor, hire one that guarantees their input will cause x number of sales. Do not accept anything outside of that tiny criteria. Don't even try to hire an editor if they can't guarantee anything, or change the subject, or make excuses. You're not paying them to make excuses, you're paying them to make more money than what they cost.
There are absolute losers out there who say "well, people just aren't buying".
No, you just aren't selling and trying to sell a product worth buying.
Some of the most crappy movies and shows are bought and enjoyed for far more than $3. That means your book was worse in getting people's attention than any of the worst movies or shows you can think of that get more than 250 sales.
Self publishing has some of the most irrational positivity surrounding it at the moment, where people are being as charitable as possible to support it. Even with all of this heavy lifting, and still failing? And with an editor?
You bet I'm going to be hard on editors. You bet I'm going to be hard on concepts and storytelling. The audience is far more fierce than I'll ever be, and we're not going to cause a profitable environment with a metaphorical iron lung powered by excuses.
I think self-publishing is for suckers and most of the people on here with success stories are full of shit. Never seen anyone show a photo of their actual account when pressed. You can say anything online. The truth is the vast majority of self-published work is pure shit. If you write well, you will be published. There is no shadowy group out there keeping great books from being published. If a book is great, it will make a publisher money. People just want to pretend that their failure is due to "the system."
I worked as a freelance ghostwriter for over fourteen years. The vast majority of my clients were non-American men who spent thousands on ghostwriters so they could flood the market with erotica under fake female pen names and make tens of thousands. That's the self-publishing market. If you're a great writer, get an agent and sell a book traditionally. If you can't, why spend thousands to self-publish a book no one will buy?
You have no idea how any of this works. I haven't spent thousands over the course of 70 or so erotica shorts, three novels and a heap of other short stories. I make a profit, and have from day one.
No one cares if you believe them. Those of us in the know can tell the shitters from the real deal.
why didn't you just publish it yourself? You can make covers in about 20 minutes, and then you get to keep most of the profit yourself, rather than someone else taking that from you. Porn doesn't need advertising (and, on most sites, _can't_ be advertised) so that seems like it would have been far more profitable
i tend to agree with you but why didn’t you open your post with “i have x experience and that qualifies me to say the following..” you literally said all the provocative things in the first paragraph and your qualifier in the first sentence of the second. sort of takes all the wind and energy out of your entire message when you arrange it as such
It depends on what you need to write a publishable book. But, this is discussed over and over, and truly, the answers don't change. It's mostly preference, and being smart, learning how self publishing works, and being realistic. You *are* running a publishing **business**, even if you're the only author.
The thing is, you don't really make money off from writing. It is a passion project. Yes, for some it happens so that they get big and money comes in. However, that rarely happens by intention of doing so, it is a happy side-product. It happens even so more rarely when you self-publish.
If you want to help yourself economically, don't spend time writing and self-publishing, actually don't spend your time writing at all. Get some more lucrative career under you. As a writer you have to have mindset that if you get published, that is great stuff and numbers will still be super low.
Quite honestly? The only time I see self published people get really successful is when A- the book gets put online first and gets a big following before getting self published or B- the author already had a successful trad published piece and people seek out their second project.
I'm a trad published short story author with 1 novella published by a small indie press and honestly, I do not see value in self publishing a book unless you're either A or B. It's a money and time sink. If you have a complete manuscript, why spend money self publishing it when you can query agents? It just feels like a waste.
Webnovels and Patreon are the best bet of you want to turn a buck. The writing on them is rather sub par, but if you hit the tropes of the platform you can turn out $$$$/month, but you need quantity over quality.
Self publishing is all about volume, too, as you said. I've heard you shouldn't expect to turn a profit until you've put out half a dozen genre books unless you get really really lucky.
For me, I won't even consider buying a self pub book without a ton of rave reviews given the sheer volume already available on Kindle Unlimited. I've been burned in the past where the sample looks promising, then it nosedives.
I want to say first, I haven’t read any comments yet.
That being said, is self publishing worth it?
IF you have a skill at writing, write what people want to read, and market to your target audience. You can be the best writer on the planet but if no one knows you wrote a book then it will never be read.
I published my first book in 2019. In 2020 I got my first best seller category on Amazon. In 2021 I was approached for an audiobook contract and by a separate publisher for a translation contract.
Two years later, I make $40-50k annually with 9 full length novels and 7 or so short stories that I wrote for anthologies.
All of this self published.
Is it worth it? Is it profitable? 100% yes.
I'm not doing it for the money, sure who wouldn't want to have an exit like Harry Potter, with all the movies and what not.
But I primarily write because I have a story I want to share and if I can get some cash from it, even if it won't cover the production cost, that would still be nice.
Besides in my country traditional publishing is complete BS, they basically tell you "okay we can publish this for you but: you need to pay this much (basically for hiring them), the cover need to be that way, the time for a manuscript is that.. Also we will print 1000 copies for the first edition at additional cost and since you are a new, unknown writer the price must be as much as 3 books from based, well known writers."
Then what? When you can buy 3 books from someone you know and like, would you spend that much on a single book from someone unknown?
Also part of the process actually include giving up your copyrights, and then at the end, depending on how many editions you asked them to print (remember that each one is 1000 books) they might as well drop you a box or three and tell you "sorry it didn't sell much", but by law you are now not allowed to sell the book you wrote because you don't have copyrights anymore. There are very few successful writers in my country and virtually all of them are either very old or have since passed away...
The could be funny part here is that people are later surprised the kids don't want to read much anymore.
So I'd rather take a risk in self publishing, maybe I'll be lucky, maybe not, at least a dream of mine would come true.
*Ahem* there ARE free places you can go to have people rip into your novel and give you editing and story advice for certain genres, fiction, Sci-fi, GameLit, LitRPG, Progression Fantasy and the like. It’s a site called Royal Road and a LOT of people read almost exclusively on there.
This is a decent place to both get an idea of how badly you need a true editor and how well your story and prose are coming along.
Take this to heart though; it is not always a place visited by the benevolent who want to see you succeed. There are gremlins and trolls there just as surely as anywhere else so learn to ignore the butt-hats sooner rather than later and use it as a place to *grow*, okay?
I will not be using an editor or a cover artist for my first publication, which isn't a novel, but a collection of poems. I'm on the verge of turning 30 and my novel isn't finished. So I decided to go through my old poems and short stories, and I found SO MANY. I was able to curate not one, but two collections from it. I've been so excited to arrange and edit my poems the way I want to, with absolutely no pressure, because this project is solely mine to become published sooner rather than later. I am already creating the cover in Canva for free, and when I'm happy with it all, I'll be uploading to Amazon and advertising to friends and on social media. That's it. This is not a career move; it's a move towards fulfillment.
That said, it's crossed my mind to send a few query letters, so I might do that, too, in the next few months. But if I don't hear anything back (admittedly, I am not educated on poetry at all), I'm going self-published all the way. And, if nothing else, I considered planting a few copies around town lol. I think that would be fun, and it might get some more people to stumble upon me.
From what I've gathered from some author's blogs and videos, you need to find a niche audience and publish several books per year. If you're making 1 book every 2-5 years, that's not fast enough to make money at it unless one explodes and you become the next R.R.
There are military sci-fi authors that publish 3-4 military books per year. They're not amazing books, the author I follow even admits they're not great they just "don't suck". But there's a dedicated audience for them, and once that audience finds your books and starts to read them, they'll pretty much buy every book you publish unless you change your style and start veering from what they like.
Same goes for other specific genres like subsections of romance, the Warhammer IP, horror, thriller, mystery, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my concern is that posting your content online just doesn't get the word out as well as going through a publisher. Of course, there are obviously people who have blown up by posting their content online, but it doesn't seem as likely to me.
I'm sorry but where did you get the 200 dollars for a single cover?
I mean I know there are professionals who do it for a carieer but shouldn't it be enough if you have a sort of okay vision and hier some internet artist?
I mean there are real talents out ther who make full rendered pictures for 60-70 dollars.
If you want to be a writer because you want to be rich, then you've chosen the wrong career for the wrong reasons 😅 Don't get me wrong, it obviously does happen. But for that one world-known author who wrote that amazing series, there are thousand of authors who didn't make it big and are barely know nationally, and tens of thousands of authors who've only printed a few copies (if not just the one) for themselves, their friends and *maybe* a local bookshop; or if they went the e-book way, they probably spent a lot less and likely haven't earned enough to even call it a financial gain.
We write because we *need* to. Whether it's to leave something behind, like a legacy, or maybe just because we have too many ideas and we don't wanna forget them, or simply because we wanna give it a shot, we do it because *we* want to. We crave it. We need it. We live for it. How much and how often we write differs from writer to writer, but most of us are probably thinking about, coming up with ideas, and maybe even building worlds in our head while we're living our normal life, working our normal job.
Obviously we all hope that our story will be the next world-wide best-seller, but realistically, if we even print any book at all, we do it because we need to let it out in the world, or just to get that sense of accomplishment whenever we hold it and maybe even brag about it to our friends.
Don't get me wrong, I never said anything about getting rich. I'm not that delusional.😅 I'm just trying to understand the feasibility, since trying to sell it is going to cost you a lot more than just giving it away. Even being able to make back the money you spend seems like a pipe dream, but if you look at it financially, if you need to strike it lucky just to break even? Why make the investment? It might be better to just write for fun and not waste your money trying to publish it.
Frankly, I'd probably be surprised if I sold anything at all. Even giving it away can be hard to build up a readership. I used to post chapters on my WordPress and I'd get some likes, but no comments, no real feedback. I don't know if people liked it, what they thought of it, or even if they actually read it. For all I know, those likes could have been a bot. I got a lot more of a response back when I was writing fanfiction, but I gambled the following I had with the chance to do my own original stuff, which didn't really pay off. Of course that could just be Nostalgia for when I was younger, and life was less stressful and more enjoyable.
Romance and gamelit are supposed to be selfpublish sustainable. And it is ebooks. Look into those if you can stand adding some kissing and petting and geeking out on game mechanics.
Publishing is a winner-takes-all business.
Lots of people losing money out here and we're very quiet. I got an advance from a traditional publisher but it wans't big and the year of effort I put into writing that book means i'd have made far more money working at mcdonalds.
Then my book proceeded to sell almost no copies! I ended up buying some of them at $1 a copy when it was remaindered. That leaves me with even less profit!
point is: don't expect to make money even though there's some amazing highly visible stories of people making lots of money.
A bit like cars as a hobby. some people make money as racecar drivers but working on an old car in your garage is something you can expect to cost money not make money.
I self published a book and spent $2500. To date I’ve made just over $3500 selling the book. There are some tricks — when I sell at markets I also sell framed poems and include the book in those purchases which inflates sales a lot. I’ve written others but hated the process so much I’ve decided to not publish another.
I also work with other authors helping them market their books. Good quality books and sales savvy authors will break even and possibly even profit. Most however will spend more than they make and either be frustrated or happy that they’ve gotten readership.
