Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money
writeusefulbooks.comUnfortunately most writers of fiction make next to nothing too. Writers often are not happy writing either (unlike painters and video artists who seem to have a whale of a time).
Sadly I toiled for 8 years on a novel (while working a day job). It was a massive effort.
It might be hard for people to understand but I felt I had to write it (i.e. writers curse).
I wish I had spent all that time on studying programming etc. Unfortunately humans are not fully rational. I actually like my novel. But it wasn't worth it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Can-Get-Restart-Jack-Gowan-ebook/dp...
But hey that's life. Shrug.
Writers should just write for the pleasure of writing and expect that the majority won't make it. It's about as likely as winning the lottery
I can relate a bit. I also wrote a book that quickly faded into obscurity. The biggest learning I had was I had no audience. I needed to build that first with blog posts or what not, THEN write the book.
I’m surprised that’s not covered here in this article
Writing a book is like creating anything else. Whether you're writing a book, making music, producing goods or offering services, people need to actually try what you've made. This is why "advertising" is so important. Not necessarily traditional advertising, but some form of getting the word out about your amazing creation.
With books, the time commitment you need from people for them to "try" what you created is immense compared to other efforts. Like if you are a painter, it takes a couple seconds for someone to have a look at what you created. If you are a musician, a few minutes spent on a track is enough. For a book, you need someone to sacrifice a few hours of their life for a non-guaranteed return, time they could spend reading something that they are practically guaranteed to enjoy. I don't write fiction, and don't read it, but I imagine it must be very hard for someone creating works of that sort.
I'm not so sure about that. I think most people won't continue reading a book that they don't like after the first few minutes while taking the description/summary into account. It would have to be well recommended for me to consider that.
I think fiction is going to move more and more towards the web novel model, where extremely long stories are published on a chapter by chapter basis. It has a far higher chance of attracting new readers, because new stuff is constantly happening surrounding the work.
This is not the writer's job. It's what publishers are supposed to do.
Maybe in 1995; but the industry has not worked like that since Amazon set up shop. Publishing was the first mass media industry to get disrupted. Non-essential work gets pushed down to the author / creator in such scenarios.
Music is the same; there was a time when your record company would pay for studio time, mastering, publicity, etc. Today? If you’re a serious artist you’re just expected to have $10k in recording gear and the knowledge of Logic Pro to produce your own songs and run a Twitch/Twitter/insta/tiktok account to connect with your fans. You honestly don’t even need a record company anymore since you can book a tour off Spotify listener count alone (touring is where the money in music is these days).
So ebooks are much cheaper than printed books then, right. Obviously not. All the work the publishers aren't doing on them, and the material savings in not even publishing them to paper ... but ebooks cost more.
So what are publishers doing in return for the higher sales price of ebooks?
Honestly? Book reviews. A literary agent will know lots of other authors who might be willing to write a review of your book. Good if you’re just starting out, unnecessary if you’re established.
And ebooks generally are cheaper; there’s a ton of $0.99 genre fiction available on Amazon.
They might disagree about that though.
From the outside it looks like they operate more like VCs, publish lots of books, see what sticks.
In fairness, making things "stick" includes things like marketing, sales, and distribution. Most publishers these days do the latter two but not so much the marketing and promotion part. For example, they're not setting up book tours or sending out review copies for the most part these days.
Yes that's a very good point. I was aiming for getting picked up by a big publishing house. These days though It's pretty essential you have some kind of audience first.
As I'm sure you know, marketing really is the worst. After years of work it's hard to be motivated enough to do too. But it's pretty essential.
I had an interesting reply on Reddit a while back from someone who went the publishing route and regretted it.¹
"This is incredible advice. Great write up.
I want to reiterate and add to the first point: signing with the publisher before you have leverage.
I got really “lucky”. I was writing a non-fiction technical book and actually got in a competition between two publishers. I had never written before. Never published. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I knew that most first time authors end up self-publishing out of what I thought was desperation. But here I was sitting between two publishers who were fighting for my book.
I worked them a little against each other. I eventually got royalties up to 17.5% and got triple the advance of the original offer. At the time I thought that I had “made it”. I was guaranteed success. Not only did one publisher want me as a first time author, but two did and they even showed that support by increasing royalties and advances. I told everyone I knew that I was getting published. I figured that as soon as my book officially published that the publisher was going to go out and sell it like crazy. I figured I was the author, my job was to write it and the publishers job was to sell it. Now that I had a publisher, they would go sell it for me. I would be rich, my publisher would be rich. Everyone wins.
Oh how wrong I was.
To this day, I’m honestly not sure what a publisher does. I was harassed on the daily about my progress with the book. Then they needed changes all over the place. The book scope started to shift far away from what I originally intended it to be. The publisher was demanding a different book, claiming market research (which I don’t think was real). The book kept shifting and shifting. At the end, I was so glad to be done. I hated what I had written. It wasn’t the book I wanted. I wasn’t proud of it. But I figured it was my first book. No one loves their first of anything. So I was happy to be done, my first one was behind me. I learned a lot about the process. It was time to reap my reward, let the publisher sell the book, and start making money and work on my next one.
I did a few launch events at the request of my publisher. I organized these entirely. All my publisher did was demand that I figure it out. The publisher never sent a marketing team to sell my book. It was ALL on me. I started getting emails every week from the publisher asking what I was doing to sell the book. They started giving me lists of ideas for how I could go out and sell it. But they never really did anything to promote it themselves. I played along for a while but eventually just got annoyed. I was doing 100% of the work. They emailed it out to their email list a few times. Maybe the occasional mention on their site. But nothing significant.
Now I realize I might sound privileged and stuck up that I was refusing to go sell my book that I had written. Many people on here probably are thinking “well duh”. But here’s the thing, the finances don’t work out for me to grind away to sell my book. For example if I organize an event and sell 20 books, I’m making $60 or so with royalties. (I only get 17.5%). So for that event it might take me 2-3 hours to organize it. Plus a few hours to attend. Plus various other administrative stuff. I’m spending 6-10 hours to make $60. Meanwhile I make the publisher about $500 for all that work that I did by myself. Remember, I’m doing nearly all the work other than printing. So it wasn’t as much that I wasn’t willing to go run an event, it was just that I hated doing an event that made the publisher $500 and made me $60. I spoke at a conference once and sold around 100 copies. It was a “success” but I had to negotiate the speaking gig, plan the speech, go early to the event, wait around all day, spend 40-50 hours practicing, writing, prepping my speech, transport to and from the event. So I spent a whole day at the event and doing the event, plus another 50-60 hours of planning and preparing. Just to make around $300 for myself and my publisher $2,500. I really resented the publisher.
