Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Alex wrote: "That's the mathematics I'm working on, Dale. Much as I would like to sell 100k+ copies per year of each title I have out, I figure that the more titles I have out the fewer of each one I have to se..."

Yep. If you can publish 100K books, you should be set. ;-)

Theodore wrote: "We all know how much we earn per page view or by the sale of each book: bupkis! You'd have to sell a ton of books to make that much. And even if your gross revenue got anywhere near those lofty heights, show me your marketing costs, and then, net them out!."

True, although I think the figures given were just for "royalties" paid by Amazon and weren't intended to suggest net income. Presumably higher-earning authors are not primarily selling $0.99 ebooks, either. The exact figures depends on file size, but when I sell a $4.99 ebook at 70% royalty rate, I get something like $3.45. At that rate a "mere" 29,000 books would get you over $100K. If you can sell for more, it becomes even less.

Then if you think about someone who has maybe 10 books out there, each one only has to sell 2,900 a year. Still a lot, but the required unit sales per book start to fall quite a bit when the price can be raised and the number of books goes up.

As for bottom line, you're absolutely right, of course. Having $100K in annual sales doesn't mean anything like $100K in net income. I guess we should shoot for $200K in sales. ;-)

Soooo . . . doing a minimal amount of research (i.e., Googling it), I found that Jeff Bezos mentioned the 1,000 making $100k+ figure in his annual report to shareholders. The article that cites this says:

It’s not that surprising, as way back in 2014/15, Author Earnings discovered that not only were hundreds of best-selling indie authors making $100K a year through KDP, but there were also several thousand indies firmly in the midlist bracket for earnings, taking between $25,000-$50,000 a year through KDP.

However, this Ingenta post on said Author Earnings report casts some doubt on the veracity of the analysis. Apparently Author Earnings' results were a projection based on data from just two "data snapshots" taken in February and April 2014, That's rather different from gathering information on actual annual earnings.

I wouldn't be prepared to say that Amazon's numbers are made up, but it's certainly possible that they are based on faulty assumptions or analysis. Then again, given the scale of the self-publishing world, 1,000 authors is just a drop in the bucket. It's possible that there are that many making that much money. That doesn't at all suggest, however, that it's easy to make big money self-publishing, or that most authors are making much at all.

How I almost photographed the lunar eclipse: The Night Doesn't Always Cooperate

Thanks Alicya, Anna, and Debz. I'll ask about that font. It's a bit hard to tell from the image how wide the spine actually is. There may not actually be that much room.

Lydia wrote: "I like how the spiral flows from front to back, though it is obvious only because of the laid out nature of the cover at the moment. I would wonder what the back would look like in isolation and if..."

Thanks, Lydia. Good comments.

Anna Faversham wrote: "Ah but the cover. The spiral alludes to Fibonacci - so that's good. The colours work well. I'm not sure about the guy with the gun. Too obvious? Anyway, I'm not sure. It's not a no-no. Just a maybe. Possibly okay."

Thank you, Anna. I received a proposal that was less aggressive, but we thought it was probably too passive for this work. We'll see if anyone else thinks it's too much.

Simi wrote: "My name is Simi Sunny, and I would like to get to know each every one of you. I write Fantasy, Mystery, and Young Adult novels. Right now, I'm currently working on WIP that's both Fantasy/Paranormal novel ^^ "


Welcome to the group!

D.J. wrote: "I like it. Very professional looking cover."

Thank you!

Actually, I think that's pretty good. You might want to work in that it's a collection of short stories, e.g.:

That's certainly true for the couples who meet in these eight compelling short stories and find that Love Starts Here.

I might also cut the "again" and make it, "...your life will never be the same."

Other than that, I like it.

Valerie wrote: "I think it looks great - very cool and professional. It's not really my preferred genre for reading but, in general, it's a very striking cover and would definitely get my attention :)"

Thanks, Valerie!

Alex wrote: "It looks good, Dale, I like it overall, my only slight concern is that I've seen the image of the guy with the gun before on at least one book cover, Ratcatcher by Tim Stevens."

Thanks, Alex. I see what you mean. It's not the same face or even the same gun, but it's definitely the same pose. But I think the covers are different enough that it will be okay.

I've been working with an artist on 99designs.com to create a new cover for The Fibonacci Murders. I plan to have him redesign all of the covers for the series to provide more professional and unified look. Here's what we've come up with:



Any and all comments appreciated.

An upcoming astronomical event: The Moon in Red. Even if you're outside the "target area" this time, you might find something of interest here.

Getting a little grandiose with my title: How to Solve All the World's Problems, in Publishous.

Wonderful interview, Carole!

Here's an interesting interview with a couple of the editors at Medium.

Thanks again, folks!

I have two new stories for you today:

The Race, a flash fiction piece.

The Wish, my first story for Curiosity Never Killed the Writer.

Enjoy!

Thanks, folks!