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Alessandra Kelley

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Polenth

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That's not what duplicity means. It means you were lying, which, I'm sure, is not what you're trying to say.

Though as it turns out, entirely accurate, as he was here to troll and start flame wars rather than genuinely wanting to help people. If anyone wondered why I take a cynical view of self-publishing evangelists, here's an example of why. I'd like to think we weren't viewed as faceless non-entities who don't matter... but you don't try to upset people for fun if you think they're real people.
 

evilrooster

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I am sorry to hear that. Kindleboards is a helpful site for Kindle users and generally pretty classy.

Yes -- I know that a lot of people find good information and supportive community there. It's unfortunate that some of the members who come here behave less than ideally, but it would be unfair to judge the whole place based on those few individuals.

I'd like to think we weren't viewed as faceless non-entities who don't matter... but you don't try to upset people for fun if you think they're real people.

Yes, this. I don't really care who does it, or what cause theyre espousing -- self-publishing, trade publishing, or the serial comma -- if people's success criteria are "get the other guys all riled up," I wish they'd just stay away. The idea that we have to have some kind of stupid inter-board rivalry just gets in the way of helping authors and making good books.
 
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AdamNeymars

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Courtney Milan's advice when asked by established authors about switching from trade to self-pub

http://www.courtneymilan.com/rambli...us-self-publishing-official-death-match-2014/

For a number of reasons, a lot of authors who are traditionally-published and curious about self-publishing talk to me about their careers when they’re up for contract renewal. Over the last 2 months, that number has been extraordinarily high—I think I’m up to 11 right now—but if I count over the last…three to four years, I’ve probably talked to dozens and dozens of authors. These range from people with print runs big enough to send a book to everyone in entire cities, to people with mass market print runs that are under 10K.

Believe it or not, I really do not push any of those people to self-publish. There really are benefits to both sides.


This blog post is for people who are traditionally published and who are thinking about self-publishing. It’s not intended for people who have not published yet.

She gives a lot of good information based on her experiences. It is worth a read for established authors want to know about the publishing industry and where it might be heading.
 
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K.B. Parker

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I read this article the other day and it was very informative. It quickly dispels any notion that self publishing is 'the easy way out', and if you go down this road, you best be ready to work your ass off on both your writing and the business side of things.
 

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Adam, thanks for the interesting link, and for giving us a bit of your opinion along with it--that's much appreciated.

We prefer people to use "self publishing" instead of "indie", because the latter causes confusion with regard to authors who are published through independent publishers. There are links which explain this more fully in the Guidelines thread for this room.
 

amergina

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Hang on, I am going to move this to the proper forum.

The Novels forum is focused on novel writing, not publishing. :)
 
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lauralam

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As a traditional publisher currently dipping my toes into self-publishing (with the long-term aim of staying hybrid), this was a fascinating article. Thanks for sharing.
 

JournoWriter

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Beyond it being a good read, what are your thoughts on this, Adam?
 

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Those reports have been discussed here several times before, Adam. As has already been said, in several other threads, there are many issues with data which relies on self-reporting.

What do you think about those issues?
 

AdamNeymars

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Those reports have been discussed here several times before, Adam. As has already been said, in several other threads, there are many issues with data which relies on self-reporting.

What do you think about those issues?

Self-Reporting is not always accurate because some authors might report false sale figures.

But I believe most of the authors who self-report on kboards.com/authors are reporting accurate figures.
 

AdamNeymars

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Two more interesting/informative links

http://edwardwrobertson.com/self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/
Self-Publishing’s Share of the Kindle Market by Genre

http://edwardwrobertson.com/followup-self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/
Followup: Self-Publishing’s Share of the Kindle Market, by Genre


ROMANCE
Self-published: 49%
Small/medium: 11%
Amazon: 9%
Big 5/Harlequin: 30%

MYSTERY/THRILLER/SUSPENSE
Self-published: 11%
Small/medium: 5%
Amazon: 16%
Big 5: 68%

SCIENCE FICTION
Self-published: 56%
Small/medium: 9%
Amazon: 5%
Big 5 (plus Baen): 30%
FANTASY
Self-published: 49%
Small/medium: 7%
Amazon: 7%
Big 5: 37%
 

Old Hack

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Self-Reporting is not always accurate because some authors might report false sale figures.

