5 ms·

This is a catchy title, but a more accurate one would be: > My book on Amazon sold 4,000 copies and made me $12,000.

by jmduke 14y ago

helipad 14y ago
Indeed. 4,000 books gets you on a bestseller list these days? Methinks the algorithm writers need to get their pencils out.
- petercooper 14y ago
  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/56284-how-many-copies-does-it-take-to-be-an-amazon-bestseller.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bo... So it seems you can hit the top 5 on Amazon with 300 sales a day.
manojlds 14y ago
Isn't that what the author is trying to say. Eventhough it's a bestseller, he is embarrassed to give out the numbers.
- notatoad 14y ago
  He seems to be trying to say he made an an embarrassingly small amount of money, and that it is somehow unreasonable to have made only $12000 by selling 4000 books. At least that's how I read this piece.
  - dsmithn 14y ago
    No, he's saying everyone else expected him to make more than that because traditionally authors don't speak publicly on the amount of money they make and the number of books sold.
HoochTHX 14y ago
At $3 profit per book sold, $15 retail, I can see why he is mad at the value suck industry(publishers/distributors).
- tracker1 14y ago
  That's $6 profit... He got $12000 for 4000 books, which is 50% of the profit, his cut. For a physical book, with distribution costs, and the likes of amazon are probably getting about a 20-30% cut.. so that's really more like $9 profit off a $15 book.. 3 for the author, 3 for the publisher and 2-3 for Amazon. bringing the cost of the book's printing to $6 or so... not bad. Also, the "best seller" was only for the one week, and 4000 books, of which most were probably during that one week isn't so bad.. the tail probably sucked though. Now, self-publishing as an e-Book on amazon, would have given him potentially a bit more.. say Amazon takes $4, that gives him $11, and if only 1/2 bought it (available in digital only), would gross him $22k, even with a price drop to say $10 for digital (amazon getting $3) would be $14k ... That's some food for thought. If you can write a book every two months, and sell 2K copies for a $10 digital version.. that's not a bad living. Bonus, if you become a little well known, people will order more of your back catalog.
  - jld 14y ago
    Finishing a book every two months would be insane for a fiction writer.
    - graylights 14y ago
      But if you look at ebooks on amazon it's getting lot more common to have serials. Shorter books, cheaper price, fast turnaround. My favorite is Wool, which has done 8 books in last 20 months and is excellent.
      - dougk16 14y ago
        John Scalzi's "The Human Division" is another serial that Amazon has really been pushing me to buy that I can only assume is worth it. Second for Wool being excellent.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Clearly the idea here is to sell more books. That and the heavily monetized links inside the article itself. When an author talks about their book sales like their so pathetic I often wonder what exactly did they expect? And more importantly why did they expect that? If it was possible as a writer to just sit down, spend 3 to 6 months writing something, and then walk away with a million bucks there would be an entire ecosystem built up around finding these authors, then giving them enough money to write their books, in exchange for a cut of the profits down the road. Currently the only way to do that as an "unknown" is to write code, not prose. And guess what, there is an ecosystem that built up around that activity. Hence the lure of this and other web sites.
- gjm11 14y ago
  > there would be an entire ecosystem built up around finding these authors, then giving them enough money to write their books, in exchange for a cut of the profits down the road. That's a great idea! We could call the entities that do that "publishers". They'd pay their authors in advance, independent of book sales, but then after that they'd take almost all the money raised by selling the books. Perhaps they'd give the authors, say, 10% of the takings, so that authors of really successful books could do well too. It's amazing no one's thought of it before, really. (Less-snarky version: It's perfectly true that you can't sit down, write for a few months, and reliably get rich. But what you present as evidence for that isn't, because in fact exactly the ecosystem you describe is what already exists, and it works just like you say, except that usually the authors do more work than 3-6 months and only a tiny fraction of them walk away with $1M.)

This is a catchy title, but a more accurate one would be: > My book on Amazon sold 4,000 copies and made me $12,000.

by jmduke 14y ago

This is a catchy title, but a more accurate one would be: > My book on Amazon sold 4,000 copies and made me $12,000.

Indeed. 4,000 books gets you on a bestseller list these days? Methinks the algorithm writers need to get their pencils out.

petercooper 14y ago
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/56284-how-many-copies-does-it-take-to-be-an-amazon-bestseller.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bo... So it seems you can hit the top 5 on Amazon with 300 sales a day.

manojlds 14y ago

Isn't that what the author is trying to say. Eventhough it's a bestseller, he is embarrassed to give out the numbers.

notatoad 14y ago
He seems to be trying to say he made an an embarrassingly small amount of money, and that it is somehow unreasonable to have made only $12000 by selling 4000 books. At least that's how I read this piece.
- dsmithn 14y ago
  No, he's saying everyone else expected him to make more than that because traditionally authors don't speak publicly on the amount of money they make and the number of books sold.

HoochTHX 14y ago

At $3 profit per book sold, $15 retail, I can see why he is mad at the value suck industry(publishers/distributors).

tracker1 14y ago
That's $6 profit... He got $12000 for 4000 books, which is 50% of the profit, his cut. For a physical book, with distribution costs, and the likes of amazon are probably getting about a 20-30% cut.. so that's really more like $9 profit off a $15 book.. 3 for the author, 3 for the publisher and 2-3 for Amazon. bringing the cost of the book's printing to $6 or so... not bad. Also, the "best seller" was only for the one week, and 4000 books, of which most were probably during that one week isn't so bad.. the tail probably sucked though. Now, self-publishing as an e-Book on amazon, would have given him potentially a bit more.. say Amazon takes $4, that gives him $11, and if only 1/2 bought it (available in digital only), would gross him $22k, even with a price drop to say $10 for digital (amazon getting $3) would be $14k ... That's some food for thought. If you can write a book every two months, and sell 2K copies for a $10 digital version.. that's not a bad living. Bonus, if you become a little well known, people will order more of your back catalog.
- jld 14y ago
  Finishing a book every two months would be insane for a fiction writer.
  - graylights 14y ago
    But if you look at ebooks on amazon it's getting lot more common to have serials. Shorter books, cheaper price, fast turnaround. My favorite is Wool, which has done 8 books in last 20 months and is excellent.
    - dougk16 14y ago
      John Scalzi's "The Human Division" is another serial that Amazon has really been pushing me to buy that I can only assume is worth it. Second for Wool being excellent.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Clearly the idea here is to sell more books. That and the heavily monetized links inside the article itself. When an author talks about their book sales like their so pathetic I often wonder what exactly did they expect? And more importantly why did they expect that? If it was possible as a writer to just sit down, spend 3 to 6 months writing something, and then walk away with a million bucks there would be an entire ecosystem built up around finding these authors, then giving them enough money to write their books, in exchange for a cut of the profits down the road. Currently the only way to do that as an "unknown" is to write code, not prose. And guess what, there is an ecosystem that built up around that activity. Hence the lure of this and other web sites.

gjm11 14y ago
> there would be an entire ecosystem built up around finding these authors, then giving them enough money to write their books, in exchange for a cut of the profits down the road. That's a great idea! We could call the entities that do that "publishers". They'd pay their authors in advance, independent of book sales, but then after that they'd take almost all the money raised by selling the books. Perhaps they'd give the authors, say, 10% of the takings, so that authors of really successful books could do well too. It's amazing no one's thought of it before, really. (Less-snarky version: It's perfectly true that you can't sit down, write for a few months, and reliably get rich. But what you present as evidence for that isn't, because in fact exactly the ecosystem you describe is what already exists, and it works just like you say, except that usually the authors do more work than 3-6 months and only a tiny fraction of them walk away with $1M.)