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I've read some blogs on Bigcloset lately about selling your book on Amazon and Kindle. My question, does it actually work? As in does it actually make money? I'm not talking about a payment of 100-200USD once in a blue moon, I'm asking if it's enough for someone to live in conditions that can be described as middle class in a city like, say, Boston for half a year.
What are the pros and cons or special considerations for selling in such a place?
For those who do sell on Amazon/Kindle and actually make money from it, how much do you make if you don't mind telling? I know everyone has their own talents, and my talents may not be as good as the others but still I'm just making a survey, to see if it's worth the time and effort.
Comments
Depends on how much you can sell
I've had my first book up on Amazon since the end of December for 99 cents. I just recently received my VERY FIRST ROYALTY PAYMENT... for a whopping 1.04.
I've sold less than 50 copies worldwide to date.
Of course, this is without advertising, as a brand new, unknown author. It's also the only piece I have up online, and isn't something I can really recommend to a lot of the people I know IRL to buy since it's TG oriented.
On the other hand, Katie seems to do pretty well for herself with her books. And who knows? Maybe my second effort will do better!
I guess the thing to keep in mind is, half a year? Maybe. Just don't expect it to be half a year any time soon.
Melanie E.
Send Tanya Allan a PM
And she may be able to direct you to how to hyperlink and advertise your book on a number of book search engines and sites.
Sephrena
Kindle
I still haven't gotten a check from my two so I don't know yet but I was told by another author that its definitely a supplementary income.
Unless you are a professional writer
I'd treat any income you get from the likes of Amazon as a bonus. Use it for something nice like getting a facial.
I am sure a few full time TG writers can make a living but IMHO, the genre is too narrow to support a lot of Authors.
A get a small income from selling a few photographs from time to time. I got a whopping $750 last year, mainly from one picture of a Pied FlyCatcher in Flight. I take piccies as form of relaxation.
Take yesterday for example. A beautiful day here in my part of Blighty. A real change from recent weeks.
Standing on an embankment waiting for 'Clan Line' pulling the Orient Express Pulmans was a real pleasure.
Samantha
Clan Line is a restored Steam Engine. 4-6-2 wheel arrangment and is a member of the 'Merchant Navy' Class of loco. It will be on the 'Watercress Line' next weekend along with West Country locol 'Braunton'. I may be there taking a few pictures if I'm not on a plane to India.
Kindle Sales Success
Since June I've been making royalties of 1400 dollars a month or more, so there is a market. What drives that market? It's a little bit of everything. What is your audience? How well you write? How good your cover is? How much exposure you can get? Can you get ranked? Do you Market?
I know of several who sell 400 or more books a month. If you figure making 2 bucks per book, that's 800 a month in the bank. Is it enough to live off of? That depends how you live. I could probably live off my 1400 but the market is fickle and last month I had my worst sales month in a while 450 books sold.
I know Tanya often sells well, but she has 40 titles to her credit and already has a healthy following. You can count on her getting good initial sales when she releases a new book and I don't know if everyone can be so fortunate (she won't let me peek at her numbers, but we both released books this month and I'm curious how OEM did to her new book which I have heard a lot of good things about).
If you want to make a living off of Amazon there is a few keys.
One, write good stories. It doesn't matter if they are 5000 words or 500,000, they do have to be good, generally free of most errors, and have some decent character development. Amazon is run on reviews, poor reviews can sink you.
Two, start building a fan base as soon as possible. Those of us who sell, Tanya, Karin Bishop, Maddy Bell, myself, have a core fan base that gets our books noticed quicker. I built my fan base off of big closet (so remember that when you publish).
Three, get titles published. I have 19 titles, as does Karin, I think Tanya has 40, this is where your residual income comes from. Sure, a new release can net you 200 sales off the bat, but have 10 books sold per other titles really pads the bank account.
Four, don't be afraid to ask for help. I've never turned down giving people advice or asking advice of others who have gone before.
Five, read. Read about marketing and about formatting, read people who write similar veins as you do to see where your genre is going.
Six, and this is tricky, have broad appeal. The one reason I sell is because I am not pigeon-toed to transgender fiction alone or just transgender audiences. I have run several successful promotions on mainstream sites and have gotten great sales (For a week I outsold Steven King).
In the end though, be true to your own vision. It is real easy to take things to heart. When people criticize you, ask if the criticism is valid. If so, make corrections, if not, vent and move on. I hope I helped.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
If
If you write something mainstream enough for the non-fetish community to also be buying.
If you write enough to keep your sale numbers up high enough.
If you make it your full time job.
If you can survive until it starts paying off.
There are a lot of IFs.
BTW I heard a news story about a woman that was incredibly in debt. She started cranking out semi-erotic romance stories on Amazon (1 or 2 a month) She has paid off her debt (or was paying it down quickly) and had a high 6 figure income from sales. (Her husband kept food on the table and power for the computer.)
I don't know how much you need to live that lifestyle in Boston, but if I had Katie's Amazon income, I would cut back on the amount I work at my job or quit altogether.
Katie, my sales died (not that they were high) in January and February too.
It seems my ears are burning...........
..............so here's my penny's worth.