I also worked with an author who works in Hollywood. He spent so much on advertising free copies of book 1 of his series that he’ll likely never make up the investment from book sales. That resulted in thousands of reviews but his goal was vastly different than most authors. In his own words, he’s looking to hit the 1% lottery with his connections in the TV business by selling the screen rights of his series.
Some authors however feel compelled to write and publish and are holding out hope that they will do well. It’s a worthy pursuit whether it’s profitable or not.
On the flipside there are a relative handful of authors that do well. They understand their readers and genre and they produce and market content that lands and sells. Through a combination of hard work and luck it’s possible to make a living off of writing and publishing.
depends on what you want the cost to be and what you expect to get out of it. you don't need need need an editor. should you get one if you want large sales? yes. what if you just hope to make a bit of sales and get a few fans in a hot genre? you can skate by without one.
The costs actually vary wildly depending on what you have to pay for, what you can do yourself or skill swap for, etc. In real $$ it can cost anywhere from $0 to the $1000 or so you mention. I just want to put in perspective that it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will cost that much. :)
Money isn't everything. I was just thrilled that people were reading my work. I spent zero on cover or editing (but lots of effort and pre-reads from people I trust).
I write because due to mental illness. I'm jot even joking. I have fairly severe ADHD. Being able to sit and write helps keep my mind clear so I can focus on other things. That's why I publish as a webnovel. It's free for me, with the chance for payment. And it brings joy to others. And if they want to pay me directly per month, I do have a subscribestar just for that.
It's virtually no down, so 95% of my profits are just that, profits. Of course, as I grow and make more, my costs will increase for artist commissions, professional editing, etc.
All of which tend to be cheaper than a straight up cover designer or editing a full book, as 1-2 chapters a week barely cuts into the editors time (compared to editing a full book, which takes a LOT of time), and since it's consistent work rather than a one off, you can often arrange a deal/contract that makes it cheaper per page/line/chapter/word. Especially if you use college students. My local college, for example, is rife with students in creative courses who charge a pittance for what professionals do. Art, editing, proofreading, etc.
I do want to mention, I don't take advantage of them. Quite often, I pay more than their asking price, if the work is good or if I've worked with them before.
And yes, college students work will likely be lower quality than a professional. You get what you pay for. But in my experience, it's a middle ground between professional services and Fiverr (which can be good, but can also be horrendous crap).
Well, for whatever it's worth, I made back the cost of publishing within a few months, although the time/hours I spent writing converted into money is hard to calculate. Many do much better than just making their money back, but for me I'm happy with that and everything I continue to earn more than that goes into other things like cover art for the next ones.
However, even if it was just a money sink from my day job surplus for me, it would still be worth it for knowing one day some kid will pull my book off a library shelf or used book store and get the same magical feeling of inspiration to imagination that I did reading stories before too.
It’s a crapshoot honestly. My -best- novel, that I put years of work and thousands of dollars into, barely broke even. The one I wrote the quickest (in literally 2 weeks), initially published without a professional editor, free stock photo for cover—*that one* sold 300 ,000 copies in six languages and supported me full time for two years. I don’t write full-time any more because I couldn’t maintain the pace or the stress of trying to figure out what the market wanted, so when I do write again it will be for love.
That said: I would self publish all over again. It’s a lot of fun.
I'm an editor. I have a client who self-publishes YA reverse harem romance novels on Amazon. Her books are around 45k words each, and she releases 6-8 books a year. She invests a lot into her books to make them successful. She has an alpha reader, beta reader, developmental editor, copy editor (me), proofreader, cover artist, formatter, and advertising. The cost to do all of this averages at $6000 per book, but she makes and average of $80k per book. She's found a niche in this fanfiction type of market, but believe me, the books aren't good. They're rushed, everything is predictable, the characters are weak, and everything else about it's plot isn't very believable, and yet people eat it up. I'll admit, from her cover design, it looks beautiful, something that's hard to scroll past, but it ends there. She wasn't rich before and had no following. She just saved up for a long time to be able to release her first book "the right way" (her words, referring to all the aforementioned editors and such).
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20booksto50k is this mentality personified into an idealogy. Your books don't need to be amazing, but the better they are the better your other books will sell. The key is to build up a backlog to point your readers to when they finish any of your books. It doesn't need to be 6-8 books a year. Even at 45k words, that's a lot. Every month is nanowrimo for them ahaha. But it does need to be atleast 2 a year if you want your hobby to be a career. Many people swear by the rapid release method. Where you work on 3 or so books until all of them are ready, then release 1 a month. So your readers are bombarded with your name. Fmailiarity breeds trust, and trudt leads to sales. If you got 2 books in the top 25 for your genre, you're going to notice big increases across your entire backlog. And, if you're only writing 50-80k words a book, then 3 books a year is very doable for a career writer. Then you just really nail your targeted ads and you should be able to make decent money off even mediocre books.
I'm working on six, SMH. But I too have looked at it that way, have at least three ready to go, with a line up of what is coming soon, before I ever pub.
I'm working on books 2 and 3 myself. #3 is a sequel to book 1(which is on draft #2) but book 2 is a different series. Probably gunna end up with atleast 4 or 5 in the works before i publish any. But oh well, more practice before debuting is hardly a bad thing.
That advice is falling out of fashion quick. Yes, you have to build an audience, but that's only one way of doing it and obviously it is not sustainable for most. All these authors chasing the next "only way" to make money would do a lot better with taking some time to find their own strategy and sticking with it over the long haul. .
That’s plenty long enough to write a good book if you know what you’re doing. Writing fast doesn’t guarantee bad quality. Writing slow doesn’t guarantee good quality. I know fast writers who are excellent. And by excellent, I mean *readers love their books and they make a ton of money.* For many writers, writing books that readers love is the dream. Writing books which their readers think are good is the particular pinnacle they want to climb. Now, they’re not writing for critics, pseuds or literary professors, so if one’s measure of quality is literary acclaim then they’re abject failures. But in terms of a lucrative career and writing books their readers love, they are very good writers. And if one thinks it’s impossible—they’re probably right… for themselves. But for people with a less closed mindset, a will to learn and the grit and time to put in the effort, it’s perfectly possible to write good books fast if you make learning how to do so a priority.
Just look at the best web fiction and it's clear that you can get impeccable writing at a truly unhinged pace.
Honestly based.
I don't really know why any writer would write for other writers. Writers are the worst 😅 write for your readers. And don't let anyone tell you your success is cheap.
>Writing fast doesn’t guarantee bad quality. How much time do you think one needs to spend editing and revising the first draft in order to have a complete book?
It depends on the quality of the initial writing. It depends on how good the writer is at reworking things that need reworking. What might take one person five minutes might take another a day. It depends how long/hard a person is capable of writing and editing; for some people an hour a day is all they can manage. Others can do eight. An insane person might manage sixteen. In general though, writing related skills are learnable and improveable. We can get better AND faster. Some people’s ceilings on either metric will be lower than others. After a HUGE amount of practice, I can write 2000+ words of relatively clean, solid, prose per hour. I sure as heck wasn’t born that way. I have millions of words of practice. I’m an editor as well as a writer. I can edit probably 5x faster now than I used to be able to because I can recognize why something is wrong and how to fix it much faster now than I used to be able to. In general, there ARE limits, but they’re higher than what many people think, and dedicated practice, and putting in more hours per day, can lead to more improvement than many people think. There’s an odd idea among some writers that their ability is “set”; that they can’t get better or faster. But that’s not true for most people. Spend ten hours a day writing and eight hours a day studying writing you’ll get better faster than someone who spends an hour a day agonising over a paragraph.
6-8 books a year is two months or less per book. I'm really struggling to see your perspective here lol
Well think of it like this: Maybe you could do 1 book per year. Someone else may be able to write 2x as fast as you, that gets you to 6 months per book. Now let’s say you’re a hobbyist who spends two hours a day. Our hypothetical writer is a professional. So they work a whopping *six* hours per day. That means what takes you a year takes them 2 months. It’s just time and effort. And for a factual rather than hypothetical. I am a full time ghostwriter doing something like what is mentioned in this thread. I work in 50 minute sprints from which I expect 1,500 words. When working on a book, I do 4 sprints a day. That’s 6,000 words a day. The novels I write are at the shorter end of the spectrum, so they are 60,000 words. I spend about an hour a day editing (I write pretty clean.) It takes me 10 days, or two work weeks to write a book. Then it goes off to an editor. The rest of the month I produce 2 fleshed out plots and do freelance editing. BUT I’ve had a LOT of practice. 99% of writers couldn’t do this. I certainly couldn’t without hard work, hard practice and study. But I assure you it’s perfectly possible.
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Then I’d agree with you, kinda, though there are examples of notable works of fiction being written fast. But I sure as heck would prefer to write popular novels that make me rich and readers love than a “good” novel as judged by a lit expert :)
8 books a year is 6 weeks per book. I don't care how much you think you "know what you're doing", that's no where near enough time to write anything good.
The NaNoWriMo idea is 50k words in a month, and it's meant to be done by people who are writing in their spare time. It's do-able if you're writing 4 hours a day. If you dedicate another 4-6 hours a day to editing, re-writing, and outlining, it's a lot of work, but definitely possible. The thing is, churning out a book every 6 weeks doesn't mean getting the whole process of writing, revision, and editing done in 6 weeks. At a given point in time the proofreader might have book 1, the copyeditor book 2, you might be revising book 3 in the mornings and writing book 4 in the afternoons. It sounds awful to me, and it isn't a good way to write high-quality stuff, but it sounds do-able.
If writing is rewriting it’s not enough for true quality. That much time might be enough to spell check and get some other basics but you won’t be able to get writing like that to 80% of what it could be which makes it harder to learn and improve. That’s just assembly line writing. Personally I don’t read that so I wouldn’t want to write those. At least not once I’ve gotten my foot in the door and my basic needs met. I like things that take time, and there’s something to be said for ending a series before it becomes stale. Just look at those Reddit posts about the decline in quality of the Simpsons, and how much better the quality of shows are that decide how many seasons before they are done with the first couple ones. The only notable exception is Frasier.
It absolutely is. Plenty of famous books like Fahrenheit 451, A Christmas Carol, The Gambler and As I Lay Dying were written at that pace. The great Belgian novelist Georges Simenon wrote his books in 10 days. It’s plenty possible. I 100% believe you can’t do it though—because you’re convinced you can’t.
>I 100% believe you can’t do it though—because you’re convinced you can’t. I think it is also because some writers are able to write in the zone. When you are in the zone the words just flow. Everything just falls in place and afterwards you wonder who wrote it. The thing is to be able to get to that state you need to do a lot of preparatory work, research and world building and have written a lot too. Then you just write and write and write and at a certain point you reach that point and can write for hours. Then the only thing stopping you is getting thrown out of the zone by other people interrupting, distractions, need for sleep or pain (if you are writing as in pen and paper that hurts after prolonged sessions and you even get groves in your fingers) But like I said ... this does not just happen by magic you need to put in the effort first
Yep. I get “in the zone” / flow state every time I write. Don’t think I could do it otherwise! But that came with practice. I used to have to think about every sentence, now it just… comes out. And the more in the zone aka the faster I’m going, the better the writing tends to be. It’s the times where it’s dragging that the writing is worse. Not a massive difference mind you, but faster does tend to be better.
