In my last blog post, Hugh Howey and the Tsunami of Cash, I talked briefly about the recent results posted by Hugh Howey and his collaborator “Anonymous Data Guy,” who analyzed in detail the sales of category best-sellers on Amazon. (The first study looked at about 7,000 books and the second study looked at about 50,000 books.) See all their results at AuthorEarnings.com. (Note that this site is no longer online.)
These results had been criticized by a number of people, so I thought it would be useful in my blog post to try to estimate the broad spectrum of indie author earnings using the 80-20 rule.
I was able to make rough estimates of the number of units sold by indie authors from the very top earners all the way down to the very bottom earners.
Hugh left a comment on that blog post, and so did Chip MacGregor, a well-known literary agent. Chip is a “no-BS” kind of a guy, and his comment was quite long and had some good questions (but also a couple of clunkers). Chip is a long-time friend of mine, and was my agent for several years, and I consider him one of the good guys. I didn’t want to simply bury my response to Chip in a comment.
I’ve decided to do a whole new blog post today just to answer Chip’s questions.
First, just to set the context, here is Chip’s entire comment, which I’ll answer line by line in the rest of this post.
As a guy who is supportive of authors self-publishing, I find Howey’s work interesting, but not earth-shaking, For the record, he looked at one day of sales, at one company, and admittedly guesstimated many of his numbers based on what friends told him. Um… Would your PhD program have accepted that, Randy? Do you think his sample size is adequate? Would you allow him to create a trend line from that? The two big questions that stick in my head after reading this report: Can we rely on Amazon marketing info to be accurate? And if so, why isn’t Amazon sharing information with him?
I know the people who are raising questions about the validity of the study are being hammered as Luddites, but I tend to think this needs a bit more study before it’s declared as gospel. I like your idea of applying the principle of factor sparsity to the data, but your suggestions seem pretty optimistic. Out of more than a million authors, the average number sold is about 300. (Nothing wrong with selling 300 copies, mind you, and if they were charging a couple bucks, they made themselves about $400, which is better than a kick in the head… but it’s not the windfall you seem to make it out.) I’m not sure why you state that “the average and median sales are not very useful,” Randy. Seems as though those are very useful to give context — as in, “There are more than a million authors on Amazon, and last year 150 of them sold more than 100,000 copies.” On the one hand, I celebrate the successes. On the other, you have to admit those are fairly long odds. Again, I hesitate to say that, because everybody WANTS this to be true, and to have discovered the secret to making a lot of money at this crazy business.
I notice Hugh came on your site to say he personally knows “several others who sold multiple millions last year.” Um… this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder about his veracity. I guess I tend to doubt that he knows “several” who sold “multiple millions.” Several? Really? Even your quick data analysis doesn’t support that, Randy. Look, I’m a guy who has self-published books and done well, and who encourages the authors I work with to self-pub… but I don’t like the Amway-like atmosphere being promoted by people who want to make it sound like there are publishing fairies out there, waiting to sprinkle hundred dollar bills onto everyone. My two cents.
Randy sez: Now that you’ve seen Chip’s comment in full, I’ll repeat it line by line and respond to each logical unit.
Chip wrote:
As a guy who is supportive of authors self-publishing, I find Howey’s work interesting, but not earth-shaking,
Randy sez: I find it both interesting and earth-shaking. Here’s why. I knew that indie authors were doing well. I know many of them. I’ve seen the difference indie publishing makes in their lives. I know the kind of sales numbers they’ve been getting.
What I didn’t know is that indie authors (as a group) have just about reached parity with the Big 5 authors (as a group). That is, the set of indie authors Hugh and Data Guy analyzed are moving just about as many copies and earning just about as much money as the Big 5 authors they analyzed.
I don’t think anybody knew that. That’s why it’s created so much excitement.
Chip wrote:
For the record, he looked at one day of sales, at one company, and admittedly guesstimated many of his numbers based on what friends told him. Um… Would your PhD program have accepted that, Randy?
Randy sez: He’s now looked at two days worth of sales, and the two sets of results are in very reasonable agreement. The company he looked at was Amazon, which is by far the biggest player in e-books. But he’s now doing a study on B&N, and I think we’re all looking forward to those results.
