Richard Stephenson's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"

When I started writing Collapse, I didn't really take the idea of publishing it very seriously. I mainly wanted to see if I could actually write a novel. I also love to write, it is a fantastic means to exercise my brain. I considered it a hobby, a fun way to unwind and stay busy. Some people pass their time playing fantasy-football, others enjoy gardening, I decided to take up writing as a hobby.

I think I was on maybe the fifth chapter when it dawned on me that I was actually pretty good at writing. Call me arrogant or conceited, but I impressed myself with how good the story was coming along. It was then that I truly believed that my story could be published and people would read it.

I was faced with the dilemma of what to do. Should I go the traditional route and find a publisher or do it on my own? To answer that question I did what I always do - research. Other than the obvious and prevalent information telling me that I had a better chance of being struck by lightning than being traditionally published, one article in particular really opened my eyes. Then I read a follow up to that post and the New York Times Best Selling author stated that she made a net of $24,517.36. Mind you that is a lot of money, but nowhere near what I imagined an author on the New York Times Best Seller list would make from a popular book. What shocked me even more was she made $25K when the publisher made $453K. No, that's not a typo, her publisher made in the neighborhood of half a million dollars compared to her $25K. Further research revealed that the publisher eats all of the cost of distributing the book, they do everything besides actually writing the book - cover art, editing, formating, marketing, raw materials, printing, distribution, and a host of other things. The author in that article made an educated guess that they netted $250K on her book. She got a measly ten percent of that. That hardly seems fair if you ask me. The big publishing houses wouldn't be in business without authors and they only get ten percent? Something is wrong with that picture.

I was still fueled with the same arrogance that led me to believe that I had a best seller on my hands. I was not arrogant enough, however, to believe that the NY Times was on the horizon anytime soon. I remembered that a friend of a friend had self-published a book on Amazon and was making a decent amount of money at it. I went to Amazon and found that it had some of the worst reviews I've ever seen on Amazon. I'm talking cringe-worthy reviews stating he was a "blight on the literary world." He had more one and two star reviews than anything. I felt sorry for him, it was just sad. The one positive thing that I took away from this was that if he could do it, I certainly could do it. Earning a seventy percent royalty compared to ten percent made much more sense to me.

My research then focused on self-publishing. I found some very encouraging articles like this one and discovered indie author legends Hugh Howey, Amanda Hocking, and of course E.L. James, the author of the Twilight fan-fiction turned Fifty Shades books, who started out as an indie. Self-publishing is an untapped gold mine. The decision was made, I was going to stake my claim and mine for gold in the self-publishing world.

I've read a lot of material proclaiming the downsides of self-publishing. Some of the more fanatical articles I came across actually claimed that self-publishing was going to destroy traditional publishing as we know it. The doomsday prophecies even went so far as to say that it wouldn't be long before the brick and mortar retail giants like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million would be defeated by the online giant that is Amazon. Once the brick and mortar retail chains closed their doors, the publishing industry would never recover.

I'm counting on it.

For the record, I don't subscribe to the prediction that all of the brick and mortar chains will go bankrupt and join the likes of Borders. No matter how much popularity ereaders gain, people will always want physical books they can hold in their hands. I predict that the large retail chains will dwindle and fade away leaving only one major bookstore chain left. The bulk of the publishing industry will be online. We're already seeing it today. Starting in 2010, Amazon sold more ebooks than hardcover books. In 2011, Amazon sold more ebooks than all printed books. The future of publshing is ebooks.

The big publishing houses are terrified of independent authors. They can't control us and don't have any say in what we do. They have been the official gatekeepers of our reading selection until now. The self-publishing industry has broken down the gate and made the big publishing houses irrelevant in that regard. Indie authors let the reader decide what they want to read. The obvious downside to taking the big publishing houses out of the picture is that they filter out a lot of garbage, the "blight on the literary world" for example. I think that the readers are willing to sift through the garbage if it means they can find the gems on their own. It doesn't take long to read a sample on Amazon and make the determination for yourself if it's worth your time.

Indie authors can set their own price, something that has the big publishing houses running scared. The big publishing houses are selling ebooks at $15. That is simply an outrageous price to charge for an ebook, especially when you can spend a couple of dollars more and purchase the physical book. I think that even $10 is too much for an ebook when you take into account that the most expensive costs on producing a physical book are production and distribution. Ebooks don't have those costs to cover. When will the big publishing houses wake up and start taking this seriously? Indie authors can undercut them at every turn at much lower prices.

The self-publishing industry is growing more each year. In 2009, ebook sales topped $287 million; in 2010, that figure more than tripled to $878 million. Analysts predict ebook sales to top $2 billion in 2013. Self-published authors are scrambling to get in on the action. In 2012, fifteen of the top 100 ebooks on Amazon were by self-published authors.

Here's hoping indie authors dominate that list in 2013.