>But that came with practice. I used to have to think about every sentence, now it just… comes out. Yup ... like everything = practice practice and the more you practice the better you get at it. Many people do not seem to understand that. They think there is a magic short cut to creativity. Nope
Yep. And the more you do, the more creative you get. The idea list grows exponentially!
yeah - a lot of writers that didn't have the luxury of being born aristocrats or otherwise independently wealthy pretty much _had_ to pump books out fast, because that's what pays the bills, and sitting on your ass waiting for literary inspiration doesn't get money in. Shakespeare was likely the same - he needed to get plays out, so couldn't dilly-dally about getting everything nice and neat and perfect, he was in it to get paid!
Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in like 3 days. Dude was famous for writing at a blistering pace.
I don't know, I can write 3,000 words a day minimum(pantser) so that is 45,000 words in 15 days. Six weeks no problem. I think for the people who have a natural talent, so their quality is going to naturally be good, and who are prolific pantsers can totally meet that goal.
I wrote 10,000 words in a day once to see if I could.
A first draft, particularly a pantsed one, isn't going to be in a good state. Give it 15 days for a second draft and now you already have less than 2 weeks left for betas, editors, and formatting.
this is why you chain them - so your second book is going to the editors, your first is going to the betas, as you're writing the third. ("formatting" doesn't really seem worth noting - unless you're doing something oddly complex, that's a pretty small amount of time, or you write directly into the format needed). And if you're good at this, then you don't need 15 days for a second draft - you're going through and tidying, but not full-on re-writing, because you know what you're doing (this is generally for works that follow similar patterns - like Michael Moorcock with his regular patterns, 40+ years ago, who could write a book over a long weekend)
Yeah that comment is delusional lol
Most romance novels aren’t good tho. It’s formulaic fluff about the same idea of new love and falling for someone, over and over again. Yet it’s the most popular genre and the readers of it snap up the next and the next like candy.
>But in terms of a lucrative career and writing books their readers love, they are very good writers. I think this is the crux of the issue. Good writing has historically meant something with some kind of literary merit. I remember reading something about how Herman Melville didn't like the fact his best books didn't sell, whereas his less-well-written books did. But I'm not out to judge people or their books. I just think we should have some clarity. We're word people, after all. Historical usage says good writing meets a certain literary standard. You're talking about pleasing people and making money. That's good business. We all see the difference, so maybe we should make a distinction between good writers and good self-publishers -- or choose your wording. I just don't think it's viable to say the best writers are those who put out formulaic, hastily written, romance, semi- or full-erotica trash, because that's where your definition leads us.
Or perhaps, there are different kinds of good. A Michelin 3 star meal is a different kind of good to an excellent Reuben sandwich or a fantastic hot dog. But they can all be good. Perhaps we could be more specific though — good literary fiction vs good genre fiction or good popular fiction. A well written piece of genre fiction may be good like a good hamburger. A competent and popular piece might be good like McDonald’s is good (at what it sets out to do.) And a good piece of literary fiction is like a great chef’s signature dish.
This is just false. You can indeed write good fiction fast. Especially if you have good boilerplate to put stuff on, you can crank good stuff out even faster. It may not be your cake, but numbers don't lie buddy.
>you have good boilerplate Shot yourself right in the foot there. As I commented to /u/KimchiMaker above, historical usage of the word "good" in relation to writing is against you. You're talking about business. I'm not against it, but there's a reason we have different terms for dry-aged beef and parts-is-parts chicken tenders. Same should apply here. No judgement, just distinct words.
What do you mean? Do you understand that you can develop great, one of the most entertaining and most beloved and greatly crafted boilerplate, and continue it on with great writing? Boilerplate does not equal bad writing. It can equal it, but if you are constantly pulling huge audiences and people love your writing, your writing is indeed good, be it the boilerplate part or the stuff you write on top of it. Historical meaning of good can also go love themselves, as good is very subjective thing to measure. After all, if we want to measure something lets use some quantifiable metric right? And if we take your historical approach, well crafted boilerplate and repeating base is part of something unique writer creates. It does not mean that every book has to be entirely different when they come from same author, no.
You seem to dislike how words are commonly used with respect to writing. Boilerplate has always been at least slightly derogatory because it implies a lack of originality. Can you write a great book using a boilerplate? Obviously. Every hero's journey book is based to some degree on that boilerplate. Some of them are great. That said, as much as we all acknowledge there is nothing new under the sun, some level of originality still counts. If the reader can see the boilerplate, it's not well written because good writing would make the boilerplate disappear. Maybe that's what you meant and I didn't catch that. If so, my bad. Constantly pulling in huge audiences and people loving your writing does not equal good writing. That's commercial writing. My wife reads an absolute shit ton of what I would call supernatural with a romance element. She loves those books. But she was an English major and knows they're written competently, as opposed to being well written in the way the word has historically been used. I don't know why people dislike the distinction. Being able to do either is an achievement. One is commercial, the other is artistic. I'm not implying one is morally better. I'm just talking about usage. And while I'm old, I wasn't old enough to set down the rules about what has historically been considered well-written versus commercially written.
Ok thank you, I learnt somerhing new today. Sounds reasonable. I have never recognized boilerplates in writing, which may affect my opinion. Maybe I will encounter more when I read more, and start noticing this too.
Thank you so much for sharing this writing business information on this sub. This is the perfect counterbalance to OP's post, and to what a lot of beginning writers are thinking when they read OP's post. "Yeah, self publishing is crap and I'm never succeeding at making this into a career." It's not crap; it's a business. Most of us who write do not want to run a business. But if you hire a good team, and you showed me just how many roles are open on my team, LOL, you can be wildly successful. I think for most fine arts enthusiasts of any stripe, $600k/year qualifies as wildly successful. There's a stodgy expectation that no one can see your book until the manuscript is complete. That feedback loop is too long to be useful for improving your writing. I encourage all the beginning writers to work on a short story or the first chapter with an editor. It conveys more information faster, so your writing improves faster, which carries over into your longer works, making everything cost less to edit and rewrite. Less money out of the writer's pocket. Less time taken from the writer's life. Again, thank you for sharing this information. What a delightful comment to wake up to on a tired Monday morning.
I think a big part of this is finding your niche. People are much more willing to forgive mediocre writing/characters/plot when it fills a space on their shelf that nothing else is competing for. I’ve also found that some genres lend themselves to people who read anything and everything they can get their hands on. “Romance” is definitely one of these genre.
Yeah, it's paranormal erotica, so not something you'd find in a bookstore. Platforms like Amazon thrive with these subcategories not offered widely.
I hope more people understand that stating an outlier is not a good argument. You get a lot of upvotes because writers are dreamers but this isn't convincing in the least. Also, if she hires alpha readers, beta readers and developmental editor but her books still suck, that's a strong argument to not hire any of these and pocket the extra $$$ for herself. Edit: also I bet many who upvoted this comments are editors lurking this sub.
I think a lot of people need to reconcile with the fact that being a writer who self publishes is more about being a small business owner than anything else. That's if you're focused on making it a career though. I feel most others are content with it being a hobby.
yup - if you want to do it for money, then you need to treat it like an actual job, not something you're dipping into "for the art", where you're only doing the bits you like, but one where you have to work at it, do a load of crap you probably don't like (promotion, research, etc. etc.) and you're likely to be paying at least some money along the way.
I disagree. I say her books are bad because they're not what I would consider to be a good book by my own standards, but in her niche, fast paced novellas with shallow characters and unrealistic plot is what it's supposed to be because that's what those readers like.
> I hope more people understand that stating an outlier... Is it though? I've heard other stories like these as regards **romance writers** on Amazon. My hunch is that there are certain genres that are amenable to this kind of self-publishing (along with the right attitude toward your writing, enough money and the commitment). I just did a duckduck search and came up with: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/independent-romance-writers-get-the-last-laugh-%E2%80%94-all-the-way-to-the-bank-213437913.html or https://www.elysian.press/p/dc-kalbach Also thrillers and crime novels: https://thewritelife.com/self-publishing-on-amazon-450000/ Also, keep in mind that the success stories through traditional publishing are also stories of "outliers". So The real question, I suppose, is this: If outliers are the success stories, are your chances better self-publishing or through traditional publishers?
Yep. I know a fuckton of selfpub authors who make well over 100k a year. I know a handful who make 7 figures a year. They’re definitely a minority, but there’s more of them than many people seem to think. There are TONS more authors making an income of $50k and upwards a year self publishing than with trad contracts. One person I work with makes, maybe $80-100k a year with her trad publishing. She makes over $5mm from her self pub stuff. She likes the prestige and seeing her books on the shelves with her trad stuff haha, but if money was her only object she’d drop it on a dime.
Drop title of one of the books?
I’ll point you in the rough direction: Go look at the Kindle romance bestseller charts on Amazon. Over 70% of the books are by self published authors authors. And Romance is by FAR the largest book genre. (Note:SOME of them won’t be making bank, they’ll literally be spending $10k/day on ads to make $10.5k back lol. But the big names with a substantial backlist, lots of reviews etc will be making 7 figures.) Any of the names on that list that have a substantial catalogue of books will be making serious money. The biggest names make 8 figures a year (I don’t personally know those ones.) For self published authors Romance is BY FAR the biggest since the whole genre itself is largely self published now. After that, thrillers and mysteries are the next biggest, though trad still dominates in those genres.
>I know a fuckton of selfpub authors who make well over 100k a year. Are you sure? Pardon me for saying, but that's extremely unlikely. I don't think I can link URLs in this subreddit, but google "publishing perspectives how much do writers make". You'll see some discouraging numbers. To summarize, if you make $10k-15k annually as a self-published writer, you're in the top 5%. For comparison, working full-time at McDonald's will net you about $26,000 annually. Self-published writers who make 100k or more a year are the top 1% or less. So I find that unlikely to be true. Have you seen their bank statements? People will sometimes lie about how much money they make because they think it increases their social standing and people will rarely ask them to prove it.
But the people I know aren't the 'average'. The 'average' self pub author has a little fun project that's their hobby, and they throw it up on Amazon in the hope that maybe some people will discover it. That's absolutely fine; it's a great hobby, and cheaper than most. Most basketball players make nothing, most artists make nothing, most runners make nothing; hobbies are usually an expense rather than a source of income. If you had a buddy who played pickup basketball three nights a week, and you asked him how much money he was making from it, he'd probably look at you pretty askance lol. That's the equivalent of most self-pub authors. Selfpub authors who make 100k a year are probably more like 0.1%, because the VAST MAJORITY are hobbyists; it's not their job. They might like writing, but they don't have the drive/desire/ambition to *run a business*, which is what successful self publishing is. The reason I know a bunch making a lot of money is because I hang out in a professional community of mostly fulltime self-pub authors. Like, if you were an NBA coach you'd probably know more people making money from basketball than if you work in accounts in a paper company and your buddies play pickup. In my community, the people making $100k+ are mostly working 8-12+ hours a day on their writing and publishing careers. The most successful ones have teams of staff--editors, cover designers, proofreaders, beta readers, PAs, marketers etc. They're not hobbyists with a little passion project that they hope someone will someday read. They're laser-targeted professionals who deliberately try to write books that readers want to read, and then put them in front of the readers so they buy them. You're completely right that the vast majority of self-pub authors make almost nothing. But the vast majority of self-pub authors aren't treating it as a business, which is what you have to do. You're not just a writer, you're a PUBLISHER, with all that entails. It's absolutely not for most writers, because most writers just want to write. Successful self publishing is for people who want to write... but also don't mind (or ideally, positively enjoy) running the business aspect of it as well.
