MCM

What are the economics of being a professional author? I know how much I’ve made as a storyteller in various mediums, but the book business is still pretty much a mystery to me.

To the extent that I’ve been able to fill in any blanks I owe individual authors for having the courage to talk about their own experiences. While each story is different, they’re all adding up to a useful composite, and particularly so given all the forces at work and changes taking place in the industry.

For example, today I ran across a follow-up post by Lynn Viehl on Genreality, talking about The Reality of a Times Bestseller:

So how much money have I made from my Times bestseller? Depending on the type of sale, I gross 6-8% of the cover price of $7.99. After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36, which is actually pretty good since on average I generally net about 30-40% of my advance. Unless something triggers an unexpected spike in my sales, I don’t expect to see any additional profit from this book coming in for at least another year or two.

Is that a sobering reality? Easy money? I have no idea. I don’t know how many hours Lynn put into that title, so I can’t do the workaday math. Still, if you didn’t live a big city or have any consuming vices you could probably squeak by on that money, provided you had the same amount coming in next year…but then that’s not a given, is it? (Speaking of givens, Lynn blows up a number of myths in the post, and in the prequel.)

In a previous post I noted Joe Konrath’s sales figures for both traditional publishing and self-publishing of his novels, and that’s also worth a look.

For pure self-publishing numbers I’ve been relying on posts by Dan Holloway writing as a pair of shoes. You can read his initial accounting here, and his latest here.

If you’re a literary fiction writer, how many books do you have to sell to call yourself a success? 7,000.

If you’re an online fiction writer, are there ways to monetize your content? Sure.

Update: Publishing your own RPG? Here’s what it cost someone to do just that.

I’ll post more as I find it. If you’ve already found it, let me know.

— Mark Barrett

If you don’t know who MCM is, I’m going to skip any explanations myself and instead quote from the 1899.ca About page:

Hi there! I’m MCM, an all-around lunatic.

Note that ‘lunatic’ here is not pejorative. In fact, I think MCM is the only person I’ve run across so far who manages to take online fiction and self-publishing seriously and not seriously at the same time. For example:

Next Tuesday, I’m going to embark on a very intense adventure to write my next novel Typhoon in three days. To achieve this goal, I will need some help from you, and also a whole lot of structure. Here’s the general idea…

A day (as you may have heard) is made up of 24 hours. I am going to set aide 4 of those hours for sleep, because I don’t want to die midway through the event. I’ll wake up at 6am and stop work at 2am the next morning (all times Canadian Pacific time). I will also need 3 more hours a day for eating, bathing, and bringing-kids-to-schoolness. All in all, about 17 hours of solid work time, repeated three times. 51 hours.

Read the whole post and it makes complete sense — except for the insanity of the premise. Then again, people volunteer themselves for Ironman Triathlons andultramarathons, so why not a novel in three days?

When MCM is not at home you’ll see sightings on other sites like this one, and this one. Those two links are a well-thought-out two-part series on why online writers need good reviewers and vice-versa. (Incredibly, there’s almost no lunacy.)

You can also find MCM in the comments here, on another thread having to do with online reviews of online works. Which, if you take the time to read them along with the other links, will make it clear that this is someone who’s thinking hard about how to turn online and self-published works into viable products.

And that’s not as crazy as it sounds.

— Mark Barrett

Following the Money

Site Seeing: 1899.ca