Gathering Data - Self-Publishing Income

[modwitch]

It may be over as a model to make decent money, but it's not going away. It's the floor. There will always be a lot of books priced at the floor price. And it's likely that there will be a market segment that looks for books priced at $0.99, just like there's a market segment that buys from the remainder table.

If people want to buy $0.99 books, publishers (self- and otherwise) will supply that segment of the market.

65% of the top 100 indie books (which are all in the top 400 total on amazon) are $0.99.  You can still make a ton of money at that price point.  I don't think it's nearly as surefire a path to visibility as it once was, and some of these authors are likely leaving money on the table, but anyone in the top 400 is averaging 150+ sales a day.  So $50+ a day.  That's not chump change.  I'd rather get there at $3.99  , but there are still plenty of very successful indie books at $0.99.

[Tara Maya]

No, it's been my experience that 10 sales a day translates to a ranking of roughly 9000-ish. Two sales a day is somewhere in the 30,000s.

Anyway, I've been self-publishing since mid-April (I'll be celebrating 6 months later this month, wow times flies!) and only have one book, but my monthly income across all platforms is in the $200-500 range, with the bulk of the money coming from Createspace. I'm one of those weirdos who does better in print than in e-book.

I forgot to include Createspace in my answer. Also I was only thinking of the kindle, not the other platforms.

[Victorine]

I forgot to include Createspace in my answer. Also I was only thinking of the kindle, not the other platforms.

I think you can change your answer if adding in the other sales bumps you to a different bracket.

Vicki

[JRTomlin]

I am amazed at the percentage who make more than $1000 a month.

[Victorine]

I am amazed at the percentage who make more than $1000 a month.

Yes! Me too. It's *almost* the same as the percentage making less than $100 a month. I didn't expect that at all. I figured the numbers would get much lower that high up.

[LisaGraceBooks]

If I'm making what I am on just two books, I imagine those who have six to ten books out could certainly make a thousand a month.

[Rex Jameson]

Yeah, one book just doesn't cut it.

P.S. You know how some people recheck their sales all day long? I don't do that. But I keep checking the poll results... weird.

[Phoenix Sullivan]

Phoenix, could you share more info about making category changes and how best to utilize it? I'd certainly appreciate it.

Please excuse a quick tangent in your thread Victorine.

Tommie, my cat change probably only worked because I made a newbie mistake when I chose one of my original cats. I chose Historical Fiction and was disappointed to see that Amazon doesn't break that cat down any further (grrr), so my poor book was competing against a whole lot of books even in the New Release lists. When I realized other Arthurian-era books were in Historical Fantasy, which has fewer competing titles, I changed the category about 9 weeks after I released it. Over the next 3 weeks, the book was pretty consistently in the top 10 of the Hot New Releases for Historical Fantasy and sold about 150 copies on Amazon (compared to the 60 it had sold on Amazon the month before). Then Amazon decided New Releases could only stay on the list for 30 days instead of 90 and it was dropped from the Hot New lists a week earlier than I expected.

If you've already tagged your book in 2 cats, and if your book could be appropriate for more than 2 cats and you're not moving many copies in the ones you've chosen, simply edit your dashboard info to change one of the categories to see if that jumpstarts sales. For better visibility, it's better to move your book from a cat with lots of competition to one with less competition.

One thing that can't be stressed enough is to never let any tag go untagged. I took a peek at ...And Night Falls and see it's tagged Romantic Suspense. Good. But you have another category tag opportunity for it. Mystery? Women sleuths? Thriller? Try each of them in succession.

I also see you have some Subject tags (but you've only used 6 of the 7 Amazon gives you). Here's the thing: Amazon's search engine uses those terms (after title and category tags) to return its results - even before it uses the Customer tags. You want to have the most popular terms your readers will likely search by as your Subject tags. Are your readers likely to be looking for books about "Pensacola," "Florida" or "EPA"? Or would they be looking for "mystery" or "suspense"? Your "blackmail" and "murder" tags are excellent there. My philosophy is to use 4 of your 7 tags to describe the genre then use the other 3 for other popular terms. Any other terms beyond those that you think might be searched on can go in your Customer tag selections.

[Krista D. Ball]

Yes! Me too. It's *almost* the same as the percentage making less than $100 a month. I didn't expect that at all. I figured the numbers would get much lower that high up.

It isn't surprising. Most people who are making under $100/month aren't posting on KB or advertising that fact. It is a good look of self-published authors on KB, but not a good one overall of writers.

[Dara England]

The unfortunate thing is that there's so little stability that people could fall into a different bracket every month.

This is true. I voted $200-$500 by taking the total sum of my earnings and dividing them by the number of months AIM has been out (I'm not figuring in my other books right now because they haven't started to "give" yet). But really every month is different, so I can't count on earning a certain amount per month to pay my bills.

[Doomed Muse]

Well, and she asked the average.  My first month I earned about 2.05.  Last month was over 100 and this month looks like it will be there again (fingers crossed).  But I took the average (eye-balled it anyway), which put me in the under 100 category even though some months lately have been better than that.  I expect that in another year or so, these results would look even more interesting. 