As for his method of analysis, it’s more sophisticated than guesstimating based on what his friends told him. Hugh and other indie authors have been compiling data for years that allow them to accurately correlate a book’s sales rank with its actual sales. This is approximate, but it’s a very reasonable approximation, and the Law of Large Numbers tells us that statistical fluctuations will wash out pretty quickly as you get more data. And 7,000 books is a boatload of data. 50,000 books is even more.
As for whether my Ph.D. Program would have accepted that, let’s not be silly. I got my Ph.D. In quantum field theory at UC Berkeley. That’s a high standard of rigor, and it’s far beyond what people normally try for in real life.
From what I can see, Hugh’s calculations are well above the usual standard in the book industry. I’m looking at the BookScan report for my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES right now. For the last royalty period, BookScan underestimates paper sales by about 30% and it has no estimate at all for e-book sales.
So the real question is whether Hugh’s data increases our knowledge of author earnings. My judgment is that it does.
Chip wrote:
Do you think his sample size is adequate?
Randy sez: Yes, even for the first data set, which looked at about 7,000 books. For the second data set, it’s an embarrassment of riches, with around 50,000 books covering all categories, fiction and non-fiction. This is good stuff.
Chip wrote:
Would you allow him to create a trend line from that?
Randy sez: No, of course not. Chip, that was a bad question. Hugh isn’t analyzing the rate of change of things. He’s analyzing the state of the industry right now. In any event, you can’t create a trend line from one day’s worth of data. (Now he has two days’ worth, but he’s doing a static analysis, not trying to predict changes, so a trend line is really beside the point.) And of course, Hugh didn’t create one.
Chip wrote:
The two big questions that stick in my head after reading this report: Can we rely on Amazon marketing info to be accurate?
Randy sez: I didn’t understand this first of the two questions, so I emailed Chip to ask what it means. He emailed me back to restate it:
Since the bestseller lists at Amazon are largely seen to be a marketing tool, do we want to rely on them as a database for research?
Randy sez: OK, I see now. Chip is saying that many people believe that the sales rank for books isn’t strictly correlated to actual daily unit sales. Most people believe that Amazon uses other factors to determine the sales rank, and some of those factors might be Amazon’s marketing needs.
This means that it’s possible that the daily sales rank for a book would not be a good predictor for its daily unit sales. In that case, Hugh’s calculations with Anonymous Data Guy would be incorrect.
Fortunately, that is a testable question. Here’s how to test it mathematically:
All you have to do is look at the raw data for a large number of books. Each day, you look at the sales rank (which is public information) and you look at the actual units sold (this is private information that Amazon only tells the publisher). Since indie authors are publishers, they can easily compile this raw information and then any math person can model it.
I would model it as a Pareto distribution curve, S = C/(R**E), where:
- S = daily unit sales
- C = some unknown constant to be determined by the data
- R = the sales rank on the given day
- E = some unknown exponent to be determined by the data
So the mathematical solution is to do a least-squares fit to the data to determine the best values for C and E. Then do a chi-squared analysis of the fit to see how well the theory fits the data. This is easy to do. We could also compute variations from the best-fit. This would tell us the uncertainty in the calculations presented by Hugh and Anonymous Data Guy.
I don’t know if Anonymous Data Guy has done this calculation, but it’s not hard and it would answer Chip’s question. I have sent Hugh an e-mail about this issue.
Chip’s second question:
And if so, why isn’t Amazon sharing information with him?
Randy sez: You’d have to ask Amazon, but my understanding is that they hardly ever share any info with anyone. One thing indie authors like is that Amazon does give them up-to-the-minute sales information, which is a welcome change from the hassle it takes to get info from traditional publishers.
Chip wrote:
I know the people who are raising questions about the validity of the study are being hammered as Luddites, but I tend to think this needs a bit more study before it’s declared as gospel. I like your idea of applying the principle of factor sparsity to the data, but your suggestions seem pretty optimistic. Out of more than a million authors, the average number sold is about 300. (Nothing wrong with selling 300 copies, mind you, and if they were charging a couple bucks, they made themselves about $400, which is better than a kick in the head… but it’s not the windfall you seem to make it out.)
Randy sez: Well, as I said in my post, the average and the median are pretty useless because they’re both dragged down by the great mass of unpolished writers. Two things are important:
- How well are the top-performing indie author compared to the top-performing traditional authors?
- Roughly how many indie authors are at each pay level?
