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Costs and Prices for self publishing

Making Money as a Writer

So here we go, a post on ‘Making Money as a Writer.’ A subject that seems to come up often, far more than I ever thought it would actually when I began this journey. Let me start by saying of course, when I started this I thought “Oh I’ll write books, make $$$, quit my day job and be a writer for the rest of my life, it will be easy living!” I think that every writer has that same little fantasy that this will come and come fast and easy. It’s normal. It’s also almost never like that.

Yes, it *can* happen. And so does getting struck by lightning, or winning the lottery, or even creating this really new hot viral app that makes you $$$ hand over fist. All of it’s POSSIBLE. But likely? No.  I have been asked more than once, by very smart and well meaning people why I don’t just write full time. Simple answer? Money.

See I think those same people think it’s easy to make money writing books.It’s not. Not even close really. In grand total for ALL of 2015, I made…. 211$ Whoohoo! off of writing. Yes, that little. Why so little you may ask?

  1. Lack of understanding on my part about marketing.
  2. Poor choices of categories
  3. Rushing books to market before they were ready.

All of those hurt me badly when it came to earning $$$, and I’m working heard to rectify those issues with my next book (coming soon!)

Then of course you read things.. things like http://bit.ly/1W64joy.

Basically the statement is to give it up, only 40 Amazon authors made “money”. But lets look at the definition of making money they used.. selling 1 million eBooks in 5 years. Excuse me? What??

Basic math here folks.

You sell a Million eBooks in 5 years, your averaging 200,000 a year. The most “common” eBook price (because the article is short on the details) is 2.99. Assuming your using the 70% royalty plan (and there’s no reason to think your not) you would be making 2.09 PER eBook sold. Which means your making 418,600$ a YEAR.

 

Yeah… That’s a fair amount more than “just being successful.” That’s being majorly AWESOMELY successful. It’s also a highly unrealistic number to use as “making money from self publishing.”

What do I want? My dream goal would be to pull anywhere from 70-90k a year from writing alone. That would be insanely awesome. Truly. My realistic goal, if I can get to 30k a year from writing, that would be great!! Would I quit my day job? Hell no. But if someone came up to you and said “Hey you want an extra 30k a year in passive income?” I think anyone and everyone would say yes please.

Why write then? If money is not so easy to make, why do it?

  1. I actually really enjoy writing
  2. I enjoy telling stories
  3. I get a kick out of creating something that is out there for others to enjoy.

You want to know what you can do to support or help an self publishing author?

  1. Buy their books
  2. REVIEW their books (seriously, telling someone you like their book is great, but writing a LEGIT review on Amazon is better, FAR better due to how Amazon does things.)
  3. Recommend their book to others.

That simple. 🙂

 

 

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