I actually somewhat enjoyed doing the events and selling the book. That’s not what bothered me. It was the amount of work to reward ratio. I also hated knowing how much money I was making the publisher who I felt wasn’t earning that money. If I self-published instead, then I would be keeping closer to the $2,500 for that speaking gig! That would be worth it! I could have done more speaking gigs and reused my speech and scaled it. It would have been worth it. But with my current arrangement of 17.5/82.5% it simply didn’t make financial sense for me.
Like OP said, the publisher needs to be able to make you 7x the sales that you could get yourself by self publishing. In this case I think my sales and the publishers sales were around 50/50.
It got worse as the publisher wanted me to do lots of one on one support with people that had bought the book (it’s a technical book so they essentially want consulting advice). Again, I hate to be rude here. But I’m only making $2-$3 per book sale. I can’t really sit down with every person that buys my book individually for 10 - 30 minutes. It just doesn’t make sense. If I was self-publishing and making $20+ per book then I’d be more willing to consider it. But at $2-3 it’s just a waste of my time.
I started to see that the publisher had a lot to gain here and almost nothing to lose. At first I figured that the advance was their risk. But after doing some math I realized that they earned back their advance on the first day. Remember they keep 82.5% of the sales. They earn back their advance far faster than I work over it.
In the end, I actually was “successful” for a first time book. I broke through my advance and started getting real royalty checks. I wasn’t quitting my day job (which I had btw), but it was nice extra money.
But this goes onto OP’s second point. A book with an expiration date. My nonfiction book was a technical book. It had an expiration date. The technology I was writing about becomes less relevant over time. I got about 1 year of solid royalty checks (after breaking through the advance) before hitting that expiration date. A book without an expiration date would make all that upfront work more worth it because I’d get the payout over the long tail. I will admit though, that even though my book had easily “expired”, I still get royalties on it. I just got a quarterly payment 2 weeks ago for $223.17. So it’s still making me about $1,000 per year. It’s not much, but it’s free money at this point. I’m not doing anything to support it.
The reason I wanted to tell this story is that in the end, as a first time publisher I think you should self publish. I got published and regretted it. It got me stuck in a position where I didn’t even want to sell my book a lot of times. I kept thinking I would write another one that more closely reflects what I wanted to write and then go self publish and sell that book.
I did the math about two years ago on that book after getting one of my quarterly royalty statements. I calculated what I would have earned if I had self-published the book given the numbers on this book from launch to that current date. My jaw dropped. I estimated about 80% margin (the book sells for $30 and costs about $7 to print self published). I would have made a ton of money if I had self published and done all the same work I did with the publisher.
I really recommend self publishing your first book. Publishers really don’t make sense unless your book is going to sell at a scale that you can’t manage yourself. I also highly recommend that anyone who is considering a publisher right now should interview them. Ask the publisher what they can do for you. We often are afraid of publishers because we feel like they hold our destiny. But they don’t. You’re going to make them a lot more money than they will make you. So make them earn it. Ask what they can do to sell more books. They should have a plan."
Notes ¹https://www.reddit.com/r/writers/comments/mkhqwg/714456_in_r...
Excellent point.
What you're pointing out is the fundamental tenet our startup is build around.
When writing non-fiction, you start with a very clear promise, and you specify who it's for and who it's not for.
We talk about that in other articles on our site.
I published a book in November. It's selling. Slowly. I'm not expecting it to be profitable for several years (I've self-published, and so I've had some costs such as a cover design, editing and proofreading). I'm ok with that - I'm writing a series, and everyone I talk to suggests sales for self-published series rarely do much until at least the third volume, and it's a hobby for the most part. It's only worth it for me because I write fast and it relaxes me. Even then, it's only worthwhile because I expect sales to keep dripping in for many years (and that was a key motivation for writing a series, as well).
What I've learned as well is that most self-published writers have not the fainted clue what publishers do to sell books and/or actively do not want to do what publishers do to sell books. E.g. the traditional sales process for a paperback starts 6 months plus before publishing, and involves calling up distributors and retailers, and sending out review copies for months. It takes an upfront investment and time, and that too will only work if people believe your book will sell for them - if you don't have a big-name publisher behind you who can promise a marketing campaign, you're back to needing to have an audience (or a very compelling story).
Most self-published authors don't even know how to ensure they get reviews. It took me ages too, before I found someone to spend time reaching out to potential reviewers (it's a minefield; so many scammers - I was extremely cautious)
Advertising is a total minefield - most ads, including Amazon ads where the purchasing intent is a lot stronger, take ages of tweaking to get a positive ROI, and even then you need an audience to get decent returns, because getting people to buy based on an ad if they've never heard of you is hard.
After all that, you can still expect it to take years to get traction.
Charlie Stross commented on Twitter recently that it took him at least a decade (it might have been longer; maybe 15 years?) before he surpassed 5k pounds a year from his writing. That was with a publisher. Of course he's writing relatively niche sci fi. If you go for an easier market, like romance or thrillers, you may have a better shot (maybe; the competition is tougher too). But even professional authors who eventually make a good living off their writing often take a long time to get there.
One of the things a publisher gives you, that many who choose to self-publish don't want, though, is an objective third party assessing if you've written something that they think is likely to sell. Of course they can be wrong, and frequently are. But they're investors, effectively, considering whether it would responsible for them to put their resources and time at risk to back a book or an author. They're selective because frankly most authors are not very good, and many one the ones that are good or even amazing are unlikely to sell or unlikely to sell to their audience.
When self-publishing you get to ignore that and pretend you're the best ever. Or you can be more realistic, and expect that you most likely won't sell much, but of the people who buy, some portion will be looking forward to your next book. And so unless you're truly awful, sales will at least slowly grow.
But odds are you won't make all that much. You might write far better than JK Rowling and still not sell very much because you write something that just doesn't catch the imagination of book buyers.
But if you're at least aware that being a self-published author means at least half your time will be sales and marketing rather than writing, you'll likely already do better than most self-published authors.
>But odds are you won't make all that much. You might write far better than JK Rowling and still not sell very much because you write something that just doesn't catch the imagination of book buyers.
Really like that sentence. Very true.
>One of the things a publisher gives you, that many who choose to self-publish don't want, though, is an objective third party assessing if you've written something that they think is likely to sell. Of course they can be wrong, and frequently are. But they're investors, effectively, considering whether it would responsible for them to put their resources and time at risk to back a book or an author. They're selective because frankly most authors are not very good, and many one the ones that are good or even amazing are unlikely to sell or unlikely to sell to their audience.
I slightly disagree here. I don't know if this is true for fiction, but I don't think it's true for non-fiction.
