3 ms·

> 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

> 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 has generated passive income for about seven years now. I fully agree with your larger point that earning a living off fiction is exceedingly difficult these days. I hope fiction authors can find new revenue models like you're exploring that are successful. But I fear that fiction will go the way of poetry and theatre where it becomes a niche art beloved by some but rarely lucrative enough to devote yourself full time to it.

ska 6y ago
True - in order to do this analysis properly you need some idea of the distribution of royalties, and publication intervals, etc.
dalai 6y ago
Agree. My non-fiction, niche book generated some income for almost 10 years even though it was outdated after the first 5 or so. I am guessing that in fiction they can earn for a lot longer. There are also other effects to take into consideration: Even a moderate hit will generate interest for previous books; books in a series or in a trilogy will boost each other’s sales. Not that getting the moderate hit is easy in any way.
ellegriffin 6y ago
Yes, I am basing that off the research I did for this article: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth 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 wonder if serial content might be better. Because you get a bump every time you have a release, vs. only every three years when you have a whole book release. Either way, 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!
- vidarh 6y ago
  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 doing much marketing before we had a base of reviews, because they apparently find it almost impossible to get positive ROI on Amazon ads until there's a reasonable number of reviews. I intentionally started writing a series, and everything I've seen and heard suggests series rarely even start selling decently until at least the 3rd volume, because people hold off to see if it's worth investing time in. I'd advise against considering what happens to "most" books, because most books gets no marketing, no proper cover design, no effort in writing blurbs, no effort to push the books over time.
  - ellegriffin 6y ago
    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!
    - vidarh 6y ago
      It's not just that the third book is what takes off, but that sales of book 1 and 2 rarely takes off before book 3 is out because people hold off and might sign up to your mailing list etc. but won't read until they know there's more coming. I do certainly think the market is massively geared towards a tiny number of best-sellers, but there are a number of people who still have success with modest sales of individual books simply by focusing more on building a back catalogue and marketing to a fan base more likely to want to buy "everything". You can afford to spend quite a lot more on ads if a single sale might lead to 20 more than if one book is all you have. But that require you to think about it as a business, and a lot of writers don't want to deal with that bit.

ska 6y ago

True - in order to do this analysis properly you need some idea of the distribution of royalties, and publication intervals, etc.

dalai 6y ago

Agree. My non-fiction, niche book generated some income for almost 10 years even though it was outdated after the first 5 or so. I am guessing that in fiction they can earn for a lot longer. There are also other effects to take into consideration: Even a moderate hit will generate interest for previous books; books in a series or in a trilogy will boost each other’s sales. Not that getting the moderate hit is easy in any way.

ellegriffin 6y ago

Yes, I am basing that off the research I did for this article: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth 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 wonder if serial content might be better. Because you get a bump every time you have a release, vs. only every three years when you have a whole book release. Either way, 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!

vidarh 6y ago
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 doing much marketing before we had a base of reviews, because they apparently find it almost impossible to get positive ROI on Amazon ads until there's a reasonable number of reviews. I intentionally started writing a series, and everything I've seen and heard suggests series rarely even start selling decently until at least the 3rd volume, because people hold off to see if it's worth investing time in. I'd advise against considering what happens to "most" books, because most books gets no marketing, no proper cover design, no effort in writing blurbs, no effort to push the books over time.
- ellegriffin 6y ago
  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!
  - vidarh 6y ago
    It's not just that the third book is what takes off, but that sales of book 1 and 2 rarely takes off before book 3 is out because people hold off and might sign up to your mailing list etc. but won't read until they know there's more coming. I do certainly think the market is massively geared towards a tiny number of best-sellers, but there are a number of people who still have success with modest sales of individual books simply by focusing more on building a back catalogue and marketing to a fan base more likely to want to buy "everything". You can afford to spend quite a lot more on ads if a single sale might lead to 20 more than if one book is all you have. But that require you to think about it as a business, and a lot of writers don't want to deal with that bit.