I started writing and posting to this site and Sapphire's Place (& Others) about ten years ago. I was reluctant, but was encouraged by those who knew me and liked my work. I learned from my mistakes (and I made a lot, and still do!), and took all helpful criticism as constructive. I was fortunate, I received very few negative comments.
I only started publishing eBooks and paperbacks 34 months ago, in April 2011.
I started selling about 50 or 60 books a month, and now I have 40 titles and sell around 9000 ebooks a year, and a handful of KOBO books, Smashwords books and paperbacks through www.feedaread.com.
Last month(Feb) I published two new books on the 13th and 20th of the month. My sales were around 985 for the month. Royalties mean I'm roughly the same as Katie...$2.00 a book(give or take 25c)
Advice:
1. Have your work professionally edited by someone you trust.
2. Post to free sites first to get a following and listen to feedback.
3. Be prepared to learn and adapt how you write to be more readable.
4. Have a website to publicise your work and as a contact point for people to communicate with you.
5. Join groups and sites on which you can publicise your work.
6. Use Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and anything else that can raise your profile.
7. Go for it!
8. Never pay to publish. Writers get paid to write. Publishers get paid to publish... if you self publish, you can do it for nothing and reap all the royalties without agents and publishers stealing your money for your work.
9. Paperbacks cost more to produce and therefore are more expensive to buy. A Kindle eBook that I sell at $3.49, I reap around $2.00 royalty. If I sell the same book as a hardback, I have to charge $7.99 to get back $1.75. Then the customer still has to pay postage on top.
PM me for any other information.
Good luck
Tanya
There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!
Kindle pricing
Just out of curiosity, does the author or amazon set the price? For an example Maddy Bell's Gaby books (40 chapters) list at 3.99, Nena books (8 chapters) list at 7.99 ... How ever both original price is set to 9.99. Just thought that was odd.
The Author, which is why you
The Author, which is why you see 20 page 'books' for $5.99 +.
Selling on Amazon
The key, as I understand it, is networking. With BC, you have at least one advantage in that if you allow Erin to link to your book, your book will have free advertising and exposure to a fairly large universe of potential buyers at exactly zero cost to you, yet Amazon will pay a commission to BC, a win/win relationship.
Most successful writers have at least a blog, and perhaps a presence on Facebook or other social networking site. This provides a platform for communicating with your fans, letting them know about upcoming books, providing a teaser for existing releases, and generally keeping in touch with your audience.
Chose your tags wisely, as many find potential books to read based upon tags and reviews alone.
Price wisely. Three or four bucks is the new black, as they say. It's cheap enough that very few people have to wonder where their rent is coming from if they buy your book, and it's about the cost of an ordinary hamburger, just for comparison.
Consider joining the Amazon exclusive programme for authors. This will allow you, on a limited basis, to offer your book as a freebie or a one-dollar title for a short time, once a year as I recall, yet still be paid royalties as if you'd sold it for full price. This is a wonderful way to build a readership, assuming that you've made your book worth reading. Amazon sales will almost certainly make up the bulk of your sales in any case, so giving up on Apple and Barnes & Noble won't hurt as much as you thought it might. Their sales combined are an almost negligible fraction of the total market.
Add to that as well a very nice selection of author tools, including a fairly decent spellchecker in the KDP section.
They really do make life easy for authors.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Free Book today on Formatting for Kindle
Formatting of Kindle Books: a Brief Tutorial [Kindle Edition]
by Charles Spender (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GHN7WQ?
The book focuses primarily on authors who use Microsoft Word.
Note that the book is very discouraging about publishing on Kindle. He's right only in that most Kindle authors don't make the New York Times Best Sellers list, but that's true of the vast majority of print authors as well. J.K. Rowling did rather well, and was a rather unlikely success to boot. One never knows what's possible until one has a go at it.
Forecasting failure before one starts is little better than advising one to suck one's thumb in social situations, lest one say something inappropriate.
Go for it. To hell with critics who haven't even bothered themselves to read what you write before saying it's a bad idea.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
My experiences
I posted two novels (first and second in a series) on the Kindle Store and Smashwords last May, at $2.99, and a third, shorter novel (in the same world but not in the same series) this January at $1.99. So far I've sold 67 copies, 11 on Smashwords and 56 on the Kindle store; more than half the sales have been in the last couple of months, so they seem to be increasing over time.
Smashwords pays a slightly higher royalty -- or a much higher royalty if you price the book at less than $2.99 (which seems like a good idea if it's a novella or very short novel), so I wouldn't recommend using Amazon's exclusivity program. It doesn't look to me like they're really giving you that much in exchange for not being allowed to sell the book through other retailers.
The only promotion I've done is to post stories here, on FM, and on Shifti.org with links saying "hey, if you enjoyed this free story, you can buy these others!"
The money I've earned so far doesn't really pay me for the effort of ebook formatting, creating the KDP and Smashwords author accounts and learning to use them, etc. But that learning overhead is past, and the effort to format my future works as ebooks is a lot less, so I'll probably keep doing it. Anecdotally, ebook sales build slowly over time instead of selling most of their copies in the first few weeks like paper books in bookstores, and my limited experience bears this out.
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http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/trismegistusshandy
http://shifti.org/wiki/User:Trismegistus_Shandy