Which is more profitable?

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/kindle-numbers-traditional-publishing.html

One author's experience with selling e-books through his publisher and through his self-published kindle sales. He shares numbers--both e-books sold by title, and his income from those sales.

I wonder if his experience is similar to others'  or different?  And how many authors can make that comparison at all.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

We'd have to see more data from authors who are in both systems (traditional and self-publishing), I think. While I'm not precisely skeptical of his numbers, he has a tremendous boost from his print sales, and the viability of his entire enterprise is predicated on the publicity he's already gotten by being in thousands of bookstores.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Yuki-onna (I think I have that spelled right) recently announced that her Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland will be print-published, but also noted how important being an award-winning author with lots of print sales, and the resulting amazing "signal boost" was to making that success happen.

We need to find ways to get more signal boost!

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Valente was already a print-published author before she did crowdfunding, so I don't think her example helps illuminate the issues.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I did make the point that she was not only print-published first, but that she was a known and award-winning print-published author first.

The guy whose blog prompted me to start this thread was also a print-published author first.

Heck--if you count my one lonely, long-out-of-print story in MZBFM, I was a print-published author first. (Though I now have permission from the artist to post that story, with his artwork, online. Just have to get around to doing it!)

Right now, there's a dearth of information as to how to do this net-publishing thing profitably, and everyone's situation is at least a little different. So I figure we have to collect information from everybody, noting the differences.

I see signal strength (simply becoming visible to potential buyers) as being one important issue.

Another (assuming our work is good quality), is finding ways for the potential buyer to believe it's worth paying for.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I haven't run into the last issue before (most people are conditioned to think that books (physical) and books (electronic) should be paid for). The first problem is the problem, though. And will likely remain a large problem until we develop different and trusted sets of gatekeepers.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

People are conditioned to believe that books published by an editor/publisher are worth paying for.

Some people assume that anything that looks like a professionally-published book is worth buying, but not all. A lot of people think of "vanity press" when they see self-publishing, and either assume the quality is substandard (i.e. the author only paid to publish their own book because their writing is cr**). Others are very suspicious that the quality is likely to be substandard.

Hopefully, that is changing.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Not the same branch, but the same conventional/innovative type of comparison: Last year, 1/4 of my poetry sales went to traditionally edited markets, and 3/4 went directly to my audience online.

Re: Hmm...

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Another part of what fascinated me was the various differences in income not just number of books sold experienced in the same time period by the same author.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that low-priced ebooks sell tremendously more than high-priced ones. People will pay more for something they really own and can hold in their hands than for something ephemeral that Amazon.com can take away whenever it pleases. So lowballing the price of ebooks makes sense.

In fact, I've read a lot of articles about the usefulness of creating a FREE ebook for promotional purposes. It's becoming a very popular piece of swag for websites and authors.

I remain bitterly disappointed by Amazon.com's treatment of authors, though. Their self-publishing contract is horrible. They take the lion's share of the money for doing nothing more than adding another product to a system that already exists.

I really want to see an alternative develop for cyberfunded creativity that will route the money where it belongs: to the creator of the work. But to compete with conventional models, we need a way to facilitate the connection between creators and audience so that it's easier for people to find each other.

Re: Thoughts

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Amazon's percentage was too high! I wonder if someplace like creatspace might be able to sell e-books and negotiate for rights with Amazon? If they were willing, they'd have more clout than individual writers, at least.

I wonder how big a consortium of writers would have to be to get any concession from Amazon in that regard?

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but it would sure be interesting to find out. I doubt there's much chance of getting it down to a reasonable 10-20% consignment rate, but below 50% might be doable.

Re: Thoughts

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

As their parent company, Amazon is not going to let Createspace duplicate their e-book business, which is already making them money without letting a subsidiary muscle in on it. :)

Re: Thoughts

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I didn't know Createspace was a subsidiary of Amazon!

Wow there's a lot to learn about all this stuff.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

What I thought was most interesting is how many comments referenced the value of paying for a good cover for your ebook. :P

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Seriously? People look at e-book covers? Where? o_O

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

You prompted me to go read the comments--there's a lot more there than there were last night. I didn't see a lot about covers.

I did see the advice that LSI gives a better deal than Lulu or Createspace if you expect to sell more than a few dozen books.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Lightning Source requires you to supply your own ISBNs, though, which is tremendously expensive. Ten ISBNs costs you $275: if you're only planning on publishing one book, that's a hefty fee to make back. If you're planning on publishing more than 10 books in your life, you can either choose to shell out $275 again or you can go to the next block they offer... which is a hundred. For $995.00.

I don't know about you, but as a small business-person, $1000 is a hefty out-lay for 100 ISBNs. I'm not sure I'll put out 100 books, even, so what do I do with the overage? I've seen people chip in together to buy a block of ISBNs, but that creates paperwork, overhead and negotiation issues.

Both Lulu and Createspace supply their own ISBNs. One less headache.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Wow, ISBNs are expensive!

Though I'm looking at Fireborn, and now the #fridayflash stories I'm doing, and thinking that I may well have at least two books worth of stuff relatively soon, that is "already published" and therefore hard to sell to traditional print publishers. Which makes me look at the prospect of using up 10 ISBNs a bit differently.

Can a writer sell an already-bought ISBN to another writer, or do writers have to get together to buy them to start out with?

And thanks for sharing all this! I know it had to take you some time to learn it.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

ISBNs are registered to a publisher, not a writer. They can't be transferred. (In the case of Lulu or Createspace, THEY are the listed publisher, even though technically it's self-published.)

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Eww. Sounds like a bunch of wasteful paperwork. Is this system designed to do anything useful, or just create an in-group that has privileges others just don't get?

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

You also have to register as a publisher before you can purchase blocks of ISBNs. I have a block of 100. I can't remember exactly what I paid for publisher registration, but I think it was another $250. You only have to do that once, but it's still a chunk of change.

(And don't get me started on UPCs...)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I didn't know that about the registration fee. *shaking head*

That's the #1 thing I didn't like about Lightning Source. It's set up so that it encourages you to become a small press publisher. Because you end up with either too few ISBNs... and have to spend more to get more... or you end up with SO many that you think, "I might as well do something with these to recoup my costs."

I don't want to become a small press publisher. And I found Lightning Source's customer service kind of annoying anyway. :P