Behind the Curtains of An Indie Author

If you came here from Reddit or any of my writer forums, welcome to the show.

If you came here from Facebook, welcome back.


In the interest of anyone thinking of self-publishing or already are a self-published writer I have decided to write about a subject all of us dread to think about but must be acknowledged.

Sales.

On the forums I lurk and participate in, it feels like talk about Sales goes one of two ways; either someone is humble-bragging about what they've done or, and this is far more common, someone is panicking about not having enough sales.

Now, to be honest, the self-published books I've read tend to be either a) pretty bad or b) close to pretty good.

For me, most are too 'wordy'. If I had to take a guess, I'd say many of these fellow Indie writers are in their twenties, as I was as well at one time. That's okay. But I'm a talk and plot guy, not a preach and describe the scenery guy.

Back in my twenties, we didn't have the ability to push out whatever we chose without having to go through the hoops or getting a professional opinion. If you wanted to be published, you had to rely on someone else's opinion, a gatekeeper so to speak. You had to submit it and wait weeks, months for a letter.

I once received a form rejection letter from a publisher that I had no recollection of contacting, much less whatever it was I submitted.

It felt like a preemptive rejection and quite rude, to be honest...

For those who may fall into the b) category listed above, I usually want to say 'hey, let me help you trim this a little'. But then it is probably too late and perhaps a little rude. After all, they have already published and moved on to checking their sales stats, Kindle listing, book 3 of their fantasy epic trilogy, etc, wondering when the gold will start rolling in.

So with that said, I'm peeling back the curtain on my book sales to explain why you don't see a Tesla in my driveway. Maybe it will help some of you indie authors feel better about yourself or at least not as alone and worthless, as I sometimes feel.

Click that little 'read more' link below to continue.



First, I'm in my mid-forties. I've been writing one way or another for a long time. I've done some journaling, written some overly-complicated long emails and the occasional short story (about twenty so far if I guess). My first full-length novel was a symbolic story of heartbreak in the guise of a traveler crossing the Sahara, a lost Indiana Jones. I was about twenty at the time. I don't know what happened to it but it was probably pure crap. It was the longest thing I ever written until then. I spent many hours hand-writing before typing it out, back before the days of word processing.

Five years later, Windows Word changed my life forever. I did another book crossing young angst, religion and wrestling at the end of the grunge area; Duff Ragwell and His Amazing Channel Changer.

I submitted that to a publisher who sent me a very nice rejection letter stating they didn't see a market for a 'wrestling' book. Little did they know the WCW and WWE were about to go for each other's throats. I never resubmitted that anywhere else.

I then switched to magazines. I wrote, reported, edited, wrangled stories, met advertisers, published and distributed this for two years. It was a soul-sucking experience that was amazing.It's incredible what you can do when you don't know how to do it. But eventually, it ended. I started with a car and four roommates and it ended with me taking a bus to advertiser meetings and living alone in a subletted apartment for a few months. Burn-out.

I backed away from public writing for another five years. I continually worked on a love story of childhood romance, despite having only bad experiences in this department. Then I started another book, based on my experiences during a summer sabbatical in a small mountain town. More on that later.

Then Y2K happened.

So let's speed things up by 10 years - self-publishing became an emerging reality and I took advantage of a 'sale'. I pushed out that story on the small mountain town. It was an awful experience, the book was sub-par, full of typos (even on the cover which I am confident wasn't there when I submitted the files) and frankly embarrassing. I now know this would be called my 'first draft' in publishing lingo but honestly, I rewrote that about three times.

Now I've since rewritten that first book about 10x. I've self-published it and I've also published two other books. I am very proud of them all.

But this is about Sales.

I have sold about two dozen books personally and gave away about the same number. I had a specific floater copy which is out there somewhere, with the caveat that if you read it, you must write a few words in it on the inside cover. I'd be interested to find out where that one went to.

For your convenience I will split my sales between Internet and Personal.

Internet Sales

For self-publishing I used Createspace, a subsidiary of Amazon. I get paid once my royalties are over $100 US. I earn 35% of the list price. So if the book is $10, I get $3.50 of that. As of now, with four physical books published, my royalties through Createspace/Amazon is just over $10.

Last year I made $16. I have sold six e-books through Kindle ebooks. Seeing as how I published my first novella on Kindle back in 2015 that's a stellar two books a year at .99 cents each.

if only I self-promoted more...

Now, as I write this, I just did a self-search on Amazon. It lists only one published book out of my four, despite Createspace saying it is available. WTF...