Publishers can only asymmetrically help. They're able to somewhat accurately spot which books might work, but they can't do the inverse (spot which books won't).
> if you've written something that they think is likely to sell //
Isn't it more "that they think they can sell and maximise their profit above other things they might choose to sell". It's close but has a couple of distinct differences. One is cost to them, the other is sellability (and by that publisher in particular).
Woh. This is a really fantastic post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts/knowledge.
What's the name of your book that you published in November?
The Year Before the End. There's a site at https://galaxybound.com (that needs a designer to clean it up.... And contact details etc. in my profile)
I'll give the caveat that I'm new to this too - just spent more time than the typical writer looking into the business side of things...
Cool. I'll buy your book. Nice title.
The review that you got there was pretty cool! The reader was actually surprised by the innovative way that you've put together your narrative :)
Thank you ^^ Well... If you enjoy reading maybe give my novel a go :) You do need a Kindle though /wouldn't recommend reading on a phone. But no hassles. Cheers
I was about to pick it up before I read this comment, any particular reason you don't recommend reading it a phone? that's generally the main way I read books so I was disappointed
Well, he said he can't recommend reading in general on a phone, which I can absolutely relate to. I can't even read anything longer than a normal article on my pc screen. It's just not enjoyable, for some reason, so I print out most papers I read.
Oh. Well you can try on the phone I guess. If thats how you normally read stuff.
I might be picky, but I just prefer kindle for longer stuff. IPads and tablets might be good too.
Just bought it. Will post back here when I finish it.
Good man. I really appreciate it :) Be interested in any thoughts you have. I don't mind if you are critical. And hope you enjoy it ^^
Hey I know you're feeling like giving up, but you have to realize that you've only taken the first step--and the good news is, it's a step that only 10% of people ever make! So congratulations! You published your first novel! Only 10% of people ever finish "that novel" they have in their head that they feel the urge to write. I'm proud of you!
Now for the next part, which no one like's to hear: the easy part is over. Yep, you heard that right: getting your first work finished and out there was relatively easy compared to the mountain you have set yourself on to climb. Yes, only 10% of people dare climb that mountain, and here you are--among the 10%. Now, as you look forward, I can tell you that at every major step, every major obstacle, and every major setback, only 10% of people keep going.
You might think there's a secret to this writing thing, but there isn't. Just like when we're hiking up a mountain, the only thing that matters is putting one foot in front of the other. That's the only way you climb. So you HAVE to get back in there (mentally) and keep going!
You just started on an amazingly difficult and frustrating and beautiful journey in life. You made it to where only 10% of people get to--and now you want to stop the journey?
My friend, your journey has only just begun.
Thanks for your kind words. Perhaps what you say is true. I'm not sure I'm qualified (ironically) to say.
What I can say is that the time, the sacrifice, and then the crappy marketing ploys (no one tells you about that). It's real hard work. It's really hard when you get nothing for all your efforts.
I know a 2nd book would be easier. But it still would take a lot of time. Probably 3-4 years.
Potentially in... a while... I might write again. I am full of ideas. But honestly I'd rather build IT stuff right now. Programming is my new love.
Don't get me wrong there is a real beauty in writing. But, well there is a lot to life. And I'd like to explore different things. There's a ton of creativity in IT.
I can always start writing again when I'm 55/60. I actually don't think it's a young man's activity. There's no money in it either.
But yeah, sitting in the sun during my twilight years... writing. Sounds great.
I never really understood these pep talks, given by strangers but like they really know you. I see this on twitter too:
"Hey you, you are beautiful"
"Hey, you are doing a great job this week, I'm proud of you"
The Twitter ones are telling everyone who reads that they did a good job this week. It's a public message. How can it have any sincerity?
I understand the desire to console the GP here, but the Twitter ones make no sense to me.
I'm definitely not into this stuff, but at the same time, the human mind is a strange and mysterious thing. Generic pep talk, positive signage, self affirmations all seem to have a positive effect on a lot of people.
There are quite a few scientific studies out there that bear this out.
What motivational bullshit. Why should the GP continue working hard for little reward?
It's easy to tell someone else to be unhappy and poor isn't it?
Perhaps it wasn't the most useful way to spend your time through a solely economic lens. But if you felt it was something you had to do and you shipped your work, you can take pride in that.
> Writers should just write for the pleasure of writing and expect that the majority won't make it. It's about as likely as winning the lottery
Think that's especially true for fiction.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Yes. Unfortunately it was so... Thanks reading it.
I relate with you - I also feel that my time would be better spent doing something else - but since 2014 I keep writing a (self-help?) book..
A constructive criticism: your cover doesn't stand out (and I'm being kind). If I had found your book randomly I would ignore it completely. I know this is totally subjective so take it with a grain of salt. Probably my cover will not be better.
Hey that's cool. I appreciate your feedback. I'm no expert but others have said they really like it. Maybe it's subjective? I've no idea tbh.
Honestly, you lost me with just the second sentence of this:
> Jurgen has a headache that won't go away.
Ok, I'm intrigued.
> He knows his fellow scientist Simon is watching him, waiting for him to be careless and kill another rat.
Uhhh wut? I'm totally confused, and to be honest "why is he killing rats" is not really a question where I'm on the edge of my seat looking for an answer.
So the full text is:
"Jurgen has a headache that won't go away. He knows his fellow scientist Simon is watching him, waiting for him to be careless and kill another rat. Ben knows all about these mistakes, and more. But he's online, always online, talking with others. He's in trouble and doesn't know how to get out of it. Mark fears he knows what actually is going on in the lab and the consequences for all three of them could be fatal. Who is the liar? Who is in danger? Who will die?"
Thank you for your feedback. Writing a back cover does take skill. Others have commented that they like it - but I'm not arrogant to claim it's flawless. It will appeal to some and not to others.
Hmmmm it has got me thinking on how to improve it tbh... It's been such a long time that I've thought about my work.
The line you quote, is supposed to convey paranoia. You're right why care about Jürgen killing a dumb rat? But then there is Ben and Mark etc.
I would love to have your feedback on my book (it sounds like it would be brutal). Personally I can't see that Ive sold you though ^^
Thanks again
I see writing packaged into buckets: creative output and distribution. I am curious how much effort was spent on distribution of your output. I love writing and building but I have often found that my project has failed because I lacked marketing efforts (distribution). Creating is always fun but sharing that work is blocked by my imposter.
I am slightly bothered by terms such as "Writer's Curse" and "Writer's Block". Doesn't this apply to all creative disciplines and any creative pursuit? What's special about the process of writing?
