Two Year Self-Publishing Anniversary–Thoughts on the Past and What’s Going to Work in the Future

I self-published my first ebook (and poorest seller), The Goblin Brothers Adventures, in December of 2010, with The Emperor’s Edge (the start of my most popular series) following soon after. Encrypted (my personal favorite story to date) came along in January. Those two novels and the MG short-story collection were everything I’d written at the time (that I deemed suitable for human consumption), and I chose to self-publish them all instead of playing the agent-hunt game. It didn’t hurt that I’d learned how well some “indie” authors (it wasn’t cool to refer to yourself as self-published anymore) were doing in the Kindle Store. Until that fall, I hadn’t known how easy it was to submit one’s ebooks to the various stores and how one could compete on a level playing field with the traditionally published ebooks.

As you might guess, I didn’t become an overnight bestseller, but I did have some moderate success, largely as a result of playing with advertising and by making a short story free at Barnes & Noble and Smashwords (I didn’t know how to get a free ebook into Amazon at the time). Here are some of my progress-report posts from the last two years, in case you’re curious about my journey thus far:

Can a “Normal” Author Make a Living E-publishing? (in which I share my sales stats after about five months of self-publishing)
Self-publishing Adventures: 9 Months and 10,000 Ebooks Later…
My Self-Publishing Thoughts After 50,000+ Ebook Sales (published in Fall 2012)

For those who don’t want to dig through the old posts, it’s been a fairly steady increase in sales and earnings over the last 24 months, though there’s definitely a cyclical aspect too (new release months, especially for full-length novels, are the highest earning months with the month before a new release typically being lowest). The overall trend, though, has been upward. This is not, I should point out, because I’m selling so many more copies of each book each month (I’m not), but because I’m continuously writing and publishing more titles. Now, two years into this, I have six full-length novels out along with several novellas and short stories. I’m editing Novel #7 now (Decrypted) and plan to publish it next month.

Here are a few notable milestones I’ve reached thus far:

Quitting the day job — This came about a year ago, though I’d “checked out” of the old job months before. Writing books is just more fun.
Being approached by traditional publishers — Amazon’s 47North asked about the Emperor’s Edge series last spring (you can see the post where I debated things here, asking for opinions from readers), and a lady at Macmillan suggested an independent project to me a couple of months ago. These offers weren’t quite right for me, but I can see a day when I sign on with a traditional publisher, at least for one series. Like many authors today, I’d be interested in pursuing a hybrid approach, so I can get (one hopes) the best of both worlds. AKA, the increased visibility from a traditionally published book series might help me sell more of my independent titles, muhaha! I’m not looking to rush into things there, though, as the industry is in a state of flux, and I’m enjoying things as they are right now, so I’ve yet to approach an agent or publisher of my own accord.
50,000+ ebooks sold (does not include free downloads) — It’s probably more like 60 or 70,000 now, but I’m too lazy busy in an important, authorial way to tally things up. You can read the 50K-sold post I linked to above for more details, but this has been a nice milestone to reach. There are lots of independent authors who have sold many, many more ebooks, but I think it’s cool to realize we can reach these numbers without being #1 bestsellers on Amazon or writing in one of the super popular genres or having a huge “break out” book. I just keep plugging away and trying to write stories people will enjoy.
Having readers start a fan forum, complete with fan art and fan fiction — Seriously, it’s nice to see earnings increase (after all, that’s what makes it so you can pursue your writing passion for a living, not to mention fund the construction of your evil overlord lair) and get emails from publishers, but this is what it’s all about, people enjoying your work enough to share it with others and even form communities around it. I can’t imagine that getting email from a reader who’s loving your series ever gets old.

As far as e-publishing in general goes, here are a few things I’ve seen over the last two years (that doesn’t sound like a long time, but this industry is changing quickly):

Other self-published authors coming and going — Some people work harder when their dreams of bestseller-dom aren’t met right away, but others get discouraged and fade away. When I looked at some of the comments on those old posts I was digging up, I saw a lot of names that have since disappeared from my radar, and when I checked their blogs, I found them lacking in recent updates — their amazon author pages were the same way. It’s true that not everybody can “make it” as an author, and poor sales and getting shredded by strangers are certainly ego-withering experiences, but I think you’d be surprised how many success stories are from people who just kept going after others quit.
Much more competition in the marketplaces — When I got started in December of 2010, I was lamenting that I’d already missed the low-hanging fruit (days when there weren’t many traditionally published ebooks in the Kindle Store, thus leading readers to try indie authors, even those with mediocre blurbs, samples, and cover art). As you can guess, there are many more titles two years later, and a lot of the “tricks” people have exploited to gain visibility at Amazon no longer work. Does that mean you can’t make it if you start today? Of course not, but you have to be prepared for a long, slow climb, not a meteoric burst onto the scene (don’t feel bad — I never got the meteoric burst either).
The end of the one-hit wonder — Oh, I imagine there’ll still be a few exceptions, but most people aren’t getting anywhere with one book anymore. There’s nothing wrong with publishing a single title, but if you want to make an income from this, you need to think in terms of a writing career. You publish a book, market it, collect the emails of those who liked it, publish another book, market it, collect more readers, etc. etc. etc. It might take ten or twenty books before you have enough fans to turn your latest release into a bestseller (if that point even comes), but if you get there like this, you’ve got staying power. Many of the one-hit wonders who were topping the charts when I got started aren’t getting any traction with their new releases today. Why? Because they didn’t follow a path that allowed them to gradually accumulate more and more fans (i.e. didn’t collect email addresses, Facebook likes, Twitter followers, etc.; bounced around in different genres; waited too long to publish new titles, etc. etc. etc.). Today, for those who want to make a career as an indie, it’s about writing lots of entertaining stories, thinking like a publisher instead of an artist, and being patient.

Now, I have editing to get back to, but those are my random thoughts on this Monday afternoon. If you have any comments or questions on my journey or where I think things are going (or, you know, what my favorite color is), feel free to leave them below. As always, thanks for reading!

 

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