Sales and glitches

While running down the tweets on The FALL, I noticed a couple of interesting links for self-published authors. If you are considering which way to go when publishing your book, then this could be of interest.   It provides the lowdown on what you need, what to expect and better still, lists of what kind of exposure you will get from places like Createspace and Smashwords. Here's the link :

http://writershelpingwriters.net/bookstore/

If, like me, you have been watching your Amazon monthly sales reports and wondering what is going on, then here's the link for you:

http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2016/?src=mc

There are lots of theories as to why even top authors are finding their sales figures dropping, but no conclusive answers as yet. Many suspect a glitch in Amazon's tracking system, or worse, think the company has altered the algorithms to suit different parties. 

https://scriggler.com/SharePost/Opinioncash=eef777d8eda116e438f70f571aa9455d

Another article that every aspiring author should read is behind the third link. Does price matter, does length matter? Do reviews help? All sorts of information gathered together in one place. 

It is an education to read the articles, including the comments section. Get yourself a coffee, sit down with an hour or so to read and inwardly digest what they say.

PC problems

Problems with my pc again, My e-mail keeps vanishing. This is the third time it has taken itself off into the unknown so I hope I am not missing important messages. We suspect it is a clash of some kind between software since I updated to Windows 10. Although I have Windows 10 on my laptop, it does not seem to be affected by the same problem, so I shall have to resort to e-mails on there until this is sorted.

Heard yesterday that Write Words, Inc - an independent US publisher - is closing down after 17 years, so that means that Banners of Alba, my very first book, and Dark Pool, its follow on story, will be reverting to me. I first published with them in 2006 and they have been sending me small sums of money all that time, so it is quite sad to see them disappear.

It means plenty of work over the winter to  check them over and re-publish them on Kindle with new covers. Meanwhile I'd better finish the Matfen Affair, which is standing at around 35,000 words so far.

Indie author figures

No more than  40 self-published authors “make money” via Kindle, according to a report in the New York Times on 7th February this year. Selling more than one million e-book copies in the last five years qualifies you to make this claim. I’m surprised 40 authors have managed that. Here are some quick notes about the topic.

Last year, a third of the 100 best-selling Kindle books were self-published titles. That figure is averaged out for each week. The digital market is huge - there are 4 million titles today in the Kindle Store, compared with 600,000 six years ago. Standing out in such a crowd is crucial and very difficult to do.

Some ground-breaking solutions come from the successful self-published authors such as Meredith Wild, Bella Andre, Barbara Freethy, H.M.Ward, C.J.Lyons. They have struck deals with Ingram Content Group, a major book printer and distributor, thus getting their novels in bookstores, big-box stores and airports.

It seems there are two publishing worlds out there running in parallel. One is the traditional trail and the other is driven by Amazon with books priced at a much lower level.

The majority of authors earn a figure that is well below the poverty line. The statistics are grim:
Overall, the median writing-related income among respondents dropped from $10,500 in 2009 to $8,000 in 2014, a decline of 24%. That’s way below the poverty line! Most authors depend on another job to survive.

So if you’re not selling your books, take heart, you’re not the only one. If you’re considering becoming a writer, think twice, because it won’t make you rich.

Meredith Wild’s story is fully reported in the New York Times, here, and well worth a read.

Depressing news for authors

There’s a new survey out and it tells depressing news. 

Almost 50% of writers are not happy with their earnings. 

A third make less than $500 (£329) a year. It also shows that “the old way of doing things continues to reap the most financial rewards for writers.” 

Traditionally published authors make an average of $3,000–$4,999 (£1,976- £3,292) a year. 

Independent writers make $500–$999 (£329-£658). 

Those who use both ways – earned $7,500–$9,999 (£4,941- £6,587) a year.

Almost 10% earned $100,000 (£65,874) or more, with 4.1% earning $250,000 (£164,681) plus. At the other end of the scale, 50% of writers earned $1,000– $2,999 (£658- £1,976) or less this year.

(That's converting dollars to sterling at today's exchange rates. It always sounds so much more  in dollars!)

The survey claims Independent authors like doing things on their own terms. “I know that if my book doesn’t sell today, there’s more I can do to promote it tomorrow, or maybe it will see a boost when my next book comes out.”

Traditionally published authors on the other hand are willing to give up their rights for royalties, like the fact that the publisher takes all risks and think a publisher can do more than they could themselves.

If you want to read Alison Flood's article in full, here's the link ~  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/23/authors-earnings-fall-350pa-survey

Books and Spikes

If you want a detailed report on how UK publishers are doing, then check out "Review of 2014" by Philip Jones in the Bookseller 20 January, 2015.

Here's a swift gloss -

"e-book sales outpaced print sales during the year."

Domestic e-book sales for Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan totalled 49m units in 2014, a 15.3% rise on 2013. There was an 18% rise in 2012, and a huge 105% gain in 2012 (on 2011).

There are and probably always will be, spikes. The e-book market rate of growth was exaggerated in 2012 by the Fifty Shades trilogy, Spikes like this can play havoc with a companies figures, skew general trends and drive analysts crazy.

Independently published titles are growing, but no one has a way of tracking the rate of growth.

HarperCollins UK chief executive Charlie Redmayne says the traditional Christmas sales spike has "all but" disappeared. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said virtually the same thing two weeks ago.

The other thing of interest is what everyone is calling the "print renaissance." The book trade has "rekindled its love affair with the physical book." 

Has digital helped revive and reinvent print?

The shift to tablet reading and the rise of subscription services, will likely change the narrative again. As Kindle's Russ Grandinetti suggested at Digital Book World last week, nothing is stable. Let's hope the book business is doing better than we all thought.

Quercus

Sarah Shaffi reported on 22^nd January that Quercus had put itself up for sale. I missed the news back then, so sculling around the internet on a dull night can pay dividends. I've also discovered that Zara Phillips has had her baby and its already a month old. How could I have missed hearing about that? What might I discover next?

Anyway, it seems Quercus is expecting a significant trading loss for 2013 and decided “it would be in the best interests of the company's shareholders to seek potential offers by means of a formal sale process. We now feel that the skills and experience of Quercus' team will flourish best within a larger organisation and so we've decided to put the company up for sale. In the meantime it's business as usual at Baker Street."

The independent publisher put its losses down to "continuing issues within the book trade which led retailers to adopt very conservative ordering policies", and "a lower than expected upturn in digital sales over the Christmas period to the end of the year".

Prospects of a merger with another publisher were squashed: "We like being an independent publisher, and that's how we want to operate. Obviously there have been headwinds in that direction across the trade, but one set of bad results for us doesn't mean the end of independent publishing."

All this after having one of the bigger hits of the last few years - the Stig Larsson novels. It just goes to show that even three best selling novels are not enough to keep a publisher afloat.