This is where I talk about the business of being a self-published author.
Things you should know going in: I have a high-quality day job and am the primary breadwinner in my household. I’ve been working full-time since 1988 and expect to continue doing so for another ten years, unless some family-related event makes early retirement both possible and desirable.
What that means, from the top, is I neither wish to nor can afford to make writing a full-time job. Thus: it’s a hobby. Which, in my view, means it needs to be at least 75% fun.
According to John Scalzi (https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/06/26/authors-talking-about-politics-an-archived-twitter-thread), 99+% of books sell 20K or fewer copies. That’s all books, including the ones published and promoted by Big Publishers, not simply self-published books.
The purchase royalty on a $4.99 book published through Kindle Direct is $1.75. My average monthly royalty income is around $15. I could increase that with a vigorous advertising campaign, but I already spend an average of $50 a month on ads and am unwilling to spend more, because writing is a hobby. Writing income will never replace my day-job income.
Even if I sold 20K copies per year, that would produce $35K in gross income. $35K/yr comes out to less than $17/hr. My day job wage, including the value of benefits, is over $50/hr. That’s the big Why Not, in a nutshell.
The smaller Why Not is a function of time. How much does it cost to produce a book? It can cost thousands of dollars in actual money paid to professional beta readers, editors, publicists, graphic designers, social-media consultants and/or personal assistants, and of course advertising. I have always (with the day job in mind) chosen the cheap route, doing nearly everything myself. I do have a designer; I pay her around $100 per cover, which is fairly standard. She also created my website, which costs less than $30/mo. Yes, my website alone is a net loss against royalties.
Aside from those out-of-pocket expenses and advertising, the cost of a book is my time.
On a good day, I can produce about 1000 words/hr. By the time I’ve finished a book, with multiple editing passes, that comes down to about 500 words/hr. Thus a 70K-word novel can reasonably be said to take 140 hours to write. It takes another five hours, on average, to complete the publication setup and to promote (by which I mean placing ads, soliciting reviews, blogging, and Instagramming or Facebooking).
So: 145 hours x $50/hr = $7250 as the time cost of a novel. Call it $3000 for the time cost (never mind the hard costs) of a 30K-word novella. At $15/mo in royalties, it takes 200 months to pay myself back for the cost of writing and publishing a novella. Thus: a hobby. I cannot even consider the true market value of my time, or I’ll be too demoralized to keep going.
I’ve observed, in the self-published romance community, that one of the best ways to attract and retain reader eyeballs is a regular publication schedule. If an author has one or two books, even if heavily promoted, even if beloved by readers, those readers will eventually stop looking for a new title from that author. Because there are so many books out there. We offer books on sale, or even for free, in order to attract eyeballs; many readers (myself included) will buy a book on sale or download a free copy and never buy a full-price title from that author. Giveaways are advertising, that’s all.
What about Book Bub, you say? A single Book Bub deal for romance can cost around $700. That’s what it costs the author to give books away. Because again: many readers will snap up that heavily-discounted or free title and never return to the author. If I want readers to continue seeing my name and eventually try a giveaway or – who knows? – even buy a copy, I have to put something in front of them regularly. Fortunately, I like to write.
And because writing is something I very much enjoy, I would rather write new things than spend all my available time promoting existing things. If I could afford to be a full-time writer, I could easily write as much as I do now and promote the hell out of everything. But I can’t, so I don’t, and I’m okay with that.
All that said: I love it when I hear from a reader that they liked something. I don’t do this only for me. So if you read something and like it, please consider leaving a positive rating or review. It really helps writers - all writers! - keep going.