So my blog post was aimed at guessing the answers to these questions. The answer is that about 10 indie authors are moving more than a million copies a year. That sounds pretty cool to me. Look at the other numbers in my post! There are opportunities here for a couple of thousand indie authors to be moving more than 10k copies per year. That makes it clear that the whole “outlier” thing is a myth.
Chip wrote:
I’m not sure why you state that “the average and median sales are not very useful,” Randy.
Randy sez: The reason is simple. We’re used to that pesky “bell-shaped curve” when talking about results. We know that the average man is about 5’9” tall, and the standard deviation is about 3 inches. We know immediately from this data that a 7 foot man would be exceptionally tall and a 5 foot man would be quite short. Note that both of those extremes are reasonably close to the average (and the median). So the average and median are useful numbers for understanding bell-shaped curve distributions.
But the Pareto distribution is wildly different. The top-selling author in my estimates was selling 7.5 million copies. The average author was selling just under 500.
If the top-selling author were as tall as he is rich, he’d be almost 17 miles tall!
That is the sense in which the average is not very useful for a Pareto distribution. The average gives us no information at all on what we should expect from peak performers.
I won’t belabor this, Chip, because I know you’re familiar with the Pareto distribution. You blogged about it recently on your own blog, in your article The Pereto Principle. (Aside from misspelling “Pareto,” it was a good article.)
Chip wrote:
Seems as though those are very useful to give context — as in, “There are more than a million authors on Amazon, and last year 150 of them sold more than 100,000 copies.”
Randy sez: No, the average does NOT give the correct context for a Pareto distribution. When you have a bell-shaped curve, you typically report two pieces of information–the average and standard deviation. Anyone who understands the bell-shaped curve then immediately understands the complete spectrum.
With a Pareto distribution, you also report two pieces of information, but they AREN’T the average and standard deviation! The two pieces of information you report are the earnings of the top-performer and the critical exponent (in my calculations I used .8613, which is the exponent for the 80-20 rule). Anyone who understands the Pareto distribution then immediately understands the complete spectrum.
Chip wrote:
On the one hand, I celebrate the successes. On the other, you have to admit those are fairly long odds. Again, I hesitate to say that, because everybody WANTS this to be true, and to have discovered the secret to making a lot of money at this crazy business.
Randy sez: Everybody agrees that the odds of a major success are long. I said this in my blog post in October of 2012, Liars and Outliers in the Publishing World. Joe Konrath has said this many times, most recently in his blog last Friday, where Barry Eisler did a guest post and then Joe chimed in: Eisler – Publishing is a Lottery & Konrath – Publishing is a Carny Game. I don’t know of anyone who claims that every indie author is going to get rich.
Chip wrote:
I notice Hugh came on your site to say he personally knows “several others who sold multiple millions last year.” Um… this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder about his veracity. I guess I tend to doubt that he knows “several” who sold “multiple millions.” Several? Really? Even your quick data analysis doesn’t support that, Randy.
Randy sez: Actually, my analysis is consistent with Hugh’s statement. My calculations estimate that there are four indie authors who moved more than 2 million copies last year and ten indies who moved more than a million. I can think of several off the top of my head who sold more than a million last year, and at least two of them I’ve met in person. I’m sure Hugh knows a lot more of the heavy-hitters than I do. I don’t know who he has in mind, but it sounds plausible to me.
Chip wrote:
Look, I’m a guy who has self-published books and done well, and who encourages the authors I work with to self-pub… but I don’t like the Amway-like atmosphere being promoted by people who want to make it sound like there are publishing fairies out there, waiting to sprinkle hundred dollar bills onto everyone. My two cents.
Randy sez: I’m also opposed to the Amway mentality, and I’ve consistently pointed out on this blog that only a few authors will ever get super-rich. But let’s remember that with a Pareto distribution, we’re interested in the expected earnings of the top performer. The expected earnings of everyone else follows from that. So it’s REQUIRED that we talk about top-performers, even though this misleads people who want to think in terms of bell-shaped curves.
The blunt truth is that most authors won’t do very well. What I’m interested in is the spectrum of author earnings from the very top all the way down to the very bottom—how many authors are at each income level. That tells authors how to plan their careers (and it might keep a few people from quitting their day jobs prematurely).
My Pareto calculations are a first cut at answering that question. I hope to show more data soon.
Chip, thanks for your questions. It’s important to ask questions, because the issue of author earnings is important.
