Earning comparisons between self published ebooks and conventionally published books

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Sat, 2011-02-19 23:16

A close friend of mine has written a book which was conventionally published and to date has earned her about £9,300.

Had she self published this work as an ebook and achieved the same sales she would have made about £100,000 (assuming she sold the ebook for the same price).

The article below makes a similar point and is worth reading.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/02/numbers-game.html

Mon, 2011-02-21 06:10

Dynamaso

Interesting article - thanks for pointing it out. I'm thinking about going down the self-publishing road myself, although the first book I want to publish is of poetry, so I know my earnings will be even less. Still, good food for thought, this.

Mon, 2011-02-21 19:09

brooosh

You're absolutely right, FTSE. That is the big catch. My feeling is it also depends on: 1. the type of book you've written (I think non-fiction works better and makes more money in ebook form that fiction) 2. how skilful you are at building a high converting website to market your book 3. how well you can populate that website with pages that rank well in the search engines for relevant keywords. Even allowing for all those things you could still fail. So it's by no means a trivial task. But someone like my friend, who has a good track record with her first book (non-fiction), should seriously consider it. Even if her self published ebook achieved one-tenth the sales that she managed with her conventionally published effort, she would still make more money with it.

Mon, 2011-02-21 23:25

ashb

Interesting stuff, dont think I could consider self publishing if it involved treks to the post office to post books to their new owner, but if it's eBooks and Createspace books, it almost begins to seem possible...

ashb

Wed, 2011-02-23 22:17

Terrence Oblong

The most interesting thing about this article isn't the comparative costs and benefits, it's simply the direction and speed of change of the industry. A positive change I think, the clunky, 'what were people reading last year and how can we copy it' view of the publishing industry today needs a good, solid kick up the arse.

Thu, 2011-02-24 00:33

ashb

Watched a BBC prog about early novelists yesterday. Sometimes they published by subscription only, which gave them a bigger whack than going through publishers. this was 200 odd years ago, they showed the subscription list and Jane Austen had ssubscribed to read some other woman writer's book -- (think Fanny Burney's) but point is, the more things change... ? And agree completely with your point about copying last years hit...

ashb

Sun, 2011-02-27 19:34

martin_t

The top selling book on the Amazon Kindle is self published. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/27/kindle-ebooks-amazon-st...

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