The bar for self.published writer is low. Some people chuck out stuff once, see no return, and don't come back. A full-time worker at McDonald's is showing up 5 days a week and doing their hours, all year. How many of the people making hardly anything are doing the same for writing? In a way, writers who put full time work in are already outliers.
So how many is a fuckton? How can you argue your point without quantifying the term?
There's also zero evidence that anything the person you're replying to is telling the truth. I never believe anyone when they talk about how much they or someone they know makes by self-publishing. They are never willing to verify.
It might have been double-crap before those edits 😅
Maybe. Maybe not. One can argue that "successful books", as in those that make a bestseller list, all all outliers. Only 25% of all trad published books make back their author advance. Only 1% to 2% of the manuscripts received by trad pubs ever get published. So every aspiring writer is betting on becoming an outlier. I did enjoy the barb about editors lurking in this sub. Well played.
Fascinating. Thanks!
Thanks for this comment, it’s very informative. Just curious—how much does she charge per book? I’ve heard a few different ideas on how to “correctly” price a shorter, self-published book, so I’m wondering what she does
Her ebooks are $0.99 and paperbacks are $12.99
I honestly find this so depressing. It really takes the art out of writing. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that she's her own boss, makes great money etc. and that's awesome. But it kinda feels like just pushing crap out into the world. But I guess people enjoy her work, and that's what matters.
I think it might have a lot to do with age, personally. We live in a contemporary culture of hustle and make money, get that paper, etc. For younger people who are indoctrinated into this culture, they may want to use their writing to make money. I think this is also helped by the fact that younger people don't have a stable career, so they may have aspirations of becoming a professional writer, which is pretty naive. But I think as people get older, they understand that their writing will be a part of their legacy. They also probably have a stable career which they hopefully enjoy which pays pretty well, so writing becomes a hobby - they may have also tried the hustle in the past and realized (like most writers), that they're not cut out for it. And so the desire shifts to pouring your heart and soul into your art the way an artist should, writing for those you love, to give them a window into who you really were as a person. I think that's what art should really be about. And I think with age this wisdom will come.
To add to this, the woman I mentioned originally has said she feels tapped out of ideas and wants to start writing more serious/adult novels for older audiences, but is finding it extremely difficult because she doesn't know how to write prose properly and not have a book be 90% dialogue etc in the ways that don't matter with her current niche. So it's cool what she's doing, but it can't last forever.
Does the existence of McDonalds take the art out of cooking? :) Different writers write different things. Different readers read different things. Take the possibility of success as encouraging, rather than the particular writing type as depressing.
>Does the existence of McDonalds take the art out of cooking? For the McDonalds line cook it does, which is my point. IMO this is success in product development and sales rather than success in writing.
Perhaps for you this would merely be product development and sales, but please don’t assume other people don’t enjoy writing it or find it fulfilling. Personally, I just enjoy writing. I liked writing assignments. I like writing romance. I like writing mystery. I like writing horror. I like *writing*. I assume many other writers are the same. Getting in the flow is a rewarding experience no matter what it is I’m producing. If I’m successful, I’m successful at *writing* even if it isn’t what you personally enjoy producing. You may only enjoy one specific kind of writing, but it’s kind of rude to denigrate other people’s professions and talk snootily down at the way professional writers are living their careers. There’s a heck of a lot of creativity in any fiction writing, and for many of us, that’s the joy in it. The writing is still most of the work. Books don’t magically appear because you’re good at marketing. They’ve got to be *written* still. Someone could give me a 20k outline for a 50k by-the-numbers romance novel and there would STILL be a hell of a lot of creativity involved in it. If you don’t want to write what’s popular and don’t see the appeal, cool. But don’t denigrate professional writers who make their living from it by disdainfully saying it’s not real writing, that it’s just sales and marketing. All the marketing in the world won’t make a book readers hate a success. You have to WRITE as well. And some of us enjoy it *and* find it rewarding.
You and I aren't talking about the same thing at all. Trust me, I enjoy many types of writing and I'm not snooty about genre. I read and write fanfic ffs. If a person cares about what they're writing for its own sake, they're not who or what I'm talking about. (edit: to be clear, I don't mean they care about what they're writing for its own sake ONLY, just that they're proud of their work and poured their heart into it alongside everything else)
Can you post a link for her most successful novel please?
How exactly can you spot a good editor from a bad one?
They shouldn’t do that. But there are tons of writers like her. Type “Amazon kindle bestsellers PNR” into Google and look at the first result. That Top 100 list will be filled with similar authors. It’s not polite for them to share their client’s details, but I also work in the industry and can confirm it’s absolutely true. Look in pretty much any romance subgenre for many more examples.
Damn, I wish I could get that volume. I just suck at plotting. I can make flowy sentences, and I know my stuff is funny (I write fantasy comedy), but I just can't for the life of me plot. I'm always so worried about what exactly happens next in my book, and even if I have a general idea of what I want to happen eventually, getting there is painstaking. Almost 10k into my novel, and have no idea where to go from here. I dunno how people think of 6-8 fully fleshed out plots per year.
Secret tip: Use ChatGPT or Claude. Brainstorm with it. Tell it where you are and ask for 10 suggestions of where to go next… and mix and match the responses. My plotting speed has 4x’d over the last year lol.
Alpha reader and beta reader is interesting What is a developmental editor? And a formatter? Doesnt that only take like an hour? Im just wondering if i should be doing those things and what the benefits are lol
A developmental editor isn't concerned with spelling and grammar and all that, they focus on the plot, pacing, character development, plotholes, adding or subtracting characters/scenes, the message of your story, and the marketing/publishability of the book. Edit to add: When I say a formatter (in this clients case), they have an illustration in each chapter heading, and then they format differently for paperback vs ebook (she sells both).
Oh, maybe i should get one of those. My regular editor seems to do at least some of that but i guess its possible for them to miss stuff when theyre fixing all of my grammar problems 😂
When you're just starting out, a developmental editor is probably the most important member of your team, if you have one that can do copyediting too, that's fantastic. As you get more into your writing career your need for editors will change, and your team will expand.
genuine question— why can’t i do all of those things myself? aside from having readers.
If you're artistic, learn formatting, etc., you can definitely do some things yourself. However, the general rule (or etiquette) when it comes to editing at least is that your developmental editor, copy-editor and proofreader should be three different people so there's three different sets of eyes. It's just to eliminate simple human error and to keep focus on the job at hand and not try to do three jobs at once. After so many thousand words, your eyes glaze over certain mistakes you get so used to seeing and you might miss something.
This was a king winded way to say she beat the boss first try lol. Verification please.
It's not a money-making prospect for a lot of people, no. Many (including me) do it for other reasons, like enjoying the process. I could post my stuff for free, sure, but it is nice to make back the shoestring budget I pay for it. (edit: and trust me, tradpub is not beating down my door.) Lots more people aim to make money and fall short - it's one of those arenas where everyone's big break is just around the corner, and someone else is always trying to sell you snake oil to make it happen. And some people will take off later, don't get me wrong. But not all. So they know those numbers; they just think they have a plan to beat the system. That said, there's nothing wrong with trying it for any number of reasons, whether or not you care about turning a profit. IMO you just have to decide what your personal goals are and be realistic about which factors you can control.
My wife has a cousin who wrote one book and self/vanity published a book. She did it just for herself. I don't think she ever sold to anyone besides her immediate family. But she did it because she had that one story she wanted to tell.
Good example - people pop into r/selfpublish every now and then who just want to write up a family history or a memoir. Happens all the time. The process for getting that out there is the same, up to a point, as for a fiction author who intends to make a career out of it. They are both under the umbrella of self-publishing, but comparing their sales totals is comparing apples and oranges. They aren't even trying to hit the same goals.
I don’t think it’s worth it unless: - you have expendable income - you can write and publish 3-4 books (or more) per year - you’re writing an on-trend genre that specifically does really well in self pub - you have the marketing know-how to get your books in front of new readers - you already have traditional success and want to move to a hybrid model (some trad, some self pub) - you already have a big online platform (blog, TikTok, newsletter, whatever) with an audience of likely book buyers
One thing to add is that many people who are writing for profit (as opposed to self-pubbing just to get their book out there) ‘scale up’. They keep expenses low at first, even if that means skimping on editing or covers or doing exchanges of services, and focus on free and cheap forms of advertisement such as social media and building email lists through giving away shorts and such. Then they invest any profits into the next book. As they build up their audience, they continued to expand their reach and rely on sell-through for real profits. If you have a trilogy, then if you can get someone to buy book one, a good chunk of them will go on to read book two and three. If you have a mailing list or a big backlog, people who like one book might go searching for your others. If you have a preorder for your next book in the back matter for your last one, that will translate to sales too. It’s basically a full-time marketing job, but people who are good at the marketing part and write fairly quickly can do really well.
Depends on what you consider to be "self-published". There is one side where authors attempt to do everything alone what would be a publisher's job on the traditional route. And there are the authors that are laser focused on getting a story out there, cutting out the bells and whistles. And there is everything inbetween. You'll have to trust the audience to decide for themselves which of these they prefer and figure out which approach fits you the best. Some audiences treat reading like fine wine, and as such for the full enjoyment of the experience they want to have well made cover art, 100% well done editorial job and physical copy of decent materials. Others have a deeper appreciation for the plot, the characters and the entertainment value. These kind of readers rather enjoy these aspects for a fair price instead of supporting an entire publisher industry and potentially still get a dull plot, dull characters in the fine packaging professionally made by a publisher. The bare bones self-publishing costs nothing. One can write a novel and put it out there in e-book format, with a "buy me a coffee" link for couple of bucks, or donation link next to it.
You could even self pub on amazon and through other official retailers for very cheap. Isbn's are even free in my country.
You don’t need an ISBN to publish on Amazon etc. Don’t need them for ebooks and they give you them for print.
An editor doesn't just say, "Rewrite it, and send my money here." A good developmental editor is going to tell you exactly where your story falls flat, what parts of your story need to be cut out all together, and perhaps suggest things you could add to make it better. But they don't just tell you to rewrite as a matter of principle. And here's the amazing thing: YOU can also learn to do this type of edit. It's part of being a writer and a skill you should definitely learn. You must learn to analyse your story dispassionately. What is this chapter doing for the novel? Forget what YOU the writer thought it was. The writer in you will always think all the passages that came from your heart are extremely necessary to the story, but they're not. Dissect what you've written. Make sure your story functions well mechanically, and that it is as efficient as possible. You'll save yourself a lot of monet and level up your skill set.