Writers Curse has its roots in the fact writing a novel can have real negative consequences (it takes ages, massive sacrifices are needed, and very unlikely to make anything substantial etc.) And yet, such people can have an obsession to write. Honestly I met so many crazy obsessed writers over the years.
If you have money then it would be great fun. But it's a huge burden if not.
Note: you will hear about some novels that take only X weeks and make a ton of money. e.g. twilight. But most writers I ever met the average was around 5-7 years for the first book. If you're taking X weeks, the odds are it will be pretty shit unless it's very autobiographical. I loved dhamma bums by Jack Kerouac for example and I think he smashed that out in about 3 months.
I see there's only one review for your book, couldn't you have encouraged your friends and family to buy and review the book (honestly)?
It's really, really hard to get people to do this and get them to actually do it. There's a reason there's a whole industry around getting reviews, ranging from the total scams (either scamming the author, or scamming readers) via slightly dishonest, to honest but totally useless, to those few that actually works.
The best way I've found (and I have someone doing it for me) is to contact book bloggers on Twitter and offer free review copies. You need to be careful (Amazon's guidelines allow free copies for books, with caveats, such as not being allowed to require a review, or offer any kind of other incentives -- anyone doing this should read their rules carefully). But even that is time consuming and it takes a long time to start getting results (people are busy; you're not paying them; books take time to read; about a thousand other people are begging them to review their books).
It's important though - sales are highly dependent on reviews, and things like advertising a book very rarely has a positive ROI if you don't get everything lining up (title, cover, enough reviews).
So if you find a reliable reviewer, they're like gold-dust if you write more books.
You might be amazed how hard it is to get people to leave reviews of books even if you give them free copies and they read it and claim to like it.
Authors have the same problem as musicians. Their work has zero marginal replication cost, zero distribution cost, low barriers to entry and they're competing for finite attention.
What invariably happens then is the top 0.1 percent of output is duplicated and sold to hundreds of millions of customers and that eats up all of the attention bandwidth for that vertical. It's the ultimate winner take all setup.
Contrast this to the prospect of running a successful restaurant that is fundamentally limited by geography. No matter how well it serves region A, region B, C, D, etc is still up for grabs. A franchise can try to duplicate its success, but it's much more costly than a successful author making endless free digital copies of their work.
The thing is that authors are too weak. They get maybe 10% of what is being made off of their work, probably much less. The publishing companies have strong leverage and can essentially extort money from the authors - they can say either you publish with us, or just put it back to your drawer and forget. It is now a bit easier to self publish, but still you are going to get pittance. In terms of music, as when artists realised to can just sidestep labels and publish themselves, the shops started using their advantage to take almost the whole pie - things like Spotify pay next to nothing for streams. It's just that artists are somehow not able to get together and force fair terms on whatever it is in the upstream, because they don't have money and any power. All they can do is to pull out their art, but there is 10x artists believing they can make it despite being scammed and they sign up.
>It's just that artists are somehow not able to get together and force fair terms on whatever it is in the upstream
That's nonsense with respect to books. If you self-publish on the most popular distribution channel (Amazon), you keep quite a large percentage of your revenue. The issue isn't the middleman, it's that there's a huge number of other books out there and unless you already have an audience or put the work into creating one somehow, not many people are going to find your work and buy it. If lots of people actually do buy it, you get a pretty good cut. But it's hard to get to that point.
Isn't that the people who can make a book popular are dealing with major publishers only? Therefore nobody is interested in the unknown writer's pie, as even 90% of 0 is still 0.
Most people who publish through major publishers aren't making much either and publishers these days don't do a lot of promotion for authors who aren't already well-known.
They do provide sales and distribution and if you're writing mostly for reputational reasons, those may be good reasons to do with a "name" publisher.
But, if you're focused on trying to make money and are prepared to make a speculative investment in making it, it's not at all clear to me that you shouldn't self-publish and pay for promotion, editorial services, etc. to try to make it happen.
Authors have a lot better alternatives than mobile app developers who have basically no choice but to pay the app store tax and musicians who are significantly limiting their reach if they opt out of streaming.
Authors have the same problem as musicians.
And app developers.
Sorry, but this applies only to non-fiction.
You can always make a usable app or non-fiction book, so you have one extra dimension of objectively measured value of your product. The first one, common to software and art, is the quality of the implementation.
Applications just like music have a near zero marginal cost. This is why the app stores are littered with $1 apps.
He doesn't seem to understand what a royalty is. He quotes himself saying "To compensate for their 85% share of the royalties, a publisher needs to sell at least 5x more copies for you to break even [compared to self-publishing]." As the lady on the tv says, that's not how any of this works. In trade publishing at least, the author's royalty is a percentage of the cover price of the book. In normal retail selling, the publisher gets maybe 50-55% of the cover price in revenue, out of which they have to pay you and also all of their costs of producing your book.
As a publisher author of a non-fiction book with an established publisher, I had to stop reading after that first point because he is completely wrong.
I think it makes sense. He's saying that if you get a 15% royalty, vs the 100% royalty minus costs of self publishing, you need to sell 5x more books via the publisher.
It's oddly worded, but the math roughly works depending on your self publishing costs.
It's very poorly worded. And if not wrong, then certainly very unclear.
The math... depends.
Not all publishers offer advances, and those that do offer advances with different strategies.
Here is one strategy: a commissioning editor uses a sales modelling system to estimate the maximum possible advance against likely sales.
At larger publishers, you can be sure the editor has a very good idea what the likely sales will be. Because that's what publishers do, and they have years, sometimes decades of data and experience to draw on.
The editor will set the advance so the book never earns out.
This gives you more money than you might expect for an advance. And you can usually haggle upwards from the initial offer.
But of course you've just signed what is really a work for hire contract. You will not see any more money than the initial offer.
Would you earn more self-pub? Possibly. That depends entirely on your ability to reach an audience and sell your book to them. Parking a title on Amazon isn't nearly enough.
If you have good marketing skills and if you hit a desirable niche you can do very well - much better than trad pub.
But if you miss - you've wasted maybe a few months, with not much to show for it.
So it's a risk/reward calculation. If you know you can write the book, an advance is money in the bank. It's a known quantity. You don't have to do marketing too.
Sometimes that's a workable deal, especially if you have a day job and marketing is not a strong competence. You won't early nearly as much as you would in dev, but - it's a book. With your name on it. And some cash.
If you have the time to spare and either know or hope you can build an audience, and are sure the title really does fit a niche, by all means self-pub.
But you should only do this if you've done the groundwork. Like any other business you have to think about product/market fit, and marketing, and finding your audience, and all of the usual hurdles.
And unfortunately, marketing is a skillset in its own right. Of course you can learn it, but starting cold is challenging.
