So 3/4 of the tips are: write a book people want to read?
If this was obvious advice, the mistake wouldn't be so prevalent in among non-fiction authors.
Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
141–148 of 148 posts
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#142Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#143> It’s because Hemingway’s Boat is broadly “about” a topic, whereas The War of Art promises—and delivers—an outcome. I certaintly don't know a damn thing about selling books. But I am an avid reader of nonfiction and this is exactly the opposite of how I shop for books myself. Other than the odd "how-to", I'm skeptical of any book promising me anything other than the author's diligent study and incisive distillation…
> but I've never read a book that "solved my problem". Of which, I assure you, I have many. Curious of your unsolved problems.
Oh, mostly personal.
How to be a kinder person.
How to not take things for granted.
How to contribute more to my community.
How to accept that due to a drift in my world views, I will likely never have as close a relationship with my parents as when I was young.
How to decide if one should withdraw from the world as much as possible or embrace it.
How to view every person as valuable.
How to respect every person even when they are creating problems for you.
How to cope with long term illness in the family.
How to feel about having amassed an amount of money that seems disproportionate to my contribution to society.
How to disagree with people without resenting them (even when you believe the things they believe are hurting people).
How to raise a kid who is curious and interested in things.
How to raise a kid that shuns cruelty.
How guide a kid away from traps you fell into yourself without taking over their life.
How to show people you appreciate them.
I'm not saying no book has helped with any of the above. But I have never read a book that fixed one of these problems or really even ever told me anything very interesting about them. What to do is mostly obvious. How to get oneself to do those things is the hard part. And I think that kind of change doesn't come from reading one book. It comes from many absorbed over a long period of time. It comes from daily devotions (not specifically of the Christian variety, though I have seen those guide people well too).
Maybe I'm wrong but that's the best I've figured out.
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not the writer's job. It's what publishers are supposed to do.
Maybe in 1995; but the industry has not worked like that since Amazon set up shop. Publishing was the first mass media industry to get disrupted. Non-essential work gets pushed down to the author / creator in such scenarios. Music is the same; there was a time when your record company would pay for studio time, mastering, publicity, etc. Today? If you’re a serious artist you’re just expected to have $10k in recording…
So ebooks are much cheaper than printed books then, right. Obviously not. All the work the publishers aren't doing on them, and the material savings in not even publishing them to paper ... but ebooks cost more.
So what are publishers doing in return for the higher sales price of ebooks?
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I published a book in November. It's selling. Slowly. I'm not expecting it to be profitable for several years (I've self-published, and so I've had some costs such as a cover design, editing and proofreading). I'm ok with that - I'm writing a series, and everyone I talk to suggests sales for self-published series rarely do much until at least the third volume, and it's a hobby for the most part. It's only worth it fo…
>But odds are you won't make all that much. You might write far better than JK Rowling and still not sell very much because you write something that just doesn't catch the imagination of book buyers. Really like that sentence. Very true. >One of the things a publisher gives you, that many who choose to self-publish don't want, though, is an objective third party assessing if you've written something that they think i…
> if you've written something that they think is likely to sell //
Isn't it more "that they think they can sell and maximise their profit above other things they might choose to sell". It's close but has a couple of distinct differences. One is cost to them, the other is sellability (and by that publisher in particular).
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe in 1995; but the industry has not worked like that since Amazon set up shop. Publishing was the first mass media industry to get disrupted. Non-essential work gets pushed down to the author / creator in such scenarios. Music is the same; there was a time when your record company would pay for studio time, mastering, publicity, etc. Today? If you’re a serious artist you’re just expected to have $10k in recording…
So ebooks are much cheaper than printed books then, right. Obviously not. All the work the publishers aren't doing on them, and the material savings in not even publishing them to paper ... but ebooks cost more. So what are publishers doing in return for the higher sales price of ebooks?
Honestly? Book reviews. A literary agent will know lots of other authors who might be willing to write a review of your book. Good if you’re just starting out, unnecessary if you’re established.
And ebooks generally are cheaper; there’s a ton of $0.99 genre fiction available on Amazon.
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#147Unfortunately most writers of fiction make next to nothing too. Writers often are not happy writing either (unlike painters and video artists who seem to have a whale of a time). Sadly I toiled for 8 years on a novel (while working a day job). It was a massive effort. It might be hard for people to understand but I felt I had to write it (i.e. writers curse). I wish I had spent all that time on studying programming e…
Perhaps it wasn't the most useful way to spend your time through a solely economic lens. But if you felt it was something you had to do and you shipped your work, you can take pride in that. > Writers should just write for the pleasure of writing and expect that the majority won't make it. It's about as likely as winning the lottery Think that's especially true for fiction. Thanks for sharing your story.
Yes. Unfortunately it was so... Thanks reading it.
Re: Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very poorly worded. And if not wrong, then certainly very unclear. The math... depends. Not all publishers offer advances, and those that do offer advances with different strategies. Here is one strategy: a commissioning editor uses a sales modelling system to estimate the maximum possible advance against likely sales. At larger publishers, you can be sure the editor has a very good idea what the likely sales wi…
>The editor will set the advance so the book never earns out. Not deliberately, most of the time. If you have a track record, a good agent, and there's a competitive bid for your book, they might overpay knowing that they don't have to earn out to make a profit, they just have to get reasonably close. Maybe they can make it up in subrights. But if those things are not true, the advance will be lower.
Not for fiction. For non-literary (i.e. non-household name, tech-oriented) non-fiction - definitely.
It's a production line, and it's rare for authors to do more than one or two books.
Some bigger publishers really do have spreadsheet models of likely sales, and they base their acceptable advance offers on them.