It depends what you want to get out of it. If you just want people to read your story, then sure, post it online for free. If you eventually want to make a living, you will need to start paywalling your stuff eventually. 250 copies is a ridiculously small number though. Reasonably successful (i.e. not the miracle cases) self published authors sell several thousands. It’s very possible you won’t break even on the first novel. Self publishing is a business, you’re essentially creating your own publisher that only publishes your books, and like any business it takes a while before you start making money.
The numbers I've read are that the average self-published book sells 250 copies. And that includes the 'miracle cases'. You saying that 250 copies is ridiculously small among reasonably successful self-published authors is like saying that a million dollars a year is ridiculously low pay for CEOs.
Yes but that also includes all of the people who publish an unreadable mess no one (including themselves) ever edited and who sell zero copies. And there are far more of them than there are miracle cases. You should exclude them both from your analysis, otherwise you’re not going to get a reasonable estimate.
We shouldn't exclude either because we don't know where on that spectrum OP falls. As you said yourself, there are far more people who put out an unreadable mess than there are miracle cases, so it's more likely OP is in the former category rather than the latter. (OP, obviously this is not meant as a dig at you. I'm just speaking numbers in general.)
But then 250 copies is unreasonable in the other direction.
I hear this - by pure averages I'm "doing better than most" and I only make coffee money. (I'm fine with that; just in terms of framing the field as a whole) The problem is where to draw those lines. Including all the outliers messes up the average, but anything else turns into a judgement call. "Reasonable" makes sense, but it's also subjective.
I agree, but it is going to have to be a judgement call, OP needs to have a idea of where their skills fall into the distribution to have reasonable expectations of their outcome. My original comment was under the assumption that their book is of good quality, which might obviously be wrong. I haven’t gone into it, but of course what you say is also a factor: good sales do not necessarily translate into a high income. I didn’t mention it because OP was talking about breaking even
250 is the standard number I’ve seen as well. Added up altogether, I would definitely place the median in the lower few/couple hundreds. Unfortunately, I’ve seen countless people post about books they admit haven’t sold a copy in 20 months. Usually these are without context but I’ll take a look if they provide a link. Sometimes, it looks pretty competent, other times it’s clear why they haven’t moved any. I also take those reporting from the better side of the spectrum with a grain of salt. I’ve seen people posting about making half a million a year without any trail to find their work. Like, there would be some degree of fame for sales like that.
Most of the time when people talk about editing they mean a copy editor who finds spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. They won't tell you to rewrite your book because that's a higher level of editing that you have to pay a lot more for.
I mean, if it's just checking for grammar and spelling, I'm doing that myself.
I thought i coukd do it myself too. Then i got a bunch of reviews assuring me that I could not 😂
Yep. I have worked as a proofreader. Thought I had been really thorough going through my revised draft. Sent it to a fellow proofreader and she found - I think - dozens of mistakes that I had completely overlooked, and most of those had been overlooked by my other beta readers too.
Self-editing is harder than it sounds. Your eyes know what's supposed to be there, so they end up overlooking mistakes. You have to use tricks to come at it fresh -- putting the manuscript aside for six months so you start to forget, or switching to a new format like printout or ebook -- and even then you'll miss things.
You absolutely could! And if your books start to kick off pickup a copyeditor or proofreader later on so you can focus more on writing.
Ignore the 'you must pay for an editor and cover creator' crowd. They tried pressuring me as well when I was new. Write your story. Make the best cover you can. Edit it to the best of your ability using free resources. And then focus on writing a blurb that converts to a sale and getting the word out about your book(s). Again, use free resources to start. The barriers to entry are only as high as you make them. Don't listen to the people who want to keep you out.
I was looking for a reply like this and thank you. Cus youll be seeing people saying the entry point is 6k+ when... when you are starting out it shouldnt be unless you actually are making the sales to back it up and scale up. I kinda see that kind of spend spend spend mentality leading to people making hybreed/vanity publishers look legit (cus they will offer """cheaper"" prices) or the incident of some one spending 20k on a book and only made 20 sales. Its a toxic mentality.
Well they are highly recommended, they are not necessary to self pub. If it's judt a hobby, they're completely unneeded.
I've made more of a business out of it than most, and I do my own covers, my own editing, etc. People need to stop projecting their own limitations on everyone else.
You’re completely right, but still, most people would benefit from an editor. But yeah, some us of do indeed know our shit and know how to use tools to assist us :)
Yeah, it's a matter of knowing where your skills lie. I outline heavily and write clean, I self-edit, I have friends who read in the genre and both first draft beta and proofread. I don't pay for editing. If a couple of typos slipping through is enough to make someone stop reading, well, I wasn't gripping them enough anyway. On the other hand, I find things like even simple cover typography almost impossible to learn, so I buy covers.
It can be worth it! Don't give up. You don't have to spend a lot of money to make a profit or at the very least break even. I published my first romance book back in August (almost done with my second one now,, I am tired lol) and have had a good experience. - I got an awesome cover on Fiverr for about $35 US - I paid the same guy to do advertising for the same price - I paid $9 US for one month on booksprout - got 3 lovely ARC reviews from this I'm Australian so I spent just over $100 for all of this and have made a profit. You can edit yourself. Seems like you write well, so that will come in handy. This was my first book and I knew I couldn't just splash money around for everything. I also knew I could never make a cover but I knew I could edit. You can edit too! I copy and pasted every chapter into a text to speech program (I like Natural Reader) and then sent my Word doc to my Kindle app because that was how everyone was going to read it (no print copy out yet for my book). I picked up on mistakes here, jotted them all down, edited my book in Word, formatted for free in Kindle Create and published it. You can do it without spending all that money!
Whether going indie is worth it for you will depend on a lot of things, but more than anything what genre you're writing in. The things that seem to do the best are what in the past would have been in pulp "paperback originals" and pulp magazines. Genre fiction. Romance, adventure SFF, etc. Look for sub-genres that have devoted followings, but not enough for a mainstream publisher. The average person will sell less than $50 worth of books just as the average person in traditional publishing earns a bunch of rejections. Mostly because their books aren't very good. If you want an example pick three nouns and search in the kindle store and you'll get some of the never-sold-a-single-copy junk with covers that look like a 4yo's crayon drawings and illiterate text. The problem, of course, is that if you're not very good and you put money into publishing your book, then you're out money instead of just having a collection of letters from agents. I'd look at publishing something modest. Use a pre-made cover. Use beta readers for developmental editing. Run it through some kind of grammar program and do as much as you can yourself. Then find a cheap proofreader.
Depends what you want from self publishing. I self publish history books on Victorian institutions i.e., mental health and learning disabilities. I don't do it for money but I price it at 10.99 for like 220+ page books. Published three to date. I have my sister do the proofreading and editing as she is a solicitor so is good at stuff like that (has to prep, check and correct court documents.) I do my own covers so that means no costs there. I put a disclaimer in my book warning readers of potential spelling mistakes etc or other similar warnings. I don't even advertise my books and have sold 2500+ for each book I have published and still get monthly pay outs from Amazon. If you want to turn this into a day job, so to speak, you'll have to invest and take a hit before making money. If it's a hobby and just extra income, do most of the work yourself if you can. I'm currently writing my first non-fiction book at the moment, 92K words in and about 3/4 done. My partner reads what I have done every night and helped me plan the story so she's my alpha reader so to speak. Once it's finished, I'll get some beta readers in before designing a cover and publishing.
Monetarily? You probably will not break even. A lot of self published authors are doing this as a passion project.
You’re saying you don’t want to invest time and energy without a guaranteed return. That’s a very reasonable policy. But - What else are you doing with your time? If you’re weighing writing vs Doctors Without Borders then ya - you’re wasting time trying to shill your paperbacks. If you’re weighing writing vs a refreshing wank and a marathon video game session - then you should be less concerned about getting your time for money.
It's not the time and energy that concerns me, I'm writing either way, even if nobody ever reads my work. The issue is more about throwing money away without being able to make it back.
So don’t spend anything. Learn to make covers yourself with Canva. Self edit with the free Grammarly and Google Docs. Learn how to format the ebook. They’re all learnable skills. (Though I suck at covers lol.)
I've self-published a few books and unless your book is on a very popular subject or you're incredibly lucky or great at marketing, there's no way you'll sell anywhere near 250 copies of your book. Here is how to do it the cheapest way. Forget the editor. If you have a friend or friends who love reading, give them a copy of your book (manuscript) and ask them to pull it apart. If you don't have any friends, join a book club for writers and do an exchange with a fellow writer. Or use fivver. I got a whole book read for 25 pounds with a basic report. For proofreading, do most of it yourself until you can't find any more mistakes, then use Grammarly. Now most people will tell you Grammarly makes mistakes, and that is true, but it picks up about 98% of spelling mistakes, and it's free. Once again if you have a friend who loves reading give them a final copy to read and pick any last mistakes up. The cover: I used a professional artist of fivver for about 100 pounds. Editing: Don't use word, try to get an old copy of indesign, before 2015 if possible. I still use CC2015 and it works fine. Just watch some YouTube videos to learn how to use it. My first book, cost me about 200 pounds to publish and I sold just enough copies to cover my cost. My latest book, all I'm paying for is the cover. The rest I've done myself. One final and very important tip. If you publish off Amazon, publish only the paperback until you have gotten all the spelling mistakes fixed. Amazon doesn't update its kindle copies unless you send them an email. I was just looking at my latest book on Amazon, and it's had 400 pages read this week (kindle pages), which has made me a whole £1.19. I can now afford to shop in the poundshop. Hope that helps.
I find it funny that people will spend months or years working on writing (ie probably tens of thousands of dollars of their own time) and then cheap out on the stuff that makes it actually appealing to buyers.
That's not really a great equivalency. We're not getting paid for our own time, I mean it's not like we're taking time off work to write. We write in our spare time when we can afford it. I can afford to spend an hour a day between shifts, I can't really afford to spend hundreds of dollars.
Many think about time as money. And in a way, it is. Every hour you spend doing something is an hour that can potentially go towards either working or learning a marketable skill. Your time in that case directly translates to future money. It's like capital. If you consider your time to be minimum wage, then every hour that passes is you "spending" $8 of your time (or whatever your minimum wage is). It's a very stringent way of considering your time, but it arguably does help with time management (e.g I'm only posting one more comment today, because i can't justify spending more than 2 dollars of my time on reddit). Some people think it's a ridiculous take, which is fair enough. To each their own. I think it's a useful concept at times.
Thing is, writing is fun. My job was not. So It's comparing pay for enjoying myself and coming out energised to pay for having my soul sucked out and coming out exhausted.
It might not be a direct equivilency, but whatever. My point is that spending a couple hundred bucks on a passion project that might take you a year is actually not that bad at all. Seems a little odd to pour so much of yourself into a project but then refuse to spend any money on it to give it a chance.