Personally having been through this cycle a few times I wouldn't trad pub now. But I also wouldn't assume that all I have to do is write a book and it will automatically sell in reassuring quantities.
I know it won't. There's more work to do, and I wouldn't want anyone to underestimate how hard it is.
>The editor will set the advance so the book never earns out.
Not deliberately, most of the time. If you have a track record, a good agent, and there's a competitive bid for your book, they might overpay knowing that they don't have to earn out to make a profit, they just have to get reasonably close. Maybe they can make it up in subrights. But if those things are not true, the advance will be lower.
Not for fiction. For non-literary (i.e. non-household name, tech-oriented) non-fiction - definitely.
It's a production line, and it's rare for authors to do more than one or two books.
Some bigger publishers really do have spreadsheet models of likely sales, and they base their acceptable advance offers on them.
Signing a contract with an advance that turns out to be all you get paid for the book is not at all "really a work for hire contract" -- you could say it turns out to really be a flat fee contract, but that's not the same thing. A "work for hire" contract has to do with who owns the copyright, not the payment structure. If your publisher gives you a $10,000 advance on your book and you don't earn enough royalties to break the $10K mark, the book is still yours. (And there are work for hire contracts that pay royalties rather than flat fees!)
Self-publishers only get a 100% royalty if they self-retail as well (very few do this, I think). Otherwise, they only get the ~50% that the publisher would get paid from the sale price.
It is not oddly worded. It is wrong.
Yes it is an error, but the underlying point is true.
I also thought that, whilst it was easy to recognize the error, the point was still easy to understand. I think it is a good point, let's hope the author redrafts.
On #1 “Signing with a publisher before you have leverage”, a bit from an episode[0] of Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Founder’s Field Guide podcast stuck with me.
> If you ask questions of an industry and they won't tell you the answer, that's always a good sign that someone's getting very wealthy. In publishing, if you ask an author, ask any author, how much did it cost to print the book? What are your COGS? They will not know. Ask any literary agent that question and they'll think you're off your rocker. Ask any publisher to give you that information transparently and they will rip up your contract.
> So call the printers in China, pick your favorite book, find out some print brokers here in the US, and say, "What did the printing of those books cost? Send me a spreadsheet." And when they do and you find out that a $50 retail book cost about $2 to print, and you're going to get 10% of [off?] cover price, they're requiring that you order 5,000 for your own list and they're going to give you a quarter of a million dollar advance, you realize that there's no way they've taken no risk at all.
Interestingly, the person speaking was in the restaurant business… There’s quite a bit of insight in that episode.
[0] https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/20135760/kokonas-know-...
The comments here are incredibly harsh. As someone who has self published two books, quite a lot of this resonates with me.
First book addressed a timely topic but ultimately aged out very quickly and I got burnt out trying to keep up with updates. It made roughly $80,000 in lifetime sales, of which I kept 96% (credit card fees + hosting overhead).
Second book addressed a broader niche but fell into several of the traps he describes and only made $3000.
I will likely buy his book and try to apply it on either a revision of book two or something new.
Thanks. I'm glad you liked it!
> It’s because Hemingway’s Boat is broadly “about” a topic, whereas The War of Art promises—and delivers—an outcome.
I certaintly don't know a damn thing about selling books. But I am an avid reader of nonfiction and this is exactly the opposite of how I shop for books myself.
Other than the odd "how-to", I'm skeptical of any book promising me anything other than the author's diligent study and incisive distillation of a topic. I've read many books which caused my mind to grow and really excited me about the world but I've never read a book that "solved my problem". Of which, I assure you, I have many.
I share your opinion (I particularily like essays; I follow along the arguments, think whether I agree with them or not, etc. but absolutely hate the "how-to" kind of books which I strongly associate with the hustle and self improvement culture that I find quite toxic.)
But I agree with the author that the later kind of books seems much more popular with the general public, being handed solutions appears to be more attractive to many people that being encouraged to think about problems that probably aren't even relevant to them. And in a sense it's perfectly understandable, but I personally prefer the intellectual stimulation from a good essay over what is essentially a marketing speech from a professional hustler.
That's the kind of stuff I like to write myself as well. But after hundreds of essays, years in, my audience is still tiny. Churn is also higher because when you have such a style, it's harder to make a crystal clear promise so the probability that the content/reader fit isn't just right is higher.
There just aren't that many people like that.
For the gen. pop. you're better off making a crystal clear promise, being very clear about who should and shouldn't read it, and delivering on that promise so the book proves useful to the reader and gets recommended.
Most people read non-fiction to solve a problem. It seems that what you and I like is learning for learning's sake.
There are so many issues in all this. I think most self-help and how-to-be-an-entrepreneur books target people who don't read much. On the one hand, it's the bigger market! on the other hand, they don't read much.
These days, most or a large portion of books that have involve substance and research written by academics, who probably would like the books to make money but are OK with them not making money 'cause they still get fame and possibly academic kudos. Of course, there are professional researchers and writers who make a living publishing but they have their substance, they have their niche and they need only very specific advice as opposed to the (apparently confused) generalities of the article.
And thing the author of this website is he seems to aim to sell a book about getting rich writing books and those books would have to be about getting rich too. It's more a multilevel marketing scheme - which doesn't mean someone won't rich here but the entire enterprise is grim and not something I'd want to read about - well, Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait And Switch is somewhat interesting. But still.
> but I've never read a book that "solved my problem". Of which, I assure you, I have many.
Curious of your unsolved problems.
Oh, mostly personal.
How to be a kinder person.
How to not take things for granted.
How to contribute more to my community.
How to accept that due to a drift in my world views, I will likely never have as close a relationship with my parents as when I was young.
How to decide if one should withdraw from the world as much as possible or embrace it.
How to view every person as valuable.
How to respect every person even when they are creating problems for you.
How to cope with long term illness in the family.
How to feel about having amassed an amount of money that seems disproportionate to my contribution to society.
How to disagree with people without resenting them (even when you believe the things they believe are hurting people).
How to raise a kid who is curious and interested in things.
How to raise a kid that shuns cruelty.
How guide a kid away from traps you fell into yourself without taking over their life.
How to show people you appreciate them.
I'm not saying no book has helped with any of the above. But I have never read a book that fixed one of these problems or really even ever told me anything very interesting about them. What to do is mostly obvious. How to get oneself to do those things is the hard part. And I think that kind of change doesn't come from reading one book. It comes from many absorbed over a long period of time. It comes from daily devotions (not specifically of the Christian variety, though I have seen those guide people well too).
Maybe I'm wrong but that's the best I've figured out.
