Average sales for independently published authors
Meaningless or incorrect statistics help no one.
Author cliche: opening the parcel of author copies of The Poster
I read a nerve-wracking page from ‘The Poster,’ at the GWW Write-In (thanks to the most excellent Angie Chatman). The GWW writers are a tough crowd: not because they hang around pool halls chewing on broken glass and throwing darts at rats, but because they are such good writers.
I'm used to reading out first drafts where no one expects it to be good. Reading from a published book has higher expectations.
Luckily, my peers were kind, gentle and supportive.
I also did a meet and greet chat at a coffee morning in our village. I sold four copies of The Poster there, including two to people who had also written books. It’s much easier to talk to fellow authors than the general public.
The GP think that books sell themselves and that anyone who has written a book will be rich and famous. This may be because many best-selling authors become celebrities, and so many celebrities become authors.
Getting the GP to leave a review on Amazon is harder than writing the novel: I’ve had more people ask for a free signed copy that they can sell ‘when’ I become famous than have left reviews.
Hey ho, such is the life of the struggling author!
Thanks to Mary and Mandi for leaving their reviews on GoodReads
BREAKING NEWS: I shall be talking on BBC Radio Devon next Tuesday afternoon about The Poster.
Revision and a New Beginning
I finished the fifth draft of my Historical Fantasy novel, ‘Stone and Water.’ Switching the protagonist’s Point of View (POV) from first to third person required more concentration than I anticipated and I had to leave the restructure to the next draft.
I’ve started writing my third novel (Provisional title: ‘The Letter’). It’s a first-person detective thriller set in 1940s East Anglia. I’ve been watching a lot of old movies since Christmas (‘It’s research’, I tell my wife when she rolls her eyes at anything black and white on TV) and read several different crime/ thrillers.
I’m taking a break from reading fiction while I get started because I don’t want to be influenced as I write. I’ve road-tested a few scenarios at the GWW write-ins and got some useful feedback.
My sole trip to an Escape Room was this 1940s detective one in Exeter and I’ve wanted to write something along those lines for a while. I have to be careful not to pastiche Chandler.
The numbers
I might do this monthly from now on but I’m trying to be open and transparent to help other potential authors understand what their sales could be.
I’ve sold 39 copies to date: 24 online and 15 hard copies to local people. I’ve also donated 10 copies to Libraries Unlimited to get more local people to read The Poster.
Is this a good figure, nearly 4 weeks after being published? (If you would like to boost my sales figures, buy a copy of The Poster here.)
It’s hard to get accurate statistics about independent publishing and book sales because there are so many conflicting statements. Here are some:
(taken from Books Sales Statistics).
Statements 1 and 3 can’t both be true!
The word average is meaningless in this context: we need to know if it is the mode, mean or median. Big sellers skew ‘averages’ when total book sales are divided by the total number of authors. What we want is a cluster graph with book sales from each author plotted: we can then see where most lie (see example below).
Other sources are equally dubious and I think there are several reasons for this:
Lack of understanding of statistics in literary types (and in journalists and politicians).
Deliberate obfuscation from different parties with different agendas: Publishing Houses, Independent Retailers and Literary Agents. All of these have different agendas and want to show their world in the best possible light. All of them consider Amazon the enemy.
Authors fearful of numbers interfering with their ‘art.’ At the last two BristolCons I’ve attended, I’ve asked the authors on panels, ‘How many books have you sold?’ All but one have said, ‘I don’t know.’ The exception was Michael R Miller who said, ‘377,000.’ He was the author whose brains I then picked.
Why ‘average’ is meaningless.
Here’s a simple (hopefully) example of why sales figures can be misconstrued using four real-life examples and the best guess of many independently published authors.
Bonne Garmus: 6,000,000 sales of one book. The traditional publisher’s dream-ticket and runaway success. Heavy promotion and marketing.
Nadine Dorries: 3,000,000 sales of several books. The traditionally published, ‘Celebrity (?!)’ author with heavy promotion and marketing.
Michael R Miller: 377,000 sales of several books. Independently published, steady growth, includes a fantasy series. This is considered highly successful.
Me: 36 sales (it’s 39 now but didn’t want to re-do the sums). Independently published, no external promotion or marketing.
1,000 authors each selling 10 copies each. Independently published with no promotion or marketing, sold to friends and family. This is often described as common.
Total book sales = 9,387,036.
Average sales per author = 9347 copies.
But the 9347 figure is meaningless for all concerned. It is way beyond the majority of authors and would not warrant all the investment in Dorries and Garmus from the big publishers.
9347 books sold independently would earn the author between £21,498 and £32,153, depending on ebook or paperback sales. That is enough to make an annual salary, but not enough to give up the day job permanently.
The statistic (from my made-up scenario) that independently published authors might take home is that 99.6% of authors sell only 10 copies of their book.
I'll publish my numbers monthly, stagnant though they may be, to shine a light for others in a similar situation.
If you publish your monthly sales this will hold you to account and force you to continue to market your book - good luck mate.
I published on Lulu.com before Amazon allowed self-publishers. I checked last week because I wanted to see my total book sales. Lulu.com has no way to calculate book sales. I’d have to download a spreadsheet with every individual sale and add them. 20 years of sales….So, any numbers seem dubious….