I have chatted about this with friends who are just getting published, or in their first few years of publishing. There is a lot of talk these days about being able to earn a living. It is very hard to get those big advances even if you have an audience. Why? The economy and digital publishing have taken a chunk out of the money publishers have to play with. Up until a few years ago, I had ALWAYS wanted to do this. Don’t get me wrong. If one of the traditional publishers offered me a good advance, with the right kind % for digital, I would take it in a heartbeat. I’m not an idiot. I don’t see that happening, but if any editors are reading this, go ahead and approach me, lol.
I am going to talk about hard numbers. See, when I started in ebooks, no one, except for a select few of Ellora’s Cave authors, made a really great living at it. The medium just hadn’t caught on. The devices weren’t there. Now, me, I kept getting published. I was a stay at home mom who lived off her major hubby in the AF, so my money went back into the business. Let’s be honest, I probably ended up spending more money that first two years than I made. I had a lot of releases, 13 that first year, and many more after that. So, have a healthy backlist, some of which I am still rereleasing.
But, back to that magic 20. I believe that when you hit 20 releases, that seems to be the magic number for backlist sales. I don’t know what it is. Okay, part of me thinks it might be part of my funky head saying multiplying by 20 is is easy. IT IS. But, I started looking at the numbers and they don’t lie. Now, I am not saying everyone will do this. I am not saying that every author needs this. I am saying this is a good medium in my humble opinion to go by.
Categories: Miscellaneous
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