I'm an author of a non-fiction book. I self-published. My book has a 5-star rating to date even though it was published nearly 5 years ago. My book meets most of the criteria laid out in this book. I even had both a publisher and distributor approach me and I had plenty leverage. Despite all that, I didn't get the book sales I wanted nor the PR.
Everyone that reads my book is surprised to hear it's not topping the charts or plastered everywhere my audience hangs out. My book beat out all the competition when it came out in terms of reviews.
While the points in this post are valid, I don't believe they get to the bottom of what holds back sales.
Frankly, I don't know what the answer is -- I have a vague idea of what it could be but I haven't had a chance to try those things. Perhaps if my book had been in all airport bookstores a few years ago, it might have taken off (no pun intended) like Tim Ferriss' book but who knows.
Does it, though?
I assume you mean "Billion Dollar Muslim: Why We Need Spiritually Inspired Entrepreneurs".
It clearly makes mistake #3: "writing broadly about the topic instead of making a clear promise about what the reader will get out of it".
What is "clear promise about what the reader will get out of it" in "Billion Dollar Muslim"?
Frankly, based on the title I don't see why I should read it, even if I'm somewhat interested in entrepreneurship.
"Why We Need Spiritually Inspired Entrepreneurs" never occurred to me as a question worth answering. Not the way "how to increase sales?" is a question I might be interested in knowing the answer to.
BTW: you website has expired SSL certificate so the main source of promoting your book is as good as gone.
Just going off the title this sounds very niche. How many people take this kind of self help stuff seriously, and how many also value spirituality? The subtitle even says "for muslim engineers" (which I'm sure is a fairly large group, but still).
> What is "clear promise about what the reader will get out of it" in "Billion Dollar Muslim"?
Uh, it promises to explain Why We Need Spiritually Inspired Entrepreneurs.
I don't think the book needs to appeal to you to count as a clear promise the reader will get something out of it! You could object in the same way to a book called "How to Draw in Charcoal", how "Frankly, based on the title I don't see why I should read it".
There isn't a book out there that doesn't promise to show its contents to the reader. If we're dividing books into those with a clear promise vs those which are broadly about an area, compare and contrast "How to Draw in Charcoal" with "Thousand Dollar Artist: Why We Need Charcoal Drawings".
> There isn't a book out there that doesn't promise to show its contents to the reader.
I think I don't understand that, but it seems massively wrong (e.g. my favourite book is called Essays) and I have no idea what you were trying to communicate. I can't see what exactly I'm supposed to do with the second sentence either. Sorry.
I gave up marketing the book two years ago after trying for nearly 3 years. SSL certificate I will check out. That must be recent as the site has been running fine for years.
You might have a point about the promise of the book, but that depends on whether your muslim or not. Most muslims who come across it, understand the premise immediately, but still, you might have a point there.
Did you use beta readers? This is just one of our posts.
We talk more about the mechanics of useful books here.¹
Unfortunately, if it's not organically growing, it's not getting word of mouth, and if it's not getting word of mouth, it's just not that useful.
Either people don't have the problem you think they have, your book doesn't solve it, or the audience isn't right (in which case people don't run into people they can recommend the book to.)
Notes ¹ https://writeusefulbooks.com/resources/designing-nonfiction-...
I just bought your book based on the post above. Maybe it’s marketing? Your book is also aimed a small niche(I’m on your target market!), maybe that’s it?
That's hilarious. Enjoy the book :)
Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC age since you're competing with ever increasing ad prices. I have spent a lot of money on advertising regardless.
One thing that has been a major sticking point for me however, ist hat distribution has been a huge issue. I wouldn't say my target market is that small. Most of the Middle East and Asia is quite ripe for my book but amazon doest operate it's self-publishing arm out there and the alternatives have not been that enticing.
> Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC ag
And yet the free source of marketing (your twitter account) doesn't have a link to the book.
Neither does your HN bio.
Your website is broken (expired SSL certificate).
As far as I can tell you don't have a single page that tries to sell the book. A link to amazon is a bare minimum.
https://writeusefulbooks.com/ is an example of a master class of marketing a book. It describes what the book is about and why one should buy it. It established the author as successful writer and therefore authority on the subject.
He also wrote an article good enough to hit HN and be a driver to the website. That required 0 budget.
Maybe your failure at marketing are a result of you being bad at it, not a universal truth that you can only be successful with "huge budget".
Thanks! I agree that our marketing is good as the CMO. Just kidding.
Strongly agree with this: >not a universal truth that you can only be successful with "huge budget".
That quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The true GOATS of advertising and marketing, like for example Dave Trott, beat the point that you should play games you can win into your head over and over.
If one can't compete buying a ton of ads, don't try. But making a book that's useful to a small group of people, by making a clear promise, specifying who it is and isn't for, and then aggressively iterate with beta-readers until you start to get word of mouth, changes the equation more from needing lots of money to putting in a lot of the right kind of effort.
> Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC age since you're competing with ever increasing ad prices.
This is a mental trap that is super easy to fall into. The author of the article is writing a marketing guide. Marketing encompasses the entire product and go to market design, of which advertising is just a tiny part. Notice in his table of contents that advertising is only mentioned in one chapter very late in the book.
This^
I'm curious which geographies you marketed to, I can totally imagine a lot of my American friends being hesitant caught reading this book for ahem keywords. But this book can also totally sell in other places!
You're right. In the UK and America it doesn't have as much appeal but in Middle East and Asia it gains a lot of interest. The problem in those territories is distribution. Distribution is much better in the West for self-publishers.
I enjoyed this, I thought it mostly made good points, and it linked to other articles I will look at. Yet..
I started reading a blogger who teaches how to make a successful blog, sells courses about it, etc. I soon realized her blog is just about her making money from promising to help you make money from your blog. A frighteningly vacuous operation. It seems a modern cousin to the old ad in magazines promising to reveal the secret to wealth for $20. When you write to the given address you get a letter back saying "Do as I do." It's a pyramid operation.
Writing books about writing books seems similar. Selling the dream of high sales when you write on other topics, when their books are the same "making money from promising to help you make money" from your book seems a bit fishy, has a scammy element. It's more than a lil "Do as I do."
It's a fine line but ....
I've just bought an e-book online which is essentially about promoting your content online (so broadly aligned with what you're talking about). The book was relatively expensive but I'd say definitely worth it - contents are really well thought out and comes with a lot of supporting material. It also seems to have been pretty successful for the author.
But the irony is that if this wasn't something that had been promoted successfully online then I'm not sure that the author would have had the credibility to be able to sell a product of this type. Why should I believe you if you're not doing it yourself?
I respect your opinion, and if you're the type of person who considers that a blanket conflict of interest than our book isn't for you.