I think that we’ll get a fuller picture as Hugh and Anonymous Data Guy continue to analyze more data. I don’t think we’ll see a radically different picture as we get more data.
I think we’ll continue to see that indie author earnings are spread across an enormous spectrum, with a very few authors earning millions per year and hundreds of thousands who earn only a few hundred per year.
The key thing is that a couple of thousand indies are earning some tens of thousands per year. That’s the “broad shoulder” of the Pareto distribution, and it’s where most professional novelists will find themselves.
On sales ranking decline curves:
I come from the oil and gas business, and the decline of my spouses book pub’d only on Amazon showed a decline curve remarkably like those of “depletion drive” reservoirs. Production is plotted on a logarithmic scale.
Here’s a typical one http://i.imgur.com/Jxnv29Q.jpg
Here are three decline estimates http://i.imgur.com/kJqXCft.jpg
The dropoff curve is called a “b factor”
I had the luxury of matching up sales of my spouse’s book with the sales ranking, which rose as high as 5 in Kindle books. I plotted the actual sales numbers up and it did very much resemble the decline curve.
Every sales manipulation (front page Kindle ad, special Amazon page promotion) caused a “bump” in the sales curve. This is similar to that of when an oil well has a workover when a pump is used, the well tubing is cleaned out, etc.
I would imagine different authors have different decline curves. I noted during my close look at Amazon’s rankings some books would jump to the top of the pay for charts at Kindle, but were reissues or just a reprint lately in the news. These dropoffs went remarkably quick.
In other words, once a curve is established for an author/book, the sales from next book that author publishes needs to observed in the total initial “push” the book (the first week, like the initial month of production from a well) and the total curve dropoff. (Note upper middle and lower curves in the second image link above) Does a higher first week raise up the whole decline curve due to increased buzz? Or do all the ones that want the book buy it the first day and the total sales dropoff quicker because the audience is the same size as the last time?
I can’t say. I’m still learning.
Hi Walt: Good points on the decline curves. There might be some interesting math in analyzing these. I’ve seen these curves all the time, but never thought about trying to model them.
Good analysis. regarding “The Amway mentality”:
You were too kind in your response. This is a straw man. The most common complaint I’ve heard since Hugh published his first findings is that somehow they represent what Alan Greenspan would have called irrational exuberance. The false idea that everyone can “make it.” just like they tell you in Amway meetings.
But I haven’t gotten that from. . .well pretty much anyone defending the data. Not Hugh or Data Guy. Not Konrath or Eisler. Seeing the data and suggesting that most genre authors might very well make more money self-publishing is not an Amway mentality. It’s an opinion drawn from the data, not an absolute fact, but it’s not suggesting everyone’s going to start making a living writing. No one is saying that. Critics who complain about this that never seem to cite specific quotes to support the idea that there’s an Amway mentality.
Hi Edward: I have seen some Amway-talk from the usual hucksters who are selling products to “help” wannabe authors cash in on the alleged bonanza. But these are not writers, these are marketers selling what Chip calls fairy dust. The real writers–people like Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler and Hugh Howey and every professional writer I know who has gone indie–all of these people will tell you there are no guarantees. You work hard, you get your books out there, you market the heck out of them, and then you might have a screaming success or you might go plop. But nothing happens unless you take action.
I know Hugh gets annoyed as do I at comments like that. There is a huge range between selling millions and ‘going plop’ there are many, many authors like me who simply make a living at it. When publishing became dominated by international conglomerates, they decided that the only books that counted were blockbuster novels. That was when they started ditching mid-listers and they have never stopped. It is frustrating and disgusting to see this same mentality dragged, for no reason whatsoever, into indy publishing.
Hi J.R.: I’m trying to figure out what you’re unhappy about here. If you’ve read my last two posts, then you know that I’m making the same point you are–there’s a wide range.
At the top end you can earn millions. At the bottom end you can sell nothing. I know people at both ends. And I know authors at numerous points between those two extremes.
If you look at the data I presented in my previous post, I estimate roughly how many authors should be expected at each earnings level.
I’m an indie author myself, somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
Exactly. Thanks for that, Randy.
And I think Chip is doubting that I have a handful of friends, which is a perfectly valid question to raise. I’m well-known for having no friends.
If he can stop by our booth at the London Book Fair this year, I can introduce him to 7 authors who have all sold at least 2 million books. Or he can catch us at BEA, where we had to rent two booths, because our numbers are swelling.
