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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

#401

Post by clarkevans »

sltkr wrote: post #149

> There are thousands of paid fiction authors on Patreon but only 25 earn more than $1,000/month, only six earn more than $2,000/month, and only one earns more than the $5,000/month (and she’s already a bestselling author). I think she missed a few authors in other categories. Examples: - https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow (over $6,000/month) - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3814558 ($8,203 per chapter, roughly 1 chapte…

Ursula Vernon, Author of Harriet the Hamster Princess - https://www.patreon.com/ursulav (1,165 patrons, $2,709/mo)

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#402

Post by u678u »

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 model assumes the publisher does nothing. At least if you buy a OReilly or Wiley book you know it will be a decent standard. Many ebooks are junk and its not always obvious which ones.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#403

Post by chokma »

sltkr wrote: post #149

> There are thousands of paid fiction authors on Patreon but only 25 earn more than $1,000/month, only six earn more than $2,000/month, and only one earns more than the $5,000/month (and she’s already a bestselling author). I think she missed a few authors in other categories. Examples: - https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow (over $6,000/month) - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3814558 ($8,203 per chapter, roughly 1 chapte…

Some more:

  https://www.patreon.com/user?u=48733767 Casualfarmer 2.8K
  https://www.patreon.com/Zogarth 10K / month
  https://www.patreon.com/C_Mantis c.mantis / 4.2 K
  https://www.patreon.com/SelkieMyth 5.3K
  https://www.patreon.com/InadvisablyCompelled 2.8K
  https://www.patreon.com/Shirtaloon 14 K 
  https://www.patreon.com/DefianceNovels 1395 patreons
Some of those are also on Kindle Unlimited & Kindle.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#404

Post by zffr »

steelframe wrote: post #375

I put some effort into writing a sci-fi novel some years back, but I've since realized that the highest income-per-word ratio that I can hope to realize from my creative writing efforts has to come from my perf self assessment.

I’ve always wondered how much of a direct impact your self assessment actually has on your compensation adjustment.

At least in my current job, I feel like my manager already has a ball-park idea of the Comp adjustment to give me. It feels like I would probably get more or less the same adjustment no matter what I write so long as I write something reasonable

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#405

Post by cultofmetatron »

mritchie712 wrote: post #364
peterarmstrong wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks :) Ironically, I've been talking about the relationship between lean publishing and serial fiction for a long time (for example, this video from a conference talk I did in 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozO0kOnqmyA ), but Leanpub has never hit anything close to product-market fit for fiction. We do well in our niche of computer programming / data science / business types of books, but we have essential…

My wife has toyed with the idea of writing romance novels. Do you have many romance writers on Leanpub? Her thinking is to keep the "trashiness" of most romance but improve on the story and writing. She keeps saying "I need a publisher", but I was thinking there must be a simple way to publish straight to Amazon, looks like that's Leanpub!

you can publish directly. no need for leanpub.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#406

Post by watwut »

mritchie712 wrote: post #364
peterarmstrong wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks :) Ironically, I've been talking about the relationship between lean publishing and serial fiction for a long time (for example, this video from a conference talk I did in 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozO0kOnqmyA ), but Leanpub has never hit anything close to product-market fit for fiction. We do well in our niche of computer programming / data science / business types of books, but we have essential…

My wife has toyed with the idea of writing romance novels. Do you have many romance writers on Leanpub? Her thinking is to keep the "trashiness" of most romance but improve on the story and writing. She keeps saying "I need a publisher", but I was thinking there must be a simple way to publish straight to Amazon, looks like that's Leanpub!

Self publishing is easy. Finding audience is hard.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#407

Post by akiselev »

ellegriffin wrote: post #391
akiselev wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the GP's characterization that it's greedy and you should definitely try for it, but I'm going to rephrase your statement thus: > I've made that as a pitching coach and umpire throughout my career, why not hope for it as a pitcher? Writer/editor are fundamentally different roles than novelist. In the former, the people with the up front capital already know what they want, at least in a more concrete…

This is certainly valid, but it also assumes the current publishing model (as in, how could I, one writer, make $100,000 of the $28 billion pie). Which also assumes that I would need to reach mass appeal (re: sell lots of copies) as an author to be successful in that paradigm. What I am asking is, is it possible for me, who already has a niche audience for my writing, to have those followers support me as a writer? C…

> What I am asking is, is it possible for me, who already has a niche audience for my writing, to have those followers support me as a writer? Can I add enough value to that small audience, that they want to pay to subscribe to my work? Would 1,000 people pay $100/year? Or 2,000 people pay $50/year?

That's a completely different concept that a novelist so data from the classic publishing industry are likely useless. You'll have to find out for yourself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know of some niches that certainly are supporting multiple independent authors at that amount per year or more, but they're all unique markets in their own right and I'd hesitate to extrapolate one from the other. In truth, I'd call most of those people analysts who write well and the few who work in fiction have semi-formulaic/restricted niches like writing material for GMs of hardcore D&D groups. Hardly work that allows one to flourish artistically.

tldr: Short answer: no. Long answer: ...is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#408

Post by watwut »

Siira wrote: post #325
andi999 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a scalable product there is usually no middle ground. Either you are getting rich or just getting by, or even not getting by (last one the most likely one)

Isn’t software a big exception to this?

No. Software follow the same pattern.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#409

Post by sdgasg »

u678u wrote: post #402
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 model assumes the publisher does nothing. At least if you buy a OReilly or Wiley book you know it will be a decent standard. Many ebooks are junk and its not always obvious which ones.

Yup, having been burnt by a few bad e-book purchases (both, fiction and non-fiction), now I stick with big name publishers. Unless books are recommended by trusted Twitter or hn accounts.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#410

Post by Sebb767 »

> Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies—which is paltry when you consider that the 10 best-performing Netflix films saw more than 68 million views.

Reading a book takes far longer than watching a movie. Assuming ten hours for a book, that's 5 million "read hours" compared to 102 million "watch hours" (assuming 90 min) for the top movies. Plus, movies can be watched in the background or socially in a group. I'm not saying reading is not a niche - it probably is far smaller than it used to be -, but it's not as niche as this statement makes it out to be.

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