I don't consider that good or bad, it just is. Similar to how some people prefer fish over meat and vice versa.
However, I will push back against the broad stroke generalization that you either teach people for free or charge money and be considered a scam.
Our advice is solid and battle-tested. There's Rob who wrote the Mom Test and Devin who wrote The Workshop Survival guide with Rob. And then there's our community with over a 100 up and coming authors who we're helping increase the probability of success through our process. The early results are already positive and it'll only improve as we keep trying to nail our process even more.
Is YC a scam because it isn't free?
If an author is like Tai Lopez you don't get word of mouth and burn through your lead pool. That means you're constantly trying to attract fresh leads, which is why these scams eventually tend to break.
What we're doing is teaching a process that minimizes some of the common mistakes authors make. Yes, we're charging money for that.
But if you look at our process, or heck, just read this article, you should be able to see that there's value worth paying for.
If you use nothing else but this article with these 4 common pitfalls to avoid, you'll do better vs. not having read it. And this was free.
So, I don't think your argument holds any water.
There's definitely a scam element when the thing that they're selling is a "How to make money doing X". Less so if X is recursive like this, or the original article here.
If there's a magic money fountain and someone is selling info on how to get it, rather than exploiting it for all it's worth, selling the info is the magic money fountain they've found. And the money is supposed to come from you.
Isn't it the case with anyone doing anything for the most part?
When Marques Brownlee tells me what motivated him to buy an iPhone it's always a gymnastic I need to play in my head on if I should even try to relate to a dude who buys/gets handed a couple devices or cars every week.
The article does read like that but he seems to have basically applied lean principles to writing books. And he says he's written 2 books that both make him $10k per month so it seems he's walking the walk.
You've hit the nail on the head. It's the same for some other industries like courses teaching you how to trade stocks. The way they make money is the course, not the trading.
Shouldn't #5 be "not promoting your book effectively" because he's clearly promoting his book effectively. I think this is fine if fame and fortune are your goal, which is an unquestioned assumption for a lot of people, but there are other reasons to write a book, which he does not address.
In fact, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who write non-fiction books are absolutely aware that the royalties will likely be (maybe) beer money--assuming they don't have expensive tastes in beer. Rather they're reputational. In tech, being a published author on a topic often separates people from the pack as consultants but it can also easily differentiate you if you have an externally-facing role (especially) at a company.
Personally, I've made a relatively trivial amount of money from the books I've written, but I have little doubt they've been good investments of my time--some of which has been work time.
ADDED: I'd add that "promoting your book effectively" probably isn't free. Most authors aren't going to get a lot of publisher support so now you're hiring a publicist, paying for review copies, paying to travel (normally) to speak at events where you do book signings and promote your book, etc.
Researching and writing help clarify your thoughts, which could pay dividends in other ways. I'm retired, don't need the money and am told old to care about fame, but I have several ideas for non-fiction books I'm working on. Now that I think about it, his blog post presents a strong case for not writing a non-fiction book for money. There are other ways to spend your time with a better chance of making money, unless you're clever self-promoter that is.
"A 98% drop in sales after the first year, Seventy percent of traditionally published titles fail to pay out a single dollar in royalties, Vanishingly few nonfiction books sell even five hundred copies"
That's a great point. It's not just about I have a book. But that, especially if it's through a publisher (which has pros and cons), I have sufficient knowledge of the topic either acquired day-to-day or through research that I'm capable of laying down at least 250 pages or so of coherent writing on said topic. The last book I did I was definitely already familiar with the area but I was certainly more so my the time I was done.
I agree but you can't fake this. You still have to follow our process because a book that doesn't have strong word of mouth and doesn't resonate doesn't give you credibility.
I.e. you can't just slap a book together and think you've got credibility. People see right through that.
This is something Tendayi Viki of Strategyzer talked to us about:
"HOW DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE BOOK AS A PRODUCT? In my line of work, credibility is very important. I can’t cold call companies and be like “Hey, you know that those innovation programs are very important? Well, we have the best one. You can buy it now for three easy payments of 599.” Reputation matters a lot. It’s so much easier if someone comes to you. If they already respect me before we start the conversation.
Now, there are two ways to do that. You can deliberately be the snake oil salesmen. But that’s why those books don’t work because it’s so obvious what the person is trying to do. They write a book so they can say “I wrote a book”.
Or, you can say “I actually have something authentic to share and let me share that.” That’s the approach I’ve taken. I know I need to build a reputation but I don’t want to build it on nothing. If people pull back the curtains, they can see substance."
Notes I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing you of saying that. I'm merely adding to your comment.
Reference https://writeusefulbooks.com/resources/Tendayi-Viki/
The point of the article is explaining how a goal of a living wage can be earned directly off nonfiction writing, in addition to two different reasons that are explicitly stated at the beginning of the article as being commonly suggested.
It also explicitly is calling out methods that do not require fame, nor does it espouse a goal of fortune (unless you treat a living wage as a fortune).
He does so dismissively, not treating them seriously: "you should therefore embrace your book’s predestined doom by reframing it as either passion project or calling card."
That sentence refers to the traditional method, not our method.
It seems to me that virtually everyone going into the creative fields (art, music, writing, acting) should enter that field without any expectation to make a living from it.
We pay other people to do things that aren’t fun for us, not the other way around.
The owners of and investors in publishing houses, movie studios, and music labels tend to expect something beyond 'making a living'. Whereas those who actually generate cultural phenomena (our culture, aka the shared framework of references that allows us to define an us) see little to nothing from work that is foundational to multi-billion dollar media empires. Not making a living means that the class of people most free to engage in cultural creation are those who are independently wealthy.
'Follow your passion' brings with it the perversity of if you love it, then that should be reward enough. Much in the way that doctors and nurses have been labeled as 'heroes' is used as a smoke screen to not increase pay or alleviate working conditions because you love your work and can you really be a hero if you expect money from it?
One way or another, it seems, human society appears bent on perpetuating the idea that some people should generate value for others without compensation in regards to that value.
Ha ha what? The problem is there are low barriers to entry to working in the creative arts so there's huge competion. It's like app development. Creating isn't enough. You need a marketing strategy.
Publishers OTOH diversify so can build their empires by backing multiple authors etc, some of whom break out.
Anybody with feet can run around a track. So athletics has, in that sense, a low barrier to entry. That doesn't make them Usain Bolt.
It's an interesting look past the mystification of how capitalism is claimed to work. Behind the curtain it is unable or unwilling to find a way to sustain the existences of the producers of goods that the public desires. Instead it relies on disposability. Burn a part out (and many do; it's particularly a problem among romance writers -- and on through Hollywood, the porn industry, et cetera) and replace. Rinse and repeat.