{Temporary thirty minute break to add the other books to my Amazon page which will show up in the next five days. I also create an Author's bio. I'm not smart enough to figure out how to add an RSS feed from this blog to my author page. And yes, I need a better profile picture} 

Anyways... moving on to the much more satisfying Smashwords.com e-book sales.

Now, for those who know, my hard-cover books are full of footnotes, little jokes and whatnot. Footnotes are a bitch to format for Smashwords. That formatting actually felt like work and often my manuscript was sent back for revisions. I do want to point out that Smashwords customer service is great. They helped with the problems noted and gave me stellar advice.

Smashwords also keeps track of partial downloads, which gives me a better idea of how many people actually acted on any Internet promotion I do, usually through Reddit or Facebook.

I'm just starting to learn more about Twitter so have yet to do any self-promo on there. Instead I lurk on other indie author sites and wannabe comedians. Although common practice states to push your works only a little on Twitter, otherwise you're just spamming.

On Smashwords I have published my two novels and three novellas. My price again is .99 cents. I'm obviously not in it for the money but for the long-term. I want exposure, a grass-roots audience.

But apparently this is what happens if you self-publish 'erotica'

For this site's reports I actually need a calculator. I have a firm sixteen sales but more importantly, over 700 downloads sitting in people's e-readers, waiting to be discovered. That definitely feels good.

Smashwords royalties are the same, at 35%. It's pocket change and as such they pay into my PayPal account every year. I don't look at the total, for it's nice to find money in those unexpected places, like a $20 bill in your old jacket. PayPal is my old jacket and I found I have just over $20 sitting in there.

Okay, so there are my Internet sales. Now don't you feel better?

Personal sales 

Obviously the most profitable way is to sell directly. I keep 100% of the profit, after figuring out how much I paid per unit for shipping. I guesstimate my expenses for shipping as about $9 per book. I take donations from friends and family, whatever they want to pay. Not too many ask about them which is okay. Families and friends first, critics later.

Of course, the more books I buy at once for myself, the cheaper the shipping is but I can't justify having boxes of books sitting in my house. It would be too depressing stepping around them every day to get to the computer.

So I order one box at a time.

Now as an experienced book shopper on the low end of the income bar, I find most new books over-priced. My tipping point to purchase a new book is $10 and I can't recall the last hard-cover book I bought that wasn't on the discount table. I love thrift shops and garage sales. But I can't sell for $10 although all I want is to cover my expenses and hopefully break close to even. Because of that, my  book price is $15, figuring in a 60-40 split with the book seller. Again, I'm not in it yet for the money, just the exposure.

Now my small town has two book stores. One is in the mall and the other is downtown. One is a chain, the other a brick and mortar front for the area's distribution company. Both have 'local interest' sections which is where they offered to place my book(s).

No offense, but I'm not a fan of having my book in 'local interest'. The other books are mostly local trail guides, history and non-fiction type books. However, until I grow a bit more confident and request my books to be moved into general fiction, that is where they sit.

Downtown, I've only sold one book from that outlet. I blame it on poor visibility for their local interest section is in the very back of the store, in the middle. Sales 101 states your most popular sales areas are at eye level along the outside of the store (think grocery store), and close to the check out counter.

At the Mall, the local interest is close to the counter. When I first went there, I was surprised as to its location. I asked with trepidation if they would put my indie books on consignment. I thought they'd say they wouldn't, that needed some type of distributor/publisher behind me but to my relief, they didn't.

I waited a couple months before snooping back in to check if anyone picked up a copy. And happily, they were gone. The lady said head office would send me a royalty check in the next month. I gave her a couple more copies and the process repeated itself.

I admittedly am not the greatest on following up on my sales. They're spare change and I treat them as such, for fear of  being one of those guys who post on Internet forums asking why their books aren't selling.

But I do go to the mall every couple months and am surprised to find my books gone. So then I have to go back home, get more copies and return.

Obviously I can't sell my books if people don't see them but I've sold eight copies there and I guess they've gone pretty fast considering the surrounding books are still there.


I think my covers help. Do your research on what you think will make your cover stand out from the rest.

For the record, I have yet to see a royalty check from head office but the consignment lady said she would look into it.

So there you go. If you are interested in any of my books, I've hidden links throughout this post to where you can buy or download them. You can also help out a little by leaving kind, truthful reviews on any of those sites.

Or you can help out an indie author and reach out to me by email, facebook or twitter and I will send a signed one personally.

Who knows, one day they might be worth something...

jay