Please feel free to repost. Or, if you know of other, similar posts/threads, to link to them in comments. If you’re an author doing direct digital sales from a web site you manage/control (meaning in addition to whatever you’re doing through Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords, Direct2Digital—or whatever)… Questions for Authors Already Selling Directly What […]
More Author Earning Data: Making a Living or No?
I haven’t updated the spreadsheet I pulled a few weeks ago, but here are the numbers from the last I pulled. There are some data quality problems here. The low end of people who say they’re making a living writing? I don’t think $450 is a likely real response. Likewise, some of the higher numbers […]
Smashwords Self-Publishing Bestseller Genres
Publishers Weekly has been publishing the top 25 bestselling self-published works on Smashwords each month. Here’s February’s list. I’m not the least bit surprised that Romance is the top-selling category in terms of those top 25. What does surprise me, though, is the overwhelming percentage of those titles that are romance: 2/3 if you include […]
Fun Data from the Author Earnings Spreadsheet
This page is not affiliated with authorearnings.com. Rails app to generate this can be found on GitHub. Some earlier charts are here. Table columns are percentiles: 25% means that, if you line everyone up in order, 25% made that or less. Self-Published Earnings, 2013 # 25% 50% 75% 90% 95% 100% 914 300 3000 24000 […]
You Didn’t Fail
Context: this post from Cassie Alexander. Cassie, I’ve known you for a long time. We’ve spent nights writing in chat, on Twitter, at conventions, all kinds of things. I remember you bringing your (impressively large) box of rejection letters to BayCon one year before you had a pro sale. I love you so much I […]
New iTunes Connect Sales Charts
E-mail from Apple: We have released a new version of Sales and Trends on iTunes Connect that introduces interactive features to help you better understand your sales data. You now have the the ability to: View sales within a selected time period Group your sales data (for example, by territory) Filter sales by one or […]
Two Corrections for the E-Book Royalty Calcumatic
Both are good news. I like good news. First, Kobo payments are monthly if—and this is kinda confusing so I’m just going to quote them directly: Payment will be issued on a monthly basis if your content has generated over $100.00 USD. If after 6 months, your content has not generated over $100.00 USD, we […]
Author Earnings Survey: Initial Glance
There’s a lot of interesting information in the Author Earnings survey that Hugh Howey and others are working on. Hugh’s posted a preliminary link on Twitter, and you can watch the live data coming in. I decided to do some breakdowns of the really early data: self-reported 2013 income. [fancy_table] Trad Self Median 6,000 […]
2-1/2 Years of E-Book Sales Data
In two charts. I worked at Apple, so it’s not surprising to me that I sold more copies through iBooks than is generally true for other authors. What did surprise me was the relative number of Nook book sales. Because this is a short story, here are the royalty percentages per sale: Amazon 35%, Nook […]
A Few Book Covers
Things coming out Real Soon Now, in probable release order. Coffee & Canopy Coffee & Canopy is a forthcoming book about our experiences in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Monkeys! Crocodiles! Bats! Venomous sea snakes! Volcanoes! Cover photo is one I took of Nicaragua’s Masaya volcano. The “travel diary” series will be novella length, have selected […]