Sadly, many of my 7-figure indie pals can’t make it to these book fairs. Too busy writing. 🙁
Hi Hugh: LOL, yeah, I think not having friends is typical of writers. Chip is a good guy, but he needs to get out more and meet more indie writers.
By the way, great work on the B&N report that you just posted with Anonymous Data Guy. Looks like indie income from B&N is a bit more than 10% of indie income from Amazon, which lines up with my own results.
You guys are doing an incredible job of getting the word out on the real state of indie authoring.
I have this theory that there’s a critical point at which the wheels could fall off of trad publishing. It’s the point at which A-list authors decide that 25% of the trad-publisher revenue just isn’t as good as 100% of indie revenue. If they abandon the trads en masse, then that’s a disaster for the Big 5. I suppose they could try to survive on backlist, but it would mean cutbacks. I have no idea if this will happen, but I think it could. What it requires is information, and you’ve provided that.
Ha! No, Hugh, it’s not that I assume you have no friends. But the data points to a very few people on the planet selling “multiple millions,” so I questioned whether or not your comment was (maybe just a bit of) an exaggeration. But I think the research you’re doing is wonderful. My criticism was largely one of sample size, trend lines (and though Randy says you’re not proposing it as a trend line, I tend to think that’s exactly how people are reading it), Amazon information, and (as one person here said, quoting Alan Greenspan) irrational exuberance. Take that in context — I’m a longtime agent, often getting questions from people who are convinced they’re going to self-publish their book and make millions. That said, I’m also a big supporter of indie publishing, and encourage all the authors we work with to figure out how to be involved. It needs to be part of every author’s career plan.
Glad we could connect. I’ll stop by the booth at BEA and insist you buy me a beer. (Or vice versa.)
Hi Chip: Quick question on that trend line thing: Can you give me some examples of people who are trying to read a trend line out of Hugh’s data? I haven’t seen that, but if somebody is doing that, I’ll be happy to go explain to them that you can’t draw a meaningful line through one data point.
And as far as sample sizes, even Hugh’s first data set is comparable in size to the Digital Book World survey (Hugh had 7000, DBW had 9000). Hugh’s second data set had more than 50,000. And the new B&N data has 5000. But Hugh’s data has the advantage that the sample was objectively selected, whereas the DBW survey had the problem that the sample was self-selected, which usually introduces some sort of statistical bias into the results.
But the important thing is that Hugh’s “samples” are actually the complete population of category bestsellers. That’s by definition. So if you’re trying to draw conclusions about category bestsellers, then this is not a sample, it’s the whole thing. So the question of sample size becomes irrelevant–if that’s what you’re trying to study. And it is certainly useful to study the set of category bestseller.
In any event, I’m glad you support your own clients in their indie pursuits. That’s good for your authors and it’s good for you.
Good rebuttal, Randy. Re: how many indies make > $1M a year, just head over to KBoards, and they’ll tell you. Numbers don’t lie.
IMO, the biggest point of the AA report by Hugh Howey et al is that indie publishing is a viable mainstream alternative to traditional publishing.
In the end, readers win. They win because they have way more reading choices today than the limited number of books once monopolizing publishers had funneled into bookstores the last 60 years. Readers win because now they can tell writers what they want to read without committees standing in the way. And they win because they can buy and read more books per year by their new favorite indie writers.
Hi Jan: Yes, I agree. Readers are winners with the indie revolution. And authors are winners. As long as authors and readers are doing well, the publishing business will be healthy. I think the industry is healthier now than at any time I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve been writing almost 26 years.
Randy, remind me never to get into an argument against you … at least not without a very expensive calculator handy! I just wanted to add points. I always find it interesting when people bring up that lots of indie authors don’t make much money. From what I’ve been told, the same is true about traditionally published authors. How often have I read—I think on Chip’s blog even—that it is not a great field in which to make a living unless you are a big name. So how is indie publishing so much worse? There are a boatload of ideas, and niches and target audiences that the traditional houses won’t touch currently because they are too risky. If an author writes for that audience, he/she has a zero chance of making money with traditional houses. As an indie … I’m thinking her chances may be a little better. I know of a few authors whose writing was solid, but had a risky audience. They’ve chosen indie, with the intent of being a hybrid, only to not want to go back.