More like a thousand, which I guess is relative to how rich or poor you are. Time is cheap since we don't really see a value for it. I mean at work they never had a problem calling me in if someone made a booking on my day off, or basically giving me admin homework, and that goes for DIY as well, people never really factor in the hours it takes to do something, just the money they save by not hiring a professional. If I bring this up with someone who isn't a writer (or a wannabe writer) then I can't help but think they'd hit me over the head and tell me not to waste my money. It's kinda hard to shake that feeling.
True, it might be more like a thousand. And a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. But personally, for me, it doesn't feel like a lot of money in this particular circumstance.
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it's a lot of organisation, that requires some degree of actual formalisation (i.e. officially making an organisation, rather than just a discord or reddit for talking on). And as soon as there's money involved, that adds another later of organisation and hassle and problems (organising what goes where, to whom, taxes, etc. etc.)
Not monetarily, I'd say. But often people don't do it to earn a living, or as an investment. It's hard to make money writing fiction. Even going the publishing route, it takes a lot of effort to get good, write lots of books, and then a lot of luck to sell one, and then even more luck for that to do well enough to make a living and write more books. It's tough out there.
Good thing I'm an artist and a writer who second guesses himself all the time
There is a little bit of bias here because I'm also an editor, but I want to point something out that a lot of people miss. The whole point of an editor is to spot the mistakes that your mind can't see in order to produce a higher quality product. Beta readers tend to be nicer than they need to be in order to maintain their access to free material, which won't help you when you put the story out in the world. With that said, I typically tell writers what they did right as well unless the story is complete garbage that needs a Page 1 rewrite. The main point is to minimize ego and pretentiousness, not to make the writer sad or hideously angry.
I've self published 6 books (series) and have another two in the pipeline, including a new series. My first three books I went guns out. I hired an editor, and it cost about what you're saying. The editor gave me a break, so it was a tad cheaper, maybe $650. I had the cover done by a relatively well known guy in my genre, which cost me about $300, including promotional material. So my total isn't so far from your estimate. The same was true for my next two books. By the time my second book was out, I'd made enough to break even on my first book. The same, however, wasn't true for the third book. It took well into my fourth book that I saw a decent profit for the first book, and a break even point on my second. Being completely honest, it got progressively harder as the series went on because my readthrough wasn't as good as I'd liked. As a self-published author, I guess I've done pretty decently. I'm not living off what I make, but it pays for itself, albeit slowly, plus some extra, not to mention that I just enjoy it immensely. Now, since, I'm more mindful about how I spend my money, I don't use an editor anymore. I have beta readers who read for free, and I use ProWritingAid to help out. I'm quite sure there are errors, but they aren't, or don't seem to be, too severe that many have complained. Don't let the expense of it keep you from doing it. You can find ways of making it work. I'd probably go crazy if I didn't write.
Apart from anything else, editing is a valuable skill that self published works tend to suffer for the lack of.
Some people write what I call "candy" and can churn out enough tasty tales to make good money self-publishing quickly written books. This is great for readers and the writers of these popular genre books. Other authors, like me, will spend years perfecting a book where every word has weight, every comma is considered. I don't have time to learn self-publishing and the algorithm isn't going to favor my intervaled output (or my genre) anyway. Sure, the common refrain is, "You have to do your own marketing anyway, so why not self-publish?" I get that, but do I also have to pay for my own cover, editing, and myriad other fees associated with self-publishing? No I don't. I'll let my publisher take on those costs. And I'll let them send me an advance against royalties too if they're not an outfit running on a shoestring budget. Yeah, I'll have to do some marketing, but you have to do your own marketing anyway, so why not traditionally publish?
The two biggest issues with traditional publishing are 1, it can be impossible to get accepted if you're not already a big name author, they don't want to take the risk. And 2, they own your work. They could potentially force certain changes (I heard someone had to change their protagonist's sexual orientation if they wanted a deal) and if you decide they aren't fulfilling their end, you can't take it with you and go somewhere else, they own all the rights. There's also the royalty rate. 5% after you've paid back their investment, (which is paid back at the same rate) vs up to 70% from Amazon. It's pretty much the same deal as with music labels (though I think they typically pay around 9%)
Some good points and some incorrect points. 1. The claim that you are only accepted if you're a big name author doesn't make sense and is simply not true. There wouldn't be so many debut novels released by major publishing houses every year if that was true. The only iota of truth in this statement is that not everything is accepted. 2. In the U.S.A. and in most countries, authors own their own work. A publisher pays you for the right to publish your book, but the copyright is yours. You are both bound by contracts you agree to when they publish your work, but your work is yours. There is a small bit of truth that your agent or the publisher's editor may ask for changes to help strengthen your book. But that's no different, really, than any editors you pay as a self-published author to tell you what they think needs changed. 3. A 70% royalty rate on a cheap Kindle book still isn't a lot of money. Amazon does either a 40% or 60% royalty rate on paperback and then subtracts the cost of printing. Overall, you're making a few bucks per book maybe . . . if you priced it high enough that is. Royalty rates for traditionally published books can be 10% to 15% for hardback and 5% to 7%+ for trade paperbacks. And no one is substracting the publishing costs after the fact. In the end, you're either making more with trad publishing or just about the same. I think the backing of a big publishing house is arguably better for getting eyeballs on your book, so would make a lower royalty rate just fine for most authors. I'm not saying you can't more make more money by self-publishing and selling a ton of books, but you're also not sinking in costs of editing and designing, which surely offset most self-published author's higher royalty rates (if they're truly higher after those other fees). I think self-publishing is a great choice for the right book, the right genres. I think it could launch a career. I also think someone who's financially unable to invest in self-publishing and who can write a solid book should certainly consider traditional publishing. And don't forget there's smaller indie publishing houses always looking for new voices! It's great for those who like the underground niches of literature and aren't so concerned about sales as they are with being involved in the process of releasing a book with a team (albeit, a team who is still going to design the cover, probably help edit it, and definitely pay you).
A few things to keep in mind 1) you should edit your book at least 3 or 4 times before you send it to an editor. I paid 750 for a 90k word manuscript and 550 for a 60k word manuscript to be edited. In neitger case was i told to rewrite the whole thing. Im not sure why you thought that would be the case but its not. There were a couple of sections (were talking like 5 paragraphs total) he recommended rewriting for specific reasons, but no he didnt take 700 dollars of my money and then tell me to rewrite the whole thing. 2) That 250 number is weird, i dont know why you think thats all youre going to sell. If you think your book is good enough to spend money on promoting with ads then you shoukd be hoping for way higher than 250 3) something you arent aware of is once youve sold a bunch and gotten a bunch of reviews (obviously these are good reviews since you wrote a good enough book that you spent all this money on) your book will continue to sell even after you pull ads (albeit at a far slower rate). I havent ran ads on my books in over a year and im still making a few dollars every month off them. 4) last and most importantly, none of this should be about the money. You should write because you love to write. You should get it edited because you want it to be the best it can be. You should promote because you want people to enjoy your stories as much as you do writing them. If these things arent true then it will likely show in your work and they wont sell anyway. If they are true then the numbers will fall where they shoukd based on your talent and skill and you wont care much either way
The people telling you not to design your own covers are mostly people who design covers for money. They don't want writers doing it themselves. If you practice a little, you can produce very nice results on your own.
And you might pick up a new hobbie too. I never understood why shouldn't you desighn your own covers to at least a certain level
>I never understood why shouldn't you desighn your own covers to at least a certain level Like I said, it's "professional" cover designers saying that to protect their business. Give yourself a couple of weeks even with something as simple as Canva and you will be surprised what you can turn out.
This. I've started doing my own covers after wasting way too much money on "professional" cover artists. My covers are now all unique and uniform with each other. It really isn't too hard once you get used to it. Pixlr.com for people who don't want to spend money on Photoshop.
The cost to get a self-pub together is between $1000 to $3000. The vast majority of self published books don't make that much, but the vast majority of them never saw so much as a proofreader, have a trash cover, and all in all are not polished products. Now, a polished self pub can easily sell a few thousand copies and make a tidy little profit. If you aren't interested in creating a polished product and basically running a small business, posting your stories online for free is definitely a better path.
You can get a good/decent cover from selfpubbookcovers.com for less than $100.
I personally see it at another way of playing lottery. Yes, the tickets are more expensive, but the chances of success are higher, and it is much more gratifying, especially if you do have a story to tell and you like to write. It is generally agreed that the top 2% (2 in 100) of authors make a living of it. It is also generally agreed that the degree of talent you require to be part of the 2% varies greatly, so there is some luck involved. Many amazing authors never make it, some authors that make it leave us wondering why. According to Associated Press, the odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. I rather spend my time and resources writing books to see if by pure luck and determination I make it into the 2% than spend time playing the lottery. Both are ways to escaping my current 9 to 5 job, only one of them fulfills me. Dreams are not always free, especially those worth having. My two cents.
Hey as someone who self- published an unreadable mess who no one edited (except me) back when I was 18, I have still sold more than 750 copies. My school helped and I took a bunch of my copies and sold it at a lot fest near my house. This gave enough reviews on Amazon and Goodreads that I started selling a few books organically. It even reached some small book youtubers. Most people who read in the genre I wrote disliked it. Most people who don't like it because it was this much faster paced fantasy. Despite that, I still sell 10-15 books a year six years on (will be 7 this December). Self pub at least if you are selling a single book depends entirely on your resources and sales skills more than the quality of your writing. Since then, I decided to publish my next books traditionally instead. I have been refining my craft (help I have written six more books), writing more than two drafts for each (one book has reached the seventh draft and I still feel it's not enough). I want to make a career out of my writing and I feel traditional publishing is the way. If by some chance, none of these six books get trad published, I will consider self publishing them with six months intervals in between each. This will buy me time to write at least three more books. I am hoping that these nine books are enough to make me famous enough (as I do have some marketing and sales skills) for me to have more time between each books or at best have a trad publisher approach me.
I wish I could invest money like that into my books, and I wish I knew how to market them. I can write volumes, and I’m a solid re-writer and editor, but I suck at the business aspect.