[Philip Chen]

I responded with data from day one, which might be skewed low as it takes about six to eight months for a self-published author to get going.  Looking at onloy the last siux months, my average goes up a notch.

[Tommie Lyn]

Phoenix, thanks ever so much for your explanations and invaluable advice. I'll be applying it to all my books.

And, Victorine, I apologize for hijacking your thread.

My answer to your question, by the way, like Philip Chen's, varies quite a bit, because I virtually ignored my ebooks until recently. And things have changed drastically since I decided to change my focus from my paperbacks to my ebooks. I didn't vote in the poll for that reason, because my data couldn't be considered reliable.

[Phoenix Sullivan]

My pleasure, Tommie. Just remember knowing how to do something doesn't mean you'll be good at doing it. Still working on boosting sales myself.

@Victorine: Do you have any objections if some of us want to riff off the poll results for blog posts?

[Victorine]

I just wanted to thank everyone who participated. The results have been encouraging for me. I might do a more focused poll that asks about length of time, genre, number of books, etc. I'd probably need more voters than I can gather here, though, to make any kind of major connections with it. (And we can pretty much guess, anyway. More books + More time + More popular genre = More money.) But it still would be interesting.

Thanks everyone!

Phoenix - I don't mind at all. Go ahead!

Vicki

[genevieveaclark]

This has been really cool. I really didn't expect the share of under 100 / btwn 100 and 1000 / more than 1000 to be so stable and even through out, even given all the usual caveats about self-selecting samples, sample size, etc.

I'm glad I saw this. Thanks Vicki, and everyone else.

[JRTomlin]

It isn't surprising. Most people who are making under $100/month aren't posting on KB or advertising that fact. It is a good look of self-published authors on KB, but not a good one overall of writers.

Even for authors on KB, I find that a surprising result. What I think it says is that authors who work at it seriously and intelligently can make money self-publishing fiction. (Although luck always plays a part, too)

Of course, it says nothing about all writers.

Edit: On the subject of genre, my own experience has been counter-intuitive. My best sales have been in a less popular genre--historical fiction. I suspect that those have less competition which may make gaining a foot-hold easier. So if someone wants to write in such a genre, it might not be such a bad idea.

[Victorine]

You know, I've had a lot of books come through my blog, Why is this not selling, and there are a few that I felt really didn't have a great reason why they're not selling, but not that many. Most of the time I can point to an area that could be improved.

That, coupled with these results tells me the same thing, JR. If an author is willing to work seriously and intelligently, the odds are pretty good they can make some money at this.

Vicki

[Tara Maya]

It isn't surprising. Most people who are making under $100/month aren't posting on KB or advertising that fact. It is a good look of self-published authors on KB, but not a good one overall of writers.

Agreed. That's the problem with studies that are from volunteer answers not random samples. 

[Phoenix Sullivan]

Thanks, Vicki. I posted some commentary today using the poll to springboard off of. Nothing said there that hasn't already been observed here. On my blog I stress realistic expectations and choices made through educated decisions. I've caveated the results (many times over ).

[Krista D. Ball]

Edit: On the subject of genre, my own experience has been counter-intuitive. My best sales have been in a less popular genre--historical fiction. I suspect that those have less competition which may make gaining a foot-hold easier. So if someone wants to write in such a genre, it might not be such a bad idea.

/off topic

I can only speak to the people I know personally who write historical fiction (excluding historical romances), but they seem to be middle-of-the-pack in terms of sales. The hard science fiction crowd are generally the lowest, and the historical romance folks are the highest. Obviously, always exceptions in this; I'm just speaking in terms of generals not specifics.

/on topic

I'm always willing to pay for a good historical novel. I read a lot of historical non-fiction and have long gotten used to paying $25+ for a historical ebook...and often getting the hardcover as a gift

So, an historical fiction novel in the $5-10 is a steal for me, when the tradebacks are often in the $20+ for the novels.

[modwitch]

Edit: On the subject of genre, my own experience has been counter-intuitive. My best sales have been in a less popular genre--historical fiction. I suspect that those have less competition which may make gaining a foot-hold easier. So if someone wants to write in such a genre, it might not be such a bad idea.

I totally agree.  Women's fiction and romance are hugely popular.  Getting noticed in those genres is fiercely difficult.  A lot of that has to do with how many books are in a category - how big is the pond?  Romance has tons of readers, but how many of them make it past the top 10,000 books in the genre to the other 35,000?

I think it's actually good strategy to write for a genre that a) has a <5K pool of books, and b) has good readership (you can see that by looking at the rankings of the top books in the genre). 

[mattlynn]

I agree with the last post. I put my books in the War category, and its not that hard to get in the Top 20...in the UK anyway.

[Jan Hurst-Nicholson]

I would be interested to see the final result as I  have been asked to give a talk on e-publishing to a group of writers.
It would also be interesting to know how many books make up the income.

[Sara Pierce]

Well this is only my third month doing this so I'm sure my results will change over time, but I very nearly reached $400 last month after only $17 in August, so I'm sure my monthly totals will change soon. I do short story erotica which seems pretty popular these days, and also sell on sites like AllRomanceEbooks and Bookstrand, not just Amazon and/or BN, so my reach may be wider than other markets.