The question becomes: is it a system instated by humans and controlled by humans, or a system that has come to control humans, a meta system, global capital as a type of planet-wide intelligence analogous to an ant colony or the cells in an individual body, bent on its perpetuation at the necessary cost of any of those individual components.
It's an interesting system to discuss in the hypothetical. The genre, however, changes when or if one realizes the part you are in such a system as it exits. Of course, we all think we're special. There's always a war going on around us, but there isn't a bullet out there with my name on it; those shells rip others to pieces, not me.
Which, circling back, is why we need 'content creators'. We need Lovecrafts to distract us from the cosmic horror of ourselves and what we label reality.
I'm not sure why the downvotes. That's absolutely a fair comment. There are some cases where creative work can benefit your day job through visibility and related skills. (A talented amateur actor is probably going to be better at presentations for example. And being that really good presenter at your company's user group event every year isn't going to hurt you.) But it seems a good point overall. Being great on some instrument probably isn't going to be a great argument for why you should get promoted at a non-music-related position.)
It's a bad comment because it totally misses the actual dynamics of the creative marketplace--that is, superstars-take-all. It has nothing to do with the "fun" of the work. The superstars in the creative industries are making 7-8 figures and everyone else is making 4-5 figures while trying to become a superstar.
And I would say that going into a field that requires hitting the jackpot to not be waiting tables as a day job isn't a great strategy from an expected earnings perspective. (Which isn't to say people shouldn't do it if that's their thing.)
I would also say, people make more money doing stuff that's hard. (and of course the bar goes up)
I'd say "hard" is a necessary but not sufficient condition. People (individually or in the aggregate) also need to be willing to pay you specifically a lot of money for what you specifically bring to the table that, in many creative fields, requires being very top tier (and lucky).
In the arts, the equivalent of a mid-tier developer makes jack squat.
Fortunately for me, writing compilers is fun.
Doing something that’s fun and hard.
If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun.
I have to say this to my all the time to my friend who got into Harvard from across the pond who seems to deliberately pick "easy" courses with lots of book work and therefore burns out e.g. if you want to learn complex analysis, the hard course that requires thinking will probably have less tedious homework to do for example.
It's the same with competition. Who wants to enter a competition that's an easy win? There's no joy in that. Far more fun competing with people who are very good.
Must be fun!
I got a publishing contract with a larger publisher to write a book on Agile (10 years ago, didn't end up publishing, long story).
I know that amazing feeling the author mentions of getting a "yes", while totally ignoring that at best I was going to make pennies. If I recall it was 10% after all publishing costs were paid for. However, I had a full time job, so this was for-the-love-of-it rather than as a real source of income.
I wrote a few books with a major publisher, but did it largely for the authority that it conveyed on my work and career at the time.
Love works too. :)
The real reason why most non-fiction authors don't make a profit is because only scam topics which sell a dream but don't add any real value can make any profit in our current scam economy.
Self-help gurus, spiritual charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, get-rich-quick con men, corporate consultants, slick marketing experts; these are the people who are making profit in our scam economy.
Just focus your energy on a fucking scam and you will make money by the boatload. You don't need a long article to tell you that. Just open your eyes and look around.
It's not just writing which is affected; every 'intellectual' industry is affected; art, music, science, politics, technology... All the successful people are scammers. That's why you can't find any good content anywhere these days. The shit always floats to the top. The media is concentrating all our attention on the shit and away from the good stuff.
Also, the rich people who are running the show are morons with no taste and 0 intellect.
Step 1: sell 10k copies of your book through self-publishing.
Step 0: already be successful at marketing or be well-known.
There are certainly some valid points, but his solution pre-supposes that you already know your marketing.
So the actual steps would be:
* consistently produce good content for several years, build an audience (and an email list, as quaint as it sounds)
* write a book, self-publish it
* promote the out of it
* THEN try to get a publisher on board
You severely overestimate how well known Rob was before releasing The MOM Test.
You've got the order wrong. He got "famous" because The MOM Test did well. It wasn't "He was famous and then The MOM Test did well."
The danger with your line of reasoning is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If one truly believes the need to be famous, they can't ever succeed.
However, our process is designed to show that's not the case and to help "normal people" succeed.
Having the right publisher is probably the most important.
I can recommend https://newline.co
I wrote a book with them and made enough to pay my rent for over a year with the money I made.
I wrote a mediocre book on a popular programming language, and have gotten something like 10-20keuros. It took a year to write it, dunno how many hours, but probably not a very good hourly pay.
It's based on anecdata but I think a non-fiction book - on average - still has a better ROI than a fiction book. While the outliers may make more money with fiction, the average writer will never make 10-20k from a fiction book. Probably an order of magnitude less.
Did you self-publish or use an established publisher?
An established publisher.
how much are these numbers skewed by academic monographs? these are books that are basically going to be sold only to university libraries, which might explain why they sell <500 copies.
there are many such books where no author ever expects to make money -- they have other incentives due to the way academia is organized.
My impression is that even reasonably well-selling non-fiction books typically do not sell a lot of copies. To make it onto a best-seller list you only need to sell in the tens of thousands of books.
So 3/4 of the tips are: write a book people want to read?
No clearly, the message is, write self-help books for wannabe writers.
Self-help books for wannabe anythings is not a bad idea. Imagine a self help book for wannabe app developers.
During a gold rush, sell shovels.
If this was obvious advice, the mistake wouldn't be so prevalent in among non-fiction authors.
I enjoyed reading the article. However, I think the author is over-generalising a bit with targeting this at "non-fiction" authors. #1 & #2 are perhaps broadly aplicable, but #3 & #4 seem more geared towards self-help books, books about management and the like. I suspect people who read a memoir, an auto-biography, an eulogy or about true crime may well be interested in reading about a topic rather than looking for actionable advice?
>I suspect people who read a memoir, an auto-biography, an eulogy or about true crime may well be interested in reading about a topic rather than looking for actionable advice?
Those don't classify as the type of non-fiction problem solving books we're talking about.
All models and methods are an approximation of the world (excluding pure mathematics). That error in approximation creates problems when you don't respect the domain of validity of the theory.
Right now, what you claim as over-generalising, I argue is you taking our theory outside its domain of validity.
I agree that it breaks there, but that's only because it wasn't designed for that domain so it's kind of a strawman argument.
... because most non fiction books are wrote as a product to make money, not to communicate something useful to the reader?
All the money is in substack these days. Maybe there could be a startup that anthologizes substacks into print books with low margins but high volume
Fantastic advice. Now all I've got to do is write