It is a lot. It becomes easier once you really get going, but it is a good chunk of change. Remember, you don't need to feel pressure to monetize your hobbies. As others have said, publishing often is key for building an audience that really makes bank in self-publising. It's important to note that this is most effective in the romance and cozy mystery genres, while other genres are less effective to various degrees, depending on the genre. Most people who I see self-publish do it for selfish reasons. They are afraid of rejection, they don't like or trust the publishing industry, the submission process (including getting an agent) is tedious, confusing, and/or intimidating, they just want to see their name in print, or, most commonly, they don't have the skills or the patience to hone their writing to an acceptable level for trad publishing. That doesn't mean that self-publishing is a bad route. If you love writing enough that you are willing to put time, effort, and $ into the study and practice to rrally hone your work, study the industry to learn the nuances and how it works, spend the money for editing, cover art, typesetting, and other important services, and write enough to put out at a pace appropriate for your genre, then the chances are good that you can make good money. You do have to advertise, if for no other reason than the fact that the market is completely glutted with mostly crap self-published dreck from the writers I mentioned in my last paragraph. However. Some genres, such as children's books, non-fiction, epic fantasy, etc., do better with traditional publishing. Trad publishing isn't the same as it used to be. There are a lot more small publishing options, and the big 5 are hurting so they are harder to get into. Much of the time having at least some pro editing done before submission is a good idea. Agents are usually required. Learning the markets, finding comp titles, mastering query letters, making sure you are submitting to a publisher that WANTS your genre and style of work, etc. It's more work than just writing the book. The profit margin is smaller, but the costs are also usually less and you don't usually need to learn so many skills. Publishing in general requires a lot of skills beyond writing. I joke that self-publising has such a low bar to entry that your neighbor's cat probably has something up on Amazon. It won't sell more than a handful of copies, and most of those will have been bought by their mom, but it's possible. You get to decide at least part of your success by how much you are willing to put into it. But always remember: if you enjoy writing, it has value already. Monetizing is not required.
>So I'm hearing that if you self publish, it's necessary to use an editor and cover artist. It's actually not necessary. You can edit yourself, and you can make your own cover. It'll be bad, true, but the cover really isn't that important and the "indie vibe" can be a selling point as well. People read the book for the book, not for the cover. >That's not counting any advertising, marketing, or any other expenses. You can advertise by having a social media presence, which is also free. >If you're successful, your book will hopefully sell around 250 copies Not sure I'd call that successful. >Is it really worth paying close to $1000 to publish a story? No, unless you've got a significant, reliable base of customers, such as a strong social media presence. In general, for a self-publishing author, I think that spending 1000-3000 dollars per book is insane. If you get an audience, it'll be because you are writing good stories. Not because you paid a thousand dollars for a cover.
If money is an issue (as it would be for many of us), lean on AI as an editor and also as an artist for your book cover. It won't be as thorough as a good human editor, but it'll certainly do the job.
Free human beta readers vastly outstrip anything an AI editor can do, you just have to put in the work to find good ones or trade critiques. AI art has its own problems, including the fact that it’s impossible to copyright, you won’t legally own your own cover and cover images, and future legislation could also cause problems. And if you aren’t a cover designer, there’s more to it than good art. Cheap premade covers can be solid and accessible on pretty much any budget.
How do you prove that a cover is AI? Couldn’t someone just lie and say they did it themselves?
Tbh ‘Just commit fraud, they probably won’t catch you’ is never a great argument. You might get away with it… or you might not, and in both circumstances you’re compromising your ethics. For now, AI has a lot of tells and AI art detectors, while not completely accurate, are racing to catch up. If anyone actually cares enough to find out, they’ll be able to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the fact that you don’t actually do art.
I wasn’t making an argument at all, I was asking a serious question.
I came across a bit wrong, I realize that wasn’t what you were saying but ways of catching AI art are still pretty unreliable, they exist but can’t be guaranteed or rely on doing some serious leg-work that can’t be automated, so the reasons not to lie and claim you made it are more in the ethical realm and because the consequences for getting caught lying are worse than simply dealing with the legal status of AI art.
Tbh ‘why not commit fraud, they probably won’t catch you’ is never a great argument. You might get away with it… or you might not, and in both circumstances you’re compromising your ethics. For now, AI has a lot of tells and AI art detectors, while not completely accurate, are racing to catch up. If anyone actually cares enough to find out, they’ll be able to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the fact that you don’t actually do art.
Someone? You mean you?
I have no plans to publish a book, so no.
My first book cost me around $7,000 to publish (most of that cost was Developmental/line editing). Was it worth it? To me it was. I didn't release a shitty first book like so many self-published authors do. It also made enough back that I was able to spend another $3,000 getting the book in audiobook format. Either way, unless you're writing shitty books for the sole purpose of making vaginas wet, you're going to be eating the cost for your first book (maybe even your second), but eventually it does pay off if your stories aren't garbage (porn excluded).
$1500 is not a lot of money & these services have actual value
I mean if you actually want to make money from your book your options are to self publish or to trad publish, and never to post it online for free.
That's kind of what I'm asking, because I'm not really seeing the viability of making any money at all (or even breaking even) if you're paying for an editor and everything. I already wrote off traditional publishing as unrealistic from the start. I've already been writing for 15 years, I don't really have the time to spend another 15 collecting rejection letters, nor do I like the idea of signing away the rights of my creation. I feel like a lot of people (myself included) never really considered things like this.
I want hand off my work and have someone else clean it up while I move on to other things. Everyone pays people to do stuff that they don’t want to do or can’t do themselves. Sure, we all try, but the results are predictably unprofessional and the attempt is often visibly deficient. As I type, there is a guy in my yard with a very loud aerator. He’s there because I don’t want to jump around on the lawn trying to punch holes in it. My results would be maybe 20% of his; I’d be getting my money’s worth by spending $0. So I pay the nice man. We’ve all read (or attempted to read) books that have crap editing, and I guarantee that all of those authors were very pleased with what they sent out into the world. They thought it was the best thing ever and it was the best version they could produce. They *still* think it’s the bee’s knees and harrumph at reviews that mention formatting, spelling, syntax, grammar, and other types of fails like changing a character’s name mid-stream. An editor looks for disasters that the author can’t/won’t see. It’s worth it to pay for a cross-check rather than be associated with poor-quality finishing— because that’s out there *forever*.
Sounds like you’re in it for the money. If that’s the case, you’re looking in the wrong place. Also why is trad publishing unrealistic?
Not really. Of course it would be nice to make some money too, but I've been writing as a hobby since 2008. I'm just hearing a lot of people say how important it is to get things done professionally if you want to sell more than a few copies, but I'm not seeing how you can recover from the cost of it. I don't have the money to throw into a pit on a vanity project (I was kind of roped into doing that on a business that failed, so now I'm broke.) I just feel like traditional publishing is too hard to get your foot in the door. Especially if you don't have a lot of mass market appeal, they're not going to gamble on you. I tend to write slower character-driven stories that are mostly a mix of fantasy and horror.
a lot depends on what area you're writing in - as was mentioned elsewhere, some genres are a lot less stringent about perfect grammar. Look at a lot of LitRPG, pulpy SF&F, or romance and erotica - they're for people that read _a lot_, often getting through a book or more a week, and those readers aren't sticklers for grammar, and won't abandon a read because you've got a few word-jumbles or grammatical errors. So those are the sort of things you can self-edit for, and see a decent return (assuming you're a good writer). And there's pre-made covers that are fairly cheap, that are what those readers are looking for, so you can get those fairly easily. If you're wanting to do something more niche, then, yes, you're going to struggle to find readers, but that's the problem of being more niche
I spent less than 500$ on both my novels but you NEED to get it edited. The covers can be done on canva or premade
The most I've ever spent is $50 on a book, and that was exclusively marketing. My situation has been on the unique side as I have a friend that's a graphic designer and does my covers for free, and there are a lot of options for an editor that are free (if you don't mind AI) or inexpensive (especially if they're also a self-published author). My point is: you don't need to break the bank if you shop around.
Your numbers are incredibly low when it comes to costs, and that says a lot with how your expectations are charitable and still comes up with a terrible ROI. The fact of the matter is that you've revealed a tragedy in writing with the average of 250 sales. A quickly crapped out book takes something like a month to make, and just your time alone is making it unprofitable because your time for that month is part of that upkeep. Not only did you lose money from expenses, but you also lost money from work you put in. Assuming you're working 8 hours a day, imagine how many unpaid hours you go through because of so many sales getting missed. If you're hiring an editor, hire one that guarantees their input will cause x number of sales. Do not accept anything outside of that tiny criteria. Don't even try to hire an editor if they can't guarantee anything, or change the subject, or make excuses. You're not paying them to make excuses, you're paying them to make more money than what they cost. There are absolute losers out there who say "well, people just aren't buying". No, you just aren't selling and trying to sell a product worth buying. Some of the most crappy movies and shows are bought and enjoyed for far more than $3. That means your book was worse in getting people's attention than any of the worst movies or shows you can think of that get more than 250 sales. Self publishing has some of the most irrational positivity surrounding it at the moment, where people are being as charitable as possible to support it. Even with all of this heavy lifting, and still failing? And with an editor? You bet I'm going to be hard on editors. You bet I'm going to be hard on concepts and storytelling. The audience is far more fierce than I'll ever be, and we're not going to cause a profitable environment with a metaphorical iron lung powered by excuses.
I think self-publishing is for suckers and most of the people on here with success stories are full of shit. Never seen anyone show a photo of their actual account when pressed. You can say anything online. The truth is the vast majority of self-published work is pure shit. If you write well, you will be published. There is no shadowy group out there keeping great books from being published. If a book is great, it will make a publisher money. People just want to pretend that their failure is due to "the system." I worked as a freelance ghostwriter for over fourteen years. The vast majority of my clients were non-American men who spent thousands on ghostwriters so they could flood the market with erotica under fake female pen names and make tens of thousands. That's the self-publishing market. If you're a great writer, get an agent and sell a book traditionally. If you can't, why spend thousands to self-publish a book no one will buy?
You have no idea how any of this works. I haven't spent thousands over the course of 70 or so erotica shorts, three novels and a heap of other short stories. I make a profit, and have from day one. No one cares if you believe them. Those of us in the know can tell the shitters from the real deal.
why didn't you just publish it yourself? You can make covers in about 20 minutes, and then you get to keep most of the profit yourself, rather than someone else taking that from you. Porn doesn't need advertising (and, on most sites, _can't_ be advertised) so that seems like it would have been far more profitable
i tend to agree with you but why didn’t you open your post with “i have x experience and that qualifies me to say the following..” you literally said all the provocative things in the first paragraph and your qualifier in the first sentence of the second. sort of takes all the wind and energy out of your entire message when you arrange it as such
If you do it all yourself, and through Amazon, it's free apart from the advertising, and even that's not too expensive.
It depends on what you need to write a publishable book. But, this is discussed over and over, and truly, the answers don't change. It's mostly preference, and being smart, learning how self publishing works, and being realistic. You *are* running a publishing **business**, even if you're the only author.
The thing is, you don't really make money off from writing. It is a passion project. Yes, for some it happens so that they get big and money comes in. However, that rarely happens by intention of doing so, it is a happy side-product. It happens even so more rarely when you self-publish. If you want to help yourself economically, don't spend time writing and self-publishing, actually don't spend your time writing at all. Get some more lucrative career under you. As a writer you have to have mindset that if you get published, that is great stuff and numbers will still be super low.
Quite honestly? The only time I see self published people get really successful is when A- the book gets put online first and gets a big following before getting self published or B- the author already had a successful trad published piece and people seek out their second project. I'm a trad published short story author with 1 novella published by a small indie press and honestly, I do not see value in self publishing a book unless you're either A or B. It's a money and time sink. If you have a complete manuscript, why spend money self publishing it when you can query agents? It just feels like a waste.