And what about those at the bottom of the pile? This is one of those factors that actually skews the data, IMO, making the earnings potential look bleaker than it really is. If you compare indie vs. traditional, these are not comparable populations in terms of time honing one’s craft. It stands to reason that if an author works hard at craft, they will have better stories and therefore do better in the marketplace (tho it’s not a given). When comparing raw data, the pool of indies will include Crazy Uncle Joe, who decided to publish his manifesto to start a revolution, and Eccentric Aunt Gertrude, who thinks her memoirs on the assembly line are exciting. I don’t care about their data. I want to know how I stack up against other serious authors who want to produce quality material for the enjoyment of the reading public.
I’m a little curious.
I’ve been participating in a similar conversation on indie publishing elsewhere and am reading a similar theme in both.
The theme is this:
The chances of becoming a success (read bestseller) through indie publishing are so miniscule that it’s pointless to try.
That’s not really the message that’s being conveyed is it? Is success really seen only as reaching the top? That’s not how I describe success at all.
Am I missing something?
Or misreading the information being presented?
Hi Carrie Lynn: I think you’re probably missing something. There is a difference between the data and the interpretation.
The data I’ve presented in my previous post shows a rough estimate of how many authors you can expect at each level of success. While this is just an estimate, it seems reasonable based on anecdotal evidence from the many indie authors I know. (And I’m an indie author, so I have my own place in the data.)
The interpretation that I make is that the top level of sales for indie authors is astonishingly high–multiple millions of dollars per year. Not many authors reach that, but as you look down the spectrum, you see more and more authors.
There is something I call the “broad shoulder” which is a set of a few thousand authors who are all selling tens of thousands of units per year. That’s exciting! That tells us that lots of indie authors are earning some serious coin. And some of them can quit their day jobs. That’s a huge reason to celebrate.
Of course, below that broad shoulder is the famous “long tail” of authors who move a few hundred copies per year. In fact, the great majority, close to 95%, are moving fewer than a thousand copies a year, if you believe the estimates I presented last week.
These are just facts. If you believe that this means it’s pointless to try, that is YOUR interpretation, not mine. My interpretation is similar to that of Barry Eisler, who posted in Joe Konrath’s blog last week that publishing is a lottery. It is in fact a lot like that, but with a continuous range of payoffs.
Personally, I think a talented and hard-working indie author can expect to do well–to earn some tens of thousands of dollars per year. And she has a shot at glory, though the odds are low.
I think all authors need to know what the odds are, going in, so they have reasonable expectations. A lot of authors go in with outrageously high hopes, then they see their first sales figures and assume they’re a failure, when they’re in fact doing pretty well. I’ve seen this so many times, I’ve lost count. Almost all my professional novelist friends have felt like that. Only by exchanging information have they learned that they’re all doing about as expected. Which then gives them the courage to soldier on.
For top numbers in apply your Pareto analysis:
On August 17, 2013, HM Ward posted on kboards that she had hit 2 million copies sold, with over 1.5 million sold in 2013 year to date.
http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=160043.0
On February 12, 2014, she said she’s sold 4 million books since 2011. So, between August 17, 2013, and February 12, 2014, she sold over 2 million books. Guessing, of course, as I don’t know what her 01/01/2014 to 02/12/14 sales were, but I think it’s safe to say she moved 3 million copies in 2013.
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,178537.0.html
Excellent example, Christa!
And also… this KB thread, where we can all agree that USD $50K is a decent salary per annum:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,179386.0.html
IMO, that thread brings to light one issue with tradpub mentality — the idea that authors have to have a bestseller to make bookstores keep shelving their books. That front-loading of sales is old school book marketing. It’s still being done today with massive all-out book launches, and then nothing from the author for another year or two.
One beauty of indie publishing (for those in the broad curve on the bell) is that you don’t necessarily need to be on top of bestselling lists to make a decent living. We’re talking a long tail with steady income over time. Different mindset.
Besides, as hybrid author Russell Blake so succinctly puts it: Most books don’t sell, regardless of whether the authors are in tradpub or selfpub. But the AA report by Hugh Howey says that if you go indie, the probability of your making some sort of sales on your novels (if well-written, obviously) is higher than what tradpub can give you over the same period of time.
Additionally, we all have our own definitions of pecuniary success. Some of us will be happy if we can buy a cup of Starbucks per book sold, a feat now affordable with indie royalties, especially since we save 15% agent fees.