But I believe most of the authors who self-report on kboards.com/authors are reporting accurate figures.

Even if they only exaggerate a tiny bit in their own favour (and studies suggest that most people will do this), then all the statistics there will be useless.

And as people who are enjoying some success are more likely to report their sales figures than those whose books have failed to sell, the stats are even more skewed.

If there was a dataset available which had been compiled from verifiable numbers by an independent agent, I'd take it seriously. Otherwise, it's just not reliable enough to be anything more than a bit of fun, I'm afraid.

Two more interesting/informative links

http://edwardwrobertson.com/self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/
Self-Publishing’s Share of the Kindle Market by Genre

http://edwardwrobertson.com/followup-self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/
Followup: Self-Publishing’s Share of the Kindle Market, by Genre

Adam, you posted links to those blog posts before, and in a thread which has now been locked.

There are two problems with this.

AW is huge. Really huge. It has over 50,000 active members. If everyone started duplicating posts, AW would collapse under its own weight; we'd need to start charging people for membership, because of the increased server costs: it wouldn't be good. So from now on, please remember to post things once only. No duplicates. OK?

The other issue is that the other thread was locked, and for good reason. That means the conversation is over. If you think a thread should be reopened, send the moderator who closed it a PM arguing your case. But don't try to rekindle it in a different thread, or start a new thread to continue that conversation, because that will just get you a ban.
 

Polenth

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JWNelson

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Tony Horwitz op-ed piece in NY Times about his e-pub "experience"

Perhaps others saw this article in the online NY Times? "I was a digital best-seller" His "name" apparently brought an e-book seller/promoter his way along with something called "Byline" that winged-over. One good cautionary tale in this relates to how assigning rights to his non-fiction piece led to it vanishing from Amazon.com and elsewhere when Byline went bye-bye. Thoughts?
 

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KatiePerryFan, I'm sure I've asked you this numerous times before: please read the guidelines, and get your terminology right when you post here. "Indie" causes confusion, so we ask you not to use it in this context.

I'm going to merge this into the Interesting Links thread.
 

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Book Merchandising Tips for the Self-Publishing Author

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Something we authors dislike, isn't it? I thoroughly enjoy the creative exercise of writing a story. Coming up with the theme. The plot. Characters. Setting. Dialogue. Even revising and editing can be enjoyable.[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]But – marketing?[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]We “sell” with our composition. But how much do we know about marketing?[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This piece is worth reading and can be found @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordy-grundy/book-merchandising-tips-f_b_6590294.html[/FONT]
 

MartinP

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An interesting read for all self-publishers having difficulties
with
@£$ format ting
on..
Amazon - [link removed by moderator]
 
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Old Hack

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Please edit that link, Martin: we don't allow link-shorteners here as they often contain malware.

ETA: I've looked at the page and it doesn't seem to offer anything I'd get involved in. Vague stuff about formatting, and an author keen to sell his own books. Nope, I'm not going there.
 
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AlexisRadcliff

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Income, Covers, and Editing: Crunching Some Self-Reported Survey Data

Hugh and Data Guy have this great survey over at AE where self-published authors can self-report their earnings data from the last year... I'm certain they'll do something cool with it eventually, but since the data is open, they haven't yet, and there are over 1200 responses, I thought I might do some more data analysis and build a few pretty graphs.

This data is all self-reported and NOT a random sample, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect this to reflect a true picture of the industry… though it probably reflects the picture of the industry for the types of authors likely to self-report sales data to surveys they find on the internet. While it’s interesting to discuss, take everything I say here with a grain of salt.

Insights and Highlights

  • If you’re a glass half-full type, 22% of self-published authors (1 in 5) in this data set made more than $20,000 in the year prior to the survey.
  • If you’re a glass half-empty type, 45% self-published authors (nearly half) in this data set made less than $1,000 in the year prior to the survey.
  • Having more books published correlates with higher earnings in a year, and your 4th book and your 6th book might be important tipping points for author earnings.
  • Paying for professional freelance editing correlates with higher earnings.
  • Paying for professional graphic design correlates with higher earnings.
  • Of the authors represented in this data set, 56% of them hired a professional cover designer, and 53% hired a freelance editor to review their work.
You can see the full post with all the pretty graphs (and more discussion on results) over at my blog.