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Writing books is not really a good idea

ellegriffin.substack.com

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Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#371

Post by selimthegrim »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #313
kingsuper20 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. More than a few I would wager. It's also a way to pay a politician in a backdoor way. Having said that, I'm amazed that so many of those titles are actually bought, they do appear to be at least somewhat popular. Any thrift store has piles of Presidential biographies and outraged-about-a-President books, they're over by the microwave cookbooks.

Yeah, for example, the Republican National Committee spent over $300K on Donald Trump Jr.'s book, which it then turned around and gave to donors, and $100K more on one of his other books. It spent over $400K on Dan Crenshaw's book and almost $100K on Tom Cotton's book. When Herman Cain was running for President, his campaign committee bought up pallets of his book that happened to be on sale at the same time as his p…

So the ex-mayor of Baltimore should have had the Maryland Democratic Party buy her children’s books instead?

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#372

Post by ellegriffin »

snet0 wrote: post #369
ellegriffin wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Exactly! Right now the ebook library model is based off the physical book library model where the library purchases a certain number of ebooks (say 10) and the author only gets a portion of the royalties on those ten copies, and then the library loans those copies out to an unlimited number of people. It should be managed more like Spotify- where books can be read unlimitedly, but the author gets paid royalties…

This is what I think the best course looks like. I know there are issues with Spotify's model (at least, I have heard people make this claim), but given that music had to transition to a streaming-based model (and considering that written text looks to be slowly going this way, too) the per-consumption royalty looks good to me. Of course, instantiating this in the real world is another question. For ebook libraries,…

Right, exactly. And we could learn from spotify (pay the creators more). But the ebook library is huge now and could easily be transformed. The only problem is that they aren't charging a monthly subscription fee (like Spotify) and so they would have to use donation dollars to fund that. And yet, I have to wait 15 weeks to get a book on my kindle because other people are reading it first, which seems very outdated.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#373

Post by bluGill »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #97
GekkePrutser wrote: post #73

> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…

> I don't think this'll work. Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between. The pressure of the next episode would lead to 'phoned in' chapters. Not just from the author's side. From a reader's perspective this would also not work. I don't want to start reading a book a chapter at a time. I don't even like reading books that are part of an unfinished series. For me, as someone who reads quite a lo…

There are enough books where the first few were good, but the final was terrible that I'm not sure I agree. I've learned to be happy with never having finished some series because they started great but by the middle weren't worth finding out how it finished.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#376

Post by ellegriffin »

vidarh wrote: post #347
ellegriffin wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am basing that off the research I did for this article: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth "Most books peak in the first 10 weeks after their debut, then exit the market." This is "most" so of course there are exceptions. And it sounds like you are one of them. That is amazing! Did it have a big bump at front, and then decrease over time? Or have you seen other bumps later on? I do wo…

I think that is largely because most writers don't know how to or don't care about marketing. I published a novel in late november, and it's sales are low but steady to slowly increasing. A key aspect is that to "survive" past the initial bump you need to invest effort into building word of mouth and getting reviews, and that is a slow process. The people I got to help with marketing even actively advised against doi…

Oh I've heard that. The classic "third book" being the one that goes viral. (Gillian Flynn, Dan Brown, etc.)

I agree with you on considering most books (most books don't market), but even trying to learn from the successful books isn't entirely encouraging. Even the best ones don't see a lot of reads.

But the industry is rapidly changing. We don't all watch the same three television channels anymore. Niche content is more the norm than mass marketed content.

I think the whole "creator economy" is still in its infancy, and we have yet to see whether it will actually allow creators to monetize in a meaningful way. But it's worth engaging with it as an experiment to see what happens!

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#377

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #174
klelatti wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's completely impossible: - I've paid $50 for an e-book with content that I thought was really valuable (and it was worth every penny). - In the 2020s the book could be accompanied by supporting material (webcasts etc) which would increase the perceived value. - Some people would be prepared to pay more for early access and to support an author they really like. I think that part of it is a change in…

>Frankly too many (non fiction) books are essays spun out to book length. I think by the time you took your scalpel to a typical business book, you might be left with 50-100 pages. The core idea is probably a magazine article but there are usually useful examples, context, etc. The problem is that publishing industry economics demand something more like 250 to 300 pages (and truth be told a lot of readers would feel…

I've been told that business books are 7 pages of content, and 242 pages of story so to get people to read the content pages.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#378

Post by munificent »

ellegriffin wrote: post #304
munificent wrote: post #220

> Not to mention, an author would have to come out with one book a year to maintain that salary. Your math looks odd to me. You look at the amount a book earns in a single year and extrapolate that to the author's annual salary , but seem to assume that once the first year is up, the book stops earning. Does books earning passive over multiple years affect the numbers? For what its worth, my single non-fiction book h…

Yes, I am basing that off the research I did for this article: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth "Most books peak in the first 10 weeks after their debut, then exit the market." This is "most" so of course there are exceptions. And it sounds like you are one of them. That is amazing! Did it have a big bump at front, and then decrease over time? Or have you seen other bumps later on? I do wo…

> Did it have a big bump at front, and then decrease over time? Or have you seen other bumps later on?

It had a spike at launch when I announced it on my mailing list and then it tapered. It's held pretty steadily since then. If you're curious, I wrote a thing about the launch here: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...

But it's a technical book on programming, so the whole economic and time model are just totally different compared to fiction. My model was to serially publish it online for free. There's a link to the mailing list at the top of each chapter. When I finished a chapter, I'd put it online and tell people about it. That did a good job of building up the mailing list. Then when the print edition was done, I could use that to tell people about it.

I had absolutely no expectation of this, but somehow having it online for free has been really good for actually selling copies too. I don't know if it's because it raises the book's profile, or because people can try before they buy, or maybe that just feel grateful that they don't have to buy? Either way, it worked out way better than I expected.

> I'm fairly certain that it's like you say, and that fiction will go the way of poetry and become to niche to make a living from it. But I'm going to at least give it a go and see what happens!

I really hope you're successful. Even if the money is falling out of it, fiction is the best way I know to share insight about the human condition with others. We'd be poorer as a species without it, regardless of what capitalism thinks.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#379

Post by [deleted] »

mritchie712 wrote: post #331
peterarmstrong wrote: post #315

One thing to consider is royalty rate. If you sell 5000 copies for $20 and earn a dollar per copy, you've earned $5,000. (This math is based on 10% royalties on the publisher's portion, which is about half of retail. And no, fiction books don't sell for $20 typically, but I'm using this number to make the math easy.) Now, if you sell 5000 copies of an ebook for $20 and earn 80% royalties, you earn $16 per copy, and e…

This is self promotion done well. Provide insight into the problem you solve and explain where you fit into this story. Nice job.

[deleted]

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#380

Post by bluGill »

runevault wrote: post #243
lumost wrote: post #59

Is this the natural outcome of having larger retailers? In the era of small local book stores, the store owner had large discretion on what to stock. Different book stores would naturally stock different books and cater to different preferences. The customer would have options to discover new books, but would also have popular books sometimes "hidden" by the book sellers preference. If every book reader is hooked int…

Yes, but more specifically, large retailers track the way books sell and order authors based on prior success. So if an author has a down book it can trigger a spiral where the big stores order less and less. Amazon isn't impacted by this in the same way because technically everything is on their shelves, but the B&Ns and the like of the world it does (and before they went under Borders as well).

On the other hand B&N had a lot more books. The small bookshop was typically filled with the same trash that I'd never read. (that is the definition of trash book: one the person making that claim would never read - those retailers stocked them because that is what most people read)
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