One last note on this, Randy… It was nice to see some people actually READ this, since I see a lot of these sites where they just get on to take sides and criticize. (Like, for example, Thomas coming on to say, “Why does everyone get crazy when they talk about an indie-author making money?” Um… someone got crazy? If you’d actually READ the piece, you’d see that I’m very supportive of indie authors, Thomas. My questions had to do with the research methodology and interpretations of it, NOT the very evident piece of information that authors are independently publishing and making money.) So my thanks to you for having the discussion, Randy, and for debating some of my questions. You’ll be happy to see I corrected Vilfredo Pereto’s name to the correct spelling in my blog (I had to study the guy in my doctoral program — you’d think I’d have kept his name consistent in my post). And I’ll be happy to see this research again when Hugh has more complete data. Let’s hope Amazon opens up a bit with their information. Give my regards to Mr Howey for me. -Chip
Why does everyone get crazy when they talk about an indie-author making a little money. What’s not said here is indie authors don’t have to leave their novel in a drawer, even if it’s been edited by the best editor in the world. To a newbie it means that I’m not going to wait for the big guys. Always have marched to a different drummer and being an indie is the right place, at the right time.
It is great to see all the numbers, but you know what is even greater, one, you can get published, and two having an ex-rocket scientist like Randy spell it out.
Personally.
I am very glad to see how civil this discussion has remained. Sure there’s some disagreements flying about, but in general, it’s nice to see that no one is killing each other.
I definitely believe that the indies are becoming a viable force to contend with, but it’s still fairly young and will need more time before a full assessment could be made.
From most of the conversations I’ve seen (with a few exceptions, including this article and discussion), the two sides seem to be: “The Dinosaur of Trad Pub is Going Down! Digital is the meteor!” against “Trad Pub is still the only publishing that matters. Digital is a worthless mess that will never amount to anything.”
I think the reason most Indies are really excited is that this data shows that the landscape is clearly changing in a way most have believed it would and had hoped for. The destruction of Trad Pub is unlikely in the near term and to most not desirable. The Reformation of Trad Pub into a fairer and more author-friendly industry is looking like an increasingly inevitable consequence for those that will survive. (This should actually be good news to Trad Pub. The market forces that strongly pushed them toward being bad guys are changing and will eventually push them toward being good guys. Most people don’t really want to be bad guys, but become so through fear and compromise. So this will become an opportunity to change and live happier lives with clearer consciences.)
This is anecdotal, but it seems to me that reading overall has to be increasing rapidly. Everyone I know who possesses and e-reader is reading more now than ever before. I personally increased my reading dramatically after getting an e-reader. Not just ebooks, my visits to the library increased dramatically as well. Not so much to the bookstore, but for many people that will also be the case. My appetite for fiction went from moderate to voracious. I predict that this will be an ongoing trend for people who were voracious readers in their youth, and for whom visits to the bookstore and library became extremely rare as life became increasingly busy. I also predict a side effect of re-awakened voracious appetites will be more bookstore trips squeezed into people’s schedules where such trips had previously been dropped altogether. If this increasing demand materializes, the broad shoulder will get both broader and higher, allowing more good authors than ever in history to actually make a decent living from their work.
These are obviously optimistic predictions. But I will not be surprised at all if they materialize. I would love to see polling data from gallup or some such organization analyzing the effect of e-readers on overall reading consumption. Great article Randy. Thanks.
Hi David: Well said! I hope that the market forces you’re talking about really do push trad publishing into being good guys.
For me as an author, this would mean that they stop using contracts with incredibly onerous terms, such as owning the rights for the life of the copyright with no hope of reversion, no-compete clauses, option clauses, and most especially the infamous 25% royalty rate. If trad publishers start competing with the Indie Option, then that’s good for authors.
In my opinion, this is what it will take for trad publishers to survive. Evolve or die.
Given that choice, smart organizations evolve and dumb ones die.
Randy,
I wanted to thank you, not just for this article but for all your articles that try to understand the “big picture” of trad and digital publishing, and the evolving landscape for indie authors. As someone who is trying to help with the major issues that indie authors are facing, I often find it difficult to find really informative content and debates about the ways digital and indie are changing the options for authors. This makes defining the problem(s) in the landscape particularly challenging. Taking a “here’s the data, draw your own conclusions” approach is refreshing, and ultimately I think a lot more helpful than pushing any particular theories on your audience. I have nothing of significance to add, just wanted to pass on my thanks.