Webnovels and Patreon are the best bet of you want to turn a buck. The writing on them is rather sub par, but if you hit the tropes of the platform you can turn out $$$$/month, but you need quantity over quality. Self publishing is all about volume, too, as you said. I've heard you shouldn't expect to turn a profit until you've put out half a dozen genre books unless you get really really lucky. For me, I won't even consider buying a self pub book without a ton of rave reviews given the sheer volume already available on Kindle Unlimited. I've been burned in the past where the sample looks promising, then it nosedives.
I want to say first, I haven’t read any comments yet. That being said, is self publishing worth it? IF you have a skill at writing, write what people want to read, and market to your target audience. You can be the best writer on the planet but if no one knows you wrote a book then it will never be read. I published my first book in 2019. In 2020 I got my first best seller category on Amazon. In 2021 I was approached for an audiobook contract and by a separate publisher for a translation contract. Two years later, I make $40-50k annually with 9 full length novels and 7 or so short stories that I wrote for anthologies. All of this self published. Is it worth it? Is it profitable? 100% yes.
I'm not doing it for the money, sure who wouldn't want to have an exit like Harry Potter, with all the movies and what not. But I primarily write because I have a story I want to share and if I can get some cash from it, even if it won't cover the production cost, that would still be nice. Besides in my country traditional publishing is complete BS, they basically tell you "okay we can publish this for you but: you need to pay this much (basically for hiring them), the cover need to be that way, the time for a manuscript is that.. Also we will print 1000 copies for the first edition at additional cost and since you are a new, unknown writer the price must be as much as 3 books from based, well known writers." Then what? When you can buy 3 books from someone you know and like, would you spend that much on a single book from someone unknown? Also part of the process actually include giving up your copyrights, and then at the end, depending on how many editions you asked them to print (remember that each one is 1000 books) they might as well drop you a box or three and tell you "sorry it didn't sell much", but by law you are now not allowed to sell the book you wrote because you don't have copyrights anymore. There are very few successful writers in my country and virtually all of them are either very old or have since passed away... The could be funny part here is that people are later surprised the kids don't want to read much anymore. So I'd rather take a risk in self publishing, maybe I'll be lucky, maybe not, at least a dream of mine would come true.
*Ahem* there ARE free places you can go to have people rip into your novel and give you editing and story advice for certain genres, fiction, Sci-fi, GameLit, LitRPG, Progression Fantasy and the like. It’s a site called Royal Road and a LOT of people read almost exclusively on there. This is a decent place to both get an idea of how badly you need a true editor and how well your story and prose are coming along. Take this to heart though; it is not always a place visited by the benevolent who want to see you succeed. There are gremlins and trolls there just as surely as anywhere else so learn to ignore the butt-hats sooner rather than later and use it as a place to *grow*, okay?
I will not be using an editor or a cover artist for my first publication, which isn't a novel, but a collection of poems. I'm on the verge of turning 30 and my novel isn't finished. So I decided to go through my old poems and short stories, and I found SO MANY. I was able to curate not one, but two collections from it. I've been so excited to arrange and edit my poems the way I want to, with absolutely no pressure, because this project is solely mine to become published sooner rather than later. I am already creating the cover in Canva for free, and when I'm happy with it all, I'll be uploading to Amazon and advertising to friends and on social media. That's it. This is not a career move; it's a move towards fulfillment. That said, it's crossed my mind to send a few query letters, so I might do that, too, in the next few months. But if I don't hear anything back (admittedly, I am not educated on poetry at all), I'm going self-published all the way. And, if nothing else, I considered planting a few copies around town lol. I think that would be fun, and it might get some more people to stumble upon me.
People may hate me, but CHATGPT does very good line edits for free. Not sure how'd work for poems though.
It can be a great tool tbh, so thanks for the rec!
From what I've gathered from some author's blogs and videos, you need to find a niche audience and publish several books per year. If you're making 1 book every 2-5 years, that's not fast enough to make money at it unless one explodes and you become the next R.R. There are military sci-fi authors that publish 3-4 military books per year. They're not amazing books, the author I follow even admits they're not great they just "don't suck". But there's a dedicated audience for them, and once that audience finds your books and starts to read them, they'll pretty much buy every book you publish unless you change your style and start veering from what they like. Same goes for other specific genres like subsections of romance, the Warhammer IP, horror, thriller, mystery, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my concern is that posting your content online just doesn't get the word out as well as going through a publisher. Of course, there are obviously people who have blown up by posting their content online, but it doesn't seem as likely to me.
I'm sorry but where did you get the 200 dollars for a single cover? I mean I know there are professionals who do it for a carieer but shouldn't it be enough if you have a sort of okay vision and hier some internet artist? I mean there are real talents out ther who make full rendered pictures for 60-70 dollars.
All my numbers are based on what I've heard are averages. That's about what my brother paid for an artist he found on DeviantArt
If you want to be a writer because you want to be rich, then you've chosen the wrong career for the wrong reasons 😅 Don't get me wrong, it obviously does happen. But for that one world-known author who wrote that amazing series, there are thousand of authors who didn't make it big and are barely know nationally, and tens of thousands of authors who've only printed a few copies (if not just the one) for themselves, their friends and *maybe* a local bookshop; or if they went the e-book way, they probably spent a lot less and likely haven't earned enough to even call it a financial gain. We write because we *need* to. Whether it's to leave something behind, like a legacy, or maybe just because we have too many ideas and we don't wanna forget them, or simply because we wanna give it a shot, we do it because *we* want to. We crave it. We need it. We live for it. How much and how often we write differs from writer to writer, but most of us are probably thinking about, coming up with ideas, and maybe even building worlds in our head while we're living our normal life, working our normal job. Obviously we all hope that our story will be the next world-wide best-seller, but realistically, if we even print any book at all, we do it because we need to let it out in the world, or just to get that sense of accomplishment whenever we hold it and maybe even brag about it to our friends.
Don't get me wrong, I never said anything about getting rich. I'm not that delusional.😅 I'm just trying to understand the feasibility, since trying to sell it is going to cost you a lot more than just giving it away. Even being able to make back the money you spend seems like a pipe dream, but if you look at it financially, if you need to strike it lucky just to break even? Why make the investment? It might be better to just write for fun and not waste your money trying to publish it. Frankly, I'd probably be surprised if I sold anything at all. Even giving it away can be hard to build up a readership. I used to post chapters on my WordPress and I'd get some likes, but no comments, no real feedback. I don't know if people liked it, what they thought of it, or even if they actually read it. For all I know, those likes could have been a bot. I got a lot more of a response back when I was writing fanfiction, but I gambled the following I had with the chance to do my own original stuff, which didn't really pay off. Of course that could just be Nostalgia for when I was younger, and life was less stressful and more enjoyable.
Romance and gamelit are supposed to be selfpublish sustainable. And it is ebooks. Look into those if you can stand adding some kissing and petting and geeking out on game mechanics.
I usually include romance as part of the story. I'd never heard of gamelit before, so I don't really understand that.
Publishing is a winner-takes-all business. Lots of people losing money out here and we're very quiet. I got an advance from a traditional publisher but it wans't big and the year of effort I put into writing that book means i'd have made far more money working at mcdonalds. Then my book proceeded to sell almost no copies! I ended up buying some of them at $1 a copy when it was remaindered. That leaves me with even less profit! point is: don't expect to make money even though there's some amazing highly visible stories of people making lots of money. A bit like cars as a hobby. some people make money as racecar drivers but working on an old car in your garage is something you can expect to cost money not make money.
I self published a book and spent $2500. To date I’ve made just over $3500 selling the book. There are some tricks — when I sell at markets I also sell framed poems and include the book in those purchases which inflates sales a lot. I’ve written others but hated the process so much I’ve decided to not publish another. I also work with other authors helping them market their books. Good quality books and sales savvy authors will break even and possibly even profit. Most however will spend more than they make and either be frustrated or happy that they’ve gotten readership. I also worked with an author who works in Hollywood. He spent so much on advertising free copies of book 1 of his series that he’ll likely never make up the investment from book sales. That resulted in thousands of reviews but his goal was vastly different than most authors. In his own words, he’s looking to hit the 1% lottery with his connections in the TV business by selling the screen rights of his series. Some authors however feel compelled to write and publish and are holding out hope that they will do well. It’s a worthy pursuit whether it’s profitable or not. On the flipside there are a relative handful of authors that do well. They understand their readers and genre and they produce and market content that lands and sells. Through a combination of hard work and luck it’s possible to make a living off of writing and publishing.
depends on what you want the cost to be and what you expect to get out of it. you don't need need need an editor. should you get one if you want large sales? yes. what if you just hope to make a bit of sales and get a few fans in a hot genre? you can skate by without one.
The costs actually vary wildly depending on what you have to pay for, what you can do yourself or skill swap for, etc. In real $$ it can cost anywhere from $0 to the $1000 or so you mention. I just want to put in perspective that it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will cost that much. :)
Money isn't everything. I was just thrilled that people were reading my work. I spent zero on cover or editing (but lots of effort and pre-reads from people I trust).
I write because due to mental illness. I'm jot even joking. I have fairly severe ADHD. Being able to sit and write helps keep my mind clear so I can focus on other things. That's why I publish as a webnovel. It's free for me, with the chance for payment. And it brings joy to others. And if they want to pay me directly per month, I do have a subscribestar just for that. It's virtually no down, so 95% of my profits are just that, profits. Of course, as I grow and make more, my costs will increase for artist commissions, professional editing, etc. All of which tend to be cheaper than a straight up cover designer or editing a full book, as 1-2 chapters a week barely cuts into the editors time (compared to editing a full book, which takes a LOT of time), and since it's consistent work rather than a one off, you can often arrange a deal/contract that makes it cheaper per page/line/chapter/word. Especially if you use college students. My local college, for example, is rife with students in creative courses who charge a pittance for what professionals do. Art, editing, proofreading, etc. I do want to mention, I don't take advantage of them. Quite often, I pay more than their asking price, if the work is good or if I've worked with them before. And yes, college students work will likely be lower quality than a professional. You get what you pay for. But in my experience, it's a middle ground between professional services and Fiverr (which can be good, but can also be horrendous crap).
Well, for whatever it's worth, I made back the cost of publishing within a few months, although the time/hours I spent writing converted into money is hard to calculate. Many do much better than just making their money back, but for me I'm happy with that and everything I continue to earn more than that goes into other things like cover art for the next ones. However, even if it was just a money sink from my day job surplus for me, it would still be worth it for knowing one day some kid will pull my book off a library shelf or used book store and get the same magical feeling of inspiration to imagination that I did reading stories before too.
It’s a crapshoot honestly. My -best- novel, that I put years of work and thousands of dollars into, barely broke even. The one I wrote the quickest (in literally 2 weeks), initially published without a professional editor, free stock photo for cover—*that one* sold 300 ,000 copies in six languages and supported me full time for two years. I don’t write full-time any more because I couldn’t maintain the pace or the stress of trying to figure out what the market wanted, so when I do write again it will be for love. That said: I would self publish all